S01.E08: Previously On

[RobertDeSneero]

2 hours ago, Kromm said:

Even if we guess she didn't mean to (implied by the two step explosion of magic), does that erase the idea of consequences? 

Not everyone believes in a consequentialist ethical theory.

[Chicago Redshirt]

29 minutes ago, bmoore4026 said:

We still don't know how Wanda got rid of her accent so fast.

If Wanda had been watching American sitcoms since age 10, it seems plausible that she has been able to speak unaccented English for quite some time. In all her appearances since Age of Ultron until this, she spoke without a trace of an accent. 

From my understanding, people who have trained themselves to hide accents in their day-to-day speaking sometimes lapse back to them when they are tired, stressed, drunk or what have you. Something similar could be at play with Wanda.

[swanpride]

You know, while that wasn't Agatha's intention, it is possible that her actions have been on some level helpful for Wanda. Because she was now forced to confront all the trauma she experienced. Not that I would recommend this kind of "therapy" since it can backfire quite badly, but Wanda might now be ready for acceptance…

 

 We will bawl out our eyes in the next episode, won't we?

[Spartan Girl]

5 hours ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

According to Hayward, Vision had a living will, which he claimed Wanda was violating with what she was doing with his body. Wouldn't that also require him being recognized as a person? Of course, Hayward also lied (surprise) about Wanda stealing the body, which they were taking apart to keep him from being used as a weapon again (another lie), so he's full of shit regardless and must have used only part of the footage to make it look like she took the body when she left. Dick. Dick. Dick

Hayward framed Wanda for his own ends just like Ross set up Bruce as a fugitive to cover his ass. If Hayward skates comeuppance the same way Ross did in Endgame I will be PISSED.

[Capricasix]

7 hours ago, JessePinkman said:

"What is grief, if not love persevering?"

Wow okay, Vision constantly dropping gems. That hit me hard.

A good Internet and IRL friend of mine wrote something about grief a while ago that gained a little traction online. It was about grief being love with nowhere to go, and it gathers up in the corners of your eyes and in the lump in your throat. I thought of it when Vision said that.

[Chaos Theory]

3 hours ago, Kromm said:

 

Even if we guess she didn't mean to (implied by the two step explosion of magic), does that erase the idea of consequences? 

 

Wanda didn't mean to kill those people during one of the Avenger movies but Hayward keeps using it as a reason that Wanda needs to be locked up in The Raft.   If anything Wanda needs mandatory psychiatric evaluation.   Heck half of the Avengers who were supposed to be her friends even then turned on her on a dime.   It was only when they needed her did they even care where she was.    I mean yes lets recap.  Dead parents.  Dead brother.  Dead Vision.    And no one to pull her back from the abyss.

Edited February 26, 2021 by Chaos Theory

[Chicago Redshirt]

7 minutes ago, Chaos Theory said:

Wanda didn't mean to kill those people during one of the Avenger movies but Hayward keeps using it as a reason that Wanda needs to be locked up in The Raft.   If anything Wanda needs mandatory psychiatric evaluation.   Where are the remaining Avengers in all this?  They are supposed to be her friends and it looks like they left her out in the cold.  Its not the least bit surprising she broke.    I mean yes lets recap.  Dead parents.  Dead brother.  Dead Vision.    And no one to pull her back from the abyss.

We probably won't get into this any time soon,, because there's presumably only a  half-hourish left to this season. 

But I would say we don't know if the other Avengers had fair notice something was wrong with Wanda, or certainly to this extent.

The last we know of her interacting with them was at the end of Endgame at Tony's funeral. She exchanged words with Hawkeye where he said he wished he could tell Natasha that they beat Thanos, and Wanda replied that Natasha knew and they both did. So that seemed to be a healthy, or at least healthy-adjacent perspective of grief. 

Did any of them know about Wanda visiting SWORD? Maybe, but no particular reason to think they did. And especially since it turns out she didn't steal Vision's body, there's no particular reason to think that Hayward told them about the visit after the fact. 

As far as we've been shown, the first sign of any real breakdown was when she came to Westview and just had all that magic spew out. 

So even if we assume no Avengers had been checking in with Wanda, it doesn't look like they would have had a particular reason to.

I also think that it's not necessarily true that the Avengers were all friends. Teammates, sure. The movies established some were friends (Tony/Rhodey, Cap/Tony to a certain extent, Tony/Bruce to a certain extent, Cap/Sam, Natasha/Clint) But I would say that prior to Endgame, the only ones I would say would be truly friends of Wanda were Vision and Hawkeye kinda sorta.

