WandaVision (1.7): A New Villain Emerges

Given the mysterious nature of the first 4 or so episodes of WandaVision, we were bound to get reveals galore these last few episodes to help us connect the dots. I can’t say I expected them to be so fun though. The Pietro reveal was fun because of its jarring nature. Rather than cast Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Pietro (who played him in Avengers: Age of Ultron), the show cast Evan Peters (who played Pietro in a number of X-Men films). The significance of this, beyond bringing in a bit of a loopy twist, is the metatextual reference to Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox since the premiere of Avengers: Age of Ultron (moving from Pietro in a Disney film to Pietro in Fox film). In this week’s episode of WandaVision, the big reveal resulted in one of the most fun moments of the show thus far. Last week, I noted in an aside that I hoped that Kathryn Hahn would play a bigger role in the show. Well, I certainly got my wish. Lucky for me, it came in the form of an earworm of a theme song too.

I also noted last week that I was curious as to what might happen as we move into modern sitcom homages (pun intended as we moved into a Modern Family homage this episode), and it turns out we got an answer to that question as well. At almost every turn of the episode, Wanda is visibly losing control. Items in her home are switching between eras of sitcoms. The fabric of her reality is being torn apart. WandaVision doesn’t give us time to think about the implications of this as the show draws in its strongest forces right at the heart of Westview. While it sets up the last two episodes of the series well, the setup in and of itself stands as a wonderous moment. Obviously, “It Was Agatha All Along” stole the show for the biggest force in this particular episode, but Monica transformation into a superhero might still stand as the best moment of the episode. When the series started, Monica’s purpose fell in line with S.W.O.R.D.’s purpose: figure out the mystery of the Westview anomaly and ‘free’ its citizens. It was not until she visited Westview herself that her objectives changed. She felt Wanda’s pain, and she refused to give up on her. In this episode, we get a physical manifestation of that resolve. When Monica’s armored car gets swallowed up and thrown back from the forcefield into Westview, Monica pushes through the boundary herself. In this moment, we are treated to a spacy, colorful trip down memory lane. We hear Carol Danvers’ (Captain Marvel) voice talking to a young Monica, we hear her mother talking to her, and we even hear Monica being told about her mother’s death. It’s a beautiful moment of transformation both visually and sentimentally. Also, the result is quite badass. Monica’s eyes now glow blue as she can harness power akin to Wanda’s force. All of these moments leave us with four forces converging on the same house under the same force field going into WandaVision’s penultimate episode: Wanda, Agatha, Monica, and Vision.

There are so many absolutely delightful moments in this show aside from its main plot that are going to make a rewatch rich. Early in the episode, Agnes (Agatha) offers to watch Wanda’s twins while she takes a day off and says to the twins, “I don’t bite!” and then the scene cuts to her talking to the camera (as characters do in Modern Family) and she states frankly, “Actually, I did bite a kid once.” There is another moment just before Vision takes off to confront Wanda. He is talking to the camera outside of the truck that he and Darcy commandeered, and suddenly says “Why am I doing this?” and tears off his tiny little mic and moves to fly home. It is small moments like that that fill out this little universe WandaVision has created. It is a show that still largely feels in service to the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the way Jac Shaeffer has been able to craft such a unique series within that framework has been a marvel in and of itself.