"WandaVision" Episodes 7, 8 and 9

Starring: Elizabeth Olson, Paul Bettany, Kathryn Hahn, Teyonah Parris, Randall Park, Kat Dennings, Josh Stamberg, Evan Peters, Julian Hillard, Jett Klyne, Debra Jo Rupp, Emma Caulfield Ford, Jolene Purdy, Asif Ali, David Payton, David Lengel, Selena Anduze, Ilana Kohanchi, Daniyar


Episode 7: "Breaking the Fourth Wall" (or: Modern Development)

Welcome to the era of mockumentary comedy, which started with The Office and was carried into family sitcom by Modern Family and Arrested Development. Nobody really knows why these characters were all making a documentary or who it was being made for, but characters have been speaking directly to the audience ever since.

We begin with Wanda waking up in bed and looking groggily at the empty spot beside her. In a cutaway she defensively says we've all had moments of letting fear and anger get the best of us, right? And sometimes you just have to expand the borders of your little make believe world to deal with it. We get a little flashback of agents being swallowed by the Hex wall and go back to Wanda laying in bed. She groans and pulls the blankets over her head.

The twins run in to ask if she's coming downstairs anytime soon. Billy says there's something wrong with their video game. We get a little flash of the controllers changing models right in their hands while they're playing like Wanda is updating the era in the middle of the day or something. After a couple switches, they turn into Uno cards like 'fuck it, whatever.' Tommy asks if she's sleeping. From under the covers she says no, she's just resting her eyes. Billy complains about all the noise in his head making him feel weird, which would be alarming in any other context, but here...
Chrissy: That's nice, dear. As long as the voices don't tell you to kill your brother, we're fine.
Wanda just repeats that she's resting her eyes, which they take as their cue to leave.

Cutaway Wanda says she's decided to self quarantine/take a staycation as punishment for her recklessness last night. After the boys leave, Wanda throws off the blankets to reveal that she's still wearing her Scarlet Witch costume from the last episode. She groans.

Downstairs, the boys are fighting over...something...when Wanda ambles down in sweats and a robe, breezing past them like she's not even going to address whatever that is. They look at each other and shrug.

Wanda pulls a bottle of almond milk out of the fridge and puts it on the counter. She pulls a box of "Sugar Snaps" cereal (oh, bad joke) out of a cabinet and turns back to find the bottle turning into a carton of Vitamin D milk. She just blinks and pours a bowl. The carton turns back into a different bottle as she sets it down. She stares at it like she's daring it to do that again and sniffs at the cereal before jamming a spoonful in her mouth. "Yeah, I'm not sure what that's about," she says in a cutaway. "It's probably just a case of the Mondays." I guess the normal human equivalent of this is going on a bender and having a hangover. Like, 'I overdid it on the magic last night and now I can't control anything and thank god that dog isn't still around because I would definitely turn him into a squirrel by accident.'

And then even though this is supposed to be from the 2000s, the credits are apparently a homage to a more recent show by one of the producers. It's just Wanda's name this time, in different writing and different locations, including a closed sign that says "Sorry, we're Wanda" and a creepy ransom note that says "I know what u are doing Wanda". It ends with her name on a calendar where the month should be. The number 10 is circled with a heart. Vision's name is added belatedly like 'yeah, he's still here' as well as the words "created by Wanda Maximoff".

Outside, what is left of the SWORD team is gathered what the chyron says is 8 miles outside the border of Westview. Hayward stands beside another agent who is looking at the dome in the distance (which now has more sharply defined lines in places) and she says they're lucky Wanda stopped when she did. He snorts and asks what's going on with the broadcast. She says it's turned to dead air. He's like yeah, fine. "We launch today."

Vision wakes up in the grass on the inside. He blinks at the circus performers and checks that he's whole again after having parts ripped off him last night. One of the performers wanders over and asks if he's the new clown. "At least you're already in makeup. You're late for rehearsals with the escape artist." He indicates Darcy, who is standing beside the converted vehicle she was cuffed to, but now the cuffs are chains wrapped around her. In cutaway, she notes that she's not very good at "this gig" which is why she actually applied for the job of bearded lady.
Chrissy: Oh, are we going to make her annoying again? Yay.

Vision approaches her slowly and asks if she remembers him from last night. Which is always a good first question to ask. He's pretty sure their eyes met while he was kneeling on the ground screaming in pain and they shared some sort of "understanding".
Chrissy: You are deliberately phrasing it that way for my benefit, aren't you?
Diandra: Maybe.
She just says "hard pass" and shrugs off the chains, stomping off. He chases after her.

Back at the house, Wanda asks the boys around a mouthful of cereal if they've seen their dad. Tommy says no. Billy offers to go look for him. She says no, if he doesn't want to be here then there's nothing she can do about it. She grabs the remote and changes the channel. Billy hesitantly brings up that thing their uncle said last night about dad dying... Wanda says he shouldn't believe that man because "he's not your uncle." Tommy asks who he is then.
Chrissy: Some guy we borrowed from another studio. Whatever.
Diandra: He might be your uncle in some universe, somewhere with wonky timelines. Who knows?
She clearly doesn't know how to answer that, so she just gives a little speech about them expecting her to have all the answers because she's their mom, right? But yeah, she doesn't. She has no fucking clue. "I'm starting to believe that everything is meaningless. You're welcome to draw your own conclusions, of course, but that's where I'm at." The boys look alarmed and say nothing. In cutaway, she admits that she may have gone a little too dark, but...they'll be fine. Kids are resilient and their dad is literally made of the strongest material on the planet.

She sits on the couch between them. There's a knock at the door and she magics it open, calling "Hi, Agnes," without looking and laughing that she would get up "but I just don't want to." Agnes looks sideways at the camera, a smile frozen on her face. In her own cutaway, she tells the audience that she got there just in time because "she was one split end away from cutting her own bangs." Which is a euphemism for crazy I've never heard before.

Agnes offers to take the kids so their mom can have some "me time". Billy objects that somebody has to stay and take care of her. Wanda - with too much enthusiasm - insists she will be fine and they should just GO! Go! Run like the wind! Now!
Chrissy: I love you kids so much. Get out.
Diandra: Basically. What did we say about the shift in parenting strategies again?
Agnes jokingly promises she won't bite them. Then in cutaway she admits she actually did bite a kid once.
Chrissy: In my defense, he totally deserved it.
Wanda asks if there's anything she can do for Agnes because she's a "lifesaver". Agnes starts rucking up her shirt and says actually she has this mole on her back. Wanda looks alarmed and Agnes stops doing that and apologizes for crossing a boundary there. Then she asks the boys if one of them can look at it while she's herding them out the door.

Wanda turns on the television and settles in on the couch with her cereal. Then there's a noise and the little potted plant by the fireplace turns into a ficus tree. The fireplace turns into one of those wood burning things. The chair by the TV and the TV itself glitch and turn into older models. She puts down the bowl of cereal and makes a gesture to turn everything back to period appropriate decor. In cutaway, she hysterically insists that she's fine. Fine. FinefinefineFINE. Fine.
Chrissy: Because saying it that many times is totally convincing.

On the road outside, Jimmy gets the message Darcy sent him before all hell broke loose. It's a message about finding a bunch of "R and D reports" on a Project Cataract behind that last firewall on Hayward's computer. Turns out, Hayward wasn't "decommissioning" Vision. He was trying to get him working again. And he was unsuccessful until Wanda stormed in. They conclude that this explains why he's tracking VISION inside the Hex: he wants his weapon back. Jimmy says they should tell Wanda.

