I know this is probably pointless to ask about a comic book plot, but would this even count as bearing children? Being all magicky and stuff. Does Wanda actually have kids in the comics or is it just something that will happen in the future?
Overall, I would give it a B. Entertaining and a pretty good plot. I almost bailed on the sitcom parts because I have zero knowledge of any of them so any similarities were lost on me. I also had to look up who exactly Monica Rambo (yes, I know) was in universe. I didn’t recall her character from the movies so I wondered how she seemed to have powers.
Just finished watching the finale after work, and:
I thought Evan Peters playing Pietro being just an Easter Egg/fakeout was a terrible creative decision. It’s a massive audience cheat.
After all of that, Wanda just gets to walk away? That’s…no. She’s a super-villain. Fine, I get that she didn’t really realize how awful living in Fake Westview was for everyone, but that’s only because she thought she had completely overwritten them instead of partially. She thought she was just a mass-murderer, not a mass torturer. She’s still awful.
“They’ll never know what you sacrificed for them.” The *@(%?! What she sacrificed for them? She mind-raped them. To assuage her grief. Oh, boo hoo, she had to “sacrifice” Vision and her children. Well, that’s here own doing. She’s the one who not only created a fantasy world with a fantasy husband and fantasy children, she abducted and enslaved thousands of innocent people.
I really think the creators screwed this up. Wanda’s not a tragic hero. She’s not a victim. She’s unbelievably selfish and self-centered. She’s a villain. I’m even more in favor of a drone strike to the head than I was before.
And what, exactly, was Hayward arrested for? Wanda knew SWORD had Vision’s body. They weren’t keeping that secret. Hayward appears to have had the legal right to have possession of it. He appears to have been legitimately in charge of the taskforce that was dealing with the Westview anomaly. I guess the drone strike? And, yeah, shooting at kids, but that was after Woo had said he was calling in reinforcements from the FBI. And if his orders were that blatantly illegal, I guess every SWORD agent onsite other than Monica is also going to jail? I agree with whoever posted upthread, he seemed like he was a generic @$$hole government official who was an @$$hole for the sake of being an @$$hole. Really disappointing.
Even after all that, though…a lot of elements were really well done. The acting was excellent, the specific scenes were really well written (even if there were huge problems with the larger plot), the action was well laid out, and of course the production values were top notch. It’s almost painful to watch the CW’s DC shows compared to what Marvel is doing.
It’s even more convoluted. Wanda used her “hex powers” of probability manipulation to enable her and Vision to have kids, and they retired from superheroing. I don’t remember if that was supposed to be nonsensical from the start or if it was a later writer who realized how nonsensical it was, but it was later revealed that she never had children - they were a magical illusion. The kids were also somehow fragments of the soul of an evil mage, Master Pandemonium. The kids were erased from reality. Later, it was revealed that Wanda never had probability control powers or magic, she directly controlled reality, and all of the nonsensical plots and character elements over the decades that various writers had ascribed to her were actually her manipulating memories, perceptions, and the very fabric of reality. She was eventually depowered, and all of her reality alterations were “fixed”. Then, through convolutions, her twin sons became retroactively real, as teenagers, and members of the Young Avengers. I think. At least that was the current re-retcon last time I read.
Yep, that was about as weird as I expected. Thanks for taking the time to explain all that. Do you keep spreadsheets?
The last time I read about comic book Wanda, she had the probability powers which were never explained very well to a casual X-Men readers. To me it seemed like magic no matter what they said.
Overall I liked the finale and really liked the whole season. I was also disappointed with the Evan Peters fake out, but I’ll survive. Maybe they’ll come up with a retcon that makes it fit.
I think the final episode didn’t work well as its own episode and I think if the final two were just one long episode, it would have stuck the landing for me. It wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t either craving MORE NOW or feeling “How satisfying that was all by itself.” It kind of fell in the middle.
And because it’s clearly part of a bigger thing we can’t see yet, my feelings on it will surely change. Like if it really sets up Dr S 2 or Loki or whatever, my opinion will go up. And it’s not low now. If it has no ties to anything, and some of the things were just misdirects to mess with us, I’m ok with that. It was about the journey, not the destination. I thought most of the episodes were pretty good and if it’s an indicator of future Disney+ MCU stuff, I’m ok with that. I ended up not liking it as much as Jessica Jones S1, but I have a feeling I won’t like Falcon and Winter Solider as much as WV.
I’ll share the official trailer 2 now (which I mentioned contained scenes from the final episode). The last moments of Vision and Wanda together is featured at the end of the trailer, and even the thumbnail is an obvious spoiler now
Overall I loved it.
I’m watching a South Korean drama now called “Partners for Justice.” It features a grumpy forensic doctor named Baek Beom who whenever his colleagues start to speculate on “what the cause of death” is or “who the murderer was” he would respond with “stop writing fiction.” The evidence is what the evidence is. Everything else is fiction.
So going into the last few episodes of WandaVision every time I started to “write my own story” on where I thought that things were going to go I said to myself “stop writing fiction.” The story is what the story is. And once I did that I was able to really start enjoying the show.
