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

[ArmsHeldOut]

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

By potential, I think he meant latent or dormant. They were just starting to emerge (or leak out so to speak), but had yet to fully manifest.

 

[herolee10]

 

[Dark Raven]

I think we need gifs of all of Lizzie Olsen's facial expressions from this show. She's able to act with them and convey so much without even speaking a word.

 

[terry78]

Watching kevin smith livestream about this episode now trying to predict how it's going to tie into dr. Strange.

 

[DawnWarrior]

Westview is gonna be the most awesome tourist trap when this is over.

About 75% of MCU stories end with the hero fighting a same-powered arch-enemy. It looks like next week is gearing to give us two of those, with Wanda fighting Agatha and Vision fighting his pasty doppelganger (who we might end up calling Cataract.)

 

[Detective Conan]

 

[Dark Raven]

She doesn't even look like Kathryn Hahn here.

 

[Detective Conan]

She doesn't even look like Kathryn Hahn here.

When I first saw that scene I was literally wondering, “who’s that? What happened to Kathryn Hahn?”

 

[NHawk19]

This episode threw an interesting wrench in the series. At this exact moment there's not really a clear cut villain except maybe Wanda. But you've got to feel for her because she had no malicious intent she was just heart broken over a gift from Vis when something inside let loose, and she doesn't even know how she did. We're also left with the possibility she doesn't know what to do about it.

That leaves us with:

Wanda who is just in too deep right now.
Agatha who saw the Hex as sort of a beacon and showed up to figure out what's going on. Maybe she wanted to steal magic, maybe she's curious, maybe she now wants to cleanse the world of chaos magic, maybe she'll teach Wanda jury is out right now.
S.W.O.R.D. who is headed by a *****e and trying to take a military approach.
Monica, Jimmy, and Darcy who are trying to be reasonable, and work with Wanda to find a safe way to end the Hex
Vis, and Wanda's kids who might not be able to survive outside the Hex.
A group of townspeople caught in the crossfire
Zombie Vision who is more weapon than anything

The way this series is going Wanda will have had to watch Vision die 4 times and for 2 of those killed him. Unless she somehow merges Hex Vision with Zombie Vision.

Can't believe this is where we are with 1 episode to go.

 

[javonstokess]

I think it's safe to say that it's implied that both Wanda and Pietro had "something" there that was amplified/awakened by the Mind Stone. This could be the first steps towards introducing Mutants.

An even more interesting point is the Space stone seemed to do the same thing to Carol Danvers, implying that she's a mutant too. Though I doubt they go THAT far

 

[Dark Raven]

Imagine if Wanda and Pietro had grown up with the internet, or playing X-box. We'd be getting a world based around that instead of sitcoms.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

Saw this episode again, and it's just absolutely awesome, Lizzie Olsen is just killing it she deserves an award for this show.

One thing Marvel is so good at though is filling in the blanks that makes you appreciate previous movies so much more. I really want to watch Age of Ultron again now when I never liked that movie much at all and it's one of my least favourite marvel movies. But along with Black Panther, Civil War, Ragnarok and now WandaVision, I really want to watch AOU again.

 

[metaphysician]

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.

Ehhh. . . not so much. The Measure of a Man was really well acted, but its legal premise was laughable nonsense. US law requires an actual case or controversy, and the judge can't *force* one of the sides to actually be defended, in some abstract sense. If no one is actually willing to officially act as plaintiff, then the judgement just defaults to the defense.

Or basically, a legal case over android personhood is fine. However, forcing a heroic character to act as prosecuting attorney? Not fine, you are either villainizing someone unnecessarily or grabbing a giant legal stupid ball ( can you say "conflict of interest"? ).

 

[metaphysician]

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

Well, she seemed to consider the idea of Wanda doing stuff like large scale magic on autopilot as unthinkable. Given what we know about the Infinity Stones and the power they grant, it probably shouldn't be unthinkable. So its either she knows a lot more about the Infinity Stones than we do, enough to rule out the obvious answer, or she knows less, and so thinks Secret Dark Ritual is more likely. And it seems weird that she would know a lot more, especially since we have no evidence for the Mind Stone ever being on Earth prior to 2012.

 

[metaphysician]

By potential, I think he meant latent or dormant. They were just starting to emerge (or leak out so to speak), but had yet to fully manifest.

Yep. Note that even half-trained wizards elsewhere do stuff *much* more overt and flagrant than "alter probability invisibly so a possible but unlikely event happens".

 

[metaphysician]

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

Also, for an action to need "justifying" it would require than an action be taken. This episode rendered that whole issue moot largely, by showing that Wanda didn't actually *take* any intentional action. Watch the house scene again. Note the two stages of energy outburst, with the first one only encompassing the house, and the second that that hit all of Westview? Only happened *after* she was clearly immersed in pain, uncontrolled power, and whatever the hell was happening to draw a new Vision out of her. That isn't "I decide I will steal this town", that is "I rolled a 1 on my skill check and come to with no idea what the hell happened".

 

[Dark Raven]

If Wanda hadn't been snapped by Thanos and she had the full extent of her powers now, wouldn't she have been able to bring everyone back via chaos magic? And if she could alter reality shouldn't she have been able to defeat Thanos and the Black Order all by herself? She could have changed the probability of him acquiring the Infinity Stones or even the probability of the Avengers winning without Stark needing to die.

 

[RockSP]

I think it's safe to say that it's implied that both Wanda and Pietro had "something" there that was amplified/awakened by the Mind Stone. This could be the first steps towards introducing Mutants.

