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

good stuff. kinda bummed it’s almost over.

to the extent that the color coding means anything, it seems meaningful that Wanda’s zip zaps are always red, but the Vision she law of attraction manifested zip zapped to life in mind stone yellow? presumably that Vision + zombie Vision is how we get our Vision back?

Did not really like this episode, much much much too much emoting and "OH THE POWER OF GRIEF OH THE POWER OF LOVE" in extruded MCU product mode, which is exactly what I have been liking this show for not being -- BUT all that said, on a very basic level of story-writing they continue to take this places I had not anticipated -- I had not at all considered the idea that the whole Vision-corpse stealing thing was fabricated and that we'd be set up for an epic Vision-Vision battle in the final ep. That is extremely satisfying.

Oh shit, that's an h, not a b. Well, sorry for bolded spoilers.

Which, speaking of which, I am totally not getting spoilers for this on Twitter, Mandalorian was much worse in this respect! I wonder what this says about my feed.

Anyway, after all the endless theorizing about Agnes I like that she's apparently neither the Big Bad nor a secret ally, but just an opportunistic witch who eats other witches' witchcraft and was drawn to the presence of a witch so powerful. They found an unexpected (to me) way to go.

In particular, “What is grief if not love persevering?” is exactly the kind of dire line this show has mostly avoided grinding into the screen. Come on.

I’ll allow it. Vision is explicitly naive and corny like that.

I thought that line was really, really wonderful

Just watching a little YT blurb on the Loki show and not only does it look worthy of the same love WandaVision is getting, the logo that I thought was "well, that's ... interesting", now is obviously tied to the MCU early Loki working as a Time Agent against various other Loki versions , that again, I'm just impressed and so, so happy that there's such an attention to setting up the stories, environments, and the characters, as opposed to just hand-waving over powers and character actions that the non-MCU and DC seem to do. Years of Nicholas Hammond bad rope tossing devotion pays off.

Xpost me too.

Yeah, that Vision line was great. Don't know why you'd hate on that of all things.

epic Vision-Vision

I've seen people suspecting that Bettany's hyping of a big guest star in the final episode might be him cheekily alluding to ... himself, as other Vision.

A couple of other things about this episode. One ... no song, right? Two, no Monica or Pietro, right? So ... where are they? Or I guess where is *she*, assuming Pietro was not real or was Agatha in disguise. (Have there been no scenes with Agatha *and* Pietro*?) If the kids are not real, then how did Agatha get them, hide them, capture them? I can't believe there is only one episode of this left, or am I right that it's definitive that there *is* just one or maybe *two* left (which is kind of a cool advantage of not doing this on a standard network)?

Lotsa questions to be answered, and still wouldn't be shocked if this ends on an unresolved cliffhanger, with Wanda in another time/dimension, by force or choice, to be addressed in Dr. Strange 2 or something.

I was skimming reviews of this episode and the person writing for Indiewire has very clearly never seen an episode of the Dick Van Dyke show

The walnut episode is comedy cannon ffs!

it's possible to be under 49 and also not to be American

One ... no song, right?

no period sitcom, no period sitcom theme. you got two last week!

Two, no Monica or Pietro, right? So ... where are they? Or I guess where is *she*, assuming Pietro was not real or was Agatha in disguise. (Have there been no scenes with Agatha *and* Pietro*?) If the kids are not real, then how did Agatha get them, hide them, capture them?

a lot of this is explicitly addressed in expository dialogue in the episode. the vast majority of the characters in other episodes do not appear in this episode, especially the "present day" setting in the episode. Pietro is a major character in this episode (but Fietro, if you will, is not).

“What is grief if not love persevering?”

Nothing dire about this line at all. I know at least three people who've already spoken about how much having a feeling distilled down into those few words really meant a lot to them.

I guess it might be dire if you're an asshole, though.

That line was excellent and this was a highly moving episode; I’m seeing a lot of criticism coming from people intimately familiar with the comics it turned out to be very heavily based on, which, fine... but this added dimension of the sitcoms and her grief is really hitting home. The acting has been excellent, the sets amazing, and the show has not made a single misstep. It’s a small miracle.

I agree that the parts about Wanda's grief were the best in the episode. The movies, having multiple main characters and being structured around action scenes, barely even touched the fact that her parents, her twin brother and her partner have all been killed tragically, and what that must've been like for her. So it's great that a series like this has space to address the grief, and the idea that sitcoms were comfort food for her during hard times, and that's why she made Westview like it is, was great.

If the kids are not real, then how did Agatha get them, hide them, capture them?

enjoyed this episode a lot but also enjoying the thought that marvel studios spent $200m solely to give mcu wanda a reason to use her superhero name

man this episode made me cry so much

i have zero connection to the comics so it was all just character for me & i loved it. just the unfolding of how completely she turned inward in her grief, and the added detail of why she chose that location was such a gutpunch

and that line grief is just love persevering is <3
i have some dear friends who have struggled for years w the loss of a loved one & that line just crystallizes what that process really means & why some ppl do struggle for a long long time

I was hoping this story to be a bit more imaginative and less derivative, but everything that happened here was pretty much what people had speculated before the series even began.

People have speculated a lot of things though - remember the aerospace engineer that was definitely going to be Reed Richards? The choices they make touch on the comics, but have made this actual great story that's in front of us.

she sought out Wanda because she suspected Wanda might be the Scarlet Witch/Nexus Being

I think that's a little more than the episode says, she seems just drawn to powerful magic and realises after taking a trip through Wanda's head that this is what's going on.

It's worth acknowledging the other person in the two-hander - Elizabeth Olsen is great, but Kathryn Hahn keeps up with her.