My biggest disappointment was Monica’s story: but that really is my own problem, and not that of the show. It wasn’t WandaVision and Monica. She had her time to shine in the middle of the season, and it really is the episodic nature of television that makes it seem like she didn’t get to do much by the end, but taking the focus away from Wanda and Vision wouldn’t have helped. So I look forward to where they decide to use her in the future of the MCU. Its so crowded now that I’m hoping that Monica, Woo and Darcy get to cameo in everything else from now on.
And speaking of Darcy: it seems obvious to me that she wasn’t actually on set for this, so I’m guessing that a lot of what we saw here was shot after the pandemic had made a bit of impact. Some of the scenes in the middle did feel a bit out-of-place (even Elizabeth Olsen’s acting seemed a bit oddly stilted in a couple of moments when she has been an acting powerhouse in almost every other frame of the show) and I think they were filmed after production restarted.
But over all I loved it. The two big moments that got me: firstly the Rune reveal. I love a good call back/Chekov’s gun. Especially one where it takes me a few seconds to figure out what is happening.
And secondly Monica talking about her mum with Wanda at the end. We lost mum in November and it still hurts, every single day. And I lost it at that moment.
…firstly: lets not pretend that there aren’t consequences in the MCU. The Sokovia Accords were a consequence of superhero actions and they’ve had a lasting impact even to this day.
So does she get to walk away? Well she walks away at the end of the episode. But I wouldn’t take that as she is free of any consequence.
She was a victim of the Scarlet Witch. An entity she didn’t even know existed until Agatha told her in episode eight. What exactly the Scarlet Witch is is something we don’t exactly know right now.
The creators didn’t screw up here. I think the “Wanda is a villain” narrative is one that completely misses the point. It is made clear that Wanda doesn’t know exactly what she did or how much power she actually has.
The people of Westview obviously would agree with you. As would millions of people tuning in to watch the story unfold on Fox News.
But we get all of the additional context. And what I saw was the story of a women who sacrificed everything to save the world:twice. And in a moment of grief accidentally created a pocket-world that didn’t make any sense, that could have been a dream or her imagination or the real world so Wanda decided to play along with it because why-the-fuck not? And when the consequences of her actions were explicitly laid out to her she chose to try and rescue the citizens of Westview, even knowing the cost. She chose to rescue the soldiers. She chose to imprison Agatha, and not to kill her. She chose to walk away and not to fight.
In my eyes she is a fucking hero.
Obviously for a breach of the Accords. I even think this was explicitly spelt out in one of the earlier episodes.
Wanda is the Scarlet Witch. How is she the victim of the Scarlet Witch?
Sure, she created the alternate reality accidentally, and she doesn’t realize until Agatha reveals it to her that the people of Westview have been consciously aware they’re being puppetted and suffering a living hell the entire time. But she’s clearly, explicitly aware that she is puppetting real people, and she doesn’t care. The only thing that matters to her is that she gets to live her fantasy. It’s only when she’s forced to confront the true horror of what she’s doing that she seems to have any second thoughts about what she’s doing.
She “rescued” them from herself. Agatha wasn’t actually threatening the citizens of Westview. She just wanted Wanda’s power.
That’s true. I guess that makes everything else she did ok.
Agatha herself is horrified by the prospect that Wanda is going to over-write her with Agnes. She tells Wanda, “You’re cruel.” And she’s right. Wanda doesn’t have the excuse that she doesn’t understand how her personality over-writes work at that point. She’s knowingly and deliberately condemning Agatha to a living hell. In a lot of ways, it’s worse than killing her.
Not fight who? She’s defeated Agatha. Hayward and SWORD are already defeated. Monica just wishes her luck.
Look, I don’t want to get into a shouting match over a TV show. You think she’s a “fucking hero.” I think she’s a villain, but I’m not going to swear at you about it. I also don’t think I “missed the point.” I think we disagree.
If it was, I missed it. It wasn’t obvious to me. How did Hayward breach the Accords?
Personally I am very happy to have characters who have elements of both. They are much more fun and interesting.
But I agree that they glossed over her villianous side, dismissed it with a handwave that she didn’t know she was doing it, or mean to. While clearly by the Halloween episode she knew, and Vision was clearly informing her of how the townsfolk were suffering.
Hell even Vision’s let’s fight for “our home” bit, knowing that their home was based on the suffering of these innocents, is inconsistent with who this idealized Vision-version is.
But again my biggest complaint is that this episode felt like checking off boxes. I expected to FEEL something as they brought her grief arc to the end of the show, as she dealt more with guilt of her past and of what she did. To cry.
With her powers, what consequences can she face, really? The only way she goes to jail is if she volunteers to stay there. Which, maybe she should do, but it seems, I dunno, performative? If the only reason she’s there is because she wants to be there, is that actually a punishment? I think there’s something compelling in the idea of someone who realizes that they’ve done something terrible, but due to their nature, is beyond the effective censure of any other being. Her consequence is her own guilty conscience. Is that enough? No, but what could be?
I don’t know that they’ve ever shared the specific wording of the Accords, but surely, “Deliberately creating new super-beings” has got to be on there somewhere.