But first, they arrive at a little convoy with a bunch of military people setting up equipment. A woman heads right toward Monica and Monica greets her as Major Goodner. "Thank you so much for coming. My mother would appreciate your loyalty." Yep. Another debate about what major character they would bring in shot down.
Chrissy: It probably didn't help that they kept teasing a big cameo.
Diandra: Was anyone other than Paul Bettany doing that or was that just wishful thinking? Because I know he had to apologize for his dumb joke about working with himself, but I'm not sure that's where all the rumors stemmed from. I'm also not clear on the timeline of that. Were they floating those rumors BEFORE COVID shut everything down and forced them to abandon any plans they might have had to overlap this with "Doctor Strange 2" and sneak Benedict in to do a scene?
Chrissy: I think at that point everyone knew Elizabeth was going to be in that movie, so Doctor Strange appearing would not have been a surprise.
Diandra: Yeah, maybe. We'll get into insane fan expectations a lot more in the next couple episodes, I'm sure. But for now: this show was never going to bring in the X-Men or the Fantastic Four. Get over it.

Goodner shows them the insane armored monstrosity they came up with for getting Monica safely through the Hex wall. Monica smiles and declares it perfect.

Back inside, Vision is still chasing after Darcy, insisting that she tried to help him last night. She scoffs and says that can't be right because "I'm notoriously self-involved."
Chrissy: Well, at least you're aware of it.
He cuts her off and begs her to just listen. He says he thinks she was part of a team monitoring an "anomaly" that has now swallowed her. She sighs and says FINE, she'll go on a date with him. She starts to walk away and he grabs her head, jolting her out. She wobbles and groans and says part of her may secretly have wanted a cameo on Wanda's show, but "that sucked." He asks what her real name is and identifies her as the person whose communication he intercepted back in the 80s. He has questions for her. The guy who thought Vision was the new clown yells at them to get on the stage and she offers to take the funnel cake van and escape. The ring leader tries to manhandle her in the direction of the tent anyway and she punches him in the nose and runs for the van. Vision climbs in with her and says anyway, his first question is are the children safe? She doesn't know. He asks who the hell that Pietro impostor was. She doesn't know that either. She finds the key to the van and they drive away, the ring leader yelling angrily after them.

Back home, Wanda has apparently finished her cereal and gets off the couch. The dining room furniture and lamp change, followed by the curtains and wallpaper. Then the entire wall the fireplace is on seems to blink in and out. The stairs warble and the stork from the 70s episode runs across the room, squawking in alarm. In cutaway, she quietly admits that she has no fucking clue what's going on here. Things are falling apart and she can't fix it. A voice from behind the camera asks if maybe this is what she deserves and she's like 'what the hell, you don't have any lines back there. What are you doing?'

Commercial! Commercial lady is sitting on a bench in the park, looking mopey while her kids play. The narrator asks if the viewer is feeling depressed. Clouds roll in overhead as she continues to describe feeling like the world is going on without "you" and "you" just want to be left alone.
Chrissy: Yeah, it's called being an introvert.
Diandra: And I don't need medication for it, thanks.
Commercial lady falls back into a bed on a different set as the narrator suggests asking your doctor about Nexus. "A unique anti-depressant that works to anchor you back to your reality. Or the reality of your choice." Commercial lady gets up from the bed and wanders into a pharmacy while the narrator rattles off the possible side effects of the medication, which are "feeling your feelings, confronting your truth, seizing your destiny and possibly more depression." It honestly looks like every parody of every one of these damn drug ads ever. The pharmacist hands commercial lady a box of the pills and she steps outside smiling while the narrator finishes with the slogan "because the world doesn't revolve around you. Or does it?"
Chrissy: So...given what we know from "Loki" about Nexus events and the fact that Wanda's thread going into "Doctor Strange 2" is about the multiverse...
Diandra: Apparently in the comics she IS what is referred to as a Nexus being. It's why Doctor Strange and Professor X were trying so desperately to reign her in: she can alter reality. We're kind of stumbling backwards into her being more in line with her comics origins now, I think. She said something in one of the comics I read to the effect of "I'm not a witch. I'm a mutant whose abilities happen to look like magic."
Chrissy: And the fact that the X-Men and Avengers were so segregated that no one in the MCU was even allowed to say "mutant" for the longest time complicated her role in it.
Diandra: Exactly.

At Agnes' house, the boys are on the couch with the TV on and Billy has Senior Scratchy in his lap, feeding him a leaf of lettuce. Agnes plops on the couch with them and asks Billy what he's thinking. He says he likes it here. Agnes suggests that's because of the rabbit. He says no, he just likes the quiet. He looks at her pointedly and says SHE is "quiet. On the inside." Tommy is like 'redirect!' He asks if their mom is okay. Agnes blusters that she's fine and they don't need to worry about her because she can do ANYTHING.
Chrissy: [muttering] Yeah, she can move mountains if she puts her mind to it. And that's not a euphemism.
She gives the camera that wide-eyed look again and in cutaway says Ralph always chides her for "sugarcoating" things, but she just couldn't tell a 10 year old that his mom is sailing off the edge of the map to crazytown.

Outside, soldiers are putting Monica into what looks like a spacesuit. Jimmy expresses regret that Darcy isn't with them right now to reassure her. Monica vows to get her out of the Hex and climbs into the armored tank. Jimmy sidles over to Goodner and asks how much faith she has in "that thing". She says in their most state of the art space rover? Yeah, Monica will be fine. They make sure she's on the monitor before she straps herself in and floors the accelerator. When she hits the wall of the Hex, the rover stops and struggles to break through. Jimmy is like 'so much for that assessment, ma'am.' Goodner boggles that the Hex is matching her density to keep her out. Monica insists it will give and keeps going until the front wheels actually lift off the ground and it tries to drive up the wall. The floor of the vehicle starts glitching and Goodner notes that the tank is actually disintegrating. Jimmy corrects that it's being "rewritten" and barks at Monica to get out. Monica climbs out as the tank is swallowed halfway and then violently spit back, the front end having been transformed into a pickup truck. Monica looks at it, looks at Jimmy and despite his yelling protests drops her helmet and runs at the Hex.

She yells and has flashbacks of dialogue from her mom and Fury and Carol as she struggles to move through the barrier. Her eyes glow bright blue by the time she breaks through the other side, but nothing else about her has changed this time. She blinks at the electronic echo she seems to be able to see now and her eyes go back to normal. She takes off the space suit and starts running.

Apparently Darcy has been filling Vision in on everything since we last checked in with them. He summarizes that Wanda killed him. Darcy says yes, but he asked her to, to save the universe. He asks if it worked.
Chrissy: Uh...........eventually?
She says yes, but then the "bad guy" rewound time and killed him again, so... she had to watch him die twice. They stop at a red light in the middle of nowhere and Darcy groans that there are WAY too many of these in an area that clearly doesn't get much traffic. In cutaway, Vision says he thinks Wanda is trying to stop him from coming home. To support that theory, a bunch of construction workers suddenly show up to block the vehicle before they can move again. He looks at the camera pointedly. He gets back to the original topic, noting that his original programming comes from an AI named Jarvis, but his body was created because...something something Ultron robot genocide. He asks what he is now then.
Chrissy: Nobody fucking knows.

Darcy doesn't know how Wanda brought him back to life and that is NOT her field of science. She also doesn't know why he can't leave the Hex. But what she's seen of them in that production Wanda has been broadcasting shows that they really do love each other.

