Mid-story rampant WandaVision speculation

So we just watched the latest episode of WandaVision here at the Murkworks, and I have GOT to sound off about this. Since I can’t do this safely on social media for fear of dropping spoilers, I’m going to do it here!

(Seriously, this post will be CHOCK FULL OF SPOILERS so if you haven’t seen WandaVision yet, for the love of all that’s holy, come back to this post later. If you clicked over to this post from one of my social media accounts, please leave comments on this post, and not on Facebook or Twitter. If you’re reading this post on either annathepiper.org or Dreamwidth, please be mindful that there will, repeat, will be spoilers in the comments.)

SPOILERS BEHIND THE HEX WALL!

Let me start this off by saying I’ve had absolutely no background with Scarlet Witch’s history in the comics, so all I know about that is what I’ve read on her Wikipedia page. That by itself, however, was enough to clue me in that the character has had a history of losing her shit a couple of times. Which is super problematic when you possess powers capable of warping reality.

So this right there has been informing my rampant speculation of whether what we’re seeing in this storyline is entirely caused by Wanda, whether there’s an external force at work, or maybe a little of both.

At this point, five episodes in, I’m inclined to believe it’s probably just Wanda whipping up the entire anomaly on her own. The MCU movies up till now have established–and tonight’s episode underscores this–that she is ridiculously, stupidly powerful. To the tune of, she was possibly the only power on Earth that could in fact have taken out Thanos.

Given this, she is entirely capable of whipping up this entire anomaly all on her own, on the strength of her own sheer raw power.

I also feel like having this not be all on Wanda kind of diminishes her a little? This is her story, I don’t want this to be a question of “oh, she only flipped the fuck out and turned the entire city of Westview into her personal sitcom playground because Some Bad Guy Over Here” (whoever that Bad Guy might be) “made her do it”.

And we’ve seen Monica herself pick up on the grief powering the entire situation. She’s clued in that this is all on Wanda, and what’s powering it is Wanda’s grief.

This whole episode, too, underscores that idea. Particularly when the dog dies, and she has to try to explain to Billy and Tommy that you can’t just age up out of dealing with a problem. I also note with interest that the kids absolutely knew she could bring living things back from the dead and she ducked that question real hard. Possibly because of Agnes right behind her going “… you can do that?”

But more because it is now explicitly clear that Wanda has set up this entire scenario because she resurrected Vision. (This, all by itself, is a huge meaty idea for the story to revolve around, and I feel like it would reduce the weight of that narrative if they tried to shoehorn in some kind of external motivator at this point. We have only four episodes left. Do not dilute your narrative, Marvel!)

And Vision’s starting to clue in. We’ve seen him acting on his own a few times now, without Wanda present. We’ve seen him using his own powers without her prompting. And now we also know he doesn’t remember anything about his prior existence. To wit: YIKES.

So how much of this is, some quantity of Vision still being dormant in his body? Was there enough of him physically left in his systems to have his core personality and powers intact? Or is he partially recreated from Wanda’s own memories of him?

While we’re on the topic of Wanda resurrecting people, YEP HI THERE QUICKSILVER.

I only know this because of reading Tor.com’s episode recap post tonight, but that Quicksilver? He’s the Quicksilver from the X-Men movies.

Which means hello Marvel Multiverse.

We now have a real interesting question before us of whether Wanda has manifested herself a brother out of whole cloth–or whether she punched a hole through the universes and yanked herself a brother out of the X-Men universe. And whether we now have an entry point for having the X-Men finally show up in the MCU.

Also of interest to me: Quicksilver in the X-Men movies is named Peter. Not Pietro. So we’ll need to be on the lookout for whether that’s going to show up in the final episodes here.

BUT WAIT I’M ALSO NOT DONE SPECULATING!

This is of course Wanda’s story predominantly–but we’ve also got Monica Rambeau actively in play here and I have a hefty pile of speculation about her, too.

I’m real interested to see whether we’re going to have her manifesting powers in this storyline. It seems like we may already be laying the groundwork for that, what with her funky X-rays dropping a big stone hint. Monica’s Wikipedia page says she gets super powers after being bombarded by extradimensional energy.

And, welp, she just got hit with a full bore cannon blast of Wanda’s power. Wanda, comma, the ridiculously, stupidly powerful. It would not surprise me in the slightest if that’s going to cause some changes.

