Talkin' some shit about... WandaVision - Episode 8 | The Wanda Years

I'mma say this right now. I know some folk are gonna be PISSED at this episode, because they feel that not enough happened. WandaVision slowed things right the way down for episode 8, which may seem strange for the penultimate episode given what we know is gonna go down in the finale. But not a second was wasted. Y'all may think this episode gave nothing, but it actually gave a lot, and set an interesting course for some of these characters and the MCU for phase four.

After the reveal in episode 7 of who Agnes truly was, many had figured that the following episode would be a 'So, here's how we ended up here' episode as per episode 4, and that's exactly what we got - which was clear from the episode title alone, Previously On. 

Episode 8 was probably the only episode that didn't end with a long-ass list of newly raised questions, which would make sense given that we only have one episode left and a fair amount to wrap. But I don't think we are going to get all of our answers by the time the credits have rolled on episode 9. And knowing Marvel's history and that this show is a setup for Doctor Strange 2, this show is deliberately not going to tie up everything. One of the bigger questions is who will live to make it through to be seen again. My bets were on Vision dying and those kids not making it out, but the post credit sequence makes me think that maybe Vision will make it out of this after all. I figured it may all end with Wanda losing everything AGAIN, but would Marvel be that dark after an episode like this!?

When Agnes revealed to Wanda that she was actually Agatha Harkness, it was no surprise to those who knew the comics or had been reading fan theories online. Agnes being Agatha was one of the earliest WandaVision theories to hit before the damn thing even aired. The mystery concerning Agatha is where her allegiance lies, because I don't think she's truly a villain. After all, Agatha Harkness in the comics isn't always villainous. She actually helps Wanda on occasion, as she actually did in this episode. It's looking more and more like Agatha may not be serving anybody else as many had theorised, but we still don't know what twists and turns the final episode will bring. And if there's one thing we know WandaVision lives for, it's misdirection.

Episode 8 begins with an Agatha flashback to the days of the Salem with trials. Agatha is being dragged off by people who we assume are regular folk getting ready to burn her at the stake for being a witch, but these are actually witches themselves. We see that Agatha is being strung up by her own coven led by somebody she refers to as 'mother' for practising forbidden arts of magic. Rather than burn her alive (because, Disney) the whole coven zaps her with the intent to kill her. But Agatha does that thing all bad bitches do when they're about to channel some dark shit and her eyes roll back, reversing their zaps to siphon their energy. Each of the witches gets the literal life sucked out of them and fall to the ground as hollowed corpses. It's grim as fuck for Disney on a Friday morning.

The queen of the coven thinks that she's the only one that can stop her, but she underestimates Agatha, who turns her magic on her the exact same way as she did everybody else, and kills her. Agatha's inner monologue channels Brenda from Scary Movie and says 'Well we already committed murder, we might as well rob his ass' and snatches a broach from her corpse. The very same one we always see Agnes wearing.

This entire opening scene was mad dark for Disney. They probably disapproved. But if Kevin Feige says his Marvel show is going dark and showing dead bitches and witches, then Disney can't say shit. He makes them too much money.

Many fans had speculated that the magic book we saw in episode 7 in Agatha's lair was the Darkhold, which is an ancient book of magic. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D fans will know of it, as it played a major part in season 4. So this is possibly the dark arts from which Agatha was learning. Or maybe it's a book she learned of and acquired over the years as she studied magic. A popular fan theory is that it's a book stolen from the Sanctum Sanctorum in Doctor Strange.

We see with Agatha's interactions with Wanda that she is not only incredibly powerful, but knowledgeable of the arts of magic and witchcraft, and that she craves knowledge of everything there is to know about it. We also learn that the powerful sorcery Wanda used to transform Westview is what drew Agatha there, and to find out how she did it. Oh yeah. It really was all Wanda. Monica was right. Agnes intervened, but she didn't create anything in this Hex, because she doesn't actually know how.