Edited February 26, 2021 by Chicago Redshirt

[Penman61]

2 hours ago, arc said:

I said earlier that it was a delight to see the 1950s set in color, but on further thought it was also a giant mindfuck that it is a set. If I wanted to turn my life into a sitcom Wanda-style, I might recreate a sitcom house’s style and act like my favorite show, but there’s a huge difference between wanting to live out being in a fictional show and wanting to live out making a show. For all the answers we got in this episode, one of the big remaining ones is why was it a full on show, with title sequences and credits and editing and a laugh track/in-studio audience?

My take was that although the Agatha tour-guided "This is your grief, Wanda!" scenes (Sokovia apartment, Avengers motel, etc.) were tours of Wanda's past reality, that moment when Wanda looked out from the early-60s-era set and saw studio lights and audience was an updated part of her created "griefscape." Now that she knows the sitcoms' source (real sitcoms that had a studio audience), she's incorporated a place for the studio lights and audience into her griefscape.

But I could be wrong.

Edited February 26, 2021 by Penman61

[paigow]

1 hour ago, Spartan Girl said:

Hayward framed Wanda for his own ends just like Ross set up Bruce as a fugitive to cover his ass. If Hayward skates comeuppance the same way Ross did in Endgame I will be PISSED.

Fury probably replaced him with a Skrull...

[arc]

3 minutes ago, Penman61 said:

Now that she knows the sitcoms' source (real sitcoms that had a studio audience), she's incorporated a place for the studio lights and audience in her griefscape.

That’s definitely plausible but the broadcast itself and associated elements like the title sequences, credits, and suspicious editing all predated Agatha’s shock therapy session.

[Dandesun]

Yeah, Elizabeth Olsen is still killing it. Now, when Civil War came out and we got some scenes with Wanda and Vision I was just like *shrug* I really didn't care that much. Infinity War shocked the hell out of me by making me invested in their relationship. This episode where we see Wanda and Vision talk a little more in that Civil War setting was really lovely.

"This is the first home Vision and I shared." I mean... And then 'What is grief, if not love persevering?'

People... I am not made of stone.

There's a lot of things to consider about what created Vision. First, we have Tony's AI JARVIS named after Howard's... let's say valet rather than butler because Edwin Jarvis was a delightful human being (you can get to know him in the Agent Carter series, also on Disney+) and I like it better. JARVIS was awesome and then took on Ultron as an AI but managed to hide himself and continue to fight Ultron on the Interwebs and clouds and stuff. And then the Mindstone, vibranium, synthetic flesh and a jumpstart from the God of Thunder resulted in Vision. So Vision is based on an extremely wonderful human who fell in love and did everything he could to bring her to a safe place -- which he did with Howard's help -- and we see that kindness and empathy in Vision as well. It isn't remotely surprising that Wanda responded to a being who would offer such kindness to her. She's obviously had precious little of that in her life and, damn, when she gets it, it's almost immediately taken away.

Hayward very clearly sees Vision as nothing more than parts. He does not seem to understand what 'sentient' means because if he did, he'd know better than to partake in the clownery he's putting out there. The MCU acknowledged 'Back to the Future' and 'TimeCop' but did 'Terminator' somehow not make it into this universe? I need Vision to go full Skynet on Hayward. Also, he's more than happy to invoke Vision's living will to point fingers at Wanda but he won't acknowledge her as his next of kin? He's cherry picking and has been all along. Also, Hayward taking on John Byrne's attitude of Vision being 'just a toaster' is fine because I didn't much care for that in comics considering all that exists there.

Speaking of which, a being that is the result of a valet who was the basis of an AI that was instrumental in Tony's work in just about everything once he was built would absolutely be the type to have a living will and a next of kin and a property on which to grow old with his beloved. And it makes total sense that Wanda would want some sort of closure, all she wanted was to bury him and acknowledge his passing and, instead, Hayward's all 'he's made of valuable material so no... but sure, say good-bye to the pieces of his body that we're actively slicing apart in front of you.'

Her 'I can't feel you' was heartbreaking.

As for the Hex version of Vision. Well, Wanda's been re-writing reality and something about Hex Vision is real, that's how Hayward is tracking him. So maybe Wanda did use her reality warping chaos magic to re-write the mind stone power within her into Vision. That's the most plausible answer I can come up with currently.

But man, do I ever want to see Wanda and Hex-Vision reunite at this point. I just want Wanda to have happiness without having to inadvertantly take an entire town hostage. And also get some hard core grief counseling because she needs it BAD.

[Silver Raven]

The Walnut episode was a great one.  With Danny Thomas as an alien.

If they've had Vision's body for five years, why were they just then taking him apart?

Her car is red.

So Hayward lied about her taking Vision's body.

I'm hoping the real Vision will help Wanda.

 

[Penman61]

8 minutes ago, arc said:

That’s definitely plausible but the broadcast itself and associated elements like the title sequences, credits, and suspicious editing all predated Agatha’s shock therapy session.