We know she’s supposed to show up in the next Captain Marvel flick. So it’s going to be a real interesting question as to whether she’s going to have powers by then. Particularly now that we know from this episode that Carol Danvers is now something of a sore point with her!

Next, lol, anybody wanna place a bet as to whether the Asshole Director of SWORD is actually going to make it to the end of this plot alive? We were certainly expecting Wanda to cause his death when she made all the other armed agents turn their weapons on him…

But I think it’s worth calling out here that they didn’t actually shoot him.

Which, I feel, says something about Wanda’s influence here. She could have killed him on the spot. She didn’t. So far she hasn’t tipped over into full-on supervillain, and I am intrigued as all hell about how well this plotline so far is playing her. I’m really hoping that she remains “anti-hero” rather than going straight into “supervillain”.

Next thing I want to speculate about, a real interesting question the Tor.com article brings up: yeah, where the hell are the children of Westview? Has Wanda shunted them off somewhere?

Or has someone else shunted them off somewhere? Do we have a potential entry point here for Doctor Strange to show up? Because:

  1. Rumor keeps having it Wanda’s supposed to play a role in the next Doctor Strange flick;
  2. SWORD now knows that Wanda knows they’re there;
  3. SWORD also now knows that as many of them as there are on site, they are, every last one of them, currently way outclassed by the one single Avenger they just faced down;
  4. It would be a logical next move for them to review REAL FAST what other options they have and if there is anyone else they can call in for help;
  5. If there’s anybody on the planet who might have a chance at helping them make Wanda stand down, it’d be the Sorcerer Supreme;
  6. And even before they call him, it would also make absolute sense for Strange to already be very aware of what Wanda’s doing. Magical, metaphysical shit is his wheelhouse. So it would also not surprise me in the slightest if he’s already tried to intervene and is doing so by rescuing the children of Westview to get them out of the line of fire first.

But that said… I also kinda don’t want Strange to show up? Again for purposes of not wanting Wanda to be overshadowed in her own narrative, but also because the way this story is going, it really feels to me like the ultimate thing that’s going to pull her back from the brink of all this is Vision.

The scenes he’s had so far on his own, seeing things being clearly not right, and that last confrontation he has with Wanda about it (while she tries to roll the credits, lol), are laying a very clear trail to a final crisis point between them. What I’m seeing in this narrative is that he clearly has to ultimately call her out on what she’s doing. He’s already trying to, but hasn’t managed to break through to her yet.

And if anything, seeing this other “Pietro” show up, particularly if she has in fact punched a hole between universes and pulled him over, is saying to me that:

  1. Wanda’s starting to lose her grip on her fantasy; the kids are clearly out of her immediate control, and now she’s had her “brother” appear, too;
  2. There may be a very real possibility that if this is in fact the Quicksilver from the X-Men universe, a Quicksilver who does not share her history, is he going to stay under her control? Or is he going to show signs of “what the fuck is this you aren’t my sister what am I doing here?”, and contribute to her already fraying control?
  3. And if Vision sees this, is he going to have to drive home to her that this shit is not right and you have to stop it, put him back where you found him, Wanda honey?

Last but not least, and oh the feels at the very thought, here’s the question my household has also discussed tonight:

Is Vision actually going to survive this plot?

Or is he going to make Wanda put him back the way she found him?

AUUUUUUUGH!

I need the next episode NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW.

EDITING TO ADD: Oh oh oh and I’ll put this in as an addendum, because this was also an interesting side discussion in my household tonight. Namely: Wanda’s running out of decades of sitcoms to play in, so how much farther can she actually go?

We’ve only got four episodes left in the story, which suggests she won’t have time to run out of decades. But if she did, it’d be an interesting question indeed as to what she’d do. Would she cycle back around to the 50s and start over?

Dara pointed out that American sitcoms do have a history of being a thing in Eastern European nations. Which Sokovia is. And it would be totally plausible that Wanda watched a boatload of American sitcoms as a child. They may in fact represent “what happiness should be like” to a critical part of her subconscious, if she got all that imagery into her brain during her formative years. Particularly before things went to hell and she and her brother wound up in the hands of Hydra.

