SPOILER WandaVision

Part of me doubts Agnes will live that long, or that Mordo would even want to team up with her. But I'd love if your prediction was accurate! I also can see a few other potential outcomes:
Agnes as the harbinger of Mordo - she's trying to learn what Wanda knows in order so she can escape Mordo, but it's too late.
Agnes is killed by Mordo - She's about to win and Mordo pops in and kills her, but this gives Wanda and Co. a chance to flee to Doctor Strange before Mordo gets them.
Agnes and Wanda actually end up as allies in order to defeat Mordo. Strange is not amused, and it's more like a "crook on a leash" situation than anything else.

 

Looking back on IM1, it's crazy that we're here talking about magic.

 

We still don't know who thid "Ralph" is Agatha's supposed husband. There were several mentions of him, but with one episode to go...

 

Knowing absolutely NOTHING about Marvel lore, I am completely lost in Episode 8. But that doesn't mean I didn't like it!!!

Just consider me the "test consumer" that knows no lore nor backstory to a particular movie, kind of like the many people that saw the LOTR movies without reading the books first...

 

I've been considering him a sitcom joke, especially since Agnes doesn't seem like the type to get tied down. It's sort of like how in Brooklyn 99 Hitchcock and Scully have wives/ex-wives that are mentioned from time to time but never shown.

This random Twitter comment is for you!


But really, the gist of it is that Wanda's powers have historically been super confusing and convoluted. At first it was just "bad luck," but it's been retconned so many times between high level (chaos) magic, natural reality-warping mutant powers, and pretty much everything in-between. EW has a pretty decent explanation.

When it comes to WandaVision, what are Scarlet Witch's powers exactly? | EW.com

In-universe, Agnes is hypothesizing that the Mind Stone (what's in Vision's head) really just supercharged what potential Wanda already had rather than give her new powers. It doesn't exactly explain Pietro, but hey, maybe mutants are on the way.

Age of Ultron really summed it up well with "he's fast and she's weird."

 

If you mean fake Pietro, he was "summoned" by Agatha.

 

No I meant real Pietro. If Wanda's powers come from her being a supercharged witch and not the Infinity Stone as Agnes theorizes, then what's the equivalent for MCU Pietro? Is he a mutant whose powers were activated by the Infinity Stone? Is it something else unlocked? Or was it just the Infinity Stone and Pietro was lucky enough to survive?

 

'Luck' or . . . wait for it . . . 'probability'

 

For Doctor Stange 2 we now have to wait a full year... thanks Covid.

 

Woof... for the first time I think Marvel could learn something from Lucasfilm. They didn't do a good job with managing fan expectations. The last two episodes of this series are kind of a mess. There's no big reveal which has been hyped up. It probably suffered from following Mando 2.

I suspect Marvel will work on this going forward because fan speculation got out of control on what turned out to be a pretty run of the mill story about Wanda dealing with grief.

However, in the end Vision apparently lives on and Wanda gets off pretty lightly after enslaving a town for a few weeks. WandaVision is entertaining, but never really rises past being okay. The most interesting thing during the season was Pietro and that ended up being a nothing burger for now.

Anyway, this seems negative, but I'd give it all about a B-.

 

How could they manage expectations if fans themselves raise it? You can't control what fans say or speculate. Paul was trolling.

 

You can keep the star of your series from confirming there's a major reveal. That would be a good place to start. This story didn't need Pietro to be recast. In this series it's a completely useless decision. I'm sure they'll do something later with it, but a 9 episode series should do more than just serve as an advertisement for something else.

 

They delivered what was promised. Thank goodness.

 

For what it's worth, this was going to lead into Doctor Strange 2 in May before Covid hit.

--- Double Post Merged, Mar 5, 2021, Original Post Date: Mar 5, 2021 ---

I'm kinda glad we're getting smaller scalled stories now and yet are still tied to major events. Without the snap there is no WandaVision.

 

Big disagree here, sorry. The vitriolic backlash after TFA's Mystery Boxes in TLJ should tell you all you need to know about that. Any really big expectation I've seen played with in WandaVision has been due to fan speculation alone. Dr. Strange? That was us. Reed Richards? That was us. Magneto? That was us. The only things WandaVision can be accused of doing is building up Pietro and the guest appearance. The first one was a solid (if somewhat disappointing - again, due to fan expectations) twist due to meta knowledge. The second one was a joke blown out of proportion that's actually pretty funny in hindsight.


Onto the episode itself. I find myself weirdly mixed about this one. I'm sure I'll like it more later and once I re-watch it, but for now, I'm mixed.

First and foremost, this series' focus on Wanda is the best thing. It's about grief, pain, and loss, and how one deals with it all. To do that in a superhero world, and to do it well was phenomenal. I love the ending. Not all is well, nor is all forgiven. Wanda is still not coping in the best way possible (since the best thing may be to go get help instead of the whole "I can handle this by myself" attitude that she has*).

Secondly, HOLY SMOKES THAT OUTFIT! I love it! It's sleek and modern while still giving a great homage to the stuff that came before.

The fight scenes were also well done for television. A little plastic, but well done. Granted, this was the first fight we've seen in the entire run, and I'm halfway surprised we even had it. Part of me sort of hoped we could have this giant, blockbuster show without throwing a real punch, if only to see Marvel flex. But it was here and it wasn't bad. Hopefully Falcon & the Winter Soldier can step it up a notch though.

Agnes living was a really nice change of pace. I got major Wheel of Time vibes from that, and that can only be a good thing.

Lastly, the ending. It was so bittersweet and beautifully cathartic. I loved it!


