This episode was amazing and creepy. I was just shocked at the direction that the show has taken. It was so good, I watched it three times. Sure the sitcom episodes were a bit eerie, but now we are in crazy land. So much has happened that I have to talk about so sorry this is a spoiler review. Also, this episode gave its new character new poster characters. So awesome, though not really necessary.
This episode was basically a recap of all three episodes, but how they look like from outside of Wanda's reality bubble. I mean how they look like from S.W.O.R.D.'s perspective.
The episode starts right after Hulk snapped everyone back. We see that this caused some major chaos. But we also see Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) being reassembled. Apparently she was snapped away by Thanos. Monica Rambeau is the daughter of Maria Rambeau, Carol Danvers' best friend. Unfortunately the show tells us that Maria has passed away from cancer so we won’t get to see her reunite with Danvers in the Captain Marvel 2, only Monica will appear.
Monica is also the one first to go back to work at S.W.O.R.D. from the snapped people. Apparently her mother founded the agency. It seems that they are very versatile, but we still have no idea what they actually do. Tyler Hayward is now the acting director and the entire internet is suspecting that he is evil. I mean literally everyone. From Skrull, to Kree, to Hydra to Mephisto everyone thinks that there is something off about him. Although it could be just the mediocre acting standing out in an outstanding cast. The director asks Rambeau to join the F.B.I. on a missing person case to which they need one of S.W.O.R.D. drones. Apparently since she has been blipped she is grounded. It also means that she could have already meet Danvers in spaces previously so that could be really cool. Rambeau isn't excited about this new job, but we are.
In Westview, New Jersey, Rambeau meets agent Agent James Woo (Randall Park). He did not get enough screen time in Ant-Man and the WASP, that mistake is rectified here. All the internet is talking about how he finally learned the card trick that Ant-Man did in Ant-Man and the WASP. Also I am pretty sure that Westview is an easter egg for West Coast Avengers. Apparently a person in witness protection, we don’t know who, has disappeared. No one even remembers who he is. The police officers standing next to the Westview sign, say that the town doesn't exists. It is crazy. It also shows how powerful the person who is controlling all of this. I don’t think that Wanda is doing this all on her own. But basically, the entire town is now missing. The drone that they send to investigate disappears and shows no data. Rambeau doesn’t listen to Agent Woo's warnings and common sense and touches the barrier around the town. She touches it too strongly and gets sucked in. This is how we get Geraldine.
This is also how we get a really big mess. Apparently, a missing agent causes more problem then a missing town. It is an all hands on deck case. Then we get the return of our beloved Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings). Darcy is no longer a political science student, but she is now has a doctorate in astrophysics. Don’t call her Ms., she's a doctor now. I guess all that time with Jane Foster, Erik Selvig and Thor really rubbed off on her. She's is still hilarious and has an observant bad ass vibe to her, but she is super smart now. She is also the "us" character in this episode. She is brought with three other experts from different fields so she immediately realizes that S.W.O.R.D. have no idea what is the problem. Especially when she sees all the different agencies that have set camp. She quickly realizes that when someone refuses to tell her what the drones are showing them, but they can't see anything at all from Westview. Her humor is so on point, I love Dennings she's terrific. Also how can this giant facility have no coffee? It makes no sense. Coffee is very important.
It looks like this show is continuing with Thor's explanation in his first movie that magic is science that we don't understand. Darcy says that there is a lot of CMBR (cosmic microwave background), which is a real thing, coming from the anomaly. Which basically means that Wanda's powers are cosmic powers. Although I am not sure that it is her powers causing all of this. For now the radiation is in safe limit, but it could increase or that the anomaly can grow and turn the entire world into a full blown house of M. That could be so awesome, but I doubt that it will happen. Darcy figures out that there are TV waves coming from the anomaly and asks for an old TV, not flat is old. That makes me feel old. It's time for the character to watch what we have been watching which is super meta.
