Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase 4 & Beyond (and a chance to change your vote)

Pretty much, yeah. Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Falcon are all referred to by their SHIELD code names, Rhodey gets called War Machine a lot, and Scott runs up to everyone all "CALL ME ANT MAN" to much eye-rolling.

The MCU has largely dispensed with the hoary notion of every superhero having a secret identity, which often precludes the need to constantly evoke an alternate superhero name when referring to the dude everyone knows and who isn't wearing a mask or anything.

Part of an overall shift in the genre that may be driven by Geoff Johns’ personal preferences too.

obv done first and 1,000,000x better in Giffbaum LSH.

I read somewhere that Marvel had considered dispensing with codenames entirely for Marvel Now! (or one of those eras), but decided against it.

If Mephisto turns out to be the guiding villain behind WandaVision, think it'll tie into Spider-Man 3 to roughly match the comic's solution to Mysterio unmasking him?

Though comic had him revealing his identity as part of Civil War, iirc.

aw HELL no

Wanda's accent vanished between movies too

From watching too much American TV.

btw, when that bee-keeper emerged from the sewer and Wanda looked at him and said "no" and the tape rewound (in ep 2 of Wandavision), my heart about skipped a beat

which coincidentally is what dr strange and thanos also essentially do at certain points

I have a new prediction: Given they didn't establish her as having reality controlling powers in her previous appearances, Wanda is *not* controlling everything but is being made to think she is. That seems like the sort of twist-y payoff this show could have in store. Like, throw that stuff in pretty early, in episode 4, for the nerds who know House of M, but do it as misdirection.

Do we see her at the funeral at the end of Endgame? We do, right? So she hadn't disappeared or run off yet by then.

yeah, and there's a bit of dialogue in that scene that implies she has some kind of spiritual contact with the dead Black Widow and Vision

Whoa, I do not recall that bit at all, I mean the dialogue Nhex refers to. Remember her being at the funeral though.

imply is probably too strong. but considering what's happening now + Doctor Strange 2 later...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs5nYcVhsS4

OK, just watched the ending and she's there and talking to Hawkeye, and he says "I wish there was a way to let them know we won," and she says calmly, "She knows. They both do." But that's it. She certainly doesn't look so distraught that she's about to run off and create her own universe, though.

Yeah, that scene, lol. Either way, she seems pretty chill.

Thanks! I did totally blank on that particular scene, but I remember it now.

jesus fucking christ, I'm caught up now and the appearance of dead Vision scared the shit out of me

in fact Wanda is terrifying as all Hell

^^^^ otm

re: Wanda's accent, there were some interesting interviews with Elizabeth Olsen where she talks about that:

https://collider.com/wandavision-accent-explained-elizabeth-olsen/

“So, the Sokovia accent was created by me and Aaron and our dialect coach because it’s a fake country and we could find different sources of Slavic sounds. And we wanted to make sure it didn’t sound Russian because Black Widow speaks Russian, and so we just needed to sound more like Slovakian. So we created these sound changes that worked for Aaron’s British accent going to Slovakia basically and my American accent so that we sounded related. And then all of a sudden, all these different characters had to speak it in different films. [Laughs] So the Sokovian accent took a lot of time. It hasn’t gone anywhere. There have been reasons for everything. It lightened up when she started living in the States, and in WandaVision she is playing the role of being in an American sitcom and so it’s not gone. It is absolutely still there.”

yeah i'm digging the idea that wanda has almost unlimited power and can (and will) cornfield away anyone who disrupts her fantasy

xp

I also do like that the motivation (as it's understood now by Rambeau and her FBI/S.W.O.R.D. colleagues) made perfect sense. she barely got time to grieve Vision before she herself was blipped, then she returns and almost immediately after return, Tony dies. to her, very little time has passed since Vision died, and everybody is grieving Tony, but she hasn't even processed Vision's death yet, or losing 5 years of her life, let alone this.

but based on what i'm reading from followers of the comics, i feel another couple of rugpulls are coming. esp since they weren't able to find out the identity of who was playing Agnes, suggesting maybe she's.....Agatha Harkness?

to her, very little time has passed since Vision died, and everybody is grieving Tony, but she hasn't even processed Vision's death yet, or losing 5 years of her life, let alone this.

reminds me a bit of liv tyler's character in the leftovers

I stand by my current prediction re: Wanda and her newfound powers, or perhaps lack thereof.