But not everything was good about this episode:

Hayward really devolved as a villain. Marvel threw all complexity out the window with him. I'm not surprised by that at all - the standard "War Hawk Military White Guy" is really its own trope now, but I would have loved to see some nuance with it. Where Wanda was externalizing all of her pain, Hayward could have been internalizing it, using it to harden himself into something akin to a robot. Let us know how hard it was to carry what felt like the weight of the world on your back for five years, and then see how that warped his thinking. He could have been unflinching in his views, but someone who we could have seen how they got there. But outside of a pity line that immediately lost any pity we had for him, it wasn't there. Hayward shooting the kids should have been a moment built up towards, not just another drop on his evilness bucket - the scene could have pulled double duty here is what I'm trying to say.

The Fietro twist is another one, but that's more on me for holding out hope. I'm still salty at the show for doing this, but I don't blame them for using meta-knowledge and fan expectation to get a twist. Far From Home did the same thing (to a much smaller effect, but the point still stands). It's par for the course for media now to do that. Heck, I'd almost be insulted if they didn't! Fans take knowledge of how stories go with them everywhere, and constant compare, exchange, and reevaluate information from separate sources into what they're doing now. We do it all the time, from learning a language, to making a food metaphor about something completely unrelated to food. And with the saturation of content all around us, why not use those sources to better a story?

This doesn't mean that my feelings are invalid. The story got me, and it frankly didn't make the story better or cooler, meaning the twist wasn't that good.** But it's NOT the show's fault for me being upset my theory was wrong. That's on me.

Next is the wrap up. There were a LOT of plot points to resolve in this episode, and not all of them got their due. Woo basically had to pull a Deus Ex Machina, Monica's powers are still horribly unexplained, and Darcy didn't really get the denouement she deserves. (And the lack of mentions of her time working with Thor was criminal!) This episode could have used an extra five to ten minutes, but since we'll definitely be seeing these characters again, I'm not too heartbroken.


Lastly is the weird stuff:

I'm now pretty salty about how the MCU is doing Agents of Shield dirty. Granted, it's far from a giant secret, but the Darkhold showing up was the final nail in the coffin. I'm now internally working a minor rewrite of the show to try and meld what happened in the Series Finale of AoS to what happened in WandaVision. It doesn't take too much, and it may be weird, but may fix some of the inconsistencies within the show. (I.e. how they were tracking Vision, given the reveal in Episode 8.) Granted, I can't work in everything, and there's no reason to make people watch a 7 season show for just some tie-ins, but I'd love it if fans of that show didn't feel as forgotten as they now do...

Spoiler: Agents of Shield Series Finale Spoilers

After the finale of AoS, SHIELD ultimately ended up merging with its sister company SWORD, and the latter came out on top. Mac steps down as leader since Hayward has been running both the remains of SHIELD and SWORD while the AoS team were on their adventures. The pressure has gotten to him, and we'd see more glimpses of that throughout the show and through small interactions between him and Monica.

The first thing Hayward does is keep Quake away from the action for as long as possible...her missions in space do a great job at that.

When Wanda visits Hayward, it doesn't go as planned. So he gives Mac a piece of Vision for Wanda to "bury," and Mac goes after Wanda. Mac doesn't really reach her in time, but the pieces fly towards Wanda later and are used in creating a piece of Vision that Hayward can then track.
The missing person that the FBI is after would then be seen as Mac, but a later reveal along with the tracking would show that Hayward sees Vision as the missing piece, not Mac.

The Darkhold would come up later, with Agnes either mentioning multiple copies - and potentially leading to more witches and storylines like that - or that she had to go through some nasty guys to get ahold of it. (Sorry Runaways! I don't know how to fold y'all in...)
Yo-Yo would show up later and have a super-speed battle with Fietro that'd end with Monica (or Tommy) ripping the beads off.

Ultimately, I don't think it's too much, but I'm also doing this off the top of my head.

Ultimately, WandaVision was a phenomenal show with a pretty decent ending. The journey is easily worth the destination, and even if this episode is far from my favorite, I'm still looking forward to what lies ahead. ...and am hoping for more Wanda and Vision shows.

P.S. - My dad unintentionally found figured out a funny way to think of this show. It's called WandaVision because there are two Visions: White-Vision and Wanda-Vision.


*Which is a stand-in for many of us, including myself.

**There's a great podcast on being a GM that called The GM's Guide. One of the episodes talks all about Plot Twists. This is my talk about plot twists, bar none. I occasionally go back and listen to it just because I think it's that good. I highly recommend this for any writers, GM'ers, or story-tellers. Or if you just want a really practical look at plot twists. (Other good sources are the videos by Trope Talk and Just Write.)

GM's Guide 32 - Plot Twists and How to Write Them - YouTube

The points boil down to five simple rules:
1. The initial assumption MUST be created. You need to create the false assumption before you can reveal that it's false.
2. The twist must be meaningful. If the twist doesn't change anything about the protagonist's goals, tactics, obstacles, or significance to our protagonists' quest, then it's just a distraction.
3. The twist must be post-dictable. The audience's mind needs to race back through the set-up and see all the clues.
4. The twist must be sensible. If the twist doesn't make sense, it undermines the reality and believability of the adventure/story, and the audience rejects the twist as a dumb idea.
5. The twist must make the adventure/story better and not worse. Going off to fight elder gods and realizing you're just marks for a long con? Bad twist. Realizing the man you're going to kill in retaliation for killing your father is your father? Good twist (if done well).

The Fietro twist does most of these really well, but it fails on Step 5 (and falters a little on Step 2). The idea of Fietro being another puppet for Agnes to use is infinitely less cool than the idea of him being an alternate world version of Pietro, even if that version is still under Agnes' control.


P.S.S - If I didn't ship Wanda/Vision and Kaladin/[REDACTED], I would totally ship Kaladin and Wanda. Although what both of them really need is a support group together...

 

I hope they explain it and not leave it as a cliff hanger