But here's the thing. Wanda really doesn't know how exactly she created the Hex. And whilst we do see her create it, it's not a case of her voluntarily doing it. It just...happens. But when she tells Agatha that she doesn't know how it happened, she doesn't believe her. So with Wanda powerless as a result of Agatha's own Hex (the first clue concerning the source of Wanda's powers) she uses magic and Wanda's kids as a bargaining chip to have Wanda literally walk her through the events that led to the creation of the Hex. And surprisingly, this goes back way further than we may have thought it would. We'd heard the account of how Wanda and Pietro's parents died in Sokovia, but now we actually get to see it.

It's in this moment that we find out 'Why WandaVision? Why sitcoms?'. And it's a simple answer. Wanda's father used to sell DVD of classic American sitcoms, so he always had them in the house. As a result it became a family tradition to watch sitcoms together, which is how they'd learn English. And the cool thing with this is that we explicitly see these sitcoms; Dick Van Dyke, Bewitched, I Love Lucy. And even with Wanda's parents gone, watching sitcoms continues to be a tradition that she maintains through her teenage years and into adulthood. But what these sitcoms mean to her as an adult is different to what they meant to her as a child. As a little girl, sitcoms represented shared moments with her family. A sense of togetherness. As an adult, they not only act as memories of those times with her family, but a form of stability. A constant. Whilst Wanda's life continues to change, the lives and worlds in the sitcoms never do. They're a form of anchor for her. A complete escape. 

Some may roll their eyes at this reveal being so simple, but the reasoning was always going to be. It was never going to be something ridiculously scientific. After all, the entire premise and the anomaly of WandaVision is born of Wanda's grief, not some experiment. Also, it's a very real thing. Many of us hold favourite TV shows, video games, albums and books dear to our hearts, and have favourites which remind us of particular times in our lives that we go back to for comfort. When things are just too much. If many of us had the means to escape reality, we'd probably do so by living in our favourite TV show, video game, music video or novel. Providing it's not some shit like Resident Evil or Dark Souls. Unless you wanna be about dat life. The entire Hex in a way is in memoriam to those that Wanda has loved and lost.

But it's not all happy times for Wanda, as we see the scene play out just as we'd heard about in Age of Ultron. A bomb hits, Wanda and Pietro's parents die, and they're hid under bed staring at a Stark Industries shell which doesn't go off for two days. But the additional detail that we get here is the implication that maybe Wanda is the reason why the shell doesn't go off. BECAUSE SHE HAD POWERS THE WHOLE DAMN TIME.

Actually seeing Wanda's life as a kid is a great but tragic-as-fuck moment, because it fills in a large part of her life which informs so much of who she becomes and choices that she makes. And if Wanda is going to be a part of the fourth phase of the MCU and want us to care about her, then we need to know more about her and her origin story beyond Age of Ultron. Speaking of Age of Ultron...

Agnes forces Wanda to walk into another memory. The one where Wanda got her powers. Or so we think. Because Wanda actually already has powers. When Wanda walks into the room where the Sceptre is, the stone breaks free off it and is drawn to Wanda. And upon touching it, she seems to awaken it, revealing the infinity stones' true colour of yellow. But as the stone radiates and bathes Wanda in its glow, she sees a figure which looks a lot like the Scarlet Witch we know of from the comics (and saw in episode 6), which we can assume is Wanda in the future. Or, based on what Agatha tells Wanda at the end of the episode, it could be a Phoenix like entity that took over Wanda. Because whilst we now know that the mind stone was not the source of Wanda's power, and she truly is a witch, the mind stone definitely amplified her powers to a point where she herself became acutely aware that she had them and could use them. And in case anybody is lost, Agatha seems wholly unfazed by the fact Wanda was exposed to an infinity stone and it seems to be of little importance to her, because Agnes always knew Wanda was born a witch.

