I don’t think White Vision has the Jarvis and Mind Stone emotional core. Hence not quite the ship of Theseus.
Out of curiosity why couldn’t Wanda reduced the hex to a portable bubble around her kids and Vision, that can expand around some new home?
Agatha said that once the spell was cast, it couldn’t be altered. NewVision and the kids were linked to the original Westview bubble. Which doesn’t actually track with what we saw, but…Magic!
For me, most of the issues of the last episode stem from the fact that it was the last episode singular: there was too much being crammed in to too little time. Too much plot (Agatha v Wanda; Vision v Vision; Monica v Peter; Monica finding her powers; Woo and Darcy vs Hayward) and too much character-led story (the people of Westview speaking out; Wanda’s final struggle to accept the price of restoring Westview; Vision’s acceptance of his fate; Agatha’s motivations; Wanda’s facing of consequences). In the time available, something - or several things - had to give.
The fault of this is really episode 8. “It Was Agatha All Along” was such a high point - a partial explanation and reframing of what we’d seen so far, new depths to a character, a challenge to Wanda, questions to be answered and an acceleration into a final conflict. But episode 8 - while covering vital ground - spent way too long filling in the backstory and not enough following through - it ends in almost the same place it started.
Episode’s 8 reframing of MCU backstory from Wanda’s point of view was really valuable! I’ve watched this whole series with my family (wife, 12yo, 8yo). We all really liked it. None of us with any background comics knowledge. I had gleaned some stuff from the speculation here but hadn’t shared it. I’ve seen all the movies. One child has seen all the movies several times over. One has seen all of a few and bits of pieces of some. My wife has seen and entirely forgotten a handful. Episode 8 got us all on the same page and shaded in the depths of Wanda’s grief and trauma. But the show needed more time to move on from there.
So some bits worked excellently. The central thematic story of Wanda coming to acceptance that she couldn’t continue living in a fantasy at such a price was really moving; Olsen and Bettany really sold both the farewell to the kids and their own parting. Olsen’s portrayal of Wanda shattered by grief was fantastic and had various people on the sofa sniffling. The pay-off of Wanda using the runes on Agatha and showing she could learn to use her powers intelligently was great. Vision’s Ship of Theseus conversation with Vision was a good smart way to solve a problem that demonstrated his own burgeoning understanding of who he was and where he came from (Episode 1 callback). The final defeat of Agatha I though was really interesting although I’m not sure if it’s good. It was cruel and Wanda had just been told how cruel. She did smirk as she wiped Agatha’s memories. This felt authentically like Wanda but it’s obviously morally dubious to say the least. I didn’t get the sense that the show understood that or had any judgement of what Wanda was doing (compared to how it clearly judges mind-wiping the innocent Westviewers. I can’t recall but was Vision there at that point? Because I cannot see Vision permitting more mind-wiping.
Others parts were way too rushed or underwritten. Agatha was in the end just a generic “MOAR POWER” villain which was disappointing because she clearly had real insight in Wanda’s psyche and motivations, but that wasn’t in service of anything equally complex on her end. All of Monica’s scenes were rushed - we never saw how Peter got her into the man-cave; her initial exploration of her powers had no space for wonder, excitement, awe, or any other emotion - they just appeared to move the plot forward with no comment from Monica or anyone else. The cute kids vs military bit was over in seconds and yes, superspeed, but there was no satisfaction in it. Kat Dennings must have been unable to get to set that day because her one scene was clearly filmed solo and cut in - no one’s fault, I’m sure but it just added to the feeling of certain things being ticked off. There was a lot of time spent on the CGI colour-coded beams battle and I wish there hadn’t been because I’ve seen too many of those and they don’t mean anything. An actual witches battle of illusion and manipulation might have been fascinating and there were hints of that when Agatha somehow took control of Wanda’s illusion but then it went all big shooty lights.
The most disappointing bit was - as others have said - the total lack of a reckoning between Wanda and the people of Westview. Yes, she did the right thing. But even in the confrontation scene where they were literally begging her to kill them rather than keeping them trapped in this hell I never got the sense that Wanda understood - or perhaps rather felt - the enormity of what she’d done. As @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness said, Monica’s absolution of her was glib. @Miller suggested that tehre could be no justice with no plausible punishment. I disagree. Punishment is not the only form of justice. Restitution plays a part. Even a Truth and Reconciliation approach where Wanda publicly owned up to how she had hurt people and allowed them to explain the depth and cruelty of that hurt would have been some measure of justice for the people of Westview. But she couldn’t be bothered to stick around and do that because she had to go and be alone with her pain. This is really bad! The point was meant to be that she started by privileging her pain over everyone else’s but has now learned a lesson about how that is wrong. But here, in a lesser way, she is being just as selfish. The hurt of the people of Westview once again pales into insignificance compared to the unique, ineffable, immeasurable pain of Wanda.