Back at the house, Monica bursts through the front door calling Wanda's name. Wanda, who has just taken some Nexus pills, asks how the hell she got in here. Monica just hurriedly says this whole thing is about Vision and Hayward trying to bring him back online and... Wanda hits her with some red wiggly woos and says she doesn't want to TALK about that. She magics Monica out of the house, raving about first drones and missiles and Pietro... Monica yelps that Pietro wasn't them. Wanda snarls that all she does is LIE and slams her to the ground. Monica does the three point superhero landing and her eyes glow blue again briefly. Wanda gasps, startled. Monica stands and says the only lies she has said are the ones Wanda MADE her say and if she wants to "take me out" then she should just do it already. Wanda is spinning balls of red, but doesn't make any further move toward Monica. Monica smiles victoriously because this is proof that she is different from Hayward, who is determined to raze the town to the ground now to get Vision back. "Don't let him make you the villain." Wanda bitterly suggests it's too late for that.

Dennis the mailman and Dotty are hovering nearby, uncertain of what they should be doing. Agnes peeks out her window at the commotion and makes a face.

Monica tries to appeal to Wanda, saying she lost the person closest to her too recently. And she can't do anything about it or control the pain of her grief, but she doesn't think she wants to. "Because it's my truth." Agnes cuts in suddenly to tell Monica to get lost because Wanda "has been through enough." Monica snaps that this doesn't concern her. Agnes glares like 'yes it does' and she herds Wanda away while Monica begs her to take down the Hex.

The construction workers finish messing with the stoplight and clear out. Darcy starts to cross the intersection, but is stopped again by a sudden crossing of a bus load of school children. In the middle of nowhere. In cutaway, Vision rambles about how much he and Wanda suffered before coming to Westview and he didn't realize. Mostly because he doesn't remember it and feels like it happened to someone else. He shakes himself and asks what he's doing sitting here talking to a camera crew. "This is absurd," he declares, ripping his mic off and storming off. Back in the van, he just morphs himself out through the ceiling and flies off.

Agnes settles Wanda on her couch and goes to get her a cup of tea. Wanda looks at the plates of half eaten food on the coffee table with the kids show playing on the TV in the background and realizes something is wrong. She looks at the rabbit in its cage and a bug climbing the curtains and warily asks where the twins are. Agnes says they're probably playing in the basement. Wanda goes to find the basement, calling their names as she descends past a relatively normal space into a vine covered stone labyrinth. She reaches a big room with runes on the walls and a curio cabinet full of artifacts and a book that is oozing magical smoke. Agnes appears behind her, clutching the rabbit and tsks that she really thought she was the only magical being in town. She flicks her wrist and the door to the room slams shut. She says by the way, her name is really Agatha Harkness. Her eyes glow purple and she seems to mesmerize Wanda.

And now we get another credit sequence jogging through moments from all of the previous episodes to the tune of "It Was Agatha All Along" She touches down on the sidewalk outside, her purple robes turning into her 50s outfit while the whole town turns black and white. She makes a "shh" gesture at the camera. During the 60s episode, she was spinning a ball of purple magic from her table in the talent show audience. In the 70s, we see her messing with Herb's mind. In the 80s, she conjured Pietro. In the 90s, she faked being under Wanda's control when she talked to Vision. And in the current episode, she was the interviewer asking Wanda if she "deserves" what is happening. At the end of the song, we snap back to the 80s with her holding the bundle of dead dog and she cackles "and I killed Sparky, too!" Her insane laughter is cut off by the Please Stand By screen.
Chrissy: Speaking as someone who didn't have a clue who Agatha Harkness was before going into this show...I didn't see that coming the first time around.
Diandra: I still don't really know who she is. She was only mentioned briefly in, like, one comic I read and it was obvious the reader was supposed to understand who she was already. All I know basically comes from this show and the fans screeching "I KNEW IT" after this episode aired.
Chrissy: You don't say "aired" when it's streaming.
Diandra: Became available? Whatever. I'm still not used to this streaming nonsense. I don't even understand the concept of binge watching. How are people finding the time for that? Do they not have jobs? School? Something?
Chrissy: Careful. You're in danger of sounding like an old fart there.
Diandra: Back in my day we had VCRs that we could use to watch shows WHENEVER WE WANTED and we could FAST FORWARD THROUGH THE COMMERCIALS.
Chrissy: Like that, yes.
Diandra: I don't even care. Damn kids anyway. They'll never know the pain of having to wind a cassette tape or figure out what the fuck an 8-Track is and why anybody thought it was a good idea.

And we have a first mid credit scene. Such as it is. It just consists of Monica, who followed the two witches to "Agnes'" house peeking in all the windows before finding an unlocked cellar door. She opens it to see another purple magic vine covered trail leading underground. And "Pietro" appears beside her like 'whassup, Snoopy?'
Chrissy: It's probably fitting that they waited to do any mid or post credit stuff until we ditched the sitcom eras framework. Probably signals a return to normal Marvelverse.
Diandra: Huh. Yeah, that makes sense. Except Hawkeye didn't do a post credit until the very last episode and completely wasted it on a Broadway musical number.
Chrissy: So I take it we're not recapping that.
Diandra: Maybe a partial. We'll see.

Episode 8: "Previously On" (or: Now for an Exposition Dump)
Episode 9: "The Series Finale" (or: Wanda VS the Evil Witch)

Now that we're no longer doing the whole sitcom from various eras structure, the divide between these two episodes is pretty arbitrary. So, I'll probably just treat them like one long episode that could have been longer if a bunch of things hadn't been scrapped. Some due to COVID and some just due to standard "we thought it would be cool but actually doing it turned out to be a headache". Like Doctor Strange wearing Iron Man armor in "Infinity War".

Chrissy: Because IronStrange isn't just a very popular ship!
Diandra: Neither is Captain Strange. One of my favorite "this canon is bananas" details from the comics is the time when Gamora folded the universe in half and all the superheroes merged with each other. Steve Rogers and Stephen Strange resisted being separated again because of some ethical Tuvix situation, I think.
Chrissy: Tuvix...
Diandra: Star Trek reference.
Chrissy: Why am I not surprised?

Anyway, before we get back to that whole reveal in Agatha's dungeon, we have to flash back to fill in some backstory about her.

The opening fanfare ends on the Marvel title card, which goes from red (Wanda's color) to purple (Agatha's color) and dissolves in smoke. And then we're in Salem, Massachusetts in 1693. Yes, she is one of THOSE witches. She is dragged squealing in protest to a stake and secured to it with blue magic. The stake is surrounded by women in black robes and the leader accuses her of betraying the coven by stealing knowledge "above your age and station" and practicing dark magic. Agatha yelps that she has no idea what they're talking about and she didn't do anything wrong. The Supreme snaps at her to quit the deceptions and the terror just drops off her face like 'okay, fine.'
Chrissy: Ask me how I can tell by that last sentence that your knowledge of witches comes from "American Horror Story".
Diandra: Yeah, well. There's already a Sorcerer Supreme and an Iron Man Supreme in Marvelworld, apparently, so.

Agatha says she didn't break their rules, she's just so powerful that she...bent them. Because that isn't a problem, right? The other witches all start chanting in Latin, blue magic smoke forming around their hands and Agatha starts yelping again about how they could TEACH her to control it. She appeals specifically to "mother", and it's unclear if that's just the title for the leader of the coven or if she's actually her mother. "Mother" just joins in the chanting and Agatha's face falls. The other witches send blasts of energy into her and she screams and her skin seems to glow. After a minute though, she stops screaming and the energy beams turn purple and start flowing back toward the other women, who seem to have the life start draining out of them. Mother levitates and sends another beam into her chest, but she doesn't even flinch. She breaks the magic around her hands and sends a blast out to all of them. The magic beams break and everyone but mother falls down, their bodies mummified. Agatha pleads with Mother that she can be good if she would just give her a chance. Mother says no, she can't and blasts her with an energy beam again. This time the change of the beam reversing and turning purple is more obvious and slow. Mother desiccates and falls to the ground. Agatha climbs down from the pyre and plucks the broach from Mother's shawl.