Bettany was great in this episode. Never heard Vision yell like an angry person before.

so excited to see where this goes next.

also Evan Peters showing up as Pietro/Quicksilver was a brilliant way of using the problem of X-Men being separate from MCU up until now. I was wondering if they might use this to their advantage one day and I now have my answer.

so this means she's creating alternate universes? and this can't be Wanda's doing purely now, since this shocked her.

sitcom intro/theme song was brilliant

yeah it was so perfect. right down to the male singer's intonation, BJ Thomas-isms

and the Family Ties-esque animation

The 'audience' is amazing work as well.

There's still 4 episodes of this left, and it's already pretty terrifying.

closest thing to a 'horror' entry that we've had in the MCU universe. loving it.

Bettany has been pretty great throughout, but this episode in particular, his constant astonishment, terror and eventually anger was so perfect. We're only halfway done too! So into this.

I gotta remember to stay off Twitter on Fridays from now on - the trending topics spoiled this for me. Same problem happened with Mandalorian.

I agree with the theory that Wanda isn't really the one who created the Westview illusion, she's just taking advantage of how it allows him and Vision to have a happy domestic life. Nothing in the series has indicated that her powers have grown to reality-warping levels, and the SWORD crew also seems to be baffled how she's able to do all this with the power she supposedly has (telekinesis and telepathy).

Note that while in the sitcom world she appears to have reality-altering magical powers, when the sitcom facade drops she doesn't have them; in episode 3 the sitcom made it look like she magicked Monica away from Westview, but in episode 4 we saw that she actually just used her telekinesis to do that. And in today's episode she seems pretty honest when she tells Vision she doesn't control everything in Westview, and of course the appearance of Quicksilver seems to be a genuine shock for her too.

Also, when Vision temporarily lets Norm drop the illusion, Norm said "she's controlling my mind", but he never actually names Wanda as the person who's doing that. Of course we were meant to assume he was talking about Wanda, but I think the "she" he was referring to is Agnes, who in this episode is shown to be well aware of the Westview illusion, so she's probably the one behind it.

Also also, the discussion where the SWORD agents mention that Wanda doesn't have any codename felt pretty pointless, so I'm thinking it was actually foreshadowing. Maybe in the MCU it's Agnes who's the original Scarlet Witch; maybe she's even Wanda's real mother (from whom she inherited her witch powers in the comics, if I remember correctly)? And by the end of the series she'll inherit the Scarlet Witch name from her?

And if the appearance of Quicksilver is meant to indicate the existence of the multiverse (meaning that he really is the character from the X-Men movie universe brought to the MCU), then maybe the Vision in this series is an alternate universe Vision, who was brought to the MCU soon after his conception, and who therefore still has his Mind Stone? That would explain why he has no memory of a life before Westview, and why Wanda tells Tommy and Billy she can't reverse death, even though she's seemingly done exactly that with the Vision.

Stet really earned his Buffy DVDs for show hidden text.

I'm simultaneously excited by the direction events are taking and, mmm, a little hesitant inasmuch as I just recently watched the CW DC shows wring the absolute life out of the whole multiverse thing and ultimately make it a fairly unremarkable concept but I continue to have faith in the Feige so let's just sit back and see what the next several years have in store, I guess, since it's increasingly clear that this is gonna be a running theme.

Nothing in the series has indicated that her powers have grown to reality-warping levels

Apart from the multiple times she rewrites reality, you mean? Starting with the beekeeper.

Yeah, but if the simulation wasn't created by her, that just means that the simulation can rewrite reality, and she has (some) control over it, but it's not her powers that are doing it.

