It’s strange to think that this is our first official Marvel Cinematic Universe story in roughly a year. After an empty 2020, Disney+ has arrived to alleviate that lack with their first television offering—WandaVision. And it started us off right, with two episodes to get fans hooked.
Spoilers ahead.
Summary
“Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience”
Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) are a trying to appear normal in their new lives in a nondescript suburb set in a black and white world, even though she’s magic and he’s a machine. They can’t remember why there’s a heart on their calendar, but Vision heads to the office where he works on computing forms—but no one can tell him what the company he works for actually does. He is reminded that his boss Mr. Hart (Fred Melamed) and his wife Mrs. Hart (Debra Jo Rupp) are coming over to dinner, hence the “heart” on their calendar. Wanda meets their neighbor Agnes (Kathryn Hahn), and after talking to her, Wanda decides that it must be her and Vision’s anniversary that the calendar was referring to. As she’s putting together a romantic evening for them, Vision calls the house and she assures him everything is in order. They are both suitably surprised at the misunderstanding once the Harts have arrived for dinner.
Agnes brings over the fixings for a fancy meal to help Wanda out of this bind, but the food isn’t coming together as planned, and Vision has to keep Mrs. Hart away from the kitchen so that she won’t see Wanda doing magic. Eventually, Wanda pulls together a “breakfast for dinner” meal, and the four sit down to eat. They ask how Wanda and Vision met and when they were married and why they don’t have kids. The couple have no answers. Mr. Hart gets incensed and begins to choke on his food while his wife commands him to stop it. Wanda asks Vision for help, and he uses his powers to save Mr. Hart’s life. After that, everything is perfectly fine, and the Harts don’t seem to have noticed what happened—Mr. Hart assures Vision that they’ll talk about his promotion tomorrow. Vision and Wanda discuss how they’re unusual as a couple, decide this can be their anniversary, and Wanda materializes wedding rings for them both. As the episode ends, we see the credits rolling on a more modern screen, and someone on the outside taking notes on about it.
“Don’t Touch That Dial”
There’s a sound outside at night, but it turns out to be a tree branch knocking on the window. The next morning, Wanda and Vision are preparing for a talent show being done for the local school; they are doing a magic act as a form of misdirection, as the obvious “tricks” of magic will distract from their abilities. Hearing another noise outside, Wanda goes out to investigate and discovers a toy helicopter in their front bushes—rendered in vivid color. Wanda has to go to a local meeting run by Dottie (Emma Caulfield Ford), who is getting the talent show event all set up. Agnes is insistent that impressing Dottie is the way to get in good in their town. Wanda doesn’t make a great showing at the meeting, but she meets a woman who introduces herself as Geraldine (Teyonah Parris). After the meeting, Wanda tries to mend fences with Dottie, who insists that she knows something is off about Wanda and Vision. As they’re speaking, the radio comes through with a voice: “Wanda, who’s doing this to you?”
Vision goes to the Neighborhood Watch meeting, which in this town seems to be a club for the men to meet up and gossip. Trying to blend in, Vision accepts a stick of gum and accidentally swallows it, which “gums” up his gears. He shows up to the performance seemingly drunk as a result, and does real magic in their act; Wanda has to use her own magic to make it all look fake and not frighten the town. The result is humorous and everyone seems delighted, resulting in their winning an award at the show. When they get home, Wanda and Vision suddenly notice that Wanda is visibly pregnant. There’s another noise outside and they head out to investigate again—a beekeeper climbs out of the sewer and looks toward them. Wanda says “No” and the scenario promptly rewinds to the moment where they learn about her pregnancy. She and Vision kiss and when they part, his face is in color. The world begins to transform until everything is in color.
Commentary
I’ve gotta say, when I spent my childhood watching Nick at Nite reruns, this is not the use that I imagined for my viewings. (If I imagined one at all. Which I did not.)
WandaVision at first glance appears to be a return to what the MCU does best—stylize superhero stories under different genres in a postmodern pop culture mishmosh. In this case, we’re getting a tour through sitcom history via a superhero story, which would also seem to be taking sizable bits of its plot from a few different comic runs. A few reveals that were made well before the show’s debut give us clues as to what might be happening here—for one, Geraldine is not the character that Teyonah Parris is playing. She was introduced to fans at Comic-Con as Monica Rambeau, daughter of Carol Danvers’ BFF Maria, a character who takes up a multitude of jobs and guises in the comics (one of them being Captain Marvel herself).