But we also see something interesting, which is that despite Hydra filming Wanda's interaction with the infinity stone, they don't see what we see, because the security feed has been tampered with. So they only see Wanda walk into the test room and then collapse after the stone radiated her with its energy. They don't see the stone being drawn to her, they don't see her awaken it, they don't see a damn thing. So Wanda's always had the ability to Final Cut Pro shit as she sees fit. But Wanda isn't the only one who can edit footage, because acting director of S.W.O.R.D Tyler Hayward has been Premiere Pro'ing like a motherfucker. But we'll get to that.

Next is a scene of Wanda watching Malcom in the Middle in her room at the Avengers compound, not long after Pietro had died. She's senses Vision next door wanting to enter her room, which he eventually does by phasing through the wall - a cute call back (or call forward, given where this sits chronologically) to how he enters Wanda's room in Captain America: Civil War aka Avengers 2.5.

Now, Wanda and Vision's relationship in the films always felt like it came out of nowhere. There was no real origin or moment to which I felt I could trace it. So, them just being a couple always seemed strange to me. This scene does a great job of giving us that one moment when Wanda and Vision first begin to fall in love with one another, and it's really touching. Wanda is open about how she feels, and Vision is frank that he has no idea how she feels; but the common place in which they arrive and ultimately share is the feeling of being alone. Wanda feels alone because she lost people she loved. Vision feels alone because it's all he's ever been. Wanda finds Vision's outlook, directness and honesty refreshing at a time when others seem to be steering clear. And Vision finds Wanda's openness about how she feels oddly comforting, as she's probably the only person who speaks to Vision like he's an actual person. You really get a sense of how these two would be drawn to one another. And then Vision drops this zinger. 'But what is grief, if not love persevering'. Shout-outs to whoever wrote that line. It fucked me up good and proper.

This whole Wanda and Vision moment hits in such a way that even Agatha has to wipe a tear. But she wants answers, so she makes Wanda relive the moment when she saw Vision's remains at S.W.O.R.D. And bitch, if you didn't already think that Hayward was a piece of shit, you were probably cussing at the TV when you saw what his punk-ass tried to pull on Wanda.

For WEEKS we were all sat here thinking that Wanda dragged Vision's offline body outta S.W.O.R.D, tossed his ass in the boot, drove to Westview and Hexed him back to life. But the part that Hayward conveniently left out when he ran that security footage of Wanda in episode 5, is that Wanda didn't just storm into S.W.O.R.D, and she certainly didn't leave with any part of Vision. Not so much as a fingernail clipping. Wanda just wanted to have Vision's body so that she could bury him. But Hayward shuts that down, and tells Wanda 'Gurl, Yo' husband is 3 billion dollars worth of Vibranium. We are days from the un-blip and we in a pandemic'. And Wanda concedes, showing that for however much of a mess we thought Wanda was, she's still reasonable. More so than Hayward. However, we see that Hayward's plan was to gaslight Wanda into bringing Vision back to life to fulfil his operation Cataract - creating a sentient weapon that can take out other sentient weapons. He made no effort to assemble Vision or present him in a state that was respectful of him nor Wanda. His whole aim was to trigger her into bringing him back to life.

The big take out here is that Hayward's entire purpose for everything was bringing Vision back online. We knew that. But a big take out is also Wanda's composure. We were under the impression that Wanda was a firecracker who didn't have her shit together. I genuinely thought when Hayward showed Wanda Vision's body being pieced apart that she was gonna go crazy, but she didn't. The most she did was shatter a couple of windows. Still bad, but minor compared to what we figured she would do. She walks up to Vision's head, hovers her hand over where his mind stone was in an attempt to feel him, but she senses nothing. In that moment Wanda knew that Vision was really gone, and she left not feeling any real attachment to Vision's body because she knew it was just a body. It wasn't Vision.

