A brief history of Wanda Maximoff.
Last time on WandaVision, Wanda
attempted to have a staycation after exhausting herself expanding the Hex to
keep Vision from falling apart. This attempted was complicated by the
increasing glitches in her metaphorical matrix as objects in her Hex kept
warping between eras. And were exasperated further by the return of Monica Rambeau
to the Hex, the passage through the dimensional barrier giving her the ability
to see into the electromagnetic spectrum, or so it seems, and possibly a few
other neat tricks. At the same time, Vision meets Darcy and after freeing her
from the Hex gets the rundown of what happened to him pre-Westview. After being
blocked from getting home for a while, he flew off to try and get back to his
family, leaving Darcy to catch up. Things come to a head when Agnes tells Wanda
to check her basement for the twins. In the dark creepy basement, we learn that
Agnes is in fact a powerful witch named Agatha Harkness, and that most of the
problems that popped up in Westview were caused by her. Enough recap, let’s get
to it.
The best sign that you should stop doing what
you're doing? When it changes colors.
We open, not with a fun nod to a
classic sitcom, but with a bunch of witches leading another witch to the sake
in Salem, Massachusetts in 1693. So, like, tonally the exact polar opposite of
a sitcom. The magically bound witch, revealed to be a young Agatha Harkness, is
being put on witch trial for practicing Dark Magic. Huh, this makes me wonder
where the Sorcerer Supreme is. Did the Salem witches get to govern themselves,
or did they just not tell the Ancient One/Ancient One’s predecessor this was
going down? Whatever, they sentence Agatha despite her obvious fake hysterical pleas
for help. The gathered witches hit Agatha with some kind of spell, while the
head witch, revealed to be mama Harkness, watches. The spell seems to work for
a minute, but then Agatha somehow corrupts the spell, and start to drain the
life out of them. Her mother survives, and but get’s blasted back. Mother Harkness
flies into the air above her. Agatha says that she can be good, but Mother
Harkness says she can’t. Agatha drains her too, she takes her mother’s broach,
and then flies off.
In the present, Agatha is gloating
to her rabbit about catching Wanda. Wanda tries to use her powers on Agatha,
but the 300-year-old witch isn’t worried. She binds Wanda’s hands and feet, and
explains that she has protection ruins set up around her sanctum that keep
anyone besides her from using Magic. She seems genuinely perplexed that Wanda
doesn’t know the basics of magic, despite holding an entire town enthralled. She
explains how she’s been trying to ease Wanda out of her fantasy, using the
hijinks to break the ideal sitcom world that Wanda was trying to hide in. She admits
that she got closest with her Faux-Pietro, Fietro, but Wanda metaphorically
slipped the noose on that one to. She explains that she was remote controlling Fietro,
not assuming his form or anything. She also explains that this is a possession
not necromancy. She totally could have reanimated Pietro classic, but the fact
he was in Europe and the numerous bullet wounds made that option… less than
ideal. Still worked out, though, as Wanda was so full of self-doubt, so wanted
to have Pietro back and her other issues that she just rolled with it. She
sensed Wanda’s Hex and was drawn in. She explains that she can do all the
things that Wanda has done in the Hex. She can control a bug, transform it into
a bird, to demonstrate, but she seems as frustrated as hell that Wanda is able
to do the same thing on the scale of the entire town. Basically, she’s had to
work for ages to do on the small scale and Wanda doesn’t seem to know the
basics but can puppet master nearly 4000 people. “Magic on autopilot,” as she
puts it. She tossed the bug-bird into her rabbit’s mouth. Gross.
I suppose given the choice between the two, I
would also focus on the sitcom over the active
bomb.
Wanda keeps trying to deny that she’s
the one in control of the town, but Agatha isn’t having any of that now that
she’s revealed herself. She admitted she tried to bring her out of the delusion
gently, but obviously that didn’t work. Wanda explained that all she remembers
before the Hex was that she felt empty and alone. “Endless nothingness.” That
seems to give Agatha something to work with. She plucks one of Wanda’s hair and
opens a portal. She explains that it’s time to look at a few real reruns to get
to the bottom of this. Wanda doesn’t want to, because, you know, her past is
incredibly traumatic, but Agatha pulls the “do it or I’ll kill your kids,”
card. Agatha opens up the door and they find themselves in Wanda’s home in
Sokovia with her family. Possibly… not counting out that Magneto might somehow
be involved with her and Pietro’s conception. It seems that Oleg Maximoff, her Dad,
sold DVD and VHS of classic sitcoms for a living. Part way through watching her
parents and Pietro interact, Agatha shoves Wanda into the memory and she
assumes her role in the story. The Maximoffs practice their English during a
weekly movie/show night. The family sits down to watch the Dick van Dyke show,
while ignoring the fighting that’s occurring just down the street. They have a
really nice time watching classic TV, right up until they get hit with the bomb
that killed the elder Maximoffs. Pietro and Wanda hide under the bed just
before another Stark bomb hits right in front of them. The bombs lands in a
really convenient manner, right in front of the still playing TV. Wanda chants
to herself that it’s all a bad dream and that she’ll wake up any second. Agatha
pulls Wanda out of the vision, she’s impressed that Wanda intuitively hexed the
bomb, saving her and her brother. Wanda tries to deny it, claiming the bomb was
defective, but Agatha is doubtful. It’s a start, but Agatha wants to see how Wanda
got the metaphorical big guns. A heavily armored door appeared behind them.