What we don’t know is whether or not Monica is introducing herself this way as a deliberate obfuscation. At first glance that seems unlikely, particularly once you combine her earnestness with the question we hear on the radio (“Wanda, who’s doing this to you?”). It’s possible that Wanda is going through something so tremendous, be it grief or pain or trauma, that she’s dragging people into this realm with her. It’s also possible that many or all of these people have been sent to retrieve her, and she’s simply folding them into this reality. She is clearly capable of manipulating the world when she doesn’t like what she sees, as we see at the end of the second episode. But it calls a few figures into question in particular, namely the ones Wanda has the most contact with—the Harts, Geraldine, Dottie, and especially Agnes. Any of these people could be (and probably are) someone entirely different. There are theories all over the place, but I’ll keep them out of this space so you can have fun guessing for yourself.
Is the pregnancy real? Again, it could be. Wanda does have kids with Vision within the comics, but that’s a wild storyline that goes down some terrifying avenues. The show might just be tipping a hat to that plot without really delving into it, but all the droning of “For the children” in the second episode makes it seem important. There’s also the emergence of the organization S.W.O.R.D.—their emblem appears on the observer’s notebook at the end of episode one, and again on the back of the beekeeper’s suit at the end of episode two. The group was initially going to be introduced in Agents of SHIELD, but Marvel Studios put the kibosh on it, likely because they wanted to reserve them for right now. The acronym has been changed slightly in the MCU to suggest more Earth-bound monitoring: the Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division. They’re meant to be an intelligence agency with connections to SHIELD who deal with… well, with people like Wanda.
But that’s not really what makes WandaVision an enjoyable ride so far. What’s fun is watching all the ways that the show chooses to take old sitcom tropes, and history, and entertainment rules, and reconfigure them for impact. Wanda and Vision’s neighborhood isn’t nearly as white as most of the sitcoms from the 60s made America out to be. It’s a metaphor that functions on more than one level—not only is this a correction of what people typically saw on their screens half a century ago, but it could also be a measure of Wanda’s mind having to accommodate reality. There’s actually quite a lot to unpack here, and we won’t know the full breadth of it until we’re sure of what’s happening outside her mind.
Dottie’s meeting is shown to be every bit as vicious as women of her ilk generally were and are throughout the history of American suburbia, using the veneer of seeming perfection to tear other women down, particularly if they are too different from her. We also see Vision head to a Neighborhood Watch meeting that gets flipped on its head—Neighborhood Watch groups were often used as tools of white supremacy and prejudice, created for the purpose of keeping “the wrong sort of people” (i.e. people of color, immigrants, queer people) out of an area. But when Vision arrives, he finds a diverse group of men who use meeting as an excuse to eat danishes and gossip with each other. It’s essentially what we’re expecting Wanda’s meeting to be, but revamped for the boys.
I find the way color was used in this episode fascinating because it’s not the first time we’ve watched an idealized sitcom environment get “marred” by sudden intrusions of color. The most prominent version of this on film is Pleasantville, a 1998 movie where two modern kids get sucked into the television world of the eponymous show. But in that film, the arrival of color is decidedly a good thing—it’s a mark of change, an end to stagnation, the reality within the show finally moving forward. Here, the arrival of color is a point of fear for Wanda. It’s her mind fraying, struggling to keep her dream intact.
The central plot arcs of these episodes will be dearly familiar to anyone who has seen Bewitched. (There’s a healthy heaping of The Dick Van Dyke Show and a smattering of I Love Lucy too, but Bewitched is really the star here.) Starring Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick York-then-Sargent as Samantha and her husband Darrin, the show’s laughs revolved around Samantha being a witch who was constantly trying to hide her magical abilities from nosy neighbors, grumpy bosses, and even Darrin himself on occasion. The opening cartoon credits of episode two use Bewitched’s style of animation exactly, and the plot of having to hide magic during a dinner party was a common one on the show.
