FWIW, my WAG is that Ultron is a feint Big Bad. He’s the cause of Hayward’s actions, which triggered Wanda doing something …, which resulted in a newer Bigger Bad that is the real reveal, within the bubble, and will drive the next movie. Ultron as a Bad will resolved quickly.
Although the tragic arc of Wanda to the Dark Side would not disappoint.
It’s almost as if she is in a witness protection program …
Where I am now is:
Wanda has had an extremely traumatic life which goes something like;
Parents killed
Brother killed while trying to do the right thing
Kills people in Lagos with her powers while trying to do the right thing
Kills her lover to do the right thing; futilely.
We can pencil in “finds lovers body is being experimented on by the ostensible good guys in express contravention of his wishes” as a final straw. She has essentially some sort of psychotic break - utterly overwhelmed by grief, loss and betrayal she snaps and creates the make-believe world of Westview complete with her and Vision living out a two-dimensional fantasy of domestic bliss presented as piece of highly stylised fiction. A world over which she (thinks she can) have complete control. Minor intrusions of remembered pain present themselves as brief interruptions (the Stark/Stryker/Lagos ads) but as she becomes more adept at creating and elaborating on her fantasy world she conversely becomes less able to control it.
She is, at some level, aware that what she is doing to the residents of Westview is wrong. As Quicksilver, who seems to have licence to voice harsh truths, tells her, she knows that the kids would be hurt so she keeps them painlessly asleep. Vision, who she can’t keep as a simple automaton, also brings this home to her. At some point this essential contradiction between what she wants Westview to be and what it actually is will have to be dealt with. Much as her grief will have to be dealt with. She is going to have to confront the fact that you can’t retreat from grief into a fantasy world and at some point you have to face up to the truth - and that equally, grief isn’t an excuse for hurting others. We saw some of this with Sparky when she was able to give the right lesson to her kids even if she can’t live that lesson herself.
Whether this whole fantastic coping mechanism is purely the result of Wanda going mad through grief or whether it was instigated/influenced/controlled by a third party is probably not as interesting to me as how Wanda processes her ultimate return to reality and acceptance of her loss. In some ways I’d rather see it as all Wanda rather than having her be the victim of manipulation because for me that weakens the central story about coping with loss and learning to do the right thing even when it hurts and even when it might not work.
“Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Wanda The Wise? I thought not. It’s not a story the Avengers would tell you.”
But I have. Stories are like the old videogame platforms. New skins, improved execution maybe, but the basic game play? Not too much new. Tragic arcs work well, have I’m sure since early humans told stories by flickering cavelight.
Whatever is causing the Hex, Wanda knows what she’s doing. She asked Pietro if it was wrong. That suggests she knows the difference between right and wrong and is therefore culpable. She may not be the only villain, but she’s a villain.
How large of a fan base is there that would be offended if Wanda becomes a supervillain? Is she anybody’s favorite MCU Avenger? Maybe she’s the villain in the next Doctor Strange film. Her skill set is a perfect foil for Strange.
And Pietro complimented her on her restraint. In a fashion that also appeared intended to cause doubt about the whole undertaking.
Either a dick move by someone manipulating the situation from behind the curtains (tormenting Wanda with doubt) or a manifestation of Wanda’s self-doubt.
I wonder if Pietro is Wanda’s conscience.
It’s comic books. There’s a segment of the fan base that will be offended no matter what they do.
But, as discussed upthread, much of WandaVision is directly inspired by her story arc in “Avengers Disassembled” and “House of M”. If they make her a cackling evil-for-evil’s sake villain, they’d probably face some backlash. If they portray her as a tragically flawed former hero who went mad with grief and was corrupted by absolute power and became a deeply wounded and broken villain, they’d be right in line with the comic storyline.
That storyline was controversial, but Wanda/Scarlet Witch hasn’t ever really been a fan favorite. She’s been around for a long time, and she and Vision have about as long a tenure on the Avengers as any character, but that’s largely because they were only appearing in an Avengers team title. Neither of them has ever been popular enough to sustain their own ongoing title.
Just to put some speculation down before tomorrow’s episode:
The sitcoms have nearly caught up to the current time, so episode 7 could be the last sitcom-centered episode. The series started with sitcoms for episodes 1, 2, 3, with a big reveal at the end, leading to episode 4 focusing on the outside world. So I think that pattern could roughly repeat, with sitcoms for episodes 5, 6, 7, a big reveal to end episode 7, and then episode 8 showing the details of that reveal, like episode 4 did. Then the last episode resolves the series.
I’m not predicting it - but I wouldn’t be surprised if a later episode had an attempted revert to the 1950s style as Wanda (or whomever) tries to restore “normality” - with a failure that mixes all decades in a strange way (“Too Many Cooks”)
Now that some of the dust has settled, I’m going to guess Pietro is Nightmare, and he looks the way he does because at some point Wanda must have tapped into the Multiverse and dreamed of Pietro from the Fox Universe.
Or even more meta she tapped into OUR universe and saw him on TV
If there is a “Too Many Cooks” episode, I will have to take back everything good I said about this series.
How dare you put “failure” and “Too Many Cooks” in the same sentence. If there’s even a Too Many Cooks mod or reference, this will be the second greatest show ever made.
My WAG after binge-watching the series up to this point?
Wanda made a deal with Mephisto. When she was at hew lowest, he appeared to her and offered her the life she’d always wanted - a husband, twins of her own, a perfect normal life free of Avengers and titans and killer robots and aliens and infinity stones and the like - and the cost of it is that she’s now enslaved and brainwashed this entire town and her husband’s continued existence is entirely dependent on her keeping it that way.
It certainly fits his MO, and the MCU needs a new Big Bad for Phase 4.
One speculation confirmed, but I don’t think we’ve seen all the surprises just yet.
Agreed.
There’s also a mid-credits scene on this one, in case any of you didn’t check.
I liked the way they avoided spoilers in the end credits. The song that played over the big reveal is titled “It was _____ all along” (The blanks are part of the title)