WandaVision (1.9): The End Has No End

I sat and thought about a much snappier introduction to my final recap of WandaVision’s finale, but there is so much to unpack in this episode it felt like a waste of time and worthy of jumping right in. All of the forces that we have been predicting for weeks would converge finally converged in an explosive and revelatory showdown. It is Agatha versus Wanda, Vision versus Vision, and Monica versus…Pietro? Okay, so that last battle was over pretty quickly, but all of these showdowns happened antithetical to how most battles happen in Marvel movies.

Each of them starts out relatively simple with power matched for power. Monica solves the Pietro mystery by revealing that he is actually Westview resident, Ralph Bohner, which she pronounces “boner” and gets a laugh out of him, further revealing that this was definitely never Pietro. Vision and (White) Vision’s fight starts with a physical battle and ends with a metaphysical one. Vision smartly decides the only way to beat himself is to do so on the intellectual plane. The interplay between the two Visions is quite poetic as both entities wax about how they are simultaneously not Vision and yet still Vision. The question of identity underpins this battle as well as the one that succeeds it. Agatha spends the entire battle trying to bait Wanda into giving into her base instincts (who she “really” is) , effectively ceding her powers to Agatha. At first, this is exactly what Wanda does. Agatha starts to absorb her powers and prompts her into deciding between the lives of the real Westview residents and her family. What Agatha doesn’t count on is Wanda’s growth. Wanda’s power is no mystery. She created this imagined world through her powers, her grief. But processing that grief and letting Vision go once again causes her to ascend to levels of power that even Agatha could not have anticipated. That is Agatha’s undoing. As Wanda embraces her identity as The Scarlet Witch, it means letting go of everything in Westview. That doesn’t apply exclusively to the residents she had a hold on, but Vision and their two children.

The scene where Wanda and Vision say goodbye once more is the most emotionally potent moment (yes, even more than that one in Avengers: Endgame) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Wanda turns off the light in the living room as the dissolution of the Westview anomaly starts to approach their house. (It is this dissolution that will destroy this version of Vision.) Vision promptly turns the light back on. When she questions him, he responds, “Perhaps I just wanted to see you clearly.” She questions, “And?” He plainly responds, “And there you are.” In some ways, the entirety of WandaVision felt as though it was building to that moment. The acknowledgement of not just Wanda’s grief but Wanda as a person. In that moment where she is seen is the simplest and most emotionally reassuring moment of the series. Vision eventually brings the conversation back to that question of identity and prompts Wanda to answer him about his own creation. She talks of the part of the Mind Stone that is in her (the source of Vision’s lifeblood, so to speak), but as she so aptly states, “You are my sadness and my hope,” then takes a beat, “But mostly, you’re my love.” The emotion that surges through this scene – brought to life through a magnificent performance from Elizabeth Olsen – brings home this powerful and unique telling of a love story. It is certainly a story of grief and finding out who you are in the midst of immense suffering, but what underscores all of it, from Monica’s story to Wanda’s story, is love and just how it changes over time. Not necessarily for stronger or for weaker, but how love must adapt to life in order to survive and how exactly it does that.

As WandaVision wrapped up its final episode, it’s hard not to look ahead; to look to what is next. The post-credits sequences including both scenes featuring Wanda’s life after Westview and a clear start to a (hopefully!) solo Monica Rambeau adventure. But spending time on “what does it mean?!” about post-credits scenes feels like a disservice to stories told over the course of WandaVision. Those might be worth exploring, but they are not this story. It is a fascinating – for better or for worse – mode of storytelling. Because in some ways, they are this story, right? WandaVision doesn’t and cannot really exist independent of all the movies that have led up to its specific story and those that will come after. WandaVision is a bridge to yet another story told in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. What does that mean for storytelling? I don’t have an answer for that. If you were to ask Martin Scorsese, well, you wouldn’t have to ask, because we already know. There’s certainly some truth in assertions about these movies and filmmaking as content in general across the landscape of cinema today. But it feels like there’s a bit more to the story than that. Or at least that’s how I feel after watching WandaVision. It is not a show that is as simple to write off as other plug and chug entries into the MCU. This conversation is not one that is going to end any time soon either (have you seen Disney/Marvel’s movie calendar over the next few years?). I think it’s a good conversation to have though. At its core, its about storytelling (with an overwhelming heap of corporatism, but that’s a conversation for another time): how we tell stories, which stories are told, and what they mean to us. I look forward to continuing that conversation, no matter how small and insignificant my chatter seems. Until next time. I certainly hope you enjoyed WandaVision as much as I did, and thanks for taking this journey with me.