Wanda doesn’t want to go farther, but Agatha forces her to keep moving.
We enter a HYDRA Lab. Agatha points
out that joining a terrorist organization seems like an odd means of getting
revenge on the world’s biggest arms dealer, but Wanda insists that she and Pietro
wanted to change the world. A pair of HYDRA scientists have Wanda brought in to
a containment area where they have Loki’s Scepter and the Mind Stone. While Wanda
is in the cell, the Stone seems to leap out of the scepter and flies toward
her. She has a vision on clearly herself in a much cooler looking version of
her classic costume before passing out. She’s taken to her cell where she
watches TV while the scientists look over the footage. Turns out, what she saw
was all a vision, they just have video of her suddenly passing out. Agatha
comes back in, intuits that the Mind Stone boosted a natural gift for magic
that probably would have withered without training. Agatha is starting to get
an idea of how Wanda’s powers work, but takes her to another memory to confirm.
A love born of a mutual desire to understand one
another.
The door takes us to the Avenger’s compound
in upstate New York. Wanda is watching Malcom in the Middle, when Vision comes
in to keep her company. They bond a little watching the silly sitcom. Vision
says that he wants to help her. She explains her depression, that it’s like a
wave crashing into her over and over again, drowning her. He tries to help give
her a new perspective, “What is grief, if not love persevering?” Agatha, because
she’s a literal witch, lists off the causes of Wanda’s grief, the dead parents,
dead brother, and how hard it must have been to lose the one person holding her
up and going back to the misery.
She can't feel him. But I can feel my heart breaking.
Agatha creates another door, and
they’re in the SWORD compound. Wanda walks in, demanding to see Vision’s body. She
wants to recover his body and give it a proper funeral. Hayward brings her into
his office. They chat for a minute before he tells Wanda he wants to show her
something. He brings her into the lab where they’re examining Vision’s body. He’s
in pieces. Wanda still wants to bury him, but Hayward lets her know in no uncertain
terms that he’s not letting a billion dollars in Vibranium get buried. Hayward
does seem to poke at her grief, too, clearly trying to see if her powers can
bring Vision back online. Wanda shatters the glass separating her from the lab
and levitates down to him. Hayward calls off the guards and lets her go to
Vision. She puts her hand on his head, and in a heartbreaking call back says “I
can’t feel you.” She leaves, but finds an envelope in her car. She opens it and
there’s a map inside that she follows. It takes her to Westview. On her drive,
we see many of the people that will become characters in her fantasy. She makes
it to a lot where the foundation for a house has been laid. She takes out another
document from the envelope. It’s floor plans for a house with a heart drawn in
the center, the words “To Grow Old In. V” written inside. Wanda drops to her
knees, sobbing. Her powers start going crazy and she magics a house into existence
around her. Things stabilize for a second before flaring out more intensely, engulfing
the town, forming the Hex. She then makes a new Vision from scratch, forming him
from pure energy. When he fully forms, he offers her his hand and welcomes her
home.
You could say that her love perservered quite
spectacularly.
Wanda comes to in her house, though
it’s become a sound stage. She sees Agatha applaud her from the audience stand
before vanishing. Wanda runs outside to see Agatha flying above her son’s, with
magical leashes wrapped around Tommy and Billy’s throats. She claims that Wanda
is supposed to be a myth, a vessel of Chaos Magic capable of creating anything
from nothing, a Scarlet Witch!
To quote a giant robot, threatening the children is
a bad move.
The credits roll, but midway through
we’re shown Hayward at the new SWORD base. He applauds the ingenuity of his
team. They hooked up the drone that Wanda pulled out of the Hex and threw at
his feet to a container… holding an entirely White Vision. Apparently, they figured out that they could use the energy from Wanda's Hex to fully energize Vision. His eyes open as the
credits begin again.
Okay, as penultimate episodes go, this
was amazing. We finally got a complete picture of what Wanda has been going
through and how the Hex began. It hurt to see her parents die, to see her fall
in love with Vision just a little bit and know he’s going to die. The fact that
Wanda lasted as long as she did before snapping is kind of amazing. I liked
seeing how they explained Wanda’s powers in universe, a natural talent
magnified by the Mind Stone. I obviously knew that her powers were magic based,
but it kind of surprised me to realize that the movies were still operating off
this idea that she was just telepathic and telekinetic with a light-show side
effect or whatever. The idea that Wanda Maximoff in the MCU has just now, for
the first time, been called the Scarlet Witch is kind of mindboggling. I also
liked how they decided to explain why Wanda modeled her delusions around sitcoms,
that they represent a time when her life was simpler and happier. The explanation
about Fietro was both informative but also still lacking. Like, I’m glad to
find out he was being mind-controlled and not that he was Agatha in disguise or
something. I still want to know if he’s supposed to be the Fox Pietro or whatever
his backstory is. Oh, and that reveal of the White Vision. So glad that I didn’t
see that coming, it was amazing. Granted, I’m reasonably certain how this is
going to go down. Hayward is going to send his Vision into the Hex to finish Wanda,
White Vision will meet Hex Vision, they might for a bit but ultimately merge together.
It might be wishful thinking, but I do want Vision to stick around. We’ll have
to wait a few days and see. Next time, the finale. I’m so freaking excited to
see it, but sad that this’ll probably be the last we’ll see off Wanda and
Vision and their family at least until Dr. Strange 2 next year.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/48308633
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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