LEFTOVER NINE
We start with “Previously on Wandavision”, but this isn’t a normal recap of last week’s episode. (I don’t think. You never know when you’re being trolled on this show, lol.) A news report lays out “Devastation in Sokovia”, and then gives us background on the Maximoff twins, including footage from Marvel movies. Hayward speaks during the report, detailing that Wanda stole Vision’s body, and we see Darcy tell Vision that Wanda killed him. That we know from last week, but now we have actual movie footage that shows the event. Thanos pulls the infinity stone from Vision’s head.
ONE
The recap ends with Agatha’s introduction of herself in the basement, also seen last week.
Roll logo montage.
TWO
Cut to torches and a title screen: Salem, Massachusetts, 1693.
Agatha is dragged through the woods by women in cloaks. Forming a circle, they place Agatha on a scaffold in the center and restrain her with magical bonds. An older angry woman asks Agatha if she’s a witch. Yes, she says. You’ve betrayed your coven, says Angry. You stole knowledge and practiced dark magic. At first Agatha looks cowed, but it’s an act. “Help me, mother,” she calls to Angry. She turns the power of the bonds back on the witches’ circle and drains their life away. Angry blasts her with a super beam, but Agatha drains her, too. Reaching down to her mother’s skeleton, Agatha unpins a brooch from the bodice and floats up and away.
THREE
(There is no Three.)
FOUR
Back to Senor Scratchy in Agatha’s basement. Wanda lights up the red eyes and Agatha laughs. “My thoughts aren’t available to you.” Holding all the power, Agatha points to protection spells cast into the basement walls. Only the witch that casts the runes can use her magic. (On first viewing, this seemed like silly arcana, but it actually becomes important next episode.) Agatha performs some light torture on Wanda, then casts a door in the wall and takes her through.
It’s the Cold War apartment from Wanda’s childhood. When she steps inside she becomes the girl. The family prepares to watch a sitcom dvd. Hiding in a hole in the wall is Wanda’s favorite, the Dick Van Dyke Show. They watch the “walnut” episode for the umpteenth time, faces of pure joy, until a smash from nowhere destroys the apartment. From under the bed Wanda and Pietro see an unexploded Stark missile, blinking. Agatha asks adult Wanda if she stopped that bomb. It was defective, Wanda answers. Agatha calls her a baby witch and opens another magic door.
It’s a security door, and this is a laboratory room. A young adult Wanda, sickly pale, steps in and labels herself a volunteer for the experiment. Technicians in the adjacent room say that no one so far has survived direct contact with the blue stone glowing in the spear. As she reaches for it, Wanda watches it rumble and float to her as it shines. It explodes into a yellow gleam and an indistinct image of a lady floats toward her. Wanda falls, and the scientists proclaim her alive. Back in her cell she watches the Brady Bunch on a TV. Only Wanda saw what happened. To the scientists she just stood there, then passed out.
SWITCH
Agatha tells current Wanda that the infinity stone amplified the magic in her that would have otherwise died.
FIVE
Another door, this time into a motel room. It’s the Avengers compound, says Wanda. (She and Vision aren’t at this point a couple, I don’t think.) She calls out and he materializes through the wall, coming from the next door room. Her grief from Pietro’s death is fresh, and Vision wants to comfort her. The camera slowly pushes in on Wanda as she describes her weariness, with Olsen owning every inch of screen. Then Vision says, “It can’t all be sorrow.” He’s always alone, which means no loss because there’s no love. Grief, he says in one of the great lines, is love persevering. (This might be the moment Wanda falls in love with him. That’s how Olsen plays it, and it’s beautifully done.) Even Agatha wipes a tear.
But how did you do it, Agatha demands. When Wanda returned from the blip Vision was gone, and she wanted him back. She goes to SWORD and demands his body for a funeral. Hayward meets her and shows her Vision in the lab as they dismantle him. Legs, wires, saws pulling him apart, and a very dead head are what Wanda sees. It’s obviously upsetting for her. Hayward explains that they’re dismantling the most sophisticated sentient weapon they have, and that she won’t put three billion dollars of vibranium in the ground. (He’s matter-of-fact, not menacing, and he speaks frankly to a woman with immense power. I kind of admire his stones, actually.) Of course, Wanda lights up the red. Hayward has everyone stand down so she can touch Vision. “I can’t feel you,” she says in sorrow. Leaving, she goes to her car in the parking lot.
