WandaVision - Episode 8 - Review

After the reveal of Agatha at the end of the previous episode, the penultimate episode could have gone in many different ways, but a visit to a therapists couch was not how I saw things going at all, but in a way it makes sense. While the show didn’t push things forward across the board, it got three very important stories into place for the final.

Spoilers Ahead

Starting the episode back in centuries past was a smart move, as it provided some context as to who Agatha is, rather than just assuming she was a moustache twirling bad gal and while yes, she is bad, it appears that her steps down that path may have been helped along by some forbidden knowledge. But rather than admitting her problem and offering to attempt to make amends, she gives into it and becomes consumed by the power, even going so far as it kill her own mother and then we skip ahead to now. Thankfully, the folks at Marvel didn’t let Agatha monologue too long and quickly got into the meat of the episode, walking through Wanda’s past, in order to determine how she created this bubble reality, something Agatha is desperate to learn.

After stopping by in Sokovia, recreating that scene from Avengers: Age of Ultron and then seeing how the experiment for Baron Strucker came to pass, we get a nice touching moment with her and Vision in the old Avengers Compound, before it was blown up by Thanos. What I liked about all these moments, is how well they put context around the story, even if you don’t believe what Agatha does and Wanda is some sort of super powered being, even before the stone came into the picture. Wanda has lived her life experiencing incredible loss, from her parents to her twin brother and then the man she loved and you have to remember, for Wanda, the events of Endgame were only a few weeks back. That brings us to the most important part of the episode, at least in terms of one of the long running theories, that S.W.O.R.D. is not as nice as they seem and we find out that the director is lying out his ass.

Wanda does indeed visit the headquarters and she does have a moment with the body of Vision, but then she leaves, and given that we see her drive all the way to Westview, the story that Hayward spun to Monica and the rest was just to allow him to do whatever he wanted. Of course, the final to big reveals are one, we get to finally here someone say Scarlett Witch and this isn’t a costumed name, like Tony Stark saying he is Iron Man, no this is because Wanda was born, connected to Chaos magic, something that Doctor Strange talked about. While Agatha talks about the powers that Wanda is meant to have, we might have to wait a while until they showcase her full powers, but it does explain how she created the Twins and Vision.

Yes, the Vision that has been in the show is not real, just a product of her mind, the body of the Vision never left the building, but that last minute reveal of him being powered on is not a good thing. Folks know Vision as a good guy, but before Vision came to be, that body was Ultron and there is a possibility that what is now powered up is the original idea for the body. Now it is also possible that the body is just that, an empty shell and it will come down to a fight between that Vision and fake Vision, fision if you will, but it does provide some entertaining possibilities.

As this weeks show was not set in any particular time period, the sets were more recreations of those we got to see during the various flashbacks and they were recreated quite well. I even went back and checked old movies to compare and while there might have been odd things that were not the same, for the most part things were a match. The one element that I really liked was Agatha’s costume at the end, once she dropped the pretence of being normal, while the purple powerlines were cool, it was the layers on the outfit that were the best, because not only did they provide a sense of power, given that she was floating, but instead they evoked a sense of the outfit she was known to wear in the comics.

For the penultimate episode, things moved a little slow at times, but those final moments pushed the story forward, and left this next week to be quite long, because the battle for the end is clearly going to be fought on two sides. While I would have liked to have seen Wanda’s trip through tragedy land shortened, it served a purpose and proves once again why even the most random moment in a Marvel movie can be enormously important.

The Score

8.5

The Pros

+We finally get to hear the name

+Agatha is delightfully twisted from the moment she comes on screen

The Cons

-We get confirmation, again, that Hayward is a liar

-The backtracking through Wanda's history takes too long