Hello all, and welcome to your weekly recap of whatever wildness occurred on the latest episode of WandaVision. These are meant to be read after watching, so they will go deep into spoiler territory. You have been warned!
Last Week on WandaVision…
Last week’s big cliffhanger offered the return of Pietro Maximoff to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That would have been surprising enough given his status as a super-dead character. WandaVision went the extra mile, however, by bringing in not the MCU Pietro but rather his Fox X-Men series counterpart played by Evan Peters. What does this mean for the show? For the MCU? For the X-Men? These are the mysteries we’ll be watching out for going forward.
But before we do, let’s not forget last week’s other main story: Vision’s rebellion against Wanda’s imposed reality, which inspired the arrival of Pietro in the first place. Both these issues take some big steps forward this week.
Brother From Another Mother
According to the episode conventions utilized thus far, this should be our ‘90s episode of WandaVision. But instead of sending up TGIF staples like Full House, the subject this time appears to be Nickelodeon shows with a dash of Saved by the Bell. The episode begins with Billy Maximoff (who, in the comics, will become the Young Avenger known as Wiccan) breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the audience about Halloween. This is both a clever send-up on sitcom convention (the episode will also utilize “flashback humor” as well) and an indication that Billy’s powers grant him special abilities within Wanda’s invented reality, something that’ll come up again later.
Billy and Tommy help introduce us to the new Pietro, the fun-loving uncle who plays with them as a distraction from the tension growing between their parents. He even snores cool.
Wanda spends most of the episode with Pietro, trying to figure out what his whole deal is, which is curious since one would assume she’s more on top of her own fantasy land. The fact that she’s not will probably help make her less morally culpable when the whole thing ends in a few more episodes.
For now, we get a lot of probing about Pietro’s different face and his wavering accent. Wanda asks questions about their shared past in an attempt to catch him in a lie. Pietro does his best to play along. He’s been brought here to play a role, and that’s what he’s going to do, even when the person who assigned this role tries to poke holes in it. Which is all to say, WandaVision is still plenty weird.
The Halloween concept this week gives us a lot of great sight gags in the form of homemade yet comic book-accurate costumes for both the grown-ups we’re familiar with and the characters the children will later become. Speaking of children, Westview has some now! Pietro asks Wanda where they came from. Instead of answering directly, she wonders if what she’s done is ethically okay. That question doesn’t exactly get answered either, but hey, it’s nice she’s even considering it.
For those wondering what movies Wanda likes, the crew walks in front of a theater marquee advertising both The Incredibles and The Parent Trap. Also, people in the town square appear to be watching a projected exhibition of Night of the Living Dead.
Vision Quest
Meanwhile, Vision lies his way out of trick-or-treating and instead goes off to investigate Westview on his own. At first he finds people imprisoned in limited loops, stuck doing the same activity over and over. Eventually he finds people who aren’t even moving at all, as if Wanda’s power to control them wanes the further away from her they get.
At the edge of Westview, Vision comes across poor Agnes, sitting in her car and experiencing some kind of fugue state. He does his little brain trick to wake her up and learns two things: one, he is a part of something called the Avengers and two, he is dead. Agnes starts losing it, so he zaps her into sitcom mode and decides to finally get the heck out of Westview.
But, of course, it’s not so easy. As soon as he breaks through Wanda’s barrier – greeted by a ton of SWORD agents – he begins to crumble and die. Back in Westview, Billy senses this and alerts his mother. Pietro gets blasted for voicing what we’re all thinking – “Don’t sweat it, sis. It’s not like your dead husband can die twice” – and Wanda saves Vision by expanding Westview. A lot.
This expansion transforms every real-world thing it swallows into a sitcom facsimile. So SWORD becomes a circus filled with clowns, its helicopter becomes a hot air balloon, etc. Darcy gets swallowed up as well, but we’ll have to wait until next week to see what happened to her.
I still haven’t given up my theory regarding Darcy, Woo, and Rambeau yet, by the way. This week Darcy hacks into Hayward’s fancy computer system in like two seconds, which seems conveniently fast and easy, almost like she’s in her own television show. This hacking does teach her that going into Westview changes your molecular structure, which seems like it could become important later.
What’s on Next?
We have three episodes to go and a lot of questions remain. Sadly, the whole thing seems to be gearing up to a big fight between Vision and Wanda. It’s tempting to assume Disney will give us all a happy ending, but who knows with this show? The issue of Vision’s death is now only part of the looming potential tragedy. What about the twins? On what level do they even exist, and will they disappear along with the rest of Wanda’s illusions?
More directly, next week will likely focus on how much Wanda expanded Westview and what kind of help from the outside world that invites. Who knows? Maybe an Avenger or two will show up.
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