Good point. And it makes me wonder: Is the "It Was Agatha All Along" ep 7 finale created by/watched by Wanda, too? Or is it in some different storytelling space?

Edited February 26, 2021 by Penman61

[arc]

15 minutes ago, Silver Raven said:

If they've had Vision's body for five years, why were they just then taking him apart?

Hayward said in the mid-credits scene that they’ve disassembled and reassembled Vision a million times, so presumably Wanda walked in on the fifth year of Project Cataract.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

20 minutes ago, Dandesun said:

 Speaking of which, a being that is the result of a valet who was the basis of an AI that was instrumental in Tony's work in just about everything once he was built would absolutely be the type to have a living will and a next of kin and a property on which to grow old with his beloved. And it makes total sense that Wanda would want some sort of closure, all she wanted was to bury him and acknowledge his passing and, instead, Hayward's all 'he's made of valuable material so no... but sure, say good-bye to the pieces of his body that we're actively slicing apart in front of you.'

He actually told her, "He's not yours anymore."

Aaaaand I'm sniffling again.

[Silver Raven]

6 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

the push for children could just be her trying to get to her idea of a happily ever after: a husband with a good steady job, two kids, a safe suburban house, where all the hijinks are resolved in a half-hour, and nobody dies. The American dream as she saw in all those TV shows growing up.

Like when she was watching Malcolm in the Middle and she said the dad wasn't hurt because it wasn't that kind of show.

 

[NightOwl89]

3 hours ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

Why 'has to'?

I'm not being snarky. I don't get this idea that Wanda should be punished, just like I don't get the apparent thirst for her to be the real villain. If we look at the MCU as a whole, and I've said this before but whatever, there's a whole long-ass list of "should be punished" people who have either skated as far as consequences go or are deemed not accountable for their actions due to extenuating circumstances. It seems kind of Something to single Wanda out over over, whether it's about her having agency and free will or needing to face the penalty for this. Especially when we've mostly been there and done that already when she was in the Raft before Steve showed up to set her and the others free. As has been noted, she's been curb-stomped on the same level as Thor. I guess without fat "jokes" that means we have to take this seriously?

Okay, that was a little snarky.

 

Really, this just underlines that the remaining Avengers left Wanda swinging in the breeze. As much as I love Carol, she's not an Avenger and is probably off-world anyway and too far away to help. IMO it should be taken into account that she seemed okay enough in her last movie appearance, and she might have gone on being okay enough even without Vision, but her trip to Westview was the catalyst for what came next. Seeing where their house would have been if everything hadn't turned to crap was the trigger on a gun that was loaded from the second she left the SWORD lab without Vision's remains. His gentle kindness towards her is why she came back from the edge after Pietro died, you can see her attitude towards him start to change when he notes that grief is simply love that perseveres.

As an admitted Wanda stan, I'm just tired of watching her get kicked repeatedly. I don't know what consequences could be worse than anything that's already happened to her.

This. Just, all of this.

[Silver Raven]

Please, please, don't take the kids away.

I noticed that Dottie was not in the pre-hex Westview scenes.

 

[Llywela]

41 minutes ago, Silver Raven said:

If they've had Vision's body for five years, why were they just then taking him apart?

First of all, Hayward has only been in charge since Maria Rambeau died two years ago, so he wouldn't have had the authority to start experimenting with Vision's body before then. Second of all, Hayward said they'd taken Vision apart and put him back together again multiple times already without success, so what Wanda saw was just the latest stage of a two-year project of continual de-construction and re-assembly. Only now that Wanda infused that drone with her power have they had the magic spark actually needed to re-animate him.

[Chaos Theory]

I can go either way on Wanda.   On one hand I really love the idea of Wanda and Vision having their own show and battling the forces of evil together with their twins as a family.   That would be awesome and so very Disney.  

On the otherhand.......

One of my favorite kinds of story is a downward spiral especially for a strong female character and Wanda Maximoff has all the makings to be a very compelling villain story.   

Edited February 26, 2021 by Chaos Theory

[Chicago Redshirt]

4 hours ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

Why 'has to'?

I'm not being snarky. I don't get this idea that Wanda should be punished, just like I don't get the apparent thirst for her to be the real villain. If we look at the MCU as a whole, and I've said this before but whatever, there's a whole long-ass list of "should be punished" people who have either skated as far as consequences go or are deemed not accountable for their actions due to extenuating circumstances.

One of the things that I think attracts us to the MCU and comics in general is the notion that at some point, justice is done. The nice little fiction that people always pay for their misdeeds. I can't think of really any who have evaded justice for long. The only one remotely in that category is Bucky, and he gets a pass because he was being mind-controlled. I suppose we have Black Widow having red in her ledger, but she is atoning for that.