I think the MCU movies have been pretty good at taking a basic story concept from the comics, but then adding some new, unexpected plot developments, so even the comic readers won't be spoiled. Like in Winter Soldier everyone thought they're just gonna do the big plot twist from the Captain America storyline of the same name, which they did, but then the actual big plot twist was something else, and not adapted from any comic. So similarly, I think in here they've let people believe that this is a variation of the John Byrne West Coast Avengers story/Avengers Disassembled/House of M, where Wanda snaps and rewrites reality, but actually there's something else going here.

Or at least I'm hoping they're doing something else, because the aforementioned comic book stories ruined Wanda as a character for a long time (essentially making her characterisation as "hysterical woman, who can't handle the loss of her kids, and becomes a villain as a result"), which I wouldn't want to happen here.

Yeah, but if the simulation wasn't created by her, that just means that the simulation can rewrite reality, and she has (some) control over it, but it's not her powers that are doing it.

This is fanfic - she is seen, in the series, doing these things. It's of course possible that some other explanation is in effect, but you said "nothing has indicated", and that is the indication.

She is seen doing those things within the sitcom setting, which is presented as a fake, a fantasy. In that setting the Vision also has powers that he hasn't shown before in real life, like superspeed. I dunno, I just feel that it would be weird if Wanda is all of a sudden revealed to have developed a power set that has little to do with her established powers or their origin (she got her powers from the Mind Stone, not the Reality Stone).

So yeah, I guess it is pure speculation, but IMO it feels significant that when we see her use her powers outside the sitcom fantasy, like when she throws Monica

(Sorry, that post was cut short.)

So yeah, I guess it is pure speculation, but IMO it feels significant that when we see her use her powers outside the sitcom fantasy, like when she threw Monica out of Westview in the previous ep, or when she goes against the soldiers in the latest one, we only see her use her established powers (telekinesis and telepathy), not reality-warping.

I reluctantly agree that it looks like this is not just Wanda's doing - reluctant not because it's a bad idea as such, more because of the timing. This episode is probably too early for everything to be as it seems, but it feels too late to introduce an antagonist.

Like, I understand what you're saying about twisting comic book story settings, but I'd suggest the perspective that they're rewriting the stories not as a nod to the comic book fans, but for the benefit of everyone else. Turning around in episode 6 of 9 and saying "oh by the way the villain is Mephisto or Agatha Harkness who you've never heard of before" would be a bewildering decision. I'd even prefer the idea that it's Wanda's mother because although we've not seen that figure before, the existence of that figure can be inferred, wouldn't need the same levels of explanation.

I feel like the codename is just lampshading that SWORD are going to refer to her as 'Codename Scarlet Witch' and then after this that's what she'll be - it's dumb but so is the Vision, so is Iron Man, so are a lot of superhero names.

maybe the Vision in this series is an alternate universe Vision, who was brought to the MCU soon after his conception, and who therefore still has his Mind Stone?

I'm not sure why she'd need the original Vision's body (in kit form, from the look of things) in that case?

why Wanda tells Tommy and Billy she can't reverse death, even though she's seemingly done exactly that with the Vision.

My reading of this scene is partly not wanting to freak out Agnes, partly fear that the kids shouldn't know what's going on, and partly fear that they might have the same power - the scene at the start where her powers don't work on the kids seems the start of things slipping from her grasp.

I'm mixed on Agnes - her early freaking out, and that scene, looks like someone from that Twilight Zone episode, but her reacting to the twins growing up with "Kids - you can't control them" does sound like a hint of the "Wanda's mother" option

xp The beekeeper is also outside the fantasy too though? The film stock, iirc, is different.

I'm surprised to see that no one has mentioned Monica's washed-out x-ray results, indicating that her clothes aren't the only thing to have been changed within the Hex.

My friend thinks she's all Kevlar now

The beekeeper becomes part of the fantasy as he enters Westview, as his clothes change from the SWORD gear to something recognisable within the sitcom. And we don't actually see what ultimately happens to him; IIRC he isn't shown to be ejected from Westview like Monica, so maybe the mind control simply set upon him and he became a background character in the sitcom?

the scene at the start where her powers don't work on the kids seems the start of things slipping from her grasp.

Monica has obviously gained her comic book powers now and is a being of pure energy. Isn't he set to appear in the Captain Marvel sequel?