…define “real.”
Vision could walk, talk, speak his own mind, go to work, fight for his family, love his wife. Was he not real?
Ish? WestView Vision certainly seemed to gain autonomous sapience, so in a cogito ergo sum sense, he was real. But I think Sparky was Agatha’s creation, and she made it clear that she couldn’t create new life, just realistic illusions of it (although “Sparky” might have been a real animal that Agatha magicked into the Hex).
I would say not. He’s just a manifestation created by Wanda. and the mind stone. He’s fake, just a very good fake.
No. He was a fantasy created by Wanda who could only exist inside the hex.
The same as her children which is why their goodbye scene really didn’t make me feel anything. They were just fantasy creations.
…what do you mean by fake though? If something has agency then how can you call it fake? Is android Vision any more or less fake than Westview Vision? And what would the differences be?
Probably? Aside from Vision and the kids, everyone else in Westview was a normal person forced into a role for Wanda’s fantasy world. It stands to reason that Sparky was the same thing.
…we are all humans that can only (practically) exist in the earth atmosphere. And Westview Vision landed physical punches on White Vision: that hardly seems like a fantasy to me.
I didn’t care about the children at all when they first showed up. But by the end they seemed very real, and very tangible, to me.
…Inside the Hex.
He may have been a fake Vision, but I don’t see any way to argue that he wasn’t a real person - he had emotions, the ability to reason, a sense of agency, a moral code, and a concept of self. He may have been created by Wanda, but so what? The original Vision was created by Tony Stark. Does that make OG Vision “not a person?”
I think we may be at an impasse here. It’s clear to me that Wanda didn’t have agency when she created Sitcom Westview. But it seems very clear to me that she had agency throughout the series. She actively rewinds, edits, and rescripts events and people. When Agatha finally frees the residents of Westview, Wanda isn’t surprised or confused that they’re real people, or that they talk about Wanda controlling them. The only thing she’s surprised about is that they were aware she was puppetting them the whole time, and suffering a living hell because of it. I don’t know what more “agency” you’re looking for.
This seems to be another impasse. You’ve stated you think dying is objectively worse than what happened to Wanda’s victims. I disagree. Debra Jo Rupp’s character clearly disagrees, as well. She begged Wanda to just kill her instead of playing with her.
The MCU has not been entirely consistent with the Hulk, but in the last couple of movies, it seems like the Hulk is genuinely a different, autonomous mind that shares a body with Bruce Banner. But I don’t think he gets a pass. The Hulk is dangerous, and everybody acknowledges it, Bruce Banner most of all. But the Hulk also only lashes out in spates of anger. That may be analogous to the creation of Sitcom Westview, but the Hulk doesn’t torture people.
Tony’s entire character arc is that he didn’t know that his weapons were being used like that, he’s spent the rest of his career trying to make up for it. He didn’t knowingly supply weapons to warlords and terrorists. I also don’t think he really gets a pass; a lot of MCU fans think he was on the wrong side in Civil War, for example. And he certainly didn’t give himself a pass (although, and this is an explicit part of his arc, he did repeat the same mistakes a few more times).
As several others have pointed out, they could at least have made a gesture towards that, instead of having Monica pronounce with Narrative Authority that she (and by extension anyone) would have used her power in the same way, the townsfolk are ungrateful in not acknowledging Wanda’s “sacrifices”, and “Good luck.”
…and?
We wouldn’t be here if not for a set of layers of gas surrounding the material body known as the earth. If it weren’t for the atmosphere I wouldn’t be landing any punches either.
From the show:
Vision started life as a voice with no body. Then a body, not human. Then a memory made real. Why is the last one a fantasy in your opinion?
I’m pretty much in Banquet_Bear’s corner on this one. It took them 7+ movies to fulfill Tony Stark’s character arc. I don’t think they’ll be done with Wanda after just 4. My guess is that she has at least 2 more to go.
I agree that it would be lame if this is resolved as a B-plot in a Dr. Strange movie, but I wouldn’t mind if it were resolved in a second season of WandaVision, or a feature movie with her as the protagonist, that centers this theme in the narrative.
Well, sure. But they didn’t end Iron Man with Tony still not acknowledging the damage he had done. He gets there by midway through the movie. It takes us nine episodes to get Wanda finally admitting that there was anything wrong with what she was doing. And we also didn’t get Happy Hogan reassuring Tony that everything’s ok and wishing him good luck as he heads off into the sunset with no indication that he’s even aware that maybe he should do more than apologize to one person.
Couple questions:
In-game
How did Hayward track Vision when he was created by Wanda?
Why did Vision act autonomously within the Hex?
How did White Vision have the power of the Mind Stone (phasing, flying/hovering) without the Mind Stone?
What did the missing witness have to do with anything?
Is the Scarlet Witch not good anymore? Is she chaotic like her magic?
Out-of-game
Was there a plan with Evan Peters as Quicksilver that was never followed through on like Darth Jar-Jar?
Why was Monica Rambeau’s role so minor in the finale?
I don’t get why Wanda can’t just put a mini hex on her cabin and live there with Vision and the kids.
Westview Vison was still made out of Vibranium. Hayward had a (literal) plot device that could track Vibranium emissions. This is inconsistent with other dialogue that indicated Wanda was just reshaping already extant materials, like Monica’s Kevlar vest becoming Kevlar bellbottoms, but Vision was unique. Or something.
He was unique. He wasn’t just Wanda’s puppet (although she seems surprised by his capacity for independent thought and action). He was a living mind, created from Wanda’s love.
Forget it Saint_Cad, it’s Comic Book Town.
Seriously, though, it’s not clear to me. In the MCU, it’s not actually clear which abilities Vision got from the Infinity Stone and which he got from the body Ultron designed. But, White Vision was animated by residual Chaos Magic energy, and SWORD spent years trying and failing to reactivate him, so Wanda’s Chaos Magic, which were boosted by the Mind Stone, probably replicated his original powers. Or something.
Nothing in particular. It was just a narrative hook to bring in Jimmy Woo, then Monica, then SWORD.
There’s been just a small bit of discussion about that in this thread…
I haven’t seen anything definitive from the creators, but it sure looks like it was a just an Easter Egg/in-joke/misdirect.
There was a lot going on in the finale. There really wasn’t room for all the characters and plotlines. Also, COVID interrupted production, and they may just not have been able to have her on set enough to do anything (it’s pretty clear that Darcy’s cameo, for example, was edited in, and that Kat Dennings wasn’t on set for the finale). Also, narratively, at that point, the story had become about Wanda’s conflict with Agatha, not Monica’s efforts to reach Wanda (I personally think that was a narrative and structural mistake, but not everyone agrees, obviously).
One thing I agree on with Banquet_Bear, I don’t think Wanda knows how she cast the Hex in the first place. I assume that’s at least part of what she’s doing when we see her astral form studying the Darkhold, and she hears her children crying out - she’s trying to figure out how to do it on purpose (hopefully without the innocent victims this time).
Ah! That makes sense, thank you.
Agreed. As Agatha says to her during their fight, “You have power, but you don’t have knowledge.” What she had been doing, she was doing by harnessing her power (which she doesn’t really understand) to act on her emotions. She’s now working on gaining the knowledge.