I'd really like to know why Hayward seemed so adamant that Wanda could even bring Vision back to life. She'd shown no evidence prior that she even could, but Hayward keeps pushing Wanda in the hopes she'll snap and somehow do it. Or that she'll pull a stunt so big and dangerous that he can use it as propaganda as to why operation Cataract needs to go ahead, which he seemed to do anyway, by using the security footage of Wanda to make it look like she broke into S.W.O.R.D and stole Vision's body. Trust this episode to air the day after that scarily convincing deep fake of Tom Cruise hits the web. You can't trust bitches with editing software anymore.

Hayward's actions may have seemed justified at certain points in earlier episodes, but this shit he tried to do to Wanda!? Nope. This man really had us all thinking Wanda was dragging a corpse around New Jersey, taking that deceased dick, and thereby going against Vision's living will. Hayward is 100% a piece of shit. I really hope we get a scene of Monica blasting his ass through a wall, and he definitely needs to be forced to step down as Acting Director of S.W.O.R.D. I'mma be pissed if they have him escape in his little raggedy SUV unscathed. 

We see in a post credits sequence that Hayward has succeeded in bringing a version of Vision back online who is Wii white, thanks to the drone Wanda threw at Hayward in episode 5 still being bathed in her magic, which was the missing key. So project Cataract is a go, and we're gonna get a Wii white Vision versus Vision 2.0 showdown in Westview, which is bound to trigger the absolute shit out of Wanda. But it also creates a scenario where Vision could possibly exist outside of the Hex - because theoretically his mind and consciousness could be transferred into Wii white Vision. But I have a feeling that the sight of Wii white Vision, the destruction it causes, and the implication of its existence is going to cause Vision to make a sacrifice, out of fear that he'll always be exploited. He was exploited by Tony. Exploited by Ultron. Exploited by Thanos. Now exploited by S.W.O.R.D. But let's see.

Bottom line. Poor Vision. Poor Wanda. Fuck Hayward.

Even though this episode isn't in the format of a sitcom, we still get a commercial. This time for a Buick. When Wanda leaves S.W.O.R.D, she walks over to her scarlet red Buick, then drives over to Westview in her Buick. We see shots of notable Westview landmarks we saw in the sitcoms, such as the gazebo in the town square where the talent show took place in episode 2, and also the Buick. We see some familiar faces from the sitcoms, and the Buick. There is a really melancholic vibe about Westview, which really adds to the feeling of loneliness that Wanda already feels as she drives through it in her Buick. Westview appears to be a really empty, lifeless, desolate town, which I would assume is a result of the blip. Similar to how we saw a neighbourhood looking like some shit in The Last of Us when Scott Lang went looking for his daughter in Avengers: Endgame following his return trip from the Quantum Realm. It's a beautifully eerie scene, which once again shows the real life effect that the blip had on people's lives, whether they were blipped or not. It also draws a great deal of parallels to the world today, a year into global pandemic; cities and countries under stay at home orders, businesses closing shop every other week, empty streets, low morale, lost loved ones.

Wanda didn't drive to Westview in her Buick just for the sake of it though. Vision had bought a piece of land in Westview on which a house was due to be built. On the deed, Vision scrawled the message 'To grow old in' and upon seeing this as she's stood in the exact spot where she and Vision's home was supposed to be, Wanda fucking loses it. Y'all remember that scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron when Pietro died and Wanda fell to her knees let out a shockwave of energy that obliterated everything in her vicinity? Well, she kinda does that, except her shockwave of energy ends up building a house, whilst the Buick sits and watches reality get re-written across Westview. The wave of energy wipes everything to black and white and a 50s aesthetic. But a bitch isn't done. Because a second shockwave of energy surges out, only this time yellow energy weaves out of it and starts to create Vision. So Wanda didn't bring the old Vision back to life. SHE CREATED A NEW ONE, which is even wilder. The Buick and I were surprised, confused and also impressed by the visual effects. This entire scene looked amazing, especially the creation of Vision. And as a cool detail, when the camera is on Wanda during this scene, there's a TV set beside her, and in its reflection you can Vision's body taking form. Vision. In a Tele...vision. Yep.