Ok, but it’s not entirely clear to me that even that is happening. After she realizes what she’s actually done to the citizens of Westview, and she supposedly realizes it’s wrong, she deliberately does it to Agatha. The writers and Elizabeth Olsen had done a really good job with Wanda’s portrayal up until then. I just didn’t get a clear sense that she was truly remorseful. Heck, Banquet_Bear is convinced she’s a hero, so I don’t think I’m the only one who didn’t read the ending that way.
That makes sense. Except that none of the characters knew that he’d done that until part-way through this episode, and Monica and Woo seemed convinced he’d done Something Bad several episodes ago, to the point where they committed a number of violent felonies to stop him. I suppose, it could just be that they thought he was wrong about how to handle Wanda and the Westview anomaly, and fortunately for them, after they beat those Federal agents unconscious a couple of episodes ago, it turned out that Hayward also had violated the Accords by rebuilding Vision.
Such a cool premise. It could have been something different than just the standard superhero fare, something that dealt with the internal workings of grief on a nuanced level, and they went with two witches shooting magic balls at each other. It was well and fine for following the superhero script, but I wanted something more. Villains utterly lacking complexity. Vision(s) is a bright spot, but then I always loved his character in the MCU.
This show is better than anything DC I’ve watched (which is not much), but it’s nowhere even close to the artful depictions of heroism and villainy in Daredevil, Jessica Jones or Luke Cage.
I thought the scene where Agatha wakes up the whole town sold Wanda’s guilt pretty well. I’m not as bothered with her putting Agatha back under the spell, since Agatha is far from an innocent party, and like Wanda, is someone who the normal justice system isn’t really built to handle.
Wanda: I’ll give you the role you chose. The Nosy Neighbor.
Agatha [looks momentarily confused, then scared]: No…please…
Wanda [tauntingly]: I’m sorry.
Agatha [viewed from behind, face not visible, angrily]: No you’re not, you’re cruel.
Agatha [desperately]: Wait, you have no idea what you’ve unleashed. [cunningly, perhaps a hint of a wry smile]: You’re going to need me.
Wanda [with a wry smile]: If I do, I know where to find you.
Agatha [visibly and vocally desperate and afraid]: Wait! Wait - wait - wait…
[Wanda touches her Agatha, and transforms her into Agnes. Agnes is wearing a tight, forced, perky smile, and says her lines…]
…we will find out in the next installment of the MCU obviously.
We don’t know exactly what the Scarlet Witch is. Its all speculation at the moment. Agatha gave us the briefest of backstories. But she is an unreliable narrator.
Of course she cares. That was made explicit in her conversation with fake Quicksilver when he reassured her she was doing the best that she could.
That wasn’t the only thing that mattered to her. For starters Vision didn’t deserve his fate. Vision was a good person. Didn’t he deserve a better chance at life? Didn’t he deserve a happy ending? What about the kids?
I find myself doing this all the time with thinking about mum. The regrets. The things I would have done differently. I wouldn’t have bought mum back for me. I would have bought mum back for her, because she deserved so much better because she was the best person in the world.
I mean: welcome to real-fucking-life.
The entire series is a metaphor of grief. And sometimes in real life it isn’t until you are forced to confront the true horror of what it is you are doing to not only yourself but other people that you have second thoughts about what you are doing.
Its like the metaphor is right there, waving to you, and you’ve completely missed it. Because you pretty much nailed it in your description of what literally happened, but you missed the intent of the writers here. Whether or not the writing was good is entirely subjective. But the point of the scene is not.
Wanda is dealing with not only some pretty major trauma but also the complex reality she is one of the most powerful people on the planet and she didn’t even know it. It isn’t clear that Wanda knew how much agency she had in the moment. It may as well have been a completely different person who did all the mind control things.
That’s a strawman.
Killing her would be objectively worse.
Agatha is an extremely powerful being with declared evil intent. No human prison could hold her. Wanda buys time here: both making sure she doesn’t do anything evil and keeping her out of the hands of the authorities. I don’t actually agree with what she did. But from a story-telling POV it makes a certain amount of sense.
She would have been arrested and detained the moment the reinforcements arrived.
Ya think?
The wiki isn’t official, and Agents of SHIELD seems to have been removed from official canon, but this was how I saw it.
I also thought that was a good scene, well-written and well-played, as Wanda finally begins to acknowledge the true horror of what she’s done. But then, at the end, she tells Monica she’s sorry, and acknowledges that Monica and the town must hate her, but Monica, speaking with what seems to be Narrative Authority, absolves her. “If I had your power, and I could bring back my mom, I would.” (Really? And would you mind-rape and enslave an entire town to do it?)
I probably would have bought it if Wanda had actually explicitly acknowledged what she had done, something like “I was crazy with grief. I know that’s no excuse, but I just wasn’t thinking clearly until the very end. And now…now I can’t think of what I can do to make things better. I’ve done something truly awful here, and now I don’t know what to do.” And if Monica had given some variation of Picard’s line to the Douwd, “I’m not qualified to be your judge, and we have no laws to fit the magnitude of your crime.”