9 Replies to “Mid-story rampant WandaVision speculation”

  1. So, a couple of comments as someone who’s been besotted with Marvel since I was about six (Howard the Duck was not at all what six year old me expected, but I loved it and Dr. Strange).

    1. Since the Disney/Fox merger, we knew mutants would eventually come to MCU, we just didn’t know what form it would take.

    2. The INSTANT I heard about WandaVision, I thought about the ‘No More Mutants’ thing tied to House of M, which was the result of the loss of her & Vision’s kids. Wouldn’t it be funny if what got rid of mutants in comics was what introduced mutants in MCU? Nice symmetry. I’m here for it.

    3. It’s not allllll Wanda. There are some things she can’t control. Remember the stork? The one who ‘brought’ the babies? The one she couldn’t banish, but her attempts prompted a pillar of red smoke (not her thing). In the comics, the children’s souls are actually fragments of Mephisto’s. She draws her energies from the Dark Dimension, if I am remembering correctly.

    4. Shuri had /almost/ backed up Vision’s personality before Thanos came busting in. Meaning, there are multiple ways Vis could be brought back now.

    5. Using the casting from the Fox movies for Pietro was unexpected, but not completely out of the realm of possibility. It doesn’t necessarily mean the rest of the cast will stay the same.

    Honestly, I’m surprised the big reveal came this early. Can’t wait to see where they go from here!

    1. I think there’s a legit question here of whether the things Wanda hasn’t directly controlled are a matter of “is this just because her control over the situation is not absolute, so some things go a little haywire”, or “somebody else is actively controlling the situation”.

      I saw the references to House of M and Mephisto on her Wikipedia page, yeah, both of which are very intriguing possibilities!

      But ooh here’s a thought. I do keep waffling on whether I want Strange to show up in this plot–and I wonder whether the stork might have been an early attempt of his to find a way into the situation. I can’t speak to the comics version of the character, but MCU!Strange absolutely has the kind of cunning, methodical mind that’d make him look for a subtle way to scout out the situation first before he comes in person.

      The more I think about this, though, the more I suspect we’re going to see him. Specifically because Wanda’s supposed to show up in his next movie. What’ll be real interesting here is whether this plot is going to establish the circumstances as to how she’ll be in that next movie.

  2. Did the X-men movies even have a Wanda? I only remember Pietro (Peter?) from them. But I haven’t gotten around to watching the most recent one yet. (And I have reasons to doubt my memory in general.)

    The repeated Hydra motif in the (in show) commercials makes me think there’s something more than just Wanda at work here — but I agree most of what we’re seeing here is her power. (Also, the boss’s questions in the first episode seemed suspiciously like they were very intentional, if you know what I mean. Oh, and maybe the senseless “Stops’ from the boss’s wife were Wanda trying to reassert control?)

    The point about the missing children is really, really good, though.

    1. Quicksilver appears in the three recent X-Men movies I haven’t seen–Days of Future Past, Apocalypse, and Dark Phoenix. And I don’t know this for a positive fact, but I’m pretty sure that those movies don’t have a Wanda/Scarlet Witch.

      Maybe they avoided putting a Wanda into those movies specifically because the MCU had an active Wanda and did NOT have an active Quicksilver? Dunno!

      I keep going back and forth re: Strange, because a) we do know Wanda’s supposed to show up in his next movie, b) it kinda would make sense if he’s pulled the children aside to safety, and c) if anybody has the ability to drive home to Wanda that “hey, you have world-rattling amounts of power, you really need to have a grip on how to control it, and I can show you how”, it’s Strange.

      And now that Vision himself brought up the whole “where are the children?” question, it is active in the plot. It’ll be real interesting to see how they answer this.

      1. Hi! I’m just up to speed on Wandavision, so I could read this. :-)

        I agree that it ought to be on Wanda, and not some unseen Big Bad. However, I definitely think that there’s something we don’t know about Agnes.

        X-Men: Days of Future Past came out in 2014, *before* Avengers: Age of Ultron which came out in 2015, so the MCU Quicksilver had not yet been killed off. I don’t think there really was any coordination between the two franchises at all at the time. They had just agreed that both had the right to use Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch (but no, X-Men never actually used her), but MCU couldn’t call them mutants or mention the Magneto parentage.