So it was Wanda. It was all Wanda. And given the spontaneity and uncontrollable nature of how Wanda created the Hex, she really did have no idea how it all started. It truly did start from a place of feeling completely alone, empty and endless nothingness. Wanda truly had no idea that she'd taken over the minds of everybody in Westview. Wanda was telling the truth the entire time. She wasn't Hexed or under some form of control. She genuinely didn't know exactly what she did and the scale of what she did.

Wanda's magic seems to be tethered in some form to her emotions. This would coincide with moments we've gotten throughout WandaVision when her guard has dropped and we've seen the potency of her Hex on people weaken. Such as when Wanda's distracted by Agent Woo's voice on the radio and a glass shatters in Dottie's hand, to which she asks Wanda who she is? Or when Wanda opened up and mentioned Pietro moments after her babies were born, which caused Monica to fall out of the Hex and mention Ultron. Then there's last weeks' episode, where Wanda fully felt the weight of what she'd done and started to lose her grip on it, causing her home to glitch.

Wanda is powerful. We always knew that she was. But Wanda still doesn't realise just how powerful she is or how to control the extent of her powers, and I imagine that this is going to be one of her arcs. We could possibly see Doctor Strange helping Wanda understand her powers in the upcoming film Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness in which she's confirmed to feature in. Or maybe Agatha will be the one to do it. After all, she mentors Wanda in the comics. And despite what we see of her in this episode, I still don't think she's completely villainous. But watch next week have Agatha turn into a damn dragon to try and kill everybody and eat the kids.

With Agatha now seeing how Wanda managed to do what she did, she realises what is happening, and she leads Wanda outside where Agatha has Billy and Tommy on magical leashes which are wrapped around their necks. Kids being strangled by a witch, on Disney!? Wow. In this moment Agatha is very weary of Wanda off the back of the startling revelation that Wanda managed to Hex an entire town, bring somebody back to life and create children without a drop of sperm. Agatha informs Wanda that her magic is what's known as Chaos magic, and that being in possession of it makes her The Scarlet Witch. The name. Has arrived.

And we don't get a Please Stand By, because the sitcoms are over. Westview 'bout to be a battleground of magic, guns and mess.

I'm not 100% sure of the origins of the name The Scarlet Witch in the comics. We don't always get name origins, because the name is usually so obvious based on the characters' look or their powers. Scarlet Witch can use magic, her magic is red, the bitch wears red. Scarlet Witch. But I'm pretty sure The Scarlet Witch isn't an entity in the comics, as is implied by Agatha in WandaVision. But I like this change from the source material, as it's not something that I or anybody would have seen coming. Making The Scarlet Witch a Phoenix like entity is pretty cool. It's a shame Fox fucked up The Dark Phoenix saga not once, but twice, because now I don't think we'll ever see the MCU do it, even though they'd do it so right. But with The Scarlet Witch now being an entity, Wanda's story arc actually follows parts of The Dark Phoenix saga to such a point that maybe it was also a point of reference for how the writers of WandaVision pieced together this story. If this was the case, then its brilliant. I love the idea of pulling from stories other than the ones tied to the titular characters.

Episode 8 of WandaVision did one of the biggest services of all, which was giving Wanda an origin story. Wanda was never a character that I thought much of. She was just that girl with the accent that could make stuff float, who started fucking a robot. There wasn't much to her. She'd just turn up every now and then, fuck shit up and then leave. But this episode actually made me a lil' invested in Wanda; turning her into a far more interesting and intriguing character than the films or in some instance the comics ever made her out to be.

It was also nice seeing an old moment between her and Vision, which sold me far more on how Wanda and Vision became a couple. The films just glossed over that, and hopscotched us to an expedited romance in Avengers: Infinity War. But the writers of WandaVision fully understood that we needed a love origin story too for anything here to work, and they gave it to us with what might just be one of my favourite scenes in WandaVision. 