I’m OK with it not being clear at the end whether Wanda is hero or villian. I’m OK seeing her as someone very powerful and very traumatised who could go either way. But some awareness on her part of the fact that she is on a moral tightrope would add a lot and I did not feel that.
Very well put.
Great post. Easier to comment on quibbles than all of the agreement so first the big agreement.
But?
Glad that it connected for you. That was where I was expecting them to have me feeling it deeply. Maybe it is me but I felt no emotional oomph there at all. And I cry at movies readily. I think that was what gave most and was one of the two things that most should not have been shortchanged.
The other?
I don’t even need to see her being aware of it, but narratively the tension of that is something that need be shown. WE need to be aware of it. She lets herself off easy but we the viewers should not be led to doing the same. If she is not fully repentant of what she did we should be left feeling anxious about that.
She felt guilt and trauma over Lagos but there her motivation was selfless. Here she caused harm, torture, and kept causing it knowing that fact, for selfish reasons only. That the most powerful, she and now Monica, see that from the perspective of the pain of their own grief nearly only? That SHOULD scare us. Next step and we have the supes of The Boys.
Just dittoing the above that the show did an excellent job showing the trauma that Wanda’s actions caused, but not really confronting it. I was particularly taken aback when “Dottie,” whom we’ve been conditioned to think of as the Queen Bee because that’s the part Wanda gave her, begs for her daughter to be given a role in the narrative, even as the bully, because otherwise she sits motionless in her room all day. But the enormity of what she has done is then quickly elided with a quick conversation with Monica and a trip to the Swiss Alps.
This production was stopped partway through shooting by the pandemic and was resumed under altered conditions. If you look at the episode with the neighborhood magic show, you’ll notice the audience is quite sparse and spread out. I’d bet they shot Dennings separately for this in a later pickup after the resumption.
It’s a general flaw in the genre that ordinary people are disregarded. Even in Civil War, Tony’s realisation that whoops maybe we need to give a shit about the consequences of our actions for others is of interest only because of how it affects heroes. Dead kid’s mum didn’t even get to tell his story - that was left to Tony because he’s the one who matters here.
Yeah I assumed it was Covid related and yeah, what can you do. But it did highlight how abruptly several other story elements were treated.
Perhaps Wanda and Monica’s conversation is a nod to a classic comic book conceit: “don’t think too much about the consequences on the normies”. Since Watchmen, writers have been bending over backwards to correct it, but there was a time when a hero-villain fight could raze entire city blocks with nary a thought for the muggles that lived there.
So is Vision continuing in future movies and shows? The white one got all the memories so he is basically Vision resurrected?
I guess that’s what I meant. And why it’s surprising the “real” one took off.
The Boys deals with it in one way. There’s a lovely new book, Hench, starring a spreadsheet-wielding temp worker for supervillains, and it’s my favorite way of criticizing heroic disregard for commonfolk. Worth a read, and I can totally see its protagonist plotting to destroy Wanda.
I recommended the graphic novel Marvels upthread and will do so again. Great stuff examining this very topic.
In the comics, White Vision had all the original’s memories, but didn’t have the emotional context for them. He knew who Wanda was, and what their relationship had been like, but it was like it happened to someone else. He didn’t feel any particular love or affection for her any more.
On a related note, when people speak of The Avengers various atrocities, he listed New York, Washington, DC, Sakovia, and Lagos. The Hulk and Iron Man’s battle in Johannesburg always seems to get left out.
Specially since Wanda was the cause of that one.
She’s also responsible for Sokovia - she put a whammy on Tony specifically to get him to awaken Ultron.
The catch in this show being that, until the last episode anyway, the WV Vision, regarded the suffering of the ordinary people of Westview highly. It was making their relationship estranged and he was actively seeking to get them help.
And given that he was a manifestation of what Wanda loved of Vision, emergent of what she valued of him, all the more jarring that even in the aftermath she is more caught up with what she sacrificed than with what harms she caused.