But moreover, Bewitched was a series that used Samantha and Darrin’s relationship as a metaphor for interracial marriage, queerness, interfaith matches, and any other number of identities that were othered by society. The show was ultimately shining a light on how messy things get when we don’t allowed people to simply be who they are, and demand that they appear “normal” to all onlookers—important to both Wanda and Vision, two beings who don’t fit well with our conceptions of living or reality on their best days.
Thoughts and Asides
- In the opening of the first episode we see Vision walk through a chair in their house, which allows him to keep Wanda in his arms. It’s a fun wink to the opening of The Dick Van Dyke Show, where Rob Petrie pratfalls over an ottoman upon entering his home—but Vision has phasing capabilities, so he can avoid the spill.
- There is one “commercial” per episode, the first being a Stark Industries toaster (which makes a little repulsor charging sound!), the second being a Strücker watch. These are references to outside characters who have relevance in Wanda’s life—Tony Stark was her Avengers teammate and also responsible for the bombs that destroyed her home when she was young, and Baron von Strücker was the Hydra agent who experimented on her and her brother—but it’s unclear if their presence is meaningful to the plot, or simply Wanda’s mind surfacing information.
- It was fun to see both Fred Melamed and Debra Jo Rupp in the first episode; you probably recognize Melamed from the Coen Brothers film A Serious Man, and Rupp from That 70s Show, though they’re both prolific actors who pop up all over the place.
- Okay, but what does Vision do for work, though? That’s clearly not important at all…
- Wanda pushing their twin beds together with magic at the start of episode two is, of course, a deliberate callback to the Hayes Code, a list of rules about propriety in filmed content. This particular rule stated that married couples had to sleep separately to avoid any implications of nighttime shenanigans. To make it even more ridiculous, part of the rule stated that one member of the couple always had to have one foot planted on the floor in any given bedroom scene. (Wanda and Vision don’t bother with that part of the rule.)
See you next week for a decidedly more 70s vibe…
Emmet Asher-Perrin wants to watch some Bewitched now—they’ve missed Endora. You can bug them on Twitter, and read more of their work here and elsewhere.
Interesting couple of episodes. I should point out that the helicopter also had the S.W.O.R.D. logo on it.
I hear episode 3 references The Brady Bunch- at least they didn’t choose Three’s Company!
Perhaps Vision works at the same corporation as Truman Burbank.
Is it just me or were the shades of red and gold on the helicopter near exactly the same as Iron Man’s armor … ?
Personally, I’m kinda hoping for a Partridge Family sing-a-long…
One thing that makes the sitcom homages work is the wonderful chemistry between the two leads, a partnership as easy and natural as Lucy and Ricky, or Rob and Laura. Somewhere in sitcom heaven, Alan Brady is smiling.
A subtle detail I noticed is that Wanda’s powers are somewhat modified from the MCU standard, here often resembling true “Samantha Stevens” magic more that the telepathic/telekinetic/energy blast power-set we’ve seen since Age of Ultron on. While the comic’s Scarlet Witch has sometimes wielded true magic (that’s how she got pregnant by an android in the first place), Cinematic Wanda’s abilities, while sometimes frightening in their power level (she came as close to defeating Thanos hand-to-hand as anyone on the battlefield, and did noticeably better against him than heavyweights like Thor and Mjolnir-enhanced Cap), she has never shown any capability for Dr. Strange style sorcery before. An effect of the presumably illusionary world she’s currently living in, or a sign that there’s more to her capabilities than were presented before? Her MCU powers are derived from an Infinity Stone, after all, true reality warping isn’t beyond the pale . . .
Whatever else develops, I sincerely hope that Vision’s current state of non-deadness persists past the series end. These two are too good together to break up the set.
The best part about this show is that the writers and producers in Wanda’s head (or wherever) produced genuinely good examples of the genres they are working with. They went beyond parody to make two shows that are actually funny and charming like their source material. And the scene with the beekeeper nailed that Twilight Zone look and feel.
Hopefully they can pull off the overall mystery just as well.
