The setting was much more artificial outside the house - everything beyond the walls of their property was blurry. Herb cutting through the wall seems somehow symbolic.
Now that Geraldine has been expelled, we see that “Westview” has some sort of real physical existence and takes up some space - but was it built to contain Wanda, or did it appear because of Wanda (or somehow both). I’m starting to get some “It’s a Good Life” Anthony vibes…
To me, the scenery and sky behind Herb looked like a flat, painted, theatrical backdrop, as though their 70’s sitcom setting was all enclosed inside a big soundstage.
I like that hypothesis!
RE: the beekeeper. In the comics, A.I.M. agents do have a uniform that is often compared both out-of-universe by fans and in-universe by some characters as being similar to a beekeeper’s outfit. But…as pointed out upthread, this beekeeper had a S.W.O.R.D. insignia on the suit. And A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics) already exists (or existed) in the MCU in a very different form - it was the name of the tech company Aldrich Killian founded in Iron Man 3 as part of the Extremis project. Of course, he also created a fake Mandarin, but apparently there’s also a real Mandarin in the MCU, so maybe his A.I.M. was a fake or front for the real A.I.M…
We finally have a plot! I was among those who wasn’t enjoying the series, since the first two episodes were almost entirely mediocre retro-sitcoms, with a few moments of weirdness. This episode we finally got some actual developments.
The fake ad in this one seemed directly on-point - “Escape to a world all your own, where your problems float away. When you want to get away, but you don’t want to go anywhere. Hydra Soak. Find the Goddess within.” So, pretty explicit at this point that HYDRA did something to Wanda that caused her powers to create a world all her own where she can escape the problems in her life. Not sure about the “find the Goddess within bit”.
Oh yeah, that was definitely a painted backdrop.
All right, with this third episode, I’m pretty sure that my big spoiler-hidden speculation from the previous thread is more or less accurate.
I’m going to spoiler-mask this again, for the benefit of people who may be enjoying the show but don’t want to risk having a comic-geek-informed-guess giving things away.
Basically, Wanda is manufacturing this false-reality bubble as a defense mechanism because there was an attempt to resurrect Vision and it went badly somehow.
In this episode, we also get a clearer sense of Agnes’s place in the fake reality. She was a primary part of whatever Wanda was doing to get Vision back, and she’s been pulled into the bubble. She is not creating or controlling the fake reality. However, she has an interest in seeing it through. In this latest episode, note that she’s the one arguing with Herb the neighbor, who wants to tell Vision something. Agnes wants Wanda to go forward through the fantasy, getting to whatever conclusion was planned; she doesn’t want the bubble to burst because whatever it is she wants (it’s clearly related to the children) will be put at risk if that happens.
And note that, from this perspective, there’s actually been quite a bit of story development all along. It’s not just these sitcom larks with a couple of occasional hints; if my speculation is correct, then the sitcom plots are directly reflective of what’s actually happening. Note, in the first episode, that Agnes isn’t just the funny, nosy neighbor — she takes an active role in pushing Wanda along, showing up with advice and the dinner and such, ensuring that Wanda plays out the story. If I’m right, then there’s been more actual plotting than seems initially apparent, but it’s been masked and veiled and distorted through the sitcom lens.
I don’t think we’re going to get a reveal where there’s a bad guy who has deliberately, maliciously trapped Wanda and Vision in this bubble and is forcing them to enact this weird reality. I think Wanda is the primary creator/driver of the fake reality, and Vision is a partial reflection of his previous self, made out of a combination of Wanda’s memories and whatever bits and pieces she was able to extract from his ruined body.
There will be an antagonist, probably Agnes, possibly also involving Dottie, who did not make the reality but who wants to get something from Wanda and needs her to stay in the reality she’s made for herself for some reason. They will be obstructing external efforts to assist Wanda, and supporting Wanda’s desire to stay in the fantasy and play it to its conclusion. Compare Wormtongue whispering over Theoden’s shoulder.
If my guess is right, and there’s more going on here than just meaningless sitcom pastiche which will eventually break into something else, if this really is a distorted reflection of what’s actually happening, then our view of these early episodes will depend entirely on how the final couple of episodes stick the landing — pacing out the reveals, twisting us back into reality, dumping exposition in an elegant way, and giving us a satisfying, character-based conclusion. If any of that goes awry, then, yeah, these early episodes will feel weak. But there’s definitely a version of this show where we get to the end and then look back at the beginning and say “Oh!”
A couple of things that literally came to me overnight.
In this episode, Vision uses super-speed several times. It didn’t really occur to me as it was happening, since Vision has a lot of random abilities, but…Vision doesn’t have super-speed. Pietro, Wanda’s dead twin brother, did. In this bubble reality, Wanda gave her resurrected dead lover aspects of her dead twin brother, which…probably doesn’t bear thinking about too much.
When Geraldine is corn-fielded out of “Westview”, she’s briefly crackling with scarlet energy. This is exactly the visual effect of when Wanda used her powers in Age of Ultron to induce the weird waking dreams in the Avengers. She is apparently using a super-charged version of her powers to engulf an entire small town in her waking dream.
