It’s that time of the week again where I wake up, put the bins out and put Wandavision on! It is bittersweet because the more I watch it, the more I love the project but the more I realise we are getting closer and closer to the end. And this episode does an amazing job of answering a lot of questions we have had up so now and positions us for a great finale. But as per usual… spoilers are head as a lot of stuff I discuss begins to tie up a lot of theories and rumours that have been circulating… so go and watch and then come back and give this a read.
Spoilers Ahead
So we now get to see more of Agatha getting punished by her mum and coven of witches at the start and, unless these are bad witches, she is definitely looking to be positioned as a bad guy here… or at least a very morally ambiguous neutral/mentor character. This is a shame as I was so ready to defend her as a misunderstood good guy and it may transpire that she is still trying to be good as the prospect of Chaos Magic and Scarlet Witches seems to scare her? Is she acting a bit like a Sorcerer Supreme and defending against bad magic or at least untrained magic and that everything we have seen so far is her trying to understand Wanda and her powers… or it could be that she seeks to simply control or harness her power for her own which certainly seems more likely. I would say that her behaviour of leashing Wanda’s sons isn’t exactly the sign of a hero but then again in Infinity War Dr Strange said he would let Iron Man and Spider-Man die if it meant protecting the Time Stone so if she is taking on a guardianship role like Dr Strange then its clear these magic types are clearly dedicated at least. There’s a lot to unpack about this opening scene because she clearly has a lot of power which she may or may not struggle to contain it and she apparently wants to be good… but didn’t exactly make a compelling case for it… but this is a blog for another time or a revelation for next week.
The episode served as a great retrospective origin story of Wanda as well, seeing the spoken about situation of being stuck under the table, to her first interaction with the Mind Stone and her first touching moment with Vision. It also allowed us to see the situation leading up to the start of Episode 1 where we see her create, not resurrect Vision, as well as the creation of the Hex itself. This does shine a lot of doubt on my Mephisto being the mastermind behind it all as she seems to have been largely uninfluenced through-out the entire situation but there are some aspects which are still pretty coincidental such as Westview being the place her and V bought while also being the site of immense magical power that Agatha has been looking at. Also, it is clear to see that Hayward manipulated the tapes of Wanda attacking S.W.O.R.D which redeems her as a villain to a certain degree and casts A LOT of doubt on his character. I mean Nick Fury used underhanded tactics before to form the Avengers so its out of the Directors playbook but still it’s clear that he has his own agenda (which is revealed in the mid credits which I will get onto in a minute). The episode also does a great job of really tackling Wanda’s pain and loss and putting it all into perspective while also alluding to the fact that she has been using magic since she was a ‘young witch’ which in my opinion really neatly ties together a lot of the mystery about her past. Finally on this point, it is great to see how the episodes and the sitcom styles that were used throughout Wandavision reflect the various shows she watched through-out these tough moments in her life, demonstrating that TV is both a literal and mental escape for her.
I wanted to touch a little bit more on her powers because she is clearly seen as an incredibly powerful being and one which is known through-out MCU magical history and that is a Scarlet Witch. This is a great way to grant her her name while also tying this into the lore of the universe they have created. It was certainly a powerful moment where Wanda see’s the Scarlet Witch in her traditional outfit when confronted by the Mind Stone as this is clearly shaping up to be her destiny. It looks like the Mind Stone has unlocked or boosted her latent powers which we can see in the second half where she shows some incredible power when creating the Hex. And as Agatha mentions, the power of the spell where she is simulating and maintaining life, not just around her but to the edges of the Hex, while also creating life in the form of Vision as well as even maybe the Twins, is a huge undertaking while the old, experienced Agatha took years mastering the spell to transmute a fly into a bird suggests that Wanda has huge untapped potential. The way that Agatha talks to Wanda about basic runes and hex’s as well makes it feel like she expected Wanda to have had some mystical training and awareness which becomes more apparent as we go down memory lane that Wanda doesn’t have. It could be that, similar to the comics, Agatha becomes a mentor figure to Wanda but it is looking more likely that Dr Strange will sense this mystical disturbance and step in to take Wanda on as his ward in Dr Strange: Multiverse of Madness.
A disappointing revelation that came out of this episode for me as well was about the Multiverse as it feels like a lot of the hints towards the Multiverse were actually debunked here. The first obvious one was that Agatha had created Pietro (Faietro or Fake Pietro as she called him) to simulate Wanda’s brother because she was unable to use necromancy on the actual, bullet ridden body of her brother. Side bar, Hahn gets massive points for the very sadistic and dry approach to telling Wanda this. But if we know now that Pietro was a creation of Agatha then it does then mean that this isn’t a different Pietro from another dimension which is a real shame. We know that the Multiverse is still happening and there may be some twists and turns still in the finale that result in this but for now, I don’t think we have the Fox universe in the MCU yet. And on that point, when you realised her dad came in the door was anyone else expecting Fassbender or (arguably even better) a de-aged McKellen to walk through the door? Her dad, at least here, seemed to be a regular Sokovian was trying to make a living and not a metal bending super villain it seems so, in this universe at least, it seems that Magneto isn’t kicking around.
Now back to Hayward because he is clearly hiding something. He manipulated the footage of Wanda’s attack in order to get S.W.O.R.D into the position it is now where he can, drum roll…. bring back the actual Vision! So it turns out Wanda left the base without Vision’s body and this was a lie Hayward created to move his pieces into place so he could get some of Wanda’s power to reboot the original Vision who we see coming to life again in the mid credit scene. This vision is distinctly different as he is all white and has the blue power as well as an electrical, blue gem in place of the Mind Stone so it stands to see if this Vision has the free will the original did or if this is a slave version that works for Hayward and S.W.O.R.D. I did think as well that this could be the MCU’s version of Wonderman as he was created from the brainwaves from Vision but this remains to be seen. I imagine that in the finale we will see a confrontation between White Vision and Mind Vision where maybe the two will form again – after all the Mind Vision version is created from the power of the Mind Stone as he was before, while White Vision is the physical representation of Vision and could be a great vessel. Either way, Hayward has a lot to answer for and its a bit of a dick move to simply just show Wanda people operating and ripping apart the body of her dead lover while telling her that he was ‘property’ and not necessarily a person. Either he has zero empathy and see’s Vision as simply a weapon or he was purposefully seeing to aggravate and provoke her. I think if anyone was to be revealed to be Mephisto in this, my money is on Hayward as he has been orchestrating a lot more of what we have seen this series, arguably more than Agatha, so I hope we get some further reveals concerning his character.
A final point on this is Agatha’s rabbit. Last week I said I thought this could be Mephisto shrunk down but I don’t believe this to be the case anymore. You see her talking to the rabbit and even feeding the rabbit the bird (or fly? Not sure what its form is if its a fly turned into a bird – do you get the nutrients of a bird or a fly?) which suggests that this isn’t just a rabbit. When I researched Agatha I also noticed that she has a son who is a Supervillain by the name of Nicholas Scratch and it just so happens that the rabbit is called… Senior Scratch. This could be a nod or an Easter Egg or it could be that she has actually turned her son into a rabbit for reasons unknown. If he has been villainous already, then surely her act of keeping him pacified as a small mammal is an act of good and not bad?
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