WandaVision WandaVision: Season 1, Episode 8 "Previously On" (spoilers)

[metaphysician]

How powerful is Wanda going to be by the end of the finale? Because the way things are going she's going to end up with God like powers (and I ain't complaining).

Honestly, I get the impression she won't be that much more powerful than she was before, she just will realize the breadth of what she can do moreso. After all, when it comes to oomph, she already had "Make Thanos scream in helplessness" levels of firepower. What this shows is that she can use her powers to do things that she wouldn't have imagined before. OTOH, her control of such is dicey, especially when hitting the top peaks requires being in a moment of abject emotional tumoil. . . which is probably why she will hang out with Dr Strange in the upcoming movie, to achieve better control and understanding over her powers. I doubt she's going to regularly go around dropping city-sized reality bubbles and three billion dollar masses of conjured vibranium, though.

 

[metaphysician]

am I the only one, who finds it ridiculous that SWORD after 5 years of dismantling Vision haven’t gotte really far. They’re still cutting his fingers

Nah. One, they likely started with almost zero knowledge about how to work with a vibranium bio-roid ( especially since the people with the science skill to do so, probably wouldn't help or weren't consulted in the first place ). Two, this probably wasn't the *first* time they had disassembled him. Hayward said ( or at least implied ) that they'd put him together before but could never get him to work. His current state of disassembly was probably the result of "taking him apart and see if we can figure out to fix him, take 57".

 

[metaphysician]

You can throw Hawkeye in the mix, he went on a murder spree after his family was snapped. MCU shows that everyone deals with stuff differently.

Since Hawkeye show is coming out I wonder if he had anymore talks with Wanda after Nat died. He named one of his kids after Pietro, so I wonder if he kept in touch with Wanda. I doubt anyone could have stopped her from doing this but, still hope Hawkeye and Wanda have a scene on one of their shows.

My own guess: this is all only three weeks after Endgame, and Clint himself was in a *bad* place. . . and just got his whole family back. I can easily believe that, after departing the funeral and seeing that Wanda is seemingly okay, he went off to deal with his own affairs and trauma. And, being fair, Wanda *did* seem to be handling things, as well as could reasonably be hoped given the awful circumstances. After all, she *didn't* go rampage over SWORD once she found they had his body. . . and if it weren't for the unexpected outburst of power, the most her fit of grief would have probably done is wreck a bit of abandoned housing property that belonged to her anyway.

 

[metaphysician]

I loved what the creators did, taking a risk and getting viewers buzzing, regardless of the outcome. And I kinda liked the Mandarin in IM3 as well. But the problem a lot of fans had, and I agree, was that we didn't get a proper Mandarin onscreen (though we hopefully will in Shang-Chi), causing fans to miss out on Iron Man's main villain.

While I didn't love either version of Quicksilver, we have had multiple versions onscreen, so it is not like fans have been screwed over. And who knows, maybe this dude will keep his speed powers and be MCU Quicksilver going forward.

*cough* I have to jump in, and point out that the Mandarin that a lot of the fans wanted, wouldn't have been a proper Mandarin either, in the "is actually the character from the comics" sense. The big thing the IM3 debacle revealed to me was that there are a ton of alleged fans of characters who clearly have no idea what the character is actually like.

Or, the character Ben Kingsley played was even less like the Mandarin than Killian was. . . and except in the superficial looks sense, the common fan wish of "Fu Manchu crossed with Lo-Pan" is barely any moreso.

 

[metaphysician]

It would have made sense for Hawkeye to reach out to Wanda in the middle of this when she emerged from the Hex to threaten SWORD in Episode 5 since he was the Avenger she was closest with besides Vision. But I imagine that conversation would have gone something like this:

Clint: Wanda, you have to stop. I know what you're going through. I lost my whole family and went down this path. This won't solve anything.
Wanda: Your family came back. Vision didn't.
Clint: ........Well, I tried, guys.

That would require SWORD and Hayward be on speaking terms with Hawkeye, and actively interested in involving him. I find that highly suspect, given Hayward was doing things he was not supposed to be doing.