So far, I’m intrigued but still a bit on the fence. I don’t love the source material. The world of The Dick Van Dyke Show and Bewitched seemed alien to me as a child and I have little, if any, nostalgia for it now. So while I appreciate the riffs, I spent a good chunk of the first episode asking myself why we need to revisit these tropes at all. It seemed too direct an homage, I suppose, with not enough subversion.
The second episode did a better job of hooking me since it starts the game in earnest. But I’m still left wondering why, to the extent this reality is a product of Wanda’s mind, she would go there. (Or, equally, why this would be a good choice for an external attempt to manipulate her, if that’s what’s going on.) She’s too young to have grown up with those shows, and nothing in the MCU has previously suggested they she’s a fan of such media. Of course I’m prepared to let the mystery play out on its own terms, but the incongruence rankles. Perhaps that’s the point.
She’s too young to have grown up with those shows
I think this is a bit off target.
She may have been too young if she was American, but the show itself reinforces the take that she grew up in Europe, where American sitcoms have been very popular as imported media in reruns.
@8:
“She may have been too young if she was American, but the show itself reinforces the take that she grew up in Europe, where American sitcoms have been very popular as imported media.”
Not to mention these shows still air every day on American television, and certain young people get very into them, just like they do the Beatles and the Monkeys. I worked at a TV station that aired classic TV in the evenings. It’s even more common now that local tv stations have multiple streams that air simultaneously. Many local stations of major networks will use their .2 or .3 streams to air classic rerun sitcoms.
And this is setting aside that Wanda spent a lot of time basically being imprisoned at the Avengers HQ with little to do. One can easily imagine her going on a binge of FamilyTime TV.
As far as sitcoms I want to see in this show…the obvious one is Full House. If one of her twins don’t look at the camera at some point and mouth “How rude!” then someone didn’t think this through, lol.
I know we’re saying these are sixties era shows, but this really feels more fifties era than sixties.
Also the captcha asking me to prove I’m not a robot seems kinda ironic for commenting on this show.
@10 Um….are you younger than a boomer?
‘Cause for me, ep1 and 2 are definitely sixties style……(early 60s and late 60s).
I definitely got a fifties vibe in episode one. The presence of black neighbors in episode two while the episode Itself remains in B&W gives more of an early sixties feeling. (I recall occasional black guest stars on Dick Van Dyke and the early B&W episodes of Bewitched during that time period, though never as regulars.) With the introduction of color at episode two’s end, we’re clearly moving forward in sitcom time. Early previews included clips of later events where fashions, hairstyles, and set design have a distinct late sixties/early seventies presence. The effect is remarkably subtle, and the advancing timeline might just be indicative of Wanda and Vision’s gradual awakening to the artificial nature of their world.
I did not even realize how much I have been missing MCU until watching this yesterday. I loved it. I guess my wieving experience was different as I have never seen any of the original sitcoms mentioned, but I really liked the vibes and feel I got from WandaVision. This cute, little perfect-seeming suburbia, and yet you got the notion that something was really off and it just got stronger and stronger. I am very interested in where the show will go.
@8, 9: I’m not saying it is impossible, or even implausible, that she might have been exposed to the shows. It’s more that nothing I already knew about her suggested any particular affinity to them or to that era. So it seems unmotivated and arbitrary. But I imagine the reasons will become clearer as the story develops.
A random thought re episode one: We never learn the actual significance of August 23, or of why neither of them can quite recall why it’s important. (It’s a nice touch that the calendar has no year.) What if it’s the anniversary of Vision’s death? Naturally they can’t confront that memory head-on while they’re still strapped into what ever lotus eating machine they’re passengers on…
@@@@@#11: I think because of the aforementioned Hayes Code, TV in the US seemed to lag behind what we think of as the major cultural movement of the 60s. Thus, even though the source material here (Bewitched, Dick Van Dyke Show, etc…) is definitely sixties, it feels fifties to us. Our impression is that the sixties was all about long hair, protest movements and counterculture, but TV was the land resisting that counterculture. (Other than when the Mosquitoes came to Gilligan’s Island that is…)
I noticed that the first color we see in this black and white world is a flashing red light in the toaster just at the final seconds in the commercial.
