WandaVision Episode 8 review: S1E8 revels in last week’s reveal
If you’ve been watching WandaVision every week (and if you haven’t, why are you reading this?), you’ll have been humming a certain theme tune for the past week. Yep, it was Agatha All Along!
Or was it?
Following the jaw-dropping twist last week that kindly neighbour Agnes (Kathryn Hahn) was in fact a powerful witch named Agatha Harkness, we get a stroll through Marvel’s history, in an episode presumably designed for those who haven’t quite caught up with the films.
We start with a quick origin scene for Agatha, part of a powerful witch’s coven in 1693 Salem. Her sisters try to execute her for practicing “the darkest of magic”, but she proves too powerful, deflecting their spells and killing them all. It’s a nice and over the top moment, but like so much of this episode it feels like spoon-feeding us back story.
Back in the basement we left them in last episode, Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) finds she is powerless in Agatha’s domain. Her new foe is fascinated by her powers, and more specifically how she seems to use such advanced magic with little knowledge of spell craft. “It’s time to look at some real re-runs” she says as she decides the only way to figure all this out is to head into the past, with Wanda going along with it due to Agatha holding the twins hostage.
The first scene is a mildly interesting reveal – Wanda’s obsession with sitcoms comes from sitting down with her family as a child and escaping their war-torn reality in Sokovia with shows like Bewitched, Malcolm In The Middle, The Dick Van Dyke Show and more. Their bubble of innocence is blown up (literally) by Stark Industries shells, with Wanda protecting herself and Pietro from an unexploded bomb in her first use of magic.
From there things are truly spelled out for us – Wanda’s time in Hydra’s headquarters sees her power amplified by touching The Mind Stone (Loki’s Staff); Wanda living in The Avengers’ base, bonding over sitcoms with Vision (Paul Bettany). It’s here that Marvel’s dilemma becomes clear – they have a show that cost a lot of money and needs a big audience, but not everyone’s watched every film in The MCU (despite Age of Ultron being recommended after every episode). This is an episode that fills in the gaps for those who either haven’t watched or have forgotten. For the hardcore fanbase, who have the films and comics memorised, it might be a teeny bit tedious, despite Hahn’s wonderful theatrics.
The next flashback is perhaps the most useful, as Wanda goes into SWORD headquarters, demanding Vision’s body for a burial. She meets Acting Director Hayward (Josh Stamberg), who shows her Vision’s body being taken apart, hopefully to reassemble as a new weapon. He asks if Wanda could bring him back to life, to which she refuses, and Hayward says he can’t put such an expensive resource in the ground. “He’s all I have” Wanda pleads. “Well, that’s just it Wanda, he isn’t yours” Hayward replies, making her break through SWORDs viewing glass and approach Vision’s body, but unlike Hayward’s earlier recollection, she doesn’t take him, as she can’t feel any trace of him anymore.
Bereft, she drives to Westview, a sleepy town containing a plot of land that the she and Vision planned to grown old in. Standing in the plot, consumed by grief, she screams and the energy from her pain creates WandaVision. We see that the Vision of her world is not a reanimated corpse but, well, a vision created for this sitcom fantasy.
It’s questionable how much of this catch up was needed, as many of the threads were either already assumed or discussed in other WandaVision episodes. This is the kind of storytelling that happens when WandaVision is a four-to-five hours show, rather than a two-hour film. It does somewhat suck the mystery out of the plot, but we do end on a high note.
Back in The Hex, Wanda leaves the house to find Agatha restraining the twins, telling her that the magic displayed is too dangerous and powerful. She informs Wanda that this fantasy is ‘Chaos Magic’, and that she is a being thought only to be myth, named… The Scarlet Witch. We guess they had to find a way to work in the comic book name without sounding silly (remember Abomination in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk?). Chaos Magic, in the comics, is a power that can mould and shift the very fabric of reality, and the reason Wanda hasn’t just squished every threat the Avengers have met so far is that she wasn’t aware of the extent of it.
So, it wasn’t Agatha All Along, just the bits Wanda couldn’t explain. Well, mainly Fake Pietro (“Fietro” as Agatha calls him). We also learn that Hayward is indeed The Big Bad of this series, more or less confirming that he faked the footage of Wanda breaking into SWORD. We also get further evidence of his villainy in an excellent post-credits scene, where he reveals he is breaking into The Hex using energy from… The Resurrected Vision (now a sinister off-white, hinting at the villainous White Vision character from the comics who is a soulless robot).
It’s at this point we normally fill you in on little references, or what this might mean, but episode 8 has done that pretty well for us. There are some exciting question marks about what this new Vision might mean, the climactic face-off, and how Wanda’s fully realised powers may usher in a whole new era for The Marvel Cinematic Universe. In short, it’s a turning point for the world’ biggest media franchise, but as an episode of television, this episode of WandaVision is quite literally nothing we haven’t seen before.
New episodes of WandaVision are available every Friday on Disney+