And even while we can appreciate why she did what she did, Wanda has traumatized thousands and held them against their will for about a week now. As far as we have seen, Wanda did all this of her free will, albeit while buffeted by grief. What is the proper penance/remedy for that, if not either prison or mental health treatment?

I have a lot of trust in the writers of WV, but it seems like it would be jarring if they did not either introduce more evidence that she literally could not help herself or that she even voluntarily seeks help of some sort. 

[lovett1979]

31 minutes ago, Silver Raven said:

Please, please, don't take the kids away.

I noticed that Dottie was not in the pre-hex Westview scenes.

 

Neither was Norm or Mr Hart. I don’t think Dottie is anyone special.

[swanpride]

I don't think that the Avengers are to blame for that...mainly because the ones who were the closest to Wanda are either dead or have currently their own struggles to deal with. I mean, if Clint is currently busy reconnecting with his family, you can hardly blame him, especially if Wanda hid from him her plans. The kind of active avengers like Carol, Scott, Hope, Peter or Thor are either off-world or don't even know Wanda other than maybe in passing or both.

This is maybe the one thing with bothers me a little bit that they skipped over the fact that Wanda came back and learned that of her two Avengers mentors one is

Spoiler

dead

and the other is an

Spoiler

old man

 

[Sakura12]

"You are the Scarlett Witch" what a great line to end on.

I liked this episode. Just like all the others I curse the please stand by credits. 

We got a lot of answers and saw that Wanda did actually create everything. And that Agatha was just drawn to the power. She must be surprised that Wanda has had no magic training. So Wanda and Peitro always had powers the infinty stone just brought them out or amplified them. Since they said all the other volunteers died. 

I'm now wondering if Wanda's chaos magic took a Vision from another reality. 

I'm still waiting for the Dottie reveal. 

[BooBear]

I didn't like this episode because it introduced a lot that confused me.

1. It seemed like the deed just showed up on Wanda's car. Luring her to Westview (next to Agatha's house) It seems to me maybe that deed is a fake and Agatha wanted to Lure Wanda for some reason (thus the Agatha all along) but then Wanda went all Hex crazy. It affected everyone but Agatha who simply played along to try to find out what the heck happened.  (and maybe how she could use it).

2. I know Heywood is supposed to be a baddy but I have zero problems with him. Wanda has an entire town basically being tortured. It isn't right, and if we just were being presented from a different point of view... the Director would be a hero. It is his job to stop her and free those people my any means necessary and no, I don't see him as a bad guy for experimenting with a lifeless corpse. He was perfectly nice to bring Wanda back and show her Vision knowing she could flip out. She didn't hurt him because she knew she wasn't mad with him. Her vision was gone. It wasn't his fault. The worse imho thing you can say about him is that he lied about Wanda taking Vision's body. Not sure why he would do that but imho still doesn't make him a baddy.  

3. I Kind of have a problem with Wanda being aware that she is hurting / controlling all those innocents in Westview and not doing anything about it. This is much different than Steve or Tony. So if she doesn't get her happy ever after I think it will be due to that.  She will presumably get the kids.

4. Not really sure how they are going to end it. I hope they don't just make this show an introduction to a movie. I want a real ending which might then lead into a movie from an end credit scene.

 

[dwmarch]

16 minutes ago, BooBear said:

The worse imho thing you can say about him is that he lied about Wanda taking Vision's body. Not sure why he would do that but imho still doesn't make him a baddy.

Tactically, it's brilliant if ever someone else comes calling for it, which seems increasingly likely since SWORD security is rather trivial to any powered individual. "Nope, haven't seen it and certainly don't have it stashed away somewhere. Go ask Wanda, the super-witch with the attitude problem, I bet she knows."

[festivus]

Well I give this episode an A+ because it managed to do what the MCU has not done previously, which is make me care about about one of their romances. "I can't feel you" was absolutely heartbreaking.

Also we got full on witches in the MCU now. Bring it on! 

[Cobalt Stargazer]

50 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

The only one remotely in that category is Bucky, and he gets a pass because he was being mind-controlled.

Bucky is the one  was thinking of, really, and just from a fandom perspective the contrast is jarring. Mind controlled or not, Barnes has killed people deliberately, but he's still seen as a blameless cinnamon roll who only wanted plums. Meanwhile, Wanda's the unstable girl who can't control her powers, even though she saw her brother and her boyfriend die (twice) and has had a whole other shit-ton of stuff happen to her, most of it out of her control. Sounds fair.

I would agree somewhat that the Avengers were more co-workers than friends, but I do wonder why there wouldn't be someone left to look in on her, just to make sure she's not doing this, pretty much. As viewers, we know what happened to drive her to do this, but it seems like there wasn't much time between Tony's funeral and Wanda going to the SWORD complex before driving to Westview. If she's really this erratic, it seems like there should have been warning signs. They don't have to be her friends to notice something a little amiss.