 

[Dark Raven]

I gotta be honest, I'm disappointed with Hahn as Agatha. I think they should have cast an older actor for the part. Her being younger sort of takes away that uniqueness about the character. And I don't really like Hahn's acting. She's acting like a Disney villain or like a theater student playing a witch in a play. Same for her getup at the end. She looks like a villain from Enchanted, as if they just pulled the wardrobe off the rack and put it on her. Even her type of magic looks just like Wanda's but with a purple filter.

Make Agatha Geriatric Again?

But that’s also part of how Marvel stays in the stratosphere. I mean who would’ve thought in 2021, an obscure ass character like Agatha Harkness, Franklin Richard’s witch nanny, would be the Internet’s latest obsession?

Only Marvel Studios all along.

It shows that Marvel can turn any of their characters into A list characters. It's a bit like what they did with Peggy Carter. I'm sure Marvel will want to put Agatha in as many properties as possible and maybe even give her her own spin-off.

After all, when it comes to oomph, she already had "Make Thanos scream in helplessness" levels of firepower.

She needs a red MTSIH hat.

 

[metaphysician]

You may not approve of her methods, but Agatha got more results in about a half hour of pro bono work than most psychiatrists would have gotten in a year or pricey therapy sessions.

I mean, as a joke, its a solid one, and I applaud. However, this does remind me. . .

So, over the course of the show the time period of the Hex was clearly moving forward, approaching the present day. Setting aside the obvious Doylist purpose, what does this mean in story? I think one plausible interpretation is "On some level Wanda knows this isn't the real world, and its getting closer and closer". Now, this might have been entirely engineered by Agatha, but that seems kind of dubious, she didn't have *that* much control over the narrative. Or it might have been "Ultimately this was not going to be a stable situation, but one where Wanda would come out of her fugue state eventually on her own".

I can't help but wonder what would have happened if neither Agatha nor SWORD had ran across the Hex. Permanent reality distortion, magical catastrophe. . . or "after a few weeks, the walls come down, Wanda comes out having recovered her composure, possibly a few new beings birthed by weird magic, and the locals likely remember the event as just a dream"?

 

[pixen]

Looks great.

Though we could have seennthis sooner or at least in posters.

It is reminiscent of Daredevil season 1 in which they saved the proper iconic costume for the finale.


Okay the last one made laugh.

It’s about earning her mantle, becoming the Scarlet Witch. None of the previous episodes really needed it either. As Agatha stated, we got close with a tease in the Halloween one but not the full thing. It’ll come next episode and be great.

I don't think it's a full skirt. Her legs are still visible in front. I think it's more something like this that just gives it the silhouette of a skirt, but is open in front and with pants under it:

I think her outfit will be an amalgamation of her comic outfits. The long part will be in the back like the uncanny look... excerpt less of a dress and more of a train cape.

 

[metaphysician]

My biggest takeaway from this episode is...

They can put robots on a property deed? Wild.

I actually would love to see an episode, perhaps as part of the She-Hulk show, where the topic of "the court case wherein sentient androids gained legal standing and personhood" comes up. Allude perhaps to a "Thomas Test" as a legal benchmark for telling whether the AI in front of you counts as a legal person ( which would, natch, be a hat tip to Roy Thomas who created the Vision ). You could then riff on that to other cases handling things like aliens, or non-human non-alien biological sentient beings, or whatever, and imply that the court cases are really interesting, if and only if you are a law geek.

 

[Doctor Jones]

But that’s also part of how Marvel stays in the stratosphere. I mean who would’ve thought in 2021, an obscure ass character like Agatha Harkness, Franklin Richard’s witch nanny, would be the Internet’s latest obsession?

Only Marvel Studios all along.

Yeah, and it's great that they do this. The only thing is, they have a penchant for presenting these things in a very same-y way. Marvel is like the whiz kid who can get perfect test scores but only gets B+'s and A-'s. They have everything at their disposal and yet they hit a ceiling.