As to the commercial in this episode and “the Goddess within”, they might be bringing in some of the weirder elements of Wanda’s character from the comics, which would tie into Doctor Strange. In the comics, Wanda has probably the most inconsistent, incoherent, and convoluted power set in the Marvel Universe. It seemed like literally just about every creative team had a different idea of what her powers actually were. In one version, her powers were actually manipulation of Chthonic magical energy. She and Pietro were born on Mount Wundagore, which was the physical anchor point in our dimension for the elder demon-god Chthon, and Wanda was linked to him and his dark magic. So, maybe in the MCU, Mount Wundagore is in Sokovia, and Strucker’s experiments to create Wanda and Pietro linked Wanda to an extradimensional “god” (or Goddess), which is where her powers actually come from. Previously, she only tapped into a minute fraction of Chthon’s (or whoever’s) power, but whatever happened to trigger whatever’s going on in the show allowed her to “find the Goddess within” and unleash much more of that power. Which may also be creating a crack in dimensional barriers. Which may have brought in S.W.O.R.D. (in the comics, it deals with extraterrestrial threats to Earth; in the MCU maybe it deals with extradimensional threats). It may also then directly tie into the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
I think you’re on the right track. This all flows into not just Doctor Strange territory but also Loki who has a show coming up on Disney Plus in May. My theory right now is that Wanda’s consciousness is being held prisoner in sitcomland while in the “real world” Loki is impersonating or possessing her.
It’s not icky. It’s about deep and complicated grief. Anger over her parents deaths had been her first motivator and her brother and Vision were the two perhaps even greater losses in her life, both of whom were willing to sacrifice themselves for others while she survives.
So now that it’s established that Geraldine is a real-world person from outside the sitcom world, I wonder whether everyone else in the show is real as well. It seems like at least the two neighbors from the end of episode 3 are real, based on that last scene with them. Are the babies real people too?
And if everyone there is real, what does that say about Vision?
I think everyone is real in the sense that they exist within the bubble reality she has created. Vision and the babies I think only exist as a function of her having created them in the bubble; others (maybe maybe not all of the others) had outside of bubble existences. Whether or not the babies and the Vision of this sitcoms bubble ever exist in any dimension going forward is unclear.
I am not so sure that Agnes is actively trying to push the action forward. She may be like the adults controlled by that kid in the old Twilight Zone episode … afraid of Wanda’s power and what she might do to them if they challenge her pretend world - as the now disappeared and almost killed on the spot Mr. Hart experienced.
He could be another innocent bystander, someone Wanda has reality-warped into a substitute Vision, imprinted with his powers and appearance, and an approximation of Vision’s personality. We could make up a totally random name and call him, oh… perhaps - Simon Williams? If the children are real, I don’t know how Wanda could conceive children with a synthezoid, but she could with Simon.
(I doubt this is what has happened, but it would be an interesting twist with a connection to Vision’s comic book origins.)
She arrived just after the weird noise and the toy helicopter appeared. It’s possible it wasn’t a toy at all, as Geraldine may have come in on an actual helicopter that crashed through the barrier.
Good point.
So SWORD (Geraldine/Monica and Jimmy Woo on the radio) is obviously trying to break Wanda from her manufactured reality. But who is trying to keep her there? I still think Mrs. Hart was saying “Stop it!” to stop Wanda from remembering her past and Mr. Hart’s choking was just a distraction. But I’m not sure who else is actively stopping her from “snapping out of it”. The whole Bewitched-we’ve-got-to-keep-our-powers-a-secret trope is an ingenious substitute for the real secret she is (subconsciously) trying to keep.
Is Geraldine/Monica working with the military group that is camped surrounding the bubble or otherwise? It looks to be like otherwise. Beekeeper observer is one group. She’s of another. Unclear if the watcher in ep 1 end credits was of one the other or both. Or if there are other players too.
I missed that. Disney Plus wants to redirect me to Age of Ultron before the credits are done.
You know, we’ve always assumed that Wanda and Pietro’s powers came from the Mind Stone. From Agents of Shield, we learned that Hydra venerated some sort of demon power. (I really stopped watching after the second season, so I’m a little hazy on the details.) Perhaps Barin Strücker"s castle.was on Mount Wundagore. It was in the mountains, IIRC.
Ag atha Hark ness.
If my speculation is correct, then Agnes is afraid of Wanda’s power, but she was previously involved in the real-world situation before Wanda manufactured the fantasy bubble, and now her interest is in keeping Wanda centered and moving forward in order to bring the whole thing to its conclusion. She fears two things: one, being caught as an outsider trying to manipulate the situation (c.f. the ejection of “Geraldine”), and two, the interruption and collapse of the fantasy, as it will prevent her from achieving her end goal.
Which, as I’ve noted, is almost certainly connected to the just-delivered babies. There’s some plotting from the comics which is clearly being echoed here, albeit in a modified form, so my speculation is heavily informed by that.
But also, comics aside, just in the context of the series, remember the creepy “for the children” chant in the second episode. And consider that the magic show was a community ritual performed for the benefit of the children, and consider also that during this show, Vision was unable to perform. There’s a potential analogy there, if we consider the sitcom reality as distorted camouflage for what’s actually happening.