In the present, Agatha pretends the rabbit is talking to her and giggles that Wanda does seem really surprised to see the real them, doesn't she?
Chrissy: She's not seeing the real Scratchy though, is she?
Diandra: Yeah, this was one of the things that was abandoned possibly because it would have been too complicated. In the comics, her son is Nicholas Scratch and there might have been a reveal that she turned him into a rabbit in this show at some stage of production, but it was abandoned.
Wanda's eyes glow red and Agatha laughs that that is "adorable" because Wanda was never able to control her. She puts the rabbit in a cage and the closed captioning notes that this involves "chittering", so he's probably swearing at her in rabbit or something.
Chrissy: You said this rabbit thing would only be TEMPORARY!

Wanda slides back into her Sokovian accent as she asks where the children are. Agatha notes that her accent "really comes and goes, doesn't it?" Wanda tries to blast her with a ball of energy, but nothing happens. Agatha binds her hands behind her back with her own magic and levitates her into the center of the room and points out the "protection spells" on each wall that prevent her from using her magic. Wanda looks at the glowing purple runes above the doors while Agatha cites a rule about only the witch casting the runes in a given space can use magic within it and boggles that Wanda doesn't even know the basics of witchcraft. Wanda asks who she is anyway. Agatha wants to know who SHE is first, because she's apparently been biding her time, waiting for Wanda to reveal who she is through this tour of American sitcoms. She almost succeeded with Fake Pietro, who she possessed and controlled like a puppet because resurrecting the real thing was out of the question. Not because she can't, possibly, but because his bullet perforated body is buried in Sokovia. She was lucky Wanda actually bought the replacement thing. You know, I'm starting to think that casting the guy who played Quicksilver in another series as an in-joke was a mistake. Not because it wasn't awesome and totally in line with the sitcom thing, but because the fanbase is too dense to understand that it was always just an in-joke and never about merging universes and they are unreasonably angry about it still.
Chrissy: These are the same wingnuts who claim Tom Cruise HAS to be Iron Man Supreme and point to a picture that is clearly a black person as proof that he's in "Doctor Strange 2", right?
Diandra: .......yes. But they claim they were validated in their anger over the whole Evan Peters thing by the fact that they were right about "No Way Home", ultimately. Their main evidence of which, before the movie was released, was pictures that had clearly been photoshopped.

Anyway. Agatha came to Westview because she "sensed" the "afterglow of so many spells cast all at once" and was drawn to it. She plucks a cicada from the wall and performs a quick spell on it while she rambles about how mind control is easy, but controlling thousands of people interacting in complex plots? She turns the cicada into a bird and lets it fly around the room before catching it and threatening to strangle it mid-rant about how it takes YEARS to master illusions and Wanda somehow is able to generate them ALL OVER THE GODDAMN TOWN without even trying. She throws the bird at the rabbit - who is apparently NOT in a cage, sorry - and he eats it. "I need you to tell me how you did this." Wanda says she didn't do anything. Agatha slams her against a wall angrily before saying that she already TRIED to be gentle. "To nudge you awake from this ridiculous fantasy. But you would rather fall apart than face your truth." So...enough of this. She's just gonna shake her until answers fall out now. She plucks one of Wanda's hairs and chants in Latin over it, flinging it toward one of the doors when it glows purple. The door goes from the ornate stone thing of her dungeon to a plain white wood. She says it's time they "look at some real reruns."

Agatha drops the spell holding Wanda suspended and orders her to come through the door. Wanda initially resists until Agatha somehow prompts the boys to yell for mom from somewhere in the cavernous magic basement. Then she staggers through the door into an apartment decorated with what Agatha identifies as "Cold War aesthetic". Wanda identifies the woman in the kitchen as "mama". A man comes in the front door with a suitcase. He is, of course, "papa". Mama puts the suitcase on the couch and opens it. It is full of DVD sets. "Who's the Boss", "I Dream of Jeannie", "I Love Lucy", "Malcolm in the Middle", "Bewitched" and "Addams Family" are visible. In subtitled Sokovian, Papa tells Mama he will sell them tomorrow. Pietro comes in excitedly reminding Papa that he must speak English because that is their rule for TV night: they must practice. Papa asks where Pietro's sister is and Agatha shoves Wanda forward. The camera spins around and she's suddenly a little girl, welcoming daddy home. He says she gets to pick what they watch. She looks in the suitcase and says her favorite isn't there. Papa says he put it in safekeeping before going to the hole in the wall covered by a quilt. Mama peeks out the window for a moment so we can see the war torn streets below which is the site of a current battle.

Papa pulls out a complete "Dick Van Dyke" set that was sitting on a shoebox presumably holding valuables. Pietro groans that Wanda wants THIS again while Papa cues up Wanda's favorite episode from season 2. Mama says Rob and Laura had the best shenanigans and they discuss what that word means. Papa highlights why the format might be a comfort to Wanda: the plots always featured "silly mischief that always becomes fine" in the end. The sound sort of fades and we get a few shots of Wanda watching scenes of the show with rapt attention, giggling happily, while somber music plays. And then there is a sudden explosion and the kids are jolted out of frame and everything goes black.

We come back to Wanda looking at the bombed out remains of the room, dazed. The couch is all but obliterated by chunks of wall and ceiling. Pietro drags her under the bed before a missile impacts where the kids were just sitting on the floor. They switch back to Sokovian as Pietro says they need to get out of here. She stares at the blinking red light near the Stark Industries logo and says they can't. The TV is behind it, still playing "Dick Van Dyke". Wanda stares at it and says "At the end of the episode, you realize it was all a bad dream. None of it was real." She reaches her hand toward the bomb and something suddenly drags her back out from under the bed, where she turns back into an adult. Agatha asks if she stopped the bomb with a probability hex. Er, no. That would be the version of her that was born a mutant. Here, we're sticking with the story from "Ultron" about it being defective.
Chrissy: So...in a parallel universe where the X-Men have existed since at least the 70s when Pietro looked like the guy Agatha hired to play him in this universe. Yeah, I can see why joining these franchises was always going to be a problem.
Diandra: Right? I mean...maybe that was the goal early on, but the fact that this version of Pietro was a child, like, ten years after that adult one was speeding everybody out of Xavier's mansion makes it complicated. I get that they can be separate universes now. But that wasn't how it was originally intended, so it's bound to involve a lot of retconning and weird inconsistencies before it makes some sort of sense in future installments to the MCU.

Agatha asks how long they were trapped waiting for a defective bomb to go off. Wanda says two days. Agatha stalks around the wreckage and says it looks to her like a "baby witch" who was obsessed with sitcoms and in desperate need of a LOT of therapy to deal with this trauma. Except that doesn't quite explain what's been going on lately since Wanda didn't have powers yet. The apartment's front door turns to a secure steel door with a Hydra logo on it. Wanda whimpers that she doesn't want to go back there. Agatha thinks it's "good medicine" and says "the only way forward is back."
Chrissy: Hmm, that would make a good tagline for this series.
Diandra: Or at least this episode.

The door opens and Wanda reluctantly steps through into a lab. Agatha has a quick point of exposition, noting that Wanda's response to that little apartment bombing that killed their parents was "to join an anti-freedom terrorist organization"....why? Wanda says they wanted to change the world. Then she steps forward and flashes to whatever point between the first two Avengers movies Hydra experimented on her and gave her her powers. The mind stone is still in the scepter Loki used. She identifies herself, for purposes of documenting the experiment, as a volunteer. The guy in the lab room on the other side of the window exposits that nobody has survived these experiments. The other guy cuts him off to order Wanda to touch the scepter. Before she can get any closer to it, though, the stone breaks right off the scepter and floats in the air in front of her. She reaches to touch it and it turns yellow and seems to fracture a bit before causing an explosion of energy. She stays standing long enough to have a shadowy vision of what is probably recognizable to comics fans as the outline of the Scarlet Witch before collapsing.