An even more interesting point is the Space stone seemed to do the same thing to Carol Danvers, implying that she's a mutant too. Though I doubt they go THAT far

Not really. Agatha implies Wanda had magic before the stone enhanced her, but nothing like that is implied about Carol. Calling Carol a mutant would mean Hulk, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, etc are mutants. They are all people changed by outside stimuli and got powers, whereas the marvel definition of a mutant is someone born with powers. That's why I thought it was strange when people were saying Monica could be a mutant. Nah, she got powers by going through that energy barrier multiple times, she wasn't born with them. I mean it's possible the mcu goes in a totally different direction than the comics for what a mutant is, but I don't know how likely that is.

 

[Donner]

If Wanda hadn't been snapped by Thanos and she had the full extent of her powers now, wouldn't she have been able to bring everyone back via chaos magic? And if she could alter reality shouldn't she have been able to defeat Thanos and the Black Order all by herself? She could have changed the probability of him acquiring the Infinity Stones or even the probability of the Avengers winning without Stark needing to die.

Wanda didn't even know how she created her little world. It came from a place of overhwelming grief. In other words, she didn't mean to do it.

What you're asking for is well outside the realm of what Wanda knows she can do. She's just finding out she created the Westview world. There's no way she could have brought back half the universe. She didn't know she had the power to alter probability, let alone be a master of spontaneous creation.

 

[Fosterson]

If Wanda hadn't been snapped by Thanos and she had the full extent of her powers now, wouldn't she have been able to bring everyone back via chaos magic?

There's a big difference between resurrecting one dead person and bringing back the trillions of beings that died in the Snap.

And if she could alter reality shouldn't she have been able to defeat Thanos and the Black Order all by herself? She could have changed the probability of him acquiring the Infinity Stones or even the probability of the Avengers winning without Stark needing to die.

Wanda didn't even know she could alter reality during the events of IW. Creating the sitcom world in Westview wasn't pre-planned. As we saw, it was the spontaneous result of her being overwhelmed by her grief and anguish.

But even if Wanda could have done that in IW, I'm not sure it would have changed much. Sure, she could have dealt with Proxima and Corvus more easily, and even trapped the Outrider army inside a hex in Wakanda, but remember that Thanos got ahold of the Reality Stone before Wanda even knew who he was. And I'm pretty confident that with the Reality Stone, Thanos would be able to counter any of Wanda's warping. Remember, the illusions he was able to cast on Titan and Knowhere were, if anything, even more impressive that what Wanda has done in Westview..

Not to mention that by the time Thanos arrived in Wakanda, he had five stones. Even Wanda at her current level wouldn't be a match for a five-stoned Thanos.

 

[Dark Raven]

Wanda didn't even know how she created her little world. It came from a place of overhwelming grief. In other words, she didn't mean to do it.

What you're asking for is well outside the realm of what Wanda knows she can do. She's just finding out she created the Westview world. There's no way she could have brought back half the universe. She didn't know she had the power to alter probability, let alone be a master of spontaneous creation.

But presumably she's going to learn how to control her powers now and how to access them and alter probability deliberately. And I did say if she had the full extent of her powers then, not if she was only at this preliminary stage that she is now where it all happens by accident.

 

[Zarex]

Though Wanda is super powerful, she did struggle against the energy deflecting weapons used by Corvus and Proxima. I don't think that would change even with this reality altering version. Her success against Thanos came in large part due to getting the energy deflecting helicopter blade out of his big purple mitts.

 

[Fosterson]

Though Wanda is super powerful, she did struggle against the energy deflecting weapons used by Corvus and Proxima. I don't think that would change even with this reality altering version. Her success against Thanos came in large part due to getting the energy deflecting helicopter blade out of his big purple mitts.

Part of Wanda's problem against the Black Order was that she was also having to protect Vision. Not to mention that she definitely seemed to have gotten a power-up in Endgame. The fact is that she was able to overpower Thanos' arms (the same ones that made Hulk and Thor look like chumps), break a chunk off Thanos' vibranium-busting sword and rip apart armour that had tanked multiple blows from Mjolnir.

I think EG or WV Wanda would curb-stomp the entire Black Order including Maw and Cull Obsidian.

 

[ArmsHeldOut]

Well, she seemed to consider the idea of Wanda doing stuff like large scale magic on autopilot as unthinkable. Given what we know about the Infinity Stones and the power they grant, it probably shouldn't be unthinkable. So its either she knows a lot more about the Infinity Stones than we do, enough to rule out the obvious answer, or she knows less, and so thinks Secret Dark Ritual is more likely. And it seems weird that she would know a lot more, especially since we have no evidence for the Mind Stone ever being on Earth prior to 2012.

If Agatha was of the firm belief that Wanda had begun to exhibit signs of witchcraft/magical proficiency, it stands to reason that she'd become so fixated on the idea that she simply wasn't entertaining anything to the contrary. Hence, with the "unthinkable" remark, she was perhaps speaking to the limitations of spellcasters and the like. But even with this, she later contradicts herself slightly by implying that such power is indeed within the scope of Scarlet Witches and chaos magic. I suppose we can give her a pass on that, however, as said beings had long been relegated to myth, apparently. It's also worth noting that she didn't seem all that surprised by what she had just witnessed in Wanda's memories as relates to the Stone's capabilities.

 

[Donner]

But presumably she's going to learn how to control her powers now and how to access them and alter probability deliberately. And I did say if she had the full extent of her powers then, not if she was only at this preliminary stage that she is now where it all happens by accident.

Ah okay I misunderstood. You mean if Wanda was as super powered in IW and Endgame as she is now, if she could do those things.

I'd say probably. Except for half the universe thing. I know she's a Nexus Being, but I always thought her powers were unpredictable. I think if she tried to bring back half of the living beings in the universe, she'd end up creating a warped reality where everyone walks backwards and talks in riddles or something.