As someone who grew up watching both Dick Van Dyke and Bewitched, they did a great job replicating the look. The first episode is Dick van Dyke. The kitchen is EXACLTY as in the series, including the old radio on the back shelf. Strangely, the living room was a bit different. General shape, but the fireplace in the corner near the kitchen is moved over near the doorway to the bedroom and replaced with a sofa here. The furniture was a different style too. Most probably didn’t notice it, but as someone who grew up on that series, it was jarring.
The second episode was Bewitched. Once again, the living room set was the Stephens home, only the doorway entry was in the wrong location compared to the stairs and the main living room, and they tended to shoot from a different angle from that used in the show. But when they showed the living room shot from the usual angle, wow, it WAS the Stephens home. I see that in an upcoming episode the living room is arranged like the Brady house. Pity they didn’t try to film in the real house that had the interiors remade to match the show during an HGTV series.
There were two Van Dyke episdoes where race was an important story consideration. One where Rob was getting an award for racial harmony and he and Laura had accidentally dyed their hands black up to the elbows making a costume for Richie, and were afraid the audience would be offended. The other, a classic flashback episode, where Rob thought their new baby had been switched with another couple, the Peters, at the hospital. When the Peters show up to discuss it with him, Rob opens the door to totally embarrassment when Mr. Peters is played by Greg Morris, who’d later play Barney on Mission Impossible (and who’s son Phillip would later play the Martian Manhunter, as well as Barney’s son in a MI reboot).
Ok, I gotta go, almost time for My Mother the Car ;)
I’m going to read the whole thing and comments later but I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF THIS SHOW!
I am not actually a huge Marvel fangirl – I’ve seen all the MCU movies and we’ll rent any others that come out, but I in general haven’t followed the shows or anything else. And aside from a few of them, they aren’t movies we typically get out to see in the theater (Thor: Ragnarok was an exception and I love that movie so very much, and we did see the last Avengers movies with the kids). I like the MCU, I’m just not particularly invested in it. So, for example, the show about Bucky and Falcon doesn’t actually interest me at all.
But as soon as the trailers started coming out for this I was hooked – I love this kind of meta, psychological screwiness where something is off but you just don’t know what it is, as well as the whole ‘picture perfect suburbia but something lurks under the surface’ trope. And when I was a kid, my parents worked nights. I used to stay up every night trying to wait up for them, and I would watch Nick at Nite . I grew up watching all these old sitcoms (even though for me, as a 38 year old, I would consider them well before my time. So I do wonder how other audiences are reacting to this…) and they did such a great job hitting all those beats in ways that are both affectionate but also interrogating some of the aspects that don’t age as well. Assuming each episode moves forward in time, I can’t wait for them to get to some of those classic 80s/90s era sitcoms (I was – and am – a huge Full House fan so I’m hoping we see an homage to that). (ETA: Anthony @9 – I completely forgot that Elizabeth Olsen has indirect connections to Full House).
But I love it – Bettany and Olsen have great chemistry and they’re adorable to watch. I love the character of Agnes as the kind of stereotypical nosy neighbor friend. And aside from the surface plots, I’m intrigued by whatever is going on with Wanda, and this world she has created for herself (I don’t know if it’s her specifically, but her insistence on ‘rewinding’ at the end of the second episode so that the scene played out in a different way seems to imply she has at least some control over this), who the watchers are and how much control they have over what is happening, who the other recurring people really are and whatever trauma she’s trying to cope with – it’s both sweet and heartbreaking. I don’t know – it just hits all my buttons. I’m glad on one hand they are releasing week by week but this is definitely a show I would binge if I had the chance.
Oh, and the in-world commercials/credits – I love that too! Along with the little Easter eggs to be found therein. That said, the MCU aspect is not even what really has me hooked – I think I would love this show even as its own thing (although obviously knowing Wanda and Vision’s backstory itself is part of what drives the character development).
This is an odd little show; I’m pretty sure Marvel didn’t intend it to be their first foray into streaming. But it was pretty entertaining, especially since I grew up with the sitcoms they were referencing.