 

[metaphysician]

Although Agatha used the term "amplified", I'm guessing the Mind Stone had a secondary purpose in unlocking/releasing Wanda's latent abilities. Now, if she's indeed revealed to be a mutant, then it's reasonable to infer that Pietro, by virtue of him not only withstanding the stone's effects but also developing his own set of powers in the process, was a mutant as well. What's interesting is that he was shown to be considerably less powerful than Wanda. And while his full potential could've, in time, reflected otherwise, I can't help but wonder if the transmutation factor in Wanda's metamorphosis was somehow lacking with him. In other words, perhaps the stone merely unlocked his speed powers, whereas Wanda's abilities were both unlocked and enhanced.

But again, this all depends on whether or not Wanda is, in fact, a mutant, one whose powers permit her to channel chaos magic. As others have said, a "Scarlet Witch", in Marvel Cinematic terms, could very well refer to a being of unparalleled mystic might. What we do know for certain, though, is that reality warping is within the scope of Wanda's abilities. Hence, it stands to reason that she could've simply given Pietro his powers without even knowing that she did.

Oh, and Agatha's definitely a foe. She clearly wants Wanda's powers for herself and assumed it wouldn't be all that hard to take them. But, much to her dismay, Wanda--as a "Scarlet Witch"--is far more dangerous than she ever imagined. So, the kid gloves are off now. lol

My read on Agatha is that she *thought* Wanda had used some Dangerous Forbidden Mystical Ritual or Artifact, something she could copy or steal, and that she had used it intentionally, if perhaps with the desire to wipe her own mind and lose herself in a "perfect" world. The idea that someone could do such a feat by accident, and without mystical intent, just wasn't on her radar. . . which suggests to me a possible gap in Agatha's knowledge. Specifically, she might not really understand the deal with Infinity Stones, thus underestimating how huge a thing "Had a close encounter with one" could be.

 

[#root]

I mean, as a joke, its a solid one, and I applaud. However, this does remind me. . .

So, over the course of the show the time period of the Hex was clearly moving forward, approaching the present day. Setting aside the obvious Doylist purpose, what does this mean in story? I think one plausible interpretation is "On some level Wanda knows this isn't the real world, and its getting closer and closer". Now, this might have been entirely engineered by Agatha, but that seems kind of dubious, she didn't have *that* much control over the narrative. Or it might have been "Ultimately this was not going to be a stable situation, but one where Wanda would come out of her fugue state eventually on her own".

I can't help but wonder what would have happened if neither Agatha nor SWORD had ran across the Hex. Permanent reality distortion, magical catastrophe. . . or "after a few weeks, the walls come down, Wanda comes out having recovered her composure, possibly a few new beings birthed by weird magic, and the locals likely remember the event as just a dream"?

That’s an interesting question. It’s possible that Wanda could’ve come to her senses on her own eventually. Or maybe some other entity would’ve discovered her at some point. Agatha said she “sensed” Westview and all the collective spells cast by Wanda there. Maybe even the Sorcerer Supreme would’ve eventually noticed.

I do have one question though.

Spoiler

Agatha’s mother had a magical crown of sorts when she was casting her spell. Does anyone know what that is? Anything from the comics?

 

[metaphysician]

While it remains to be seen if any Avengers show up in the finale, the only ones who really know Wanda well enough to reach out to her would be Clint, Sam and Rhodey. Thor is off-world with the Guardians and Bruce wasn’t really a Wanda fan after what happened in AOU.

And like I said in an earlier post, up until she got to Westview Wanda actually *was* handling things. . . okay-ish. Like, she was in pain but not obvious "this person needs an intervention right now" pain. Especially if everyone had checked on her during and after the big funeral. The state she was in when she visited SWORD, I can entirely buy her having been on the phone with someone like Clint or Sam an hour earlier, with them asking "Do you need help with this?" and her going "No, I need to handle this, and I'll be fine. But thanks for the offer, I am grateful."

 

[metaphysician]

If Wanda must fight and destroy White Vision, it will be the 3rd time she deals with Vision's death. If that happens.... oh wow.... I expect 616 will never be the same.

My own prediction: she won't have to destroy it. She will instead merge Vision with White Vision, to better establish his more permanent existence. . . though possibly as a prelude for Vision sacrificing his own life to provide the "substance" for the two kids to have a permanent existence. I could see it going several ways.