SIX
A letter, envelope opened, rests on the car’s passenger seat.
SEVEN
Wanda drives. She ends up going past the Welcome to Westview sign. The town itself is run down, with weeds growing through the pavement cracks. As she cruises the main road we see all of the townspeople we know going about their normal lives.
In a neighborhood, she pulls into a lot under construction. Only an unfinished foundation exists.
EIGHT
Now we see the letter. It’s a property deed with a handwritten message from Vision: a place to grow old in. That does it. Wanda breaks down. As she cries, a red beam explodes from her heart. She elevates, and the house builds itself around her. The beam spreads farther, and the town changes as well. A yellow strand of the beam builds Vision. As it ends, she screams from either pain or exertion.
It’s a black and white world with only Wanda still in color. When Vision looks at her, she changes into the appropriate Wanda with pearls, dress, and bouffant hair. He says her name aloud.
As they share a kiss on the couch, the current Wanda in color watches them. Looking up, she sees a studio with lights and cameras. Agatha sits in the audience seating and claps. She snaps her fingers and the scene changes to the neighborhood street. The twins are restrained with Agatha’s purple magic rope. It’s around their necks, and they struggle. I know what you are, Agatha tells Wanda. Myth. You have the power of spontaneous creation. Chaos magic. (Pause for effect . . . )
You’re the Scarlet Witch.
NINE
Roll credits.
Again they add in a Nine scene. Hayward in the lab still has Wanda’s missile, glowing red from her magic. He uses it as a power supply for something. There it is, we see White Vision, the actual reincarnated Vision (not Wanda’s facsimile), as he comes to electrical life in a glass box. Last shot: his white eyes open.
CRITICAL NOTES
That Six! So simple, so visual, so mysterious. It propels Wanda into the Seven and Eight, even though we don’t yet know what it says. It’s a tiny beat that wakes us up, makes us wonder. So many questions from one little image: an envelope on a car seat.
Once the Six is identified, the lack of a Three becomes obvious. Agatha unpins her mother’s brooch. What if she’d taken a letter from her pocket, instead? The jewelry is a nod to a Three, but I won’t count it. It’s too different from the Six, and it’s too integrated into the Two scene. It isn’t a stand alone beat that instigates some action or feeling in the Four. I suspect it’s a plant for the finale. (I don’t remember, which isn’t a good commentary on its use, or my memory, or both.) One of the biggest pitfalls of storytelling is this idea of planting something for a future plotline. Finish today’s story! Keep all the arms and legs in this moving vehicle!
At the end Agatha calls Wanda a myth. In the beginning Agatha overcomes all other witches, including her mother the leader. She’s obviously very powerful as witches go. And she’s heard tales of an all-powerful version of herself, the Scarlet Witch. Did she ever think she was the superhero? Did she test herself? This episode missed giving Agatha some context. I’m fixated on my invented Three, a letter. Wait. It doesn’t come from her mother’s pocket, it comes from Agatha’s! It’s a near-illegible page ripped from a book that tells of the Scarlet Witch. When she tosses it down on her mother’s dead chest, it’s because Agatha wonders about and dreams of being the Scarlet Witch. It’s a taunt directed at her mother, who never believed in her. Imagine what that context in the Three slot would do to the rest of the episode! Think of what that beat would’ve given Hahn to work with!
Otherwise, this is a fine structure. Olsen kills it in the scene with Vision in the Five. It’s one of the best moments in the entire series. Questions we’ve had all along are answered in the Seven and Eight. The Nine is very exciting, although it reminds me that our Vision was short-shrifted in the last episode and is completely missing in this one. That feels wrong.
Also, the commercial is absent. I guess this isn’t really a sitcom episode, but I wish they’d found a structural way to include it. Its continuity throughout the season seems thematically important.