Sometime later, she is watching "The Brady Bunch" in her cell while the scientists analyze the video to try to figure out what the hell happened. Except the video just shows an abrupt cut between Wanda entering the room and Wanda splattered on the floor. Much like her broadcast out of the Hex has been doing. Thanks to the brightness of the light from that energy explosion, they have no clue what really happened.

Present day Wanda and Agatha appear in the cell as the TV shuts off. Agatha's new theory is that Wanda had powers, but they never would have manifested if HYDRA hadn't done that.
Someone in the writers room, probably: I mean, that makes sense, right? That's how we can retcon mutants into this universe?
Agatha has a working theory now, but she needs more information. She magics another door on one wall, this one plain wood. Wanda walks through it into her room in the Avengers building. She is sitting on the bed watching "Malcolm in the Middle" on a more modern TV. Present Wanda explains that this was the first "home" she and Vision had. Also, she exposits that this is after Pietro died.

Vision morphs through the wall and she invites him to sit next to her. On the TV, Bryan Cranston in his younger, pre-Walter White days, puts the final nail in the front porch. And the whole thing just...collapses off the house all around him. Vision asks if that's funny because that man obviously just suffered grievous injuries. Wanda assures him the man is not really injured because it's "not that kind of show".
Chrissy: Where the laws of normal physics apply?
Diandra: It exists in the same universe as "Home Alone", yes.

Vision gets to the real reason he's here: because Wanda's voice is flat and she's staring at the TV numbly it is obvious she is still fully in grieving mode. He starts offering to talk if it would provide "some comfort". She says the only thing that would bring her comfort is seeing Pietro again. Then after an awkward beat, she apologizes and cries as she explains that she is dealing with wave after wave of grief right now. "It's just gonna drown me." He assures her that it won't because "it can't all be sorrow, can it?" He says he's always been alone, so he doesn't have a frame of reference for loss, never having had anyone TO lose. "But what is grief if not love persevering?"
Chrissy: I forgot how heavy the themes of the shows are compared to the movies.
Diandra: Yeah, let's have a massive war between superpowered humans and aliens just beating the crap out of each other because a purple giant wants to destroy the universe for...reasons. Then we'll do a bunch of shows where we have discussions about racism, grief and free will. And then we'll go back to, like, all the Spider Mans fighting all the villains.

Vision breaks the tension by looking back at the TV and laughing at something. He apologizes, but Wanda says it's okay because it was funny. Watching funny shit to distract yourself from the pain is a way of coping with life.

Present day Wanda is tearing up. Agatha swipes away a possibly imaginary tear and summarizes that she lost her parents, her brother and now Vision. "What happened when he wasn't there to pull you back from the darkness, Wanda?" Wanda sniffles and says she can't do this anymore. Agatha presses that they are SO CLOSE to explaining how she did everything. She wanted Vision back, right? A door to the SWORD facility appears on a wall and Wanda marches through it, into the scene that was originally supposed to feature - in part at least - after the credits of Endgame. She begs the guy at the front desk to let her in because she knows this is where they took Vision's body. And because she was snapped, they would have done that in the five year gap before she returned, so...yeah, she never got a chance to have any sort of closure. She wants to at least give him a funeral. Someone watching the security feed calls the guard and tells him to let her in. He tells her to wait while he buzzes her in and she just brushes him off and blasts the door open with a ball of magic.
Chrissy: At least she waited until she had permission. Obviously she didn't have to.

She marches right into Director Hayward's office and he introduces himself and says he hears she wants to recover Vision's body. She says yeah, seeing as she's his next of kin. He says she needs to see something and escorts her out to the balcony overlooking an operating theater which we saw in that footage he showed everyone. She doesn't understand what she's looking at because all they have is random robot parts. Until somebody puts the head in there. Then she starts crying and demanding to know what they're doing to him. Hayward says they're dismantling a sentient weapon. She yelps that he's not a WEAPON and they can't DO this. He says actually, they consider it an ethical obligation.
Chrissy: So if Tony had still had the arc reactor in his chest when he died, they wouldn't have been able to bury him because Sokovia Accords?
Diandra: Probably. I think this was brought up at some point during the Civil War in the comics. I forget which character it affected.
Chrissy: Yikes.

Anyway, he's not sure all she wants is to bury him anyway because with her powers she could probably bring him back online. She swears that she can't do that and never even thought of it. He clearly doesn't really believe her, but says either way he can't just hand over a few billion dollars of vibranium so she can bury it. He brought her in here because "the best I can do is let you say goodbye to him here." She cries that Vision was all she had. Hayward says yeah, but...he wasn't hers. This pisses her off and she breaks the glass barrier and floats down. Some guards point guns at her, but Hayward calls them off, saying let her "see for herself."

She goes to the head and hovers her hand with a ball of energy over the wound Thanos made, whispering through tears that she can't feel him. She strokes the head a little and then just...walks away. Note: this is very different from what Hayward claimed happened.

She goes back out to her car and glances at the card sitting on the driver's seat before driving out to New Jersey, arriving in Westview. We see what the town looked like originally and catch glimpses of some of the people cast in the sitcom episodes. She arrives at a foundation laid between a couple houses and walks into the middle of it with the card, which she unfolds. It is a property deed, with the lot circled with a red heart containing the words "to grow old in, V." She falls to her knees and sobs. Then she screams and a blast of red energy emanates from her chest and hands, swirling around like a tornado and constructing the house all around her. She takes a breath and the next blast goes out over the whole town, turning it into the 50s version of itself. And then she constructs Vision in the living room with her out of spirals of yellow energy.

When everything calms, he blinks at her, the only thing still in color. She seems surprised by all of this, but quickly changes into a 50s version of herself and smiles at him. "Welcome home," he says. They sit on the couch and kiss and lest we forget how this whole episode has been framed, present day Wanda appears behind the couch, looking at all the studio lights as the 50s couple disappears and the set is replaced with it's current 00s iteration. Agatha is sitting up in the audience seating area, clapping. She snaps her fingers and disappears and the boys start shouting for Wanda again from somewhere outside. She runs out to find them standing in the middle of the street, Agatha hovering above them in full witch outfit, bands of purple magic wrapped around each of their necks. She tugs at them to discourage Wanda from getting too close and Wanda stops obediently, balls of red magic forming in her hands.

Agatha growls that she knows what Wanda is now and she has no idea how powerful she is, does she? "You're supposed to be a myth. A being capable of spontaneous creation." And she's using her powers to play housewife in a magical tour through American sitcom history. Vision, the kids, everything about this Hex thing..."this is chaos magic, Wanda. And that makes you the Scarlet Witch."

We smash to credits and in the middle of it we go back to what's left of Hayward's team at their new outpost outside the Hex. An agent announces they are ready to "launch". Hayward goes into a tent where their scientists (overseen by Agent Rodriguez) have hooked up the drone still sparking with Wanda's red energy to an all-white version of Vision's body. They power it up and he blinks to life.
Chrissy: Because of course "Cataract" would be a milky white Vision.
Diandra: Yeah. Cute.

And aside from that little venture outside the Hex, as I said the cut between episodes is pretty arbitrary. So I'm just gonna launch right into the last one here.

Back inside the Hex, the boys are still crying for mom and Wanda is giving Agatha that death glare of a mother whose kids are being threatened. She asks if Agatha forgot that her powers still work outside that rune-protected dungeon. Agatha says she's counting on it and yanks at the twins so they fall over. Wanda hits her in the chest with a ball of energy and yells for the boys to get back inside the house. They put up brief resistance, saying they can help her, but then Agatha just levitates back upright and Tommy zooms them away before Wanda hits her again. This time, Agatha catches the ball and spins it in her own hand (the fingers of which have all turned black) as she exposits that by the way, her power is that she can siphon power from people she deems undeserving. Wanda looks at her hand, which has lost the red glow and taken on a greyish tinge.