That said, I'm rooting for "everyone lives", and Vision's fate is 'to be something of a stay at home dad for two very bizarre teenagers, because Mom desperately needs to spend time on remedial magic lessons'. Because while I am fine with tragedy when its done well, I don't *need* tragedy.

 

[metaphysician]

So am I misunderstanding or is it implied that Wanda had her powers as a child before she was experimented on?

If so, they just retroactively introduced us to mutants.

You are, indeed, misunderstanding, as the show implied no such thing. The show stated that she had *magical* powers, or rather, potential powers, before the Mind Stone experiments. That means absolutely nothing about mutants whatsoever.

 

[DCnightwing23]

Nah. One, they likely started with almost zero knowledge about how to work with a vibranium bio-roid ( especially since the people with the science skill to do so, probably wouldn't help or weren't consulted in the first place ). Two, this probably wasn't the *first* time they had disassembled him. Hayward said ( or at least implied ) that they'd put him together before but could never get him to work. His current state of disassembly was probably the result of "taking him apart and see if we can figure out to fix him, take 57".

It's also worth mentioning here that Hayward definitely set-up the whole thing - when he lets Wanda see Vision, that isn't the first time he and the SWORD team had been working on him. Keep in mind Hayward had been there the entire 5 years, while Wanda had not. He states Vision is a 3 billion dollar asset, no way you'd be dismantling him with such disregard. He also conveniently is aware that Wanda (before Wanda even knows) can bring someone back to life. As we later see, he needed Wanda's powers to boot up his version of Vision for SWORD, so he was baiting her the entire time, put on a show, just to get his 3 billion dollar project up and running. He's a massive, and I mean massive, *****ebag.

 

[Zarex]

Nah. One, they likely started with almost zero knowledge about how to work with a vibranium bio-roid ( especially since the people with the science skill to do so, probably wouldn't help or weren't consulted in the first place ). Two, this probably wasn't the *first* time they had disassembled him. Hayward said ( or at least implied ) that they'd put him together before but could never get him to work. His current state of disassembly was probably the result of "taking him apart and see if we can figure out to fix him, take 57".

After watching it a second time, I am wondering if the dismantling was a show for Wanda's benefit. They certainly could have stopped tearing him apart after she entered the facility. It seemed like Hayward may have been goading her into resurrecting Vision. (I see DCNW23 had the same thought. Great minds think alike!)

I mean, as a joke, its a solid one, and I applaud. However, this does remind me. . .

So, over the course of the show the time period of the Hex was clearly moving forward, approaching the present day. Setting aside the obvious Doylist purpose, what does this mean in story? I think one plausible interpretation is "On some level Wanda knows this isn't the real world, and its getting closer and closer". Now, this might have been entirely engineered by Agatha, but that seems kind of dubious, she didn't have *that* much control over the narrative. Or it might have been "Ultimately this was not going to be a stable situation, but one where Wanda would come out of her fugue state eventually on her own".

I can't help but wonder what would have happened if neither Agatha nor SWORD had ran across the Hex. Permanent reality distortion, magical catastrophe. . . or "after a few weeks, the walls come down, Wanda comes out having recovered her composure, possibly a few new beings birthed by weird magic, and the locals likely remember the event as just a dream"?

Folks on the interwebs have pointed out that Wanda was on the fourth stage of grief before walking downstairs into Agatha's basement. So my guess is the hex would have burst at some point and Wanda would have moved back to reality. But Doctor Harkness's speedy therapy technique speeded up the process.

Yeah, and it's great that they do this. The only thing is, they have a penchant for presenting these things in a very same-y way. Marvel is like the whiz kid who can get perfect test scores but only gets B+'s and A-'s. They have everything at their disposal and yet they hit a ceiling.

I mean, if I have to sit through yet another Superhero TV show about a witch creating a reality bubble with her resurrected dead robot lover, and then rapidly taking him and their magic children through spot on versions of classic television episodes, complete with era appropriate theme songs and commercials, I may lose it.

 

[Donner]

I mean, as a joke, its a solid one, and I applaud. However, this does remind me. . .

