One of the most-anticipated endings for a TV show in a long, long time.
We’re here! We’ve made it through the emotional, psychological, and metaphysical rollercoaster that is the WandaVision series.
Do we have all of the answers that we were expecting to get? Nope! Are some of the answers that were given kind of disappointing? Yep! Is it still one of the very best things that Marvel has ever done on the big or small screen? Absolutely.
So we kick off with Agatha still holding Wanda’s kids on magical leashes, and Wanda attempts to free them by blasting her with some of her red blasts, but Agatha just absorbs them, in much the same way she did the witches in her previous coven. Going a different route, Wanda flings a car at her, which results in this brilliant nod to The Wizard Of Oz…
… but then, right on cue, White Vision arrives and promptly tries to pop Wanda’s skull open. Thankfully, Westview Vision arrives and punts him through a caravan, which gives us this great Terminator 2 wink…
This more or less sets up the majority of the rest of the episode, with Wanda fighting Agatha and the two Visions fighting each other. While it doesn’t quite devolve into the same clichéd ending that a lot of Marvel movies end up in, it also feels disappointingly run-of-the-mill after a show that so consistently broke the fourth wall and pushed the envelope on the kid of stories that Marvel usually tells.
Elsewhere, Agent Woo is dealing with Director Hayward and it turns out he isn’t potentially some big nefarious villain, he’s just a power-hungry douchebag. Woo sneaks a phone and calls for back-up, but ultimately they arrive too late to actually do anything.
Meanwhile, Monica is trapped in Fake Pietro’s house, but she ultimately frees him from Agatha’s control and it turns out that he is the husband that Agnes had been referencing constantly in the early episodes. The husband with a very unfortunate surname.
So… we just need to wrap our heads around this one. Fake Pietro isn’t an alternate universe’s version of Pietro, but he is just some guy named Ralph Bohner, who Agatha just happened to imbue with the same powers as the real Pietro, and then the makers of WandaVision decided to cast the actor who played the alternate universe’s Pietro in the role? Have we got that right?
Because that is both (A) massively confusing, and (B) massively disappointing.
The only alternative we can come up with is if Pietro has been in hiding (in this universe?), under a pseudonym, after the events of X-Men: Dark Phoenix, but that really doesn’t hold weight. Anyone with any potential suggestions for other explanations, hit me up!
Back to the main event, there are some fun highlights, including Agatha releasing the Westview townspeople from Wanda’s control and it all goes a bit reverse-zombie-movie with a very creepy and troubling look behind the curtain that Wanda had pulled over the town.
Agatha also reveals that the Scarlet Witch is “even more powerful that the Sorcerer Supreme” (Doctor Strange sequel set-up!), and, well, this:
That’s not a good look on anyone, and in attempt to prove she’s not a bad person, she opens up the boundaries to let the townsfolk out (which also lets Hayward and his military cronies in), but the breakdown of the town also results in Vision and their kids to begin to painfully fade away, Wanda promptly shuts the town walls once more.
The two Visions get back to the kind of frustrating fight that only two identical, perfectly-matched fighters can have. They end up busting into a library (of course), and Westview Vision tries to out-logic White Vision. Whether this was on purpose or not, the deadpan delivery of White Vision’s single word was either accidentally or tactically hilarious:
We’re fully anticipating White Vision’s “Naturally” response to become a full meme moment on social media, in response to every and any question that folks online can come up with.
Anyway, Westview Vision manages to open White Vision’s mind to who he actually is, so White Vision simply deuces out through the skylight, never to be seen again. This is one case where we actually could have stood to see a little bit more destruction before it all ended with a civilised conversation in a library, but so be it.
Wanda brings Agatha back to the Salem Witch Trials (a nice little horror scene, but ultimately it goes nowhere), before they return to Westview for a big super powers fight in the sky, which feels weirdly reminiscent of Eric Bana’s scene in Hulk, where he is fighting the power-absorbing villain and shouting for them to take all of his powers away from him:
Wanda’s aim seems off, but it turns out she’s setting up some huge ruins around the walls of The Hex and Agatha’s lesson about only a witch who uses the ruins in the space can use their powers hits home. Agatha’s power-sucking powers backfire and everything collapses back to normality.
Knowing that she must put things right, Wanda decides to slowly retreat the walls of The Hex, turning Westview back to normal as it caves in on itself. We get some very emotional goodbyes with their two kids, before the final scene between Wanda and Vision arrives… and yep, if you’re invested in these two at all, you will definitely be crying.
Wanda finds herself back in the lot that Vision had picked for them, and she shuffles her way out of the town, with all of the once-friendly neighbours now looking at her with hate and fear. Monica tries to express her gratitude, but Wanda knows too many people will see her as the villain now, and she flies off, leaving the Ground Zero of her collective trauma behind.
SIDENOTES:
– Those adverts through the previous episodes? No reference to them whatsoever. Nothing. Nada. Not even a single-line explainer.
– White Vision will come back eventually, once Paul Bettany can stand to put on all of that make-up again. Also, Paul Bettany is the biggest/best troll around. All of his talk about having intense scenes with an actor he’d be waiting to work with for years? Yeah, he was talking about himself. Well played, Bettany.
– Agnes/Agatha will also come back, because you don’t leave a card like Katherine Hahn in your deck for too long.
– While it was nice that Darcy had a hand in Hayward’s ultimate fate, after all of his douchbaggery in previous episodes, seeing him simply get carted off by police was intensely anti-climactic.
– Post Credits Scene One! Monica is asked to meet some officials in the local cinema (nice nod to her future there), where it turns out that the officer is actually a Skrull. She references someone in space and since it is a “he”, that isn’t Captain Marvel, so it must be Nick Fury, since Talos was last spotted down on Earth at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home.
– Post Credits Scene Two! A wide, isolated, beautiful mountain valley, and we slowly close in a house in the middle of nowhere. We eventually make out that it is Wanda, and she has assigned herself what looks to be a life of contented loneliness, which definitely echoes Thanos’ final scenes in Avengers: Infinity War…
… but once we get inside, we see that while Wanda is seemingly keeping busy by enjoying the views and making hot drinks, the Scarlet Witch is on overdrive in the backroom, going through Agatha’s big evil witch book, obviously learning more and more spells and incantations, but the position she has taken up is eerily similar to the actual drawing of the Scarlet Witch on the page that describes how she will end the world…
And there we have it. WandaVision is no more, but we’ll soon have The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (kicking off on Friday, 19 March), as well as Spider-Man: No Way Home (December 2021), Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (March 2022), and Captain Marvel 2 (July 2022), all of which will likely tie back to the events of this show.
It truly was a rollercoaster, from those rocky first few episodes, to the giddy high when the mystery began to expand to the outer limits of the MCU, before this entertaining-but-rocky landing, a side-effect of any story that ultimately can’t really end because it is reliant on other shows and movies to tell more of it.
One thing is for sure though, we’re already sad thinking about not getting up first thing next Friday to watch it.
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