I was never into Wanda or Vision, and didn't care for them in the films. The cool factor of the production and the acting in WandaVision sold me on their story, but this episode finally sold me on the characters. And this was a very necessary thing to do. Not only because Wanda will be appearing in at least two upcoming films in the MCU, but because the final episode of WandaVision is probably going to hinge strongly on the love Wanda and Vision have for one another. I can't see Wanda coming out of this with her whole family intact. But I care far more about the outcome of this now than I did two weeks ago, because of how this episode handled Wanda's past, her love for Vision, and her life being a relay of grief with no repreive.

Episodes like this are why shows are such a great thing for the MCU, because we probably wouldn't get a 45 minute chunk of a film slowing down to give us a moment like this. It also shows that not everything superhero related has to be fast moving or action based. And for WandaVision specifically, it shows that as great as the sitcom gimmick was, the writers can still tell a great story and give us solid writing in an episode void of it, whilst keeping the tone that's been established since the first episode. It shows Marvel Studios running on a different track than we're used to, and I hope we see other shows really fuck with the Marvel formula to tell compelling stories.

WandaVision has displayed each week how masterful the team behind this show is and I think this episode was a continued testament to that. It answered questions, still posed questions and moved things along, but it also made you connect to the heart of Wanda and a character who doesn't even have a heart. Tracing the origin of Wanda's powers, how she created the Hex and then having other oddities linked to that answer was great. But Wanda's emotional state through these moments is what was the most gripping. This may put off those of you who just wanted an episode of crazy powers, mutants, multiverse shit, Mephisto and God knows what else over character development. But...it's y'alls loss. This episode was pretty stunning.

There are undoubtedly going to be those watching WandaVision who sit through this episode like 'Pffft. I knew that. This is filler'. But not everybody is up on Marvel Comics lore and has created this whiteboard of theories. Some people are just watching this show week to week, with little knowledge of the comics, not going out of their wat to watch anybody's breakdown videos on YouTube, or reading anybody's raggedy (me, I'm 'anybody's raggedy') blog posts. Some people would have needed this episode. This episode wasn't as grand and audacious as some of the earlier episodes, but it laid more groundwork and answered way more questions than some probably realised on a first watch. This was so far from a filler episode. It was 100% necessary to set up the finale, which I'm sure will still continue to lift lids and answer questions.

I have to shout out Christophe Beck, the composer for WandaVision, because the score in this episode was fantastic. The score throughout this show has been amazing, but it really hit in this episode because of the slower pace, there being less distractions, and no funky songs to draw all of the attention away. Yes "Agatha All Along" you fucking banger, I'm looking at you. The scene of seeing Wanda create the Hex, create Vision, and then step out in black and white was great visually, but the score!?

Call my wig Houdini, because it's GONE.

We've got one more episode to go, and I've still got questions. One of which is what am I gonna do with my life after this show ends. Wanda's mental health is a mess, but her show has been doing wonders (wandas?) for mine.

📒 My Episode notes

• Give Elizabeth Olsen a damn Emmy award
• Agatha high-key actually helped Wanda
• In light of Wanda's favourite episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, I think Vision's boss in episode 1 was choking on a walnut, as that appears to be what he pulls outta his throat
• The Buick
• Vision looked too cute in his lil' loungewear set
• I wonder (I Wanda) when the Agatha Harkness smokey eye tutorial is hitting YouTube
• We're not seeing this damn Aerospace Engineer until 2022
• The Buick
• We're actually gonna see Wanda with the Scarlet Witch headdress...again, but for real
• Vision looked too cute in that lil' cardigan
• The way that bomb hit whilst the Maximoff's were watching their sitcom was raw as hell
• The Buick
• So, did Pietro also have powers pre Hydra that he had no knowledge of?