        I read that Evan Peters/X-Men Quicksilver was disappointed that his MCU counterpart was killed off. He’d have liked to compare the two different takes on the character. Also, I believe that the two of them know each other. They were in Kick-Ass together.

        I understand that things went screwy with the pandemic, and the next Doctor Strange movie was originally meant to come first. I wonder how much each were charged now that Wandavision became the place to introduce us to the post-Endgame Wanda. Would the X-Men Quicksilver have come so completely out of the blue? Will Wanda’s Doctor Strange appearance be before or after this?

        I thought Endgame and Spider-man: Far From Home skipped a bit of mentioning what complete chaos there must have been when half the Earth’s population suddenly reappeared after having been missing for five years. This was the first time we really saw some of that. Or… I’m not up to date on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Has it dealt with that?

        Frankly, I was on a bit of a Marvel overload, so a year’s rest was pretty welcome, in fact. But now I’m starting to be impatient for more again.

        Have you noticed that the pandemic and the resulting hiatus has helped to realign the timeline? The current year in the MCU has to be 2023, which we’re closer to than we would have been. :-)

        However, the X-Men timeline is a *complete* mess. Days of Future Past had time travel shenanigans that excused some, but not how characters don’t age. Quicksilver was introduced in that, but that was supposed to be in the 70s.

        Finally, AAARGH! I watched Wandavision past midnight. Then suddenly I realised that I had broken my 700 day Duolingo streak. :-(

        1. I am likewise not versed with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.—we stopped watching that a couple episodes in on season 1, so I have no idea what they’ve done throughout the rest of the show.

          A possibility I saw discussed since the last episode—and which will be REAL interesting to see, if they’re going in this direction—is the idea that this other Quicksilver might have shown up not at Wanda’s doing, but at _Billy’s_. I’ve seen some talk about that one of her kids in particular having a history in the comics of significant powers after she manifested them into being, and Billy in particular is supposed to be powerful enough to be a potential Sorcerer Supreme. So it’d be real interesting to see if Billy went and grabbed his mother a version of her brother just because he thought it’d make her happier!

          Great thoughts about the timeline coming more into line with reality, I guess that’s a nice little silver lining to this whole pandemic mess. :) And yeah, I’ve kind of appreciated the Marvel break myself, it’s let me recharge my affection for the MCU. And gotten me pleased about seeing a little tidbit of adventure and awesomeness every week! My house is appreciating having an episode every week to look forward to, it gives us time to savor and discuss them before the next one shows up!

          I don’t know yet when the next Strange movie is supposed to fall in in-universe time in relation to this story, but I also haven’t gone looking for that data. I’d be real surprised if it came before it though, at this point.

          1. Talking about the kids, I am reminded of an ancient MAD magazine parody, from way back when it was a comic book that satirised other comics. In this case Gasoline Alley, which was unique for having characters age. The kids aging at will was awfully close to a scene in this satire:

            http://jeffoverturf.blogspot.com/2012/04/gasoline-valley-bill-elder-mad-mondays.html

            I don’t actually know the strip, though.

            Which is some of the same problem I have with Wandavision. I am not really familiar with the shows it references. For starters, there *wasn’t* any TV in Norway in the 50s. And from the 60s to the 80s we only had the one single state owned and licence funded channel, mostly with programming from 6 to 11 pm. Five hours per day. And there was strong pressure to keep the programming wholesome and educational. One or two comedies per week, maybe, usually on Wednesdays.

            People living near the Swedish border got their two channels as well, and in the 80s some people started getting satellite broadcasts. With advertising! Horrors! In the 90s, the broadcasting monopoly was abolished. I think the American influence increased a lot around then.

            And only last year did they remove the license fee. From now on, the state owned broadcasting is funded by taxes. It seems more or less assumed now that everybody has TVs.

            1. Thank you for sharing this tidbit of Norway history with me! :)

              Mind you, I have only a partial grounding in some of these sitcoms myself. Bewitched, mostly, because I remember watching that in reruns when I was a kid. And the Dick Van Dyke show just because we’ve occasionally watched that here at the Murkworks when we’re in the mood to watch something vintage–and it was really rather delightful. But the more recent ones they’re referencing, I have no grounding with at all.

              1. You’re welcome.

                Just watched episode 7.

                I *knew* that something was wrong with that character! I said so! :-D

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