I suspect that Wanda has become disassociated with reality after Vision died, and has created a fantasy world where they can live in happiness. At some point, I suspect she will rejoin reality, where many of the people in the sitcom world will turn out to be folks in the real world who have been trying to treat or help her (kind of twist like the end of The Wizard of Oz). The big question is, given her reality warping powers, if maybe the reality she returns to will be different than the one she left, including the resurrection of Vision, and even her having actual children (which happened in the comics). In addition to watching these clever little satires of famous sitcoms, it will be interesting to see more and more cracks appearing in the fantasy world. Everyone has mentioned the SWORD connections, which imply Nick Fury might be pulling some strings, as he was apparently running SWORD from the shadows in the post-credit scenes of Captain Marvel.
Watching Paul Bettany he obviously based a lot of his performance on Dick Van Dyke, Rik Mayhall and pre-House Hugh Laurie (a lot of his goggle-eyed goofy facial expressions are pure Blackadder 3 Hugh Laurie).
Both himself and Olsen are great in this. My kids even picked up on the weirdness of Debra Jo Rupps behaviour at the end of 1.
As the kids first “weird reality” show along the lines of Legion or Westworld it’s excellent. Hopefully it can keep things moving and not just fall into a “parody of the week” template.
I really enjoyed this, I expect Marvel to start taking a few more risks like this, especially in their Streaming shows. Feige is no fool and he knows there is a chance after Endgame that some people may start to drift away thinking that they have now completed the story and what more can there be to see? Making things different is a way to keep people interested in believing this new phase can be different and we can expect to see things we haven’t seen before. I am expecting this type of thing to be more prevalent as the Multiverse comes into play. Oh and Emma Caulfield on screen with Bunnies again? What’s not to love about that
I’m not a hardcore Marvel fan (although I have seen majority of the movies!), but watched the first two episodes yesterday and greatly enjoyed. Even without knowing the source material, it was funny, captivating and I definitely want to see more now. I’ve always enjoyed Olsen & Bettany’s work in the MCU and just to see them together again…sheer delight.
Of course, loved seeing Emma Caulfield again too!
That Olsen/Bettany chemistry showed why a Wanda/Vision pairing could make sense. And a TV series was probably the only way to get that out into the open. (Which makes sense, because monthly comics, which created that relationship in the first place, is the equivalent of TV episodes).
@rocketjay
Didn’t it mean that Vision’s boss and wife – the Harts – were coming to dinner?
Which is kind of a slapstick sitcom pratfall, but OTOH who is that confused by their own note on the calendar which validates dropped into the scene/world situation
I find the lack of mention of the red blood in the article and comments interesting as it happens in response to the radio incident and is the only other time colour appears.
Was this not in the US version?
What an odd show. The reference material is important to its success…I grew up watching bejeweled and so liked ep2 much more than ep1.
Wandavision have a good chemistry, I just hope the story doesn’t turn out to be too obvious (withdrawal after the death of Vision? please, no…)
I really enjoyed seeing Anya/Dottie… after a binge watch lf Buffy it was easy to see the demonic bunny hater under Dottie’s smiling exterior.
In the comics, minions of the evil organization A.I.M. often wear yellow suits with bucket hats that look like beekeeper hats. While the MCU version of A.I.M. has so far been portrayed without the colorful suits, I wonder if the appearance of a beekeeper (which scared Wanda enough that she rewound and edited it out of her story) might be a clue.
@28 And I believe the AIM logo has often been portrayed as a flat-topped hexagon, which is a shape that recurs in the credits of both episodes and elsewhere in the show.
Perhaps Wanda’s been captured by AIM and SWORD is attempting a rescue?
Everyone’s been speculating that all of these suburban life episodes are being caused by a mentally unstable Wanda using her reality manipulation powers, a la ‘The House of M’, with a smattering of the recent Vision miniseries thrown in to the mix. What if all of that is a distraction, and doesn’t have anything to do with the actual cause? What if Wanda isn’t the focus or the cause of any of this?