Agatha blasts her back and mockingly notes that she's in over her head and she might as well just give up her powers to someone who actually knows what to do with them. She'll even let Wanda keep this little Hex thing. Wanda apparently hasn't lost power completely yet as she has a red ball spinning subtly in the affected hand again. She levitates a car and sends it flying into Agatha and crashing them both through a corner of the nearest house. She goes to verify that she got her, but only finds Agatha's boots sticking out from under the wreckage "Wizard of Oz" style.

Cataract lands on the street behind her just at that moment, distracting her. She ambles over to him, mouth agape, and asks if it's really Vision. He cups her face between his hands and starts crushing her head, lifting her off the ground. Something slams into him, shooting him away from her. She lands in the superhero pose. It turns out it is her Vision, who drags Cataract along the road for a while before throwing him into an RV, which explodes. He turns back to Wanda and asks where the kids are. She babbles that they're safe and apologizes for not telling him everything the minute she realized what she was doing. He says he knows why she "made this world", but...she interrupts that she can fix it. He's not sure about that. And because Marvel loves their cascading superhero fights, Cataract walks out of the wreckage and Agatha reappears hovering over the house at the same time. Agatha jokes about how awkward it is when your ex and your boyfriend show up at the same party. Wanda just looks at Vision and declares that this is their home. "Then let's fight for it," he agrees. He zooms off to fight Cataract again and she takes off after Agatha.

Meanwhile, Monica is banging on a window inside a nearby house...possibly Agatha's...and calling to Wanda. From the couch, Fake Pietro tells her to save her breath because nobody can hear her. She tries to run for a window and he speeds in front of her, shoving her back.

Vision and Cataract are fighting each other mid-air and I would just like to remind anyone who might be reading this that THIS is what Paul Bettany was referring to when he teased that he was going to get to work with an actor he greatly admired.
Chrissy: We're sorry about his sense of humor. He's British.
Diandra: Yeah, remember the peeling his own face off thing? Yeah. Was this really a surprise?
Chrissy: I'm not really sure that was the part people were upset about. I really think it might be mostly the Fake Pietro thing.
Diandra: Which would require introducing the multiverse NOW, plus either pulling him from a different point in time in his universe or claiming that he doesn't age. Like Wolverine. Which is possible. But still, it would require just as much insane set up as that wank that they could resurrect Kilmonger, wipe his memories, make him the good guy and appoint him Black Panther instead of just...letting Shuri be Black Panther.
Chrissy: Yeah, so you see how they would argue for the crazy option.
Diandra: [grumbling] I really hate this fandom sometimes.

Anyway, Vision is asking if they can maybe settle this thing reasonably. Cataract growls that Wanda needs to be neutralized. And he must destroy Vision. Vision cracks that that's a no to negotiations then and phases through Cataract before he tries to rip the stone out again. Which...that can't be the actual Mind Stone, right?
Chrissy: Just go with it.
They slam each other into the ground, making a giant crater in the middle of an intersection, and then take off again.

Outside, Hayward and his team watch both blips chase each other across the screen. Jimmy is frog marched in just as Rodriguez informs Hayward that "his" system is overloaded and they can't send a signal. A phone buzzes on a desk and Jimmy sits on the desk to snatch it, distracting Hayward by talking about how he'll never be able to cover this up. Hayward, good little villain that he is, babbles that he doesn't have to because they're the only ones who ever saw that there was more than one Vision. Jimmy points out SWORD security footage must have evidence of being tampered with. Hayward thinks no one will care once Wanda has been eliminated. They'll believe his bullshit story about her stealing the body from the facility and reviving it and be eternally grateful to him for recovering their sentient weapon.
Chrissy: In case you needed an example of how the Accords/Registry can be used in bad faith...here you go.

Jimmy says yeah, the FBI will probably not be too thrilled with this plan, but he can try to explain it to them anyway. They should be here soon. Hayward snaps at a guard to take him away and he's manhandled into a corner somewhere where he uses the safety pin he got from somewhere to pick the handcuffs and actually call a buddy at Quantico to make good on that threat.

Inside the Hex, Wanda lands in the main square where life seems to be going on fairly normally. She seems to have lost Agatha somewhere in pursuit, but Agatha announces her presence by hitting her in the back with a ball of purple energy. Agatha is standing on the roof of a building in front of a billboard for a cleaning product that uses "the power of mother earth". In case you thought we left the advertising thing behind completely. Agatha notes that Wanda has never faced another witch before and asks if she knows there's an entire chapter devoted to her in the Darkhold. Wanda stares blankly, prompting Agatha to explain to her - and the audience - that the Darkhold is the Book of the Damned.
Chrissy: That's not the same book that was used in "Doctor Strange", right?
Diandra: No, that was the Book of...I want to say Caligula or something, but that's definitely wrong.
Chrissy: How are they different?
Diandra: Fuck if I know.

Agatha summons the book as she recites that the Scarlet Witch is "forged", not born a witch and she has no coven or need for incantations. I'm not sure if this separates the MCU/Avengers version of Wanda from the X-Men version whose powers come from the fact that she's a mutant or not. But her response here is pretty similar to what she says in the comics: "I'm not a witch. I don't cast spells. No one taught me magic." The comics version is uncomfortable with the label of Scarlet Witch because she says she's not a witch. She's a mutant whose powers happen to look like witchcraft.
Chrissy: Probably a minor distinction in a world where all the supernatural creatures exist.
Diandra: Yeah, now that I say it out loud, it's possible it still works to describe either version of her because X-Men are just born with the mutant gene, so...does spontaneously manifesting powers after nearly dying horrifically count as being "forged"?

Agatha says whatever, her powers are greater than the Sorcerer Supreme and it's her destiny to destroy the world.
Chrissy: Not if he gets there first. Speaking of which, did we decide if you're recapping "What If"?
Diandra: I'm still not clear on whether Stephen IS the Sorcerer Supreme yet. Unless that happened somewhere between the ending of his first solo movie and "Infinity War" and was never really mentioned. I know I didn't miss anything because they SAID right at the end of "Doctor Strange" that there WAS NO Sorcerer Supreme, so it didn't happen automatically upon the Ancient One's death.
Chrissy: Unless it did because that's how we're retconning it now.
Diandra: I'm...gonna need a whole pile of aspirin to get through "Doctor Strange 2", aren't I?
Chrissy: Eh, you've got months to figure that out.
Diandra: I'm not talking about the recap. I'm just talking about watching the damn thing.

Wanda is like 'yeah, cool story. Still not me.' Agatha says really? She points at Dottie, who is walking by and chants something in Latin. This turns out to be the equivalent of what Vision has been doing to break the mind control. Dottie snaps out of it and rushes over to Wanda, babbling about how her name is really Sarah and she has an eight year old daughter who could be friends with Wanda's boys, or feature in whatever storyline she wants if she would just LET HER OUT OF HER ROOM ALREADY PLEASE I JUST WANT TO HOLD HER AGAIN. Wanda asks Agatha why she's making this woman say these things. Agatha shrugs that they're all Wanda's puppets, she's just cutting the strings. She cuts the strings of everyone else on the street and every character we've seen so far surrounds Wanda, looking varying degrees of pissed.