 

47 minutes ago, BooBear said:

2. I know Heywood is supposed to be a baddy but I have zero problems with him. Wanda has an entire town basically being tortured. It isn't right, and if we just were being presented from a different point of view... the Director would be a hero. It is his job to stop her and free those people my any means necessary and no, I don't see him as a bad guy for experimenting with a lifeless corpse. He was perfectly nice to bring Wanda back and show her Vision knowing she could flip out. She didn't hurt him because she knew she wasn't mad with him. Her vision was gone. It wasn't his fault. The worse imho thing you can say about him is that he lied about Wanda taking Vision's body. Not sure why he would do that but imho still doesn't make him a baddy.

At the very least, Hayward lied because he wanted to keep SWORD's possession of Vision's body a secret in order to continue trying to 'bring him back online' as a weapon. Even if the organization got the body by above-board means (which...please) his blithering about Wanda violating Vision's living will is rich when he was doing exactly the same thing by wanting to weaponize him. Vision as he was before would never want to be used that way, since he didn't even want to kill Ultron except to save the world.

Hayward also lied to Monica about sending in an armed drone to fire on Wanda, who was standing next to her children at the time. What did he think would happen to the other residents of Westview if Wanda got pissed off enough? Even if the kids aren't 'real', Wanda thinks they are. She could have walked out of the Hex and nuked him and the soldiers he (stupidly) brought along, and she didn't. Where's the body count if Wanda really is the bad guy?

[Cthulhudrew]

52 minutes ago, BooBear said:

I didn't like this episode because it introduced a lot that confused me.

1. It seemed like the deed just showed up on Wanda's car. Luring her to Westview (next to Agatha's house) It seems to me maybe that deed is a fake and Agatha wanted to Lure Wanda for some reason (thus the Agatha all along) but then Wanda went all Hex crazy. It affected everyone but Agatha who simply played along to try to find out what the heck happened.  (and maybe how she could use it).

I think you got it the wrong way around. The deed was sitting, opened, in the passenger seat of Wanda's car. Agatha told Wanda that she came to Westview because she felt the big disturbance and was drawn by the lure of power.

My read is:

Wanda returns from being snapped. After Tony's funeral, she gets the Vision's letter along with anything else that he may have left her in a will (she tells Hayward that she is his "next of kin" which is technically not true in a legal sense, because he has no blood relatives. So if it was to have any legal meaning- and Hayward doesn't challenge her on it- there must have been some kind of declaration in a will.)

Before she decides to go to Westview to claim their home, Wanda decides to find where the Vision's body is so she can give him a proper burial. She was probably going to go directly there once she got it (as she did when she left without his body).

She grieves, warps the town. Agatha- from some outside area (maybe still in Salem? Who knows.)- senses the disturbance in the magical force and comes to investigate. Possibly feed on it/absorb it; at the least to understand how it came to be so that she can also access that level of power. Starts manipulating Wanda from within to figure it out.

[Cthulhudrew]

59 minutes ago, Sakura12 said:

She must be surprised that Wanda has had no magic training. So Wanda and Peitro always had powers the infinty stone just brought them out or amplified them. Since they said all the other volunteers died. 

This was what I found most interesting. I believe Strucker implied it unlocked their potential or something in the end-credit scene from Winter Soldier. But Agatha suggests that Wanda used her probability manipulation to keep the Stark bomb from exploding and that the powers might have faded away if not for the Mind Stone. So it looks like Pietro and Wanda are likely to be the MCU's first official mutants.

[arc]

1 hour ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

The only one remotely in that category is Bucky, and he gets a pass because he was being mind-controlled.

I feel like Loki hasn't really met appropriate consequences either. Maybe his upcoming TV show will address that, but ever since the end of Avengers 1, he's been more of an irrepressible scamp than the leader of an invading force that decimated NYC, not to mention the mind control and killing Coulson.

[Kromm]

5 hours ago, Featherhat said:

Yeah, that's what I was trying to get at. At this point having her sit in a padded cell or worse The Raft under SWORD or Ross's "care" doesn't seem like the right thing, could make things even worse and won't make what happened to the WV residents any better and no one can punish Wanda as much as she's going to punish herself over this. 

Theoretically I understand that, but the show hasn't yet shown us even a single moment of her regretting what she's done to people. 

I'm not saying she doesn't, but the show hasn't done the work yet to prove it to us. In fact, the closest we came was her conversation with Fietro, where she welcomed excuses and confirmation from him. That scene showed she was aware of the moral issues, but also emotionally working like hell to avoid dealing with them. 

I'm just saying we can't project the emotion of regret onto her. Until we see it, and even moreso believe it, she's the villain. Even if a sympathetic, suffering one. After we see it?  Then it becomes about proportional responsibility.  Because while we see all kinds of people get away with all kinds of things in the MCU, is "she finally feels bad" really the standard we want for a hero character? 