I’m thinking about to other potential inspirational sources – the Absolute Vision arc in the Avengers where Vision integrated with and took control of the world’s computers, and the 1998 George Perez Avengers arc where Vision was a disembodied hologram because his body was being rebuilt. In the Avengers Infinity War movie, they attempted to scan and dissociate Vision from the Infinity Stone. What if the scan successfully stored Vision’s mind, and what we’re seeing in WandaVision is his attempts to come back to life, albeit without a body? The end credits begin with a dive into Vision’s eye – we could be seeing everything from Vision’s point of view, trapped in a state with minimal or no input from the real world, and he’s fixating on the most real thing in his life, his relationship with Wanda. If so, are the computer(s) housing his consciousness still in Wakanda, or are they under the control of Hydra or SWORD? Vision falls under SWORD’s purview as he is certainly a Sentient Weapon. In the comics, Monica Rambeau’s power set involves changing into various energy states, which in this scenario could allow her to interface with Vision’s digital existence.
If some version of this idea is being played out in WandaVision, then the final outcome could be the rebirth of Vision – not through Wanda’s powers but through a more technological means. Vision’s body was left mostly intact when Thanos ripped the Infinity Stone from his forehead; Wakandan technology could have repaired it, but without a mind it would be inert.
I’d like this scenario to be correct, if only to avoid the whole ‘mental instability’ aspect of Wanda’s character in the comics. She deserves better than that.
I’ve read that it’s traditional to not end magic acts with a disappearance, as Vision was planning to. There’s not enough closure for the audience and they keep waiting for whatever it was to appear again. Of course, what actually happens isn’t a disappearance.
Both me (39) and my friend (26) recognised and enjoyed the homage to Bewitched. I don’t think anyone living is too young or too old to be familiar with these shows. I happily imagined a younger and still very innocent and impressionable Wanda watching old US sitcoms in her tiny Sokovian flat in happier days. Plus, I think Wanda’s childhood would be post Glastnost so Western content would be readily available. Loved the first hour (more the 2nd episode than the first, but hooked all the same.)
So I’m pretty sure the voice in the radio is Agent Woo.
I’m reading this as Wanda’s being held prisoner. Mr and Mrs Hart immediate departure after Vision’s use of powers, indicates to me that’s WHY they were there, to try and catch them using their powers. Now, I don’t think everyone who is there is “in on it” so to speak, but the Hart’s certainly are. And probably Norm. Gwendolyn I am withholding judgement based on what I’ve seen in trailers.
I’m also confused as to WHEN this is taking place. Initially I heard it was between Civil War and Infinity War, which makes sense with Woo’s character, he was surveilling all the rogue Avengers at that time. But other things in the trailers hint it is post Infinity War.
I don’t know, this is a mighty rabbit hole, I am really enjoying it.
In this article, there is a funny video where Tom Hiddleston called into a Q&A Livestream with Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen, to complain that Vision coming back from the dead is horning in on Loki’s territory.
@30, I like this idea! And it could be some nefarious force has realized what Vision is doing, subverting it toward their own ends, Wanda learns about and goes in to save him, getting trapped herself.
Hmm. I was misremembering Wanda’s sometimes mentor (and occasional babysitter for the Fantastic Four) Agatha Harkness as being named Agnes, so there goes that theory.
Not to Spiral into unlikely conspiracy theories, but I do have one Longshot possibility to pitch. Now that the X-men are under the Disney brand, there is a certain television obsessed villain who just might have the Mojo to pull something like this off…
@30 I like those ideas. Common wisdom is that we are looking in Wanda’s mind, but common wisdom is not always wise!
@35 There are WILD RUMORS abounding on Twitter right now that (POSSIBLE SPOILER)Evans Peters, who played Pietro in FOX’s X Men movies, will guest star in the show(POSSIBLE SPOILER)
@30/others – oooh, that would be a fun misdirection. Maybe this is all Vision’s delusion/fantasy ;)
Glad somebody else pointed out that hexagon shape becuase I noticed that the stars formed that shape in the animated intro and wasn’t sure what it symbolized, but it seemed like the shape was significant in some way. I’m a comics n00b though (don’t read them at all, actually).
@35: Oh. Wow…
@35 “I was misremembering Wanda’s sometimes mentor (and occasional babysitter for the Fantastic Four) Agatha Harkness as being named Agnes, so there goes that theory.”
You mean AGatha harkNESs?