Back in the basement dungeon Monica is trapped in, Fake Pietro is making a smoothie and rambling exposition about Monica being in his "man cave", where he hangs out "while the missus is stirring up trouble." Monica finds a bill from the city on a table addressed to Ralph Bohner. She keeps digging until she finds a headshot with the same name on it and realizes this isn't Agatha's house. It's his. And before we address the outrage over Fake Pietro being just a "boner joke"...that was a reference to a character from "Growing Pains". Which was the first job of one of the guys on the crew of this show. And again, Evan Peters' Quicksilver is from the "First Class" movies. Revealing him as really Quicksilver here would make zero sense. Monica asks how he's being controlled. She approaches him and he acts like he's going to knock her out. She just pins him on his back, which kind of turns him on actually, and her eyes glow as she scans him for...some sort of electrical signal, maybe? The beads around his neck give off a glow, so she rips the necklace right off and he snaps out of it immediately, begging her not to hurt him.

Outside, possibly in some other part of town, the Visions are still fighting. The kids are watching from inside. Billy sees flashes of what's going on in town square and Wanda screaming and decides they need to help her.

The townspeople are surrounding Wanda, demanding to know why she's doing this or just begging her to get messages to people outside this nightmare she's turned their town into. "Norm" says when she lets them sleep, they have her nightmares. Wanda babbles that they're all FINE and she has been keeping them safe and at peace. They say no, they're being poisoned by her grief and they're begging her to let them go. She keeps pleading with them to stop until she's overwhelmed and grabs her head, screaming. Red tendrils blast out from her and wrap around all of their necks, cutting them off. She realizes she's choking them without intending to and calls off the tendrils, whimpering "I'm sorry". "Mrs. Hart" begs her to just let them die if she won't let them go. Wanda, crying, promises she WILL let them go. Agatha asks what's stopping her from doing it right now then. "Heroes don't torture people." Wanda makes some sort of decision and throws a massive blast of energy up at the dome of the Hex, yelling at them to run now. They scramble as the Hex starts fracturing and all the details of the neighborhood start glitching like they were inside Wanda's house a couple episodes ago.

Outside, Hayward and Rodriguez see a seam opening in the Hex and Hayward thinks now is their chance to go in.

Over by the crumbling Hex walls, the Visions are still fighting. Except as the Hex breaks down, so does Vision. He falls out of the sky and onto the street near Wanda. The twins speed in on her other side, also seemingly crumbling. Agatha is like 'yeah, fun fact...they can't exist outside of the world you created in here. So you have to choose either them or the rest of the people in the town.' Wanda grunts and holds the Hex open for a few more seconds before letting go and letting the walls close again. Her boys all run to her and she throws a protective bubble around all of them as Agatha tries to blast them. Which might have been the goal because Agatha just sucks all the red energy from her and both of her hands turn grey. Except she's still able to summon some energy in her hands when they are surrounded by Agatha, Cataract and whatever of Hayward's men made it through the Hex wall before Wanda let it close again.

Vision apologizes for not properly preparing the boys for this sort of thing. "But you were born for it," Wanda snarls. Cataract pile drives Vision into the library and, upon prompting, says he was programmed to destroy The Vision. They fight again and basically destroy everything around them either by breaking it or lasering it.
Chrissy: This must be especially difficult for you.
Diandra: I mean...*I* don't have to clean it up and figure out how to replace everything.

Vision gets Cataract in a headlock and points out that he isn't REALLY Vision, is he? He's a "conditional". This stymies Cataract, who asks for "elaboration".

Outside, Agatha is messing with the soldiers and muttering about torches and pitchforks and NOTHING EVER CHANGES. Wanda saves them after Agatha tries to drop them on the ground and tells the boys to handle them while she goes to deal with this...witch. She flies up to face her and disappears in a puff of smoke.

Before we explain that, Tommy speeds around confiscating the guns from all the military guys. Because we need to make bad guys do something unquestionably awful lest we start thinking they make too much sense, Hayward comes out of his tank with a pistol to shoot the kids. Monica arrives and jumps in front of the bullets seeming to turn into something like the T-1000 and absorb all their kinetic energy so they drop to the ground. This doesn't deter Hayward and his next bullet sails past her head. Billy catches it in a ball of blue energy and drops it to the ground. Hayward jumps in one of the tanks and backs it up the street. Before we can wonder if he's actually going to try to mow down a black lady and two children, Darcy arrives and t-bones him with the funnel cake van.

Vision and Cataract are floating in the air still. Vision asks if Cataract is familiar with the Ship of Theseus paradox wherein a ship has all of it's parts replaced one by one until there is nothing remaining of the original ship. Is it still the Ship of Theseus?
Chrissy: I'm pretty sure that was the name of the book within a book that JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst wrote, so...I might have to read that again because I probably missed something.
Diandra: That book was a turducken of books that you would HAVE to read differently at least three times to understand.
Cataract recites the philosophy as rotting boards being replaced. Vision offers another way of looking at it: if the whole ship is disassembled and somehow reassembled "free of rot", is it still the same ship? Cataract says neither is the "true" ship and also BOTH of them are. For more thought exercises like this, read "The Visions".

Drawing the obvious parallel to them, Cataract notes that he does not have the mind stone. And Vision notes that he is made of absolutely none of his original materials. And then he says this: "Perhaps the rot is the memories. The wear and tear are the voyages. The wood touched by Theseus himself."
Chrissy: The children are the barnacles...no, wait...
Cataract says he doesn't have memories. Vision says he has DATA that is being kept from him somehow. Cataract thinks about it and concludes that it would make him easier to control as a weapon. But Vision must be the real thing because he believes himself to be and je pense donc je suis. Vision isn't so sure anymore and thinks the memories must be in there somewhere because it would be very difficult to wipe them all. He touches Cataract's forehead (the jeweled area where the mind stone was) and images from all the movies he was in up to Thanos killing him in "Infinity War" flick rapidly across the screen. His eyes change, becoming more human, and he concludes that he really is Vision. He flies away through the skylight.

The Wanda-generated Vision goes back outside the library where the twins run to hug him. Agatha watches from a nearby roof. Wanda sneaks up behind her and does her red-wiggly-woo mind control thing, sending her back to that scene in Salem. Except all the other witches are dead but she is still chained to the stake. Wanda appears and notes that this is the difference between the two of them. This little massacre here Agatha did deliberately. The witches all reanimate and climb to their feet exactly like some sort of voodoo zombies. Agatha whimpers and begs her to stop and then suddenly goes still and all the zombies turn on Wanda. Because of course it wasn't going to be that easy. Mother reanimates and pronounces that Wanda IS the Scarlet Witch and "so it is written".

Agatha steps off the stake and the witches shove Wanda in her place. Agatha gloats that her real problem isn't POWER, it's KNOWLEDGE.
Chrissy: And responsibili...no, that's something else.
Wanda's forehead starts glowing and some magic tendrils form something like the headdress she wore in the 90s episode and all the old comics. Agatha says she will correct the original spell if Wanda just gives her her powers. That way she can go back to Westview with her family and all those people and they can all live happily ever after without all the grief.

Wanda knocks all the witches away from her with a blast of energy and tackles Agatha right out of the memory and off the roof of the building back in reality. They fly off into the clouds and Wanda repeatedly blasts Agatha while muttering that she can just take it because "I don't want it". Vision flies after her, but she sends a blast of energy around him, trapping him in a bubble that floats back to the ground.

Wanda and Agatha fly around blasting at each other for a while with Agatha actually cackling until Wanda starts looking tired.

Outside, Jimmy and the guys he called watch blasts hit the nearest Hex wall from inside.

Wanda is now starting to look like the mummified corpses of the witches. Agatha drains all of her energy, cackling maniacally until Wanda is just hanging lifeless in mid air.

Down on the ground, the boys yell in horror and Vision tries to shield them with his body.