So, over the course of the show the time period of the Hex was clearly moving forward, approaching the present day. Setting aside the obvious Doylist purpose, what does this mean in story? I think one plausible interpretation is "On some level Wanda knows this isn't the real world, and its getting closer and closer". Now, this might have been entirely engineered by Agatha, but that seems kind of dubious, she didn't have *that* much control over the narrative. Or it might have been "Ultimately this was not going to be a stable situation, but one where Wanda would come out of her fugue state eventually on her own".

I can't help but wonder what would have happened if neither Agatha nor SWORD had ran across the Hex. Permanent reality distortion, magical catastrophe. . . or "after a few weeks, the walls come down, Wanda comes out having recovered her composure, possibly a few new beings birthed by weird magic, and the locals likely remember the event as just a dream"?

You know, this is a really interesting thought. I think the move forward in time was Wanda processing what was going on. It's possible that by the end of it, she would have figured out how to keep her hex just over Vision and her kids and let the rest of the town go.

It also makes me think if the people she's not controlling but are on the edge crying (like Vision saw in the Halloween episode) are crying because they're feeling her grief.

 

[Dark Raven]

I actually would love to see an episode, perhaps as part of the She-Hulk show, where the topic of "the court case wherein sentient androids gained legal standing and personhood" comes up. Allude perhaps to a "Thomas Test" as a legal benchmark for telling whether the AI in front of you counts as a legal person ( which would, natch, be a hat tip to Roy Thomas who created the Vision ). You could then riff on that to other cases handling things like aliens, or non-human non-alien biological sentient beings, or whatever, and imply that the court cases are really interesting, if and only if you are a law geek.

It could be like "The Measure of a Man" in Star Trek: The Next Generation where Picard had to defend Data's sentient status and rights. I think though that Riker was appointed as part of the opposing counsel, and while he believed in Data's rights, as part of his job as counsel he had to do everything in his power to disprove Data's sentience. That would be interesting if there were a case with both Jennifer Walters and Matt Murdock on opposing sides regarding this and even though one of them believed in Vision's sentience and rights they would have to argue against it.

 

[Dark Raven]

I was thinking that it wasn't just the Mind Stone that enhanced Wanda's powers or that she was somehow able to withstand it while everyone else couldn't. It was probably the same as the Stark bomb that didn't detonate. She probably couldn't withstand it but her probability powers affected it and gave her increased odds of surviving against it, and then as a result of being able to stand in its presence it enhanced her.

 

[djsunyc]

i'm starting to think that alot of issues will be resolved - like agatha & hayward. i also think fietro was a massive meta stunt casting. and at the end of the episode, wanda and some new version of vision decide to leave this reality but that causes some chaos and that leads into DS:MOM and SM:NWH.

 

[ArmsHeldOut]

My read on Agatha is that she *thought* Wanda had used some Dangerous Forbidden Mystical Ritual or Artifact, something she could copy or steal, and that she had used it intentionally, if perhaps with the desire to wipe her own mind and lose herself in a "perfect" world. The idea that someone could do such a feat by accident, and without mystical intent, just wasn't on her radar. . . which suggests to me a possible gap in Agatha's knowledge. Specifically, she might not really understand the deal with Infinity Stones, thus underestimating how huge a thing "Had a close encounter with one" could be.

I didn't get the sense that Agatha is unfamiliar with the Stones and their workings, but the first part sounds accurate.

 

[RockSP]

You are, indeed, misunderstanding, as the show implied no such thing. The show stated that she had *magical* powers, or rather, potential powers, before the Mind Stone experiments. That means absolutely nothing about mutants whatsoever.

If she kept the bomb from blowing, that's more than potential magic...

 

[ArmsHeldOut]

I was thinking that it wasn't just the Mind Stone that enhanced Wanda's powers or that she was somehow able to withstand it while everyone else couldn't. It was probably the same as the Stark bomb that didn't detonate. She probably couldn't withstand it but her probability powers affected it and gave her increased odds of surviving against it, and then as a result of being able to stand in its presence it enhanced her.

Either way, she withstood the Stone's effects whereas all the other guinea pigs save Pietro were unable to. What you're describing is just one of the possible means to which her powers, magical or otherwise, allowed her to do so.

 

[RockSP]

I still don't think this episode justifies Wanda's actions.

I didn't get the impression they were justifying it. Just showing what happened, and why.