FULL SPOILERS AHEAD
Some of the big questions that people have asked about WandaVision have been, who is the villain? Is there actually a villain? Has Wanda gone completely off the deep end and is a threat to reality? Is Hayward–and therefore SWORD–up to something? Is Agnes up to something? Well, at least one of these questions gets answered this episode!
The 2000’s are upon us and Wanda’s show has an Office and/or Modern Family aesthetic where characters occasionally talk directly to the camera in a fourth wall breaking interview format. Probably why this episode is called “Breaking the Fourth Wall,” among other reasons. Wanda feels drained after expanding the Hex last episode and is making a lazy day of it. Vision is MIA, Billy and Tommy are concerned, and Wanda’s house keeps shifting between decades so things aren’t the best. Agnes comes to take the boys so Wanda can relax. Meanwhile, Vision wakes up next to the circus that was the SWORD base and recognizes Darcy from the night before. He zaps her and she tells him his own history that he doesn’t remember: originally the AI Jarvis, given a body by Ultron, and was killed by Thanos. Outside the Hex, Jimmy and Monica get the information Darcy hacked from SWORD and find out that Hayward’s real goal is to get the very powerful weapon that is Vision back under government control. Monica meets up with some SWORD allies and attempts to reenter the Hex in a space rover, but the barrier is too strong. Against all good logic, she jumps in. Through sheer willpower and hints of a new energy based power–we got Spectrum/Photon/Captain Marvel!!–she manages to enter Wanda’s reality and keep her original personality. She rushes to Wanda, but Agnes shows up and takes the Avenger away. At Agnes’ place, Wanda starts to get some bad vibes and notices that her kids are missing. She enters the basement and finds creepy stone walls covered in vines, and we the audience see the aspect ratio change from full screen to widescreen suggesting she’s no longer in the Hex. Sure enough Agnes reveals that she’s really Agatha Harkness–just about everyone called that–and that she’s been responsible for every bad thing, told to us in a banger of a theme song for the “show” Agatha All Along. She even killed Sparky!
A mid-credit scene–a first for the show–shows Monica trying to reach Wanda and Agnes, but “Pietro”–who was revealed to be somewhat under the control of Agatha–catches her snooping. And the commercial this time was for an antidepressant called… Nexus?! Oh. Oh dear. More on that later.
So there we go, Agnes/Agatha was the villain all along. For me it’s a little disappointing that the real villain couldn’t just be “grief,” but whatever, we have someone the heroes can punch. She’s a dark sorceress with unknown plans, but in the comics she’s a thousands year old witch who has taken the role of mentor for Wanda and was the nanny to Franklin Richards–the son of Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman. Her general demeanor isn’t really villainous in the comics, but she claims to know what’s best and doesn’t really take anyone else’s feedback in the matters. Her major moments that stand out me are when she wiped Wanda’s memory of having children after Mephisto came and absorbed them back into him (it’s a whole thing I talked about in Episode 3), when Wanda got revenge by killing her years later as part of Avengers: Disassembled (she got better), and when she told the Avengers about Vision creating a robotic family in The Vision and how he cared for them to the point that he would destroy the world to keep them safe. What this Agatha’s plans are will be revealed next episode, most likely.
…but that commercial may give us a BIG hint. In the comics there is the Nexus of All Realities, a point where all realities connect. It’s also a phrase Dr. Erik Selvig wrote on the blackboard when he was rambling about the convergence of the Nine Realms in Thor: The Dark World, so that’s something. Because it has so much potential for destruction it typically has a guardian, and in the comics that role is taken by Man-Thing, a giant plant monster that used to be a scientist. Yes, that’s also the basic premise of DC’s Swamp Thing (Man-Thing debuted 2 months earlier), and yes, Giant-Size Man-Thing is a real comic based on a real character. But we don’t have a Man-Thing in the MCU–that we know of–so it’s entirely possible that Wanda either has become the guardian of the Nexus, or somehow is the Nexus. It’s comic books, don’t think about it too hard. Disney has told us that WandaVision will lay the groundwork for the upcoming Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness movie, so this is the perfect way of doing that. Does that mean that we may get a Dr. Strange cameo? Does that suggest that maybe the “fake Pietro” actually is the Peter Maximoff from the X-Men: Days of Future Past reality? And since going through the barrier three times has apparently given Monica superpowers, is this how the MCU adds a bunch of new powered people, like, say… mutants? We have two episodes left so expect at least a one of these questions to be answered soon!
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