Agatha gathers the energy in a ball in her hands and says yeah, so...she lied. Because you can't change a spell once it's already been cast. That mess down there can't be fixed. She makes a big dramatic sweeping motion and throws energy at Wanda, but whatever she was trying to gather fizzles before it gets very far. She tries again and nothing happens at all. Wanda revives, the mummification slowly melting away along with the grey in her hands. She twitches her fingers and a giant glowing red rune appears on the Hex wall behind her. Agatha turns to see another one on the wall behind her. And another on the wall between the two. Agatha is like 'so...guess you paid attention to that little lesson, huh?' Wanda sadly says she doesn't need Agatha to tell her who she is. The Scarlet Witch frame appears on her face again, her eyes glow and she sucks all her energy back while Agatha screams. When it finishes, she is wearing a modern version of her Scarlet Witch costume, all leather with a leather headpiece.

They float back to the ground and Agatha collapses. She glares up at Wanda and asks what they're going to do now. Lock her up somewhere? Wanda says it won't be just anywhere. She'll trap her here in the role of the nosy neighbor since that's what she chose for herself. She approaches Agatha, who yelps that she has NO IDEA what she has unleashed and she's going to NEED her now. Wanda shrugs that she knows where to find her if that proves true. Which it probably won't.
Chrissy: If I have any questions, I can probably find that guy who portaled everyone to the battlefield to fight Thanos.
Diandra: Or he can find me. Apparently.
She touches Agatha's head and she turns back into Agnes, cheerfully greeting her and maybe sort of salivating over her new look because DAMN.

The boys run to her and Vision notes that their "home" has been kind of...trashed. "I know you'll set everything right," he says pointedly. "Just not for us." Wanda nods at Monica, hovering on the sidelines, and she, Vision and the kids start walking back to the house.

The Hex starts shrinking again, releasing the agents' tents and vehicles that were turned into a sideshow first. The town sign goes back to the way it was in the beginning.

Vision and Wanda turn their clothing back to normal as they go through the door into the house. They put the kids to bed as the Hex walls close in. They say they are proud of the boys and Wanda repeats her line about a family being forever. "We could never truly leave each other." She looks sadly at the approaching wall out the window and adds "thanks for choosing me to be your mom."

The Hex releases town square and the van Darcy was driving. Apparently the movie marquee was just a Blade Runner joke before she messed with it: "Tannhauser Gate: Put the Fun in Dysfunction!"
Chrissy: What is Tannhauser Gate?
Diandra: I was hoping you knew. I only watched that movie because of Harrison Ford at least two decades ago and understood almost none of it. I think the fun in dysfunction part is unrelated though.

Wanda goes to the living room and starts turning off lamps. Vision comes up behind her and turns one back on, explaining that he read somewhere that it's bad luck to say goodbye in the dark. She calls bullshit and he says nah, he just wanted to see her. They hold hands and look out at the approaching wall. He says before he goes he wants to know one thing: "what am I?"
Chrissy: Dude, you've got...like...less than a minute.
Turns out that's all she needs because she says he is the piece of the Mind Stone that lives in her. She built him out of blood and bone and wires and sadness and hope.
Chrissy: And shards of the devil, probably.

She says most importantly, he is "my love". They kiss and a tear falls from his eye somehow. He summarizes his existence as going from a disembodied voice to a non-human body to "a memory made real". He suggests he might take another form entirely next time. "We've said goodbye before, so it stands to reason..." "We'll say hello again," she finishes.
Chrissy: This better not be like the "sun will rise on us again" thing.
Diandra: I mean...it's possible that still hasn't been realized. Or that he was talking about the afterlife or something.

The Hex closes in on the house and everything starts stripping away and he starts turning back into energy tendrils. He says "so long, darling" before disappearing entirely. She is left standing in the foundation wearing the clothes she was the day this whole thing started. She pulls up her hood and walks back to the car. Or possibly all the way back into town, where everyone is gathered again to stare at her accusingly. She goes right up to Monica, who says "they'll never know what you sacrificed for them." Wanda doesn't think it would make them feel any more charitable. But she notes Monica doesn't hate her, at least. Monica shrugs that if she had Wanda's powers plus the opportunity to bring her mom back to life...she knows she would have done the same thing. Wanda apologizes for all the pain she has caused and says she needs to work on understanding this power she has. Sirens approach and she changes into her new Scarlet Witch outfit and flies off, Monica belatedly wishing her luck.

And credits.

The mid credit scene starts with Jimmy directing everyone with cleanup, interviews and evidence collection. Monica reunites with him and he asks where Darcy is. The real answer, of course, is that Kat Dennings was trapped by travel restrictions put into place in the first wave of COVID. Forcing them to explain her away hastily like this: "uh...something about 'debriefs are for the weak'." She didn't even stay around to see Hayward taken into custody, which they are doing now.
Chrissy: Yeah, this is where you can feel the sudden re-write.
Diandra: Mmm. It's hard to tell what all these shows and movies would have looked like had they not all had to stop and shuffle everything at some point because a pandemic broke out. "Doctor Strange 2" was supposed to come out shortly after this show ended, not a year later, and would probably have tied in differently. And that would have been BEFORE "No Way Home", which probably means that "Doctor Strange 2" will only bear a passing resemblance to what it would have been before several rewrites and a major reshoot. But they've also had time now to adapt and change the whole direction of wherever they were originally going to go with the next phase by now, so it might not be as evident once we get past the stuff that was interrupted in the middle.

An agent comes to tell Monica that they want her in the theater. She follows the agent, but the theater is empty. The agent says yeah, by "they", I meant...and she turns into a Skrull. She says she was sent by "an old friend of your mother", which could be Carol except she adds "he heard you'd been grounded" so it's obviously Fury. He wants to meet her for whatever we're planning for this wing of the MCU now. And since we last saw him at some Skrull outpost taking a virtual vacation, Monica will have to take a trip to space.

Post-credits, we go to a secluded area in the mountains somewhere where Wanda is sitting on the front steps of a cabin. A kettle whistles inside and she goes to pour herself tea. The camera pans right past her and to a bedroom in the back where her astral projection seems to be reading the Darkhold. The twins call to her from...somewhere...and we slam to black.
Chrissy: So is she able to be conscious while projecting her astral form because she's stronger than Stephen? Or because the writers were forced to accommodate a rewrite that didn't involve Doctor Strange?
Diandra: [gestures and splutters a little] Both?

Chrissy: So yeah, back to everyone's loud disappointment with the whole Bohner thing...tying that to what we just said about reshuffles. It's possible that scene wouldn't have pissed people off as much as it did if it hadn't been cut short because wasn't there supposed to be more to it originally?
Diandra: Yeah, maybe. They keep digging in further, first when the crossing of all the Spider-Mans actually happened and again when they heard Patrick Stewart's voice in the "Doctor Strange" preview. But both of those things are infinitely simpler than bringing Evan Peters' Quicksilver into the MCU at this point would have been. They just can't accept it as the winking reference and nothing more that it was.
Chrissy: They can pout and argue all they want, but every ranking of all the Disney+ MCU shows put "WandaVision" and "Loki" on top.
Diandra: As they should be. And I suspect that this is your unsubtle way of segueing into telling me I should recap "Loki" now.
Chrissy: Well...as long as you brought it up...
Diandra: Uh-huh. You're getting predictable in your old age.
Chrissy: You know we're basically the same age, right?
Diandra: Yeah, and if there's anything I learned from watching zoomers annoyance with this show and its format it's that I AM officially old now.
Chrissy: Well, it doesn't help that you're that weirdo who says things like "my first crush was the Professor from Gilligan's Island" or spout knowledge gleaned from watching "Bewitched" and "MASH" as a kid.
Diandra: Come on! We grew up with Nick at Nite! I'm hardly alone here.
Chrissy: No, probably not. So...we are going to recap "Loki" next, right?
Diandra: Sigh.