I’ve noted a lot of people both here and elsewhere remarking on Wanda’s reality warping powers, which are strictly comics canon. MCU Wanda’s power set has never been indicated to work that way. Granted, the telepathic attack illusions from “Age of Ultron” had a frighteningly real feel to them, but they were all on the mental plane, no physical remaking of the real world involved. That makes sense, IIRC, her powers derive from the Mind Stone, not the Reality Stone. (Someone please correct me if I’m mistaken)
But if the hypothesis that this takes place in some kind of virtual space connected with an attempt by party or parties unknown to resurrect Vision minus the mind stone (another connection there), is correct… If a person with the ability to create detailed mental landscapes was interfaced with that information plane by whatever means (mental or mechanical)… And if the process wasn’t completely under her control…
This is gonna be a fun ride.
@37:
And the rumors I’ve read are that he was on the set of Spiderman 3.
Don’t know if it’s relevant, but I’ll eat my hat if it isn’t: In episode 2, Vision went by the name Illusion and Wanda went by the name Glamour.
Makes you wonder what’s real, and who’s under the influence of something.
@42, I only heard that SPOILER Charlie Cox had wrapped for Spiderman 3 SPOILER, so that’s news to me
@43, Good catch!
In re Wanda’s possible reality altering powers, I think the movies have shown a steady progression in her powerset, and considering the mind is the tool through which we perceive reality, I don’t think it’s impossible that her powers could expand in that way.
I’ve said it before, but one way to introduce the X-Men into the MCU would be using Wanda’s reality warping powers. Like House of M, but backwards.
Not that I think they’re going to do this in this show, but part of the build up would be to show how powerful she’s become.
Also, Wanda becoming pregnant bodes well for those of us waiting for the Young Avengers getting introduced. (We’ve already met Cassie Lang, and Kate Bishop is getting her own show [Ok, I suppose Hawkguy and Lucky are in it too]).
@45, Other Young Avengers have been spotted in casting, America Ferrerra will be in Dr Strange 2, and I think Loki’s series is setting us up for Kid Loki.
@43: Illusion and Glamour are the names of Marvel characters who interacted with Wanda and Vision https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Ilya_Zarkov_(Earth-616)
While I was watching this scene, it seemed to me that the way it was shot that it was intended that his wife was actually telling Wanda to “stop it!”. The boss was pressing Wanda and Vision for details of their backstory, and then he started choking. At first, it looked like the wife was telling him stop it, but then (IIRC) the camera shifted and it looked like she was talking directly to the camera, which I interpreted as talking to Wanda. In the “Wanda’s controlling everything (consciously or unconsciously)” version of the show, this would be Wanda unconsciously stopping the interrogation, realizing what she’s doing, and then telling Vision to save his boss.
Aeryl@44:
Went back and looked some stuff up. All I could find was stuff from December, when the casting leaks for Spider-man 3 happened (which I won’t go into in detail) regarding all the various actors in it. I found several articles where Evan Peters was mentioned, but upon re-reading them, they were always in the context of WandaVision, and relating to the Spider-man movie through that context. So, my mistake.
And this may have been covered…but I don’t think Vision is alive. I think he’s a creation of Wanda’s inside this reality. or something to that effect. Either way, I think Vision is dead and gone for good, and this is not the real Vision.
@50 In the trailer SPOILER there is a scene with Modern Era Agnes in a car, talking to fully machine red and green Vision standing outside it, and she says to him “You were dead” Or “You’re supposed to be dead.”SPOILER
So between that, and just narrative purposes generally, is why whatever the truth may be at this point in the story, I believe he WILL be alive by the end of this.
Especially considering, the suggestion above that a digital copy of Vision is interfacing with his memories digitally is EXACTLY how Jarvis survived Ultron’s attempt at killing him, I don’t find the idea that Vision found a way to digitally back himself up prior to his destruction.
As a 32 year old non-American, this show is difficult to get into. I don’t get any of the references. So it’s a bit frustrating that they have culture coded it to strongly.
That aside, I’m intrigued. I’m not sure I like it, but i absolutely want to continue watching to solve the mystery.
I did also notice the iron man-colours of the helicopter!
Did no one else get a Life on Mars vibe?
Of which I am blissfully ignorant because I’m not 13 and no longer read comics. It is new story for me. And as long as the underpants heroes don’t show up, I’m having a good time.