I am amused that for all the furious speculation that I've seen (here and elsewhere) I've not seen anyone prior to this notice that the footage of Wanda stealing the Vision doesn't show Wanda stealing the Vision.

I was hoping this story to be a bit more imaginative and less derivative, but everything that happened here was pretty much what people had speculated before the series even began.

People have speculated a lot of things though - remember the aerospace engineer that was definitely going to be Reed Richards? The choices they make touch on the comics, but have made this actual great story that's in front of us.

Familiar to a very small percentage of the viewers, though.

T-dogg has been posting excitedly itt for months about the ways he thought or anticipated this was differing from the comics, the context of disappointment is personal

Yeah that's fair, my apologies.

Yeah, I don't doubt the show is still very exciting to the 99% of viewers who're not familiar with the source material, like Vegemitegrrl said above. I guess my point is only that in the previous works they'd been pretty good at making it unexpected and exciting for us Marvel geeks too, and this is the first time I felt they kinda failed at that. Though I guess the final episode can still give us some curveballs, we'll see.

this seemed to be the suspicions-confirming episode which is fine, but it also makes me wonder why they structured this thing like a mystery box to begin with. we didn’t learn anything that wasn’t heavily hinted at in previous episodes, and the stuff that we did learn felt like retconning wanda’s inconsistent personality from the films. and the final reveal didn’t really work without the layers of extra-textual knowledge that viewers already bring to the table. we’ve known she’s the scarlet witch since 2015. the next episode needs to prove why we should give a crap she’s the scarlet witch beyond the leo dicaprio pointing meme.

that said, the scene with vision was great and it needed to be, to provide a real emotional foundation for the core relationship of the show

I am amused that for all the furious speculation that I've seen (here and elsewhere) I've not seen anyone prior to this notice that the footage of Wanda stealing the Vision doesn't show Wanda stealing the Vision.

Me, last week! "how/why did Wanda steal his body (assuming she actually did)?

Still expecting a reveal/hint of another villain, still not expecting a tidy wrap up. Leave the viewers wanting more in the lead up to Spider Man 3 and Dr. Strange 2, especially given the stuff on deck (Falcon, Black Widow, Eternals, Shang-Chi, maybe even Loki - these are all in the can, right?) doesn't seem like it would offer much of a continuation of the supernatural/multiverse stuff. Who knows when and how any of these movies will actually show up, anyway.

Loki may indeed involve multiversal themes (multichronal themes, at the very least)

Which makes sense. Though we don't necessarily know the tone of the show yet, whether it will be an adventure or drama or comedy or something in between. No one had any idea what WandaVision would be or be like until it actually aired, right?

Okay fine, no-one except Josh, who has acclimatised to the multiverse as a way of believing in everything at once.

This was the trailer from last September:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj9J2ecsSpo

Anyway, per observations above, that line is landing hard elsewhere:

I have lost several dear friends, both parents, and a son. I hated my own sorrow until tonight, when I heard: "But, what is grief, if not love, persevering?" Heart-healing poetry. Thank you, @wandavision. pic.twitter.com/9nENdIGHSs

— ralphgarman (@RalphGarman) February 27, 2021

it was also his gentle delivery, where it wasn't just Vision being left-brained and logical, but trying to understand human emotion and comfort her despite still adapting to how humans think and feel.

Something I saw noted somewhere else. When Wanda removes the infinity stone from his forehead in Infinity War, he says "It’s alright. I just feel you." In this ep, when she holds her hand over his disembodied head, she says "I can't feel you." Also noted elsewhere that when Wanda is introduced to the mind stone, in a sense this episode sort of shows that Vision had an attraction to her even back then, when his soul was embodied in the stone.

the "i can't feel you" was pretty heartbreaking

There are still friends of mine floating the Mephisto theory and I think that's nuts. To expand Agnes's arc gradually over multiple episodes and then abruptly interrupt it to throw a new baddie into a one hour finale?

I could easily be wrong but I would hate it at this point. If he was going to be the one, it should have happened by now.

I think Heyward is pretty obviously the real baddie. He inspired the anomaly and used it to repower White Vision!

I'm probably wrong (duh) but that's what I mean with my another baddie/cliffhanger suspicion. That the final episode (or two, we don't know for sure) will maybe reveal Agatha as less evil than she seems, Heyward as perhaps even more villainous than he seems, and maybe something else going on. With let's say just one episode left, is that enough to resolve Vision's quest (I assume a merging of Wanda-Vision and the just introduced White-Vision), the more or less just introduced as who she really is Agatha, the barely introduced as superpowered Monica, the still mysterious twins, getting Wanda under control, etc? There are a lot of balls (and exposition) in the air for just 50 more minutes left.

Aw man I think I've just worked out what Paul Bettany's been on about this whole time.

He's been trailing for ages that there's a non-leaked actor he gets to play against that he's wanted to for years and nobody has guessed who it is, leading to speculation there must be some big be still to come.

I started thinking about how that knocked out every Avengers co-star then it struck me - it's himself, isn't it. It's Red Vision Vs White Vision. Well played.

One of the good things about the way this show has developed is that there is in fact no baddie!

trauma is the baddie

didn’t love trauma in the comics tbh

Falcon/Winter Soldier start date is 3/19, two weeks after WandaVision finale.

I half wonder if on Friday the 12th there'll be one of those Disney Gallery episodes as with The Mandalorian where they go into the making of WandaVision.

Didn't they say they were going to do a making-of show?

'Assembled: The Making of WandaVision' premieres March 12, 2021 on Disney+

Ah well, there you go!

Very good. I haven't seen much of the Mandalorian making-of, but if it's the same quality I'll happily watch that

Am I missing something or is Agatha All Along anything more than a tweaked Munsters Today theme?