Then we move to acting director Hayward and the man he is sending inside to find Rambeau. From the suit that the man is wearing we can see that he will become the bee keeper from episode 2. Poor fella. From some reason Hayward thinks that sending him through the sewers is a good idea, even after agent Woo warns him that the barrier might be subterranean as well. Hayward is really an idiotic moron. We know it ends badly for poor bee keeper person, but we don't know what happens to him. We know that for Wanda, she simply reverses time, but we never see what happens to the person outside. Is he just stuck in the town, or stuck in time? We didn't see him get ejected. But Wanda looks very villainess from his perspective.
Then we see the television. Darcy is watching the first episode of WandaVision as we saw it. She recognizes Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch and Vision. She reminds us that Vision is dead so what we are seeing makes no sense at all. Also, the working theory that the universe created a sitcom starring two Avengers inside of s small town is ridicules, but is also means that Wanda may not be the one in control. Hayward seems pretty pissed off about the universe theory. I mean he has serious bad dude vibes going on. Darcy gets pretty into the episode, her aww is so sweet, just like ours. Also we find out that she was the person watching the first episode at the end of the first episode. Yeah, meta complicated.
The meta continues as agent Woo tries to identify the people inside the anomaly and asks questions. It is our questions, but our questions are better ones at this point. Expect for the why is it a sitcom? The people in the town are treated as actors, it is all really weird. Notice that Agnes (Kathryn Hahn) is the only person that they did not identify. Probably because she is not a resident, but a player in the bigger game. We see that in the meantime Darcy seems Rambeau inside the fake reality for the first and she looks nothing like herself. Like agent Woo says, she is not harmed in any way, but she looks different and she no longer gives boss vibes. Is she under deep cover or is she playing along with the sitcom? Does she have any control of the situation? Agent Woo doesn’t have the answer and neither do we. Not even after watching the episode, we still don't know what happens to people inside this bubble of reality. We don't get a lot of new information, just mostly the same information from a different prospective.
Then Darcy has an idea. An idea about how to contact Wanda inside of her reality. We already guessed in episode 2 that it was agent Woo who talked to Wanda through the radio, well, tried talking to Wanda through the radio and now we see it happening. While agent Woo and Darcy are discussing her communication idea they get an image from the episode of the colorful drone. We know that many drones went inside and didn’t come out, but I think this is the first drone. And it is probably in color because it is from the outside reality. But now it is a toy. Nobody has any idea how it is possible and neither do we. They try and form contact with Wanda and we know from episode 2 that they were successful in their attempts, but they don’t know that. What they see is a jump cut. No Radio breaking, no glass breaking in Dottie's hand and no creepy conversation between Dottie and Wanda. That has all been censored. I doubt that Wanda is doing it, but some other player who doesn't want anyone to see Wanda losing control over this reality. Darcy calls it a mission failure and calls it weird, but I think she knows something deep is up. I mean the commercial for the Hydra watch starts to appear and she doesn't say anything about it. I mean Hydra is a pretty big deal, so maybe she suspects that S.W.O.R.D. is compromised. It is all wired, what Darcy sees and the way she behaves.
Then we see Darcy and Woo watch episode 3. They seem totally engrossed, like we are. They are eating snacks and asking questions about the show, just like we are. They are shocked that Wanda and Vision are having a baby, but they don’t ask the most important question: are those babies even real? Wanda's none-existing sanity might totally flip if she losses her babies. It is funny how exited Darcy is when Wanda goes into the process of giving birth. Darcy and Woo are totally invested and absorbed by what they are seeing. Just like us. Darcy cries when she sees that Wanda has twins. She is invested as she says, I think more invested then we are. We are just super excited to have the show introduce Wiccan and Speed into the MCU.
Darcy and Woo are shocked when Geraldine/Rambeau mentions Ultron. It is the first time someone inside the reality bubble mentions their real world. They see Wanda starting to be angry and suspicious, and most importantly they see Wanda with the super angry head tilt and then the episode jumps to the end. Wanda kicking Geraldine out of the reality is cut out. They don’t see really angry and powerful and aware Wanda. They know something happened to the broadcast that it has been cut somehow. As soon as agent Woo asks where Rambeau is, the alarms goes off. Someone has breached the parameter.