It's hard though, because if she IS punished, those stories about the show are going to flip from ones praising how it addresses grief, to ones complaining about how only the female characters get punished. And yet I don't think Marvel having fallen down before on this changes my feeling that it's got to be at least acknowledged here, even if they contrive some magic out for her. 

[Chicago Redshirt]

2 hours ago, BooBear said:

I didn't like this episode because it introduced a lot that confused me.

1. It seemed like the deed just showed up on Wanda's car. Luring her to Westview (next to Agatha's house) It seems to me maybe that deed is a fake and Agatha wanted to Lure Wanda for some reason (thus the Agatha all along) but then Wanda went all Hex crazy. It affected everyone but Agatha who simply played along to try to find out what the heck happened.  (and maybe how she could use it).

2. I know Heywood is supposed to be a baddy but I have zero problems with him. Wanda has an entire town basically being tortured. It isn't right, and if we just were being presented from a different point of view... the Director would be a hero. It is his job to stop her and free those people my any means necessary and no, I don't see him as a bad guy for experimenting with a lifeless corpse. He was perfectly nice to bring Wanda back and show her Vision knowing she could flip out. She didn't hurt him because she knew she wasn't mad with him. Her vision was gone. It wasn't his fault. The worse imho thing you can say about him is that he lied about Wanda taking Vision's body. Not sure why he would do that but imho still doesn't make him a baddy. 

 

It sounds like only the first thing confused you.

Already stinging from general grief and not being able to give Vision a proper burial, Wanda drove to Westview. The deed shows  that Vision (somehow) bought the lot for the two to build a dream home to grow old in. So presumably, Wanda wanted to go there in her grief. But Westview has obviously become a depressing and sad version of its former self. Wanda clearly had the deed with her. When Wanda exited the car, she had the deed in her hand. And with all the sadness and grief, Wanda just couldn't take it any more.

Agatha tells us (and we have no particular reason to think she's lying on this point) that she only came to Westview after detecting the power Wanda used to make the Hex in the first place. So she didn't lay out a trap for Wanda to get her to Westview or anything.

Hayward is to me the best sort of baddy -- one who is completely justified from a certain perspective in doing what he's doing. Still, part of the problem is that he does not seem to care or think about what the ramifications of his actions are. Like Monica pointed out, we have no idea what the would have happened to the people inside the Hex or the people outside if Wanda was suddenly blowed up real good. Rather than trying to figure out alternatives, he's letting his prejudice towards powered people lead him down some potentially troublesome paths.

[Chicago Redshirt]

1 hour ago, arc said:

I feel like Loki hasn't really met appropriate consequences either. Maybe his upcoming TV show will address that, but ever since the end of Avengers 1, he's been more of an irrepressible scamp than the leader of an invading force that decimated NYC, not to mention the mind control and killing Coulson.

Sure, Loki probably should have been punished more harshly. But he was imprisoned for his actions up till Thor 2 in the original timeline, and he was ultimately killed by Thanos.

Asgardian prison is admittedly just a fraction of what he deserves for (presumably) having caused numerous New Yorkers' deaths. But he didn't completely skate. But it is something.

Now Endgame Loki...we'll see what happens with him. 

[Chaos Theory]

1 hour ago, arc said:

I feel like Loki hasn't really met appropriate consequences either. Maybe his upcoming TV show will address that, but ever since the end of Avengers 1, he's been more of an irrepressible scamp than the leader of an invading force that decimated NYC, not to mention the mind control and killing Coulson.

No character can face “appropriate consequences” on a genre show.   In real life that usually means long term incarceration but that is impossible in fiction unless you throw them in a virtual prison and move time around them or kill the character.    Bad guys either die or get redeemed.  They don’t face any real consequences at least not long term.  
 

Whatever consequence Wanda faces for the creation of fake Westview will more then likely be personal, emotional and short term.  
 

More likely still the show will switch up due to the Agatha and Hayward reveals and push Wanda back into hero....even if that means vengeful hero.

Edited February 27, 2021 by Chaos Theory

[Kate47]

I think the saddest part of the episode is that Wanda tried so hard to be good. She's not evil like Agnes, she just has this crazy power. By all rights she should have blown SWORD HQ to bits for their desecration and Hayward's smug flippant attitude, but instead she just confirmed there was no Vision left and went home. Her pain and sorrow created something more than she wanted, and she's facing it for the first time. I hope she's able to come out the other side.

[arc]

On rewatch, the opening scene in Salem has some parallels with the end. In both cases, the more powerful witch is seemingly restrained while the less powerful witch has flown twenty feet into the air as a symbol of dominance. In Salem, the more powerful witch does not fully realize her power, but once she does it's curtains for her foes. Agatha has switched positions, though.

If Agatha was drawn to Westview because of the vast magical power expended there... why not Doctor Strange or any of that whole secret mystic order? I mean, I know, this is a Wanda and Vision story, but we had a whole movie a few years ago about how the Ancient One & her whole group are like the secret police of magic.

Schaeffer and Feige probably didn't intend it this way but the line "Thousands of people under your thumb, all interacting with each other, according to complex storylines, well, that's something special baby." kinda describes TV showrunners in general and Feige in particular as the most successful blockbuster movie producer of this era.

I think it was a little silly that the Maximoff family practiced their English on TV night, but fine. I think it's a little more ridiculous that an originally German organization* operating in Sokovia in 2009 used English.

* I just looked this up and apparently there's some earlier Inhuman influence there but that stuff is arguably no longer canon if it ever was.

[Ailianna]

Or English was the only common language between the Germans and Sokovians. 

[bettername2come]

Interesting flashback at the beginning. Interesting to watch a witch put to the stake by other witches.

I knew she grew up watching all those old sitcoms. I love that she grew up binge watching. Wait, how common were DVDs in 1999 Sovokia or real-world equivalent? Hey, were there Malcolm in the Middle DVDs in that suitcase in 1999? Okay, I think Wanda's an unreliable narrator. Watching sitcoms with Vision while not leaving Avengers compound makes sense too. 

Elizabeth Olsen looked so much like her sisters walking into SWORD ( I mean, she always does, but she could've been their triplet). I liked that Wanda tried to handle retrieving the body through proper channels. So Hayward planted the idea of bringing Vision back to life in her head? Cause he's the one who mentioned it and used the term soulmate. Seems like in 5 years they'd have made more progress in the disassembly process. Did all the capable AI scientists disappear in the snap? Watching Wanda do something as normal as drive a car seems so odd. Wait, Vision really bought them land in Westview?

"What is grief if not love persevering?"

Kathryn Hahn deserves an Emmy nomination. 

Name drop.

Hayward's new Vision looks like Dennis from Bill and Ted Face the Music. 

Edited February 27, 2021 by bettername2come

[Kel Varnsen]

The all White Vision from West Coast Avengers! I wondered earlier this season if we might see that but I honestly never thought it would happen. There is only one way they could make it better. The Original Human Torch was a throw away Easter egg in The First Avenger. Now if Hayward has a line about how they used some of that robot for replacement parts that would be awesome.

10 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

Seriously, if Elizabeth Olsen doesent get an Emmy, can I just give her one myself? 

Is it possible for someone to get a drama and a comedy Emmy nomination for the same show? Because Elizabeth Olsen was a serious contender for a comedy award in those first few episodes and likewise after this one she should be a contender for a drama award.

8 hours ago, arc said:

Do arms manufacturers really slap their logos on their bombs? Why? It’s not like front line forces make the buying decisions.

It's pre-Iron Man Tony Stark, remembering what he was like before he was kidnapped I am surprised he didn't have a picture of his face on the side. Also I like the idea that her Hex kept the bomb from going off. Since if Stark was such a genius he shouldn't be making bombs that don't work.

6 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

But I would say that prior to Endgame, the only ones I would say would be truly friends of Wanda were Vision and Hawkeye kinda sorta.

She was on the run from the law for 3 years with Cap, Natasha and Sam. I would hope she former some kind of bond with them. But the first two are dead, and I guess in about a month we are going to find out what Sam has been up to.

5 hours ago, Silver Raven said:

Like when she was watching Malcolm in the Middle and she said the dad wasn't hurt because it wasn't that kind of show.

 

I wonder if Wanda ever saw Walter White. If she was a big lover of sitcoms that would really mess her up. Also speaking of sitcoms, the only thing they should have changed was they should have made the DVDs her dad was selling obvious bootleg knockoffs. But the I Love Lucy sets were the same ones my wife owns.

[Cerulean]

I’m having a hard time explaining the color symbolism to myself.
 

The good witches were blue. Agatha is purple. And Wanda is red (even further than blue -> purple) 

Does that mean that the bad part of Agatha is chaos? If it were yellow mixing with blue, Wanda should have been green, not red. But green is Doctor Strange. 

[FnkyChkn34]

Wait, so... it wasn't Agatha all along?

[Grammaeryn]

This was an ugly cry episode for me. I lost my dad in 2019. It is just shocking how gone he was. I touched his face and it wasn’t him anymore. Since I knew my mind would just push away what happened, I took a picture of his corpse in the hospital bed so I would have proof. I thought I was going crazy for the next several months, I felt so lost. 2020 was going to be my recovery back to normal time -ha!
 

Remember how Jimmy lost track of a guy in Witness Protection in Westview? With all of this talk about magic, we are assuming Dr. Strange will show up next week. What if it is Mordo? 