While this is happening we are sucked inside the TV again. You can see that by the screen ration that goes back to 4:3 ration. And then as Wanda becomes more and more angry the ration changes back again to regular TV ratio, because the sitcom illusion is broken. Geraldine tries to calm Wanda, but it does not work. For the first time we see Wanda uses her real magic, not the wireworks practical, colorless magic she has been using so far, but her red hexing magical powers. Wanda says that Geraldine is a stranger, an outsider and that she is trespassing. Trespassing in her bubble reality. It is an interesting idea. Wanda is no one's friend, she is the one trespassing and she is literally holding the entire town hostage even though she doesn't see it that way. She kicks Geraldine out of her reality through the wall, fence and every obstacle until she is outside of the limits of the bubble reality. Wanda looks very much like the villain from Rambeau perspective.
However, there is still Wanda's perspective. She looks shocked by what she has done. She even looks at her hands in confusion, like she doesn't fully comprehend what she just did. But then like a true criminal she uses her powers to cover up the evidence for what she did by turning everything back to the way it was. But her mental state is still unstable, she looks concerned and disconnected as she approaches the twins. She almost regains her composure as she looks lovingly at her children. Wanda isn't the villain, she is simply a mentally unstable person, like she is in the comics. Here we just get to experience it from her perspective.
Then comes the most shocking part of this episode. Vision walks through the door and Wanda is confused again. Although she looks angry and villainess again when she answers Vision's question about where Geraldine is. But that breaks her hold on her fake reality. She tries to look lovingly at him but fails, and then she sees him as he truly is, a dead machine. He looks exactly like he did when Thanos pulled the mind stone from him. He is colorless white and has a hole where the mind stone used to be. It is totally creepy. Even Wanda gets shocked because she usually doesn't see him like this, like he really, truly is. A dead synthezoid. She is animating his dead corpse. Which kind of makes you wonder even more about her twins. Clearly she does not create things out of nothing, so where did they really come from? This is some creepy dark stuff. Marvel usually doesn't go so dark, but now they did.
But the show isn't over and neither is the illusion. Wanda pulls herself together and the illusion snaps back. Although the ration doesn't go back to sitcom ration. She sees her regular Vision once more. When he tells her that they don't have to stay in this town she corrects him. They too cannot leave this town. She says it is their home, but clearly, it is because the illusion exists only here. Which means Wanda didn't create this bubble of a reality. She is controlling everything in it, like she says, she has everything under control. But she did not create this, she just doesn't want to leave it all. Even though Vision is dead and is probably just a marionette, he seems to have agency and his own thoughts. That's interesting. Wanda bats her lashes in a sitcomy way to fully comeback to the illusion. They take the kids and go and watch television. They watch a show, inside the show, that is inside a show. My head hurts from all of the awesome meta.
Clearly, Wanda has lost her mind. But Rambeau doesn't know that. When she comes around outside of the barrier she simply says to Darcy and agent Woo that it's Wanda. She thinks Wanda is in control of everything. That is going to cause a lot of problems. Wanda is clearly not an innocent victim, but she's not fully a villain or in full control.
This episode was brilliant. Seeing Vision dead, but yet walking and talking was truly horrifying. I think that was the best scare jump I've seen in a long time, horror movies included. Wanda may be inside her perfect reality, but it is more than fake, it is terrible. Everyone are trapped and are like little puppets, all playing to her tune. She basically kidnaped almost 4,000 people. However, I don’t think she created this reality. She has control over it, but the reason that they can’t leave is because she doesn't have the power to recreate this place. She is the villain of this show basically, but it all comes from a place of loss and hurt and mental instability. When you see how Darcy cries when Wanda gives birth, you can see the extent of Wanda's loss. Still, Hydrea are differently involved and maybe even a few more villains. Wanda isn't flying solo here. The mystery continues.
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