[Bruinsfan]

16 hours ago, arc said:

Oh, you're right! They made a big point about her not changing the essential nature of something, only reshaping it. So hex-Vision really is made of vibranium??? Wow. The one vibranium thing we're sure she didn't reshape is Vision's actual corpse since SWORD still had it.

But then again, if Hayward could track vibranium like that, you'd think he would have mined it out of Westview long ago

Is it possible that Wanda pulled the vibranium from the destroyed husk of Ultron's final primary body? I assume the authorities would have recovered that from wherever Thor nuking Sokovia's airborne capital city blew it.

14 hours ago, SeanC said:

I mean, Hayward isn’t wrong that leaving a giant store of vibranium in the ground somewhere would not be safe.

Particularly when it includes circuitry/mechanisms for going intangible or increasing its density by orders of magnitude. Ultron put some amazing futuristic tech in the Vision, that would be catastrophic in the wrong hands. Like moreso than Ultron's own vibranium body would.

 

[formerlyfreedom]

I woke up to watch this in the middle of the night, fell back asleep after, and dreamt that we’ll see Dick Van Dyke, Mike Lookinland, Susan Olsen, and Bryan Cranston in the finale. Clearly, watching tv in the middle of my sleep cycle is a bad idea.

I liked Agatha’s call out about Wanda’s changing accent.

I don’t see Wanda as a villain. She doesn’t comprehend what she’s done, or the enormity of her power. Agatha clearly does.

I can fanwank that Vision’s body was somehow protected by Maria and Tony - it makes sense that Tony would keep it from prying eyes. And once Tony was gone, there was just a bit of chaos with the returns from The Snap and all the other fallout of the final battle. And Hayward swept in to try and leverage the situation.

I think Westview was depicted more accurately for what might have happened to a typical town after The Snap and five years later, the sudden reappearance of half the population. People would suddenly return to a world no longer the one they know. Family and friends may have died or moved in the five years. It seems Vision started the house before he died, and things fell into ruin after the Snap.

Finally, Elizabeth Olsen is the most underrated actress of her generation. She better get great things going forward.

Oh, and I totally believe that Hex-Vision and OG-VisionBody will get combined.

[Capricasix]

26 minutes ago, Grammaeryn said:

This was an ugly cry episode for me. I lost my dad in 2019. It is just shocking how gone he was. I touched his face and it wasn’t him anymore. Since I knew my mind would just push away what happened, I took a picture of his corpse in the hospital bed so I would have proof. I thought I was going crazy for the next several months, I felt so lost. 2020 was going to be my recovery back to normal time -ha!
 

My sympathies ❤️ My dad died last July, so almost exactly seven months ago. When I saw him not long after it happened, I felt the same way - it was him, but he wasn’t there any more. I’m glad I got the chance to see him, though. That’s why I cried at that part of today’s ep.

[Megan]

As a non-Comic book, non enjoy-er of blockbuster movies person, I really liked WandaVision, up until this epi

If this is how the movies have been, and it's not all just CGI fighty war stuff, maybe I should give the MCU movies (I've paid attention to the Taika Waititi movies and enjoyed them) a second look? I've seen them, but also spent the time focused on building Sim houses or something else, but am disappointed with this development.

The Agatha All Along theme was not accurate and I'm sad she's ended up being like, an non entity, usher for the continuing story?

 

[swanpride]

As someone who is easily bored by fight scenes: Yeah, the MCU is more than CGI fighty war stuff. Granted, they needed some time to truly get to the more layered movies in terms of messaging, but from day 1 the MCU was more about characters than anything else.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

5 hours ago, Kromm said:

Theoretically I understand that, but the show hasn't yet shown us even a single moment of her regretting what she's done to people.

Genuine question, because I've been obsessing about it: does the lack of overt malice balance the lack of obvious regret?

Because Wanda has been given opportunities to act out of anger. At the SWORD complex. With Monica. Outside of the Hex with Hayward. Monica straight up said, "Take me out" before Agatha ruined things by leading Wanda away, and even though Wanda said 'don't make me hurt you' she just sounded tired more than anything else. As another poster said, she tried really hard to do things the right way when she wanted to claim Vision's body for burial, only to be denied. She didn't even raise her voice, and she left quietly rather than cause a scene. Or, y'know, pull the building down around Hayward's ears.

[ShellsandCheese]

18 hours ago, JessePinkman said:

Also Kathryn Hahn in one episode has established herself as a top tier MCU villain.

Is she a villian, though? 🙂 

Also, why the hell did we get that convoluted defeat Thanos plot with too much testerone involved when Wanda was right there the whole time? They really should have had her play a more integral role in the defeat of Thanos. #mostpowerfulavenger #elizabetholsenwaswasted

Edited February 27, 2021 by ShellsandCheese