Check the Critical Notes after the breakdown for my thoughts on the structure of the entire series. I figure out why I felt so dissatisfied when the season ended.
ONE
We pick up where the last episode left off. Wanda’s twins are bound by Agatha’s magic purple rope. The witches fight, and Agatha holds Wanda’s red power beams. “I take power from the undeserving,” she says. Wanda’s hand withers and turns black from the drain. Just when Agatha appears to be winning, Wanda hits her with a car that crashes through a house window. Looking through the broken glass, Wanda sees two empty boots under the car in a Wizard of Oz homage. (I laughed.)
TWO
Behind Wanda, White Vision floats down. He touches her cheek in what appears to be a tender moment, then squeezes her head in a vise grip. Our Vision rams him away. Wanda says to him, “I should’ve told you everything.” They’re a team, though. “This is our home. Let’s fight for it.” The Visions fly off in one direction, and the witches go the other.
THREE
Meanwhile, Pietro has Monica trapped inside his house, using his superspeed to corral her.
FOUR
The Visions sky-fight. “Wanda must be neutralized. You must be destroyed,” says White Vision. At the SWORD compound, Hayward tracks their flight pattern. Woo, handcuffed, says that Quantico is coming.
Wanda and Agatha also face off in the air. Underneath, Westview still looks normal. Then Agatha shows her a gothic Book of the Damned with a chapter devoted to the Scarlet Witch. (DID I CALL IT LAST EPISODE, OR WHAT!) It is your destiny to destroy the world, Agatha taunts. She removes Wanda’s mind control from the townspeople.
On the ground, Wanda is surrounded by the mob. One woman asks Wanda to let her daughter come out of her room. (It’s pretty sad.) Wanda is in denial, claiming to help this woman by making her life peaceful. “She’s your meat puppet,” Agatha retorts.
Back to Pietro and Monica. She notices some paperwork, a bill. You live here, she says. Using her super-hex vision, Monica sees the Agatha necklace that controls Pietro and removes it.
While the Visions battle around the edges of town, and the twins watch, the townspeople continue to crowd around Wanda. “Your grief is poisoning us.” It’s a cacophony, and Wanda explodes with red, sending magic that chokes them. She seems surprised that she did that, and makes it stop. “Let us die,” they say. “Heroes don’t torture people,” Agatha tells her. With that, Wanda starts to dissolve the Hex.
Seeing the breach, Hayward drives in with his force. The Visions have a mindstone battle, with White’s beam winning, tossing Our Vision to the ground. The Hex retreats, and Vision and the boys start to dissolve. “One can’t exist without the other,” Agatha says. “Westview or your family.” In response, Wanda rebuilds the Hex.
SWITCH
The family huddles together. Everyone’s here: Agatha, White Vision, Hayward, the townspeople. Wanda turns to the twins. You may not be prepared to fight, but you were born for it. They strike a fighting pose, the family against the world.
FIVE
While the Visions fight, they philosophize. (It’s my favorite part of this episode.) White says his programming directive is to destroy the Vision. Ours says he’s not the true Vision, only a conditional one. The fight stops, and White says, “I request elaboration.”
Wanda and Agatha take to the air while the boys superspeed away the military’s weapons. Monica, now free, dives forward when Hayward starts shooting at them. Her superpowers make her skin bulletproof, apparently. And then Darcy in the Funnel Cake van rams Hayward. “Have fun in prison,” she says.
The Visions discuss the metaphysical concept of the Ship of Theseus. After a back and forth, and with permission, Our Vision touches White’s stone and transfers his memories. (In montage we see all of the Vision moments compiled from the Marvel films and these episodes. White Vision’s eyes change color, and a lot of potential plotlines are born. It’s a great scene.)
And now Wanda’s in Agatha’s imagination — I guess? — surrounded by torches and tied to the stake. Around her is the dead coven. They rise and call Wanda the Scarlet Witch, harbinger of chaos. Using her red magic, Wanda shapes a crown on her head. Give me your power, Agatha says. You and your family can live in peace in Westview. Wanda blasts red, and she and Agatha go back to their sky battle over town.
Wanda continuously attacks Agatha, throwing the red and becoming desiccated by the magic drain. Agatha goes for the killing blow and — fizz, nothing. Flexing, Wanda is again young. She shows power symbols in the Hex and thanks Agatha for the lesson about witches casting runes.
Costume change, and now Wanda is the Scarlet Witch. She siphons Agatha’s purple magic and tosses her into the town. Agatha asks, “What now? Will you lock me up?” Wanda responds, I’ll give you the role you chose. Nosy neighbor. (Lol, what a fate.) Begging, Agatha says, you’re going to need me. “I know where to find you,” Wanda says, touching her head and removing her will. “Okey dokey,” Agatha (now Agnes) says with that insipid smile.
SIX/SEVEN
Now that Wanda has won the day, the twins hug her. Shall we head home, she says. In thanks, she gives a nod to Monica.
EIGHT
Westview is back to Wandavision normal. The family returns to their house in their quiet neighborhood. Behind them, the sky is Hex-red. They tuck the boys into bed, both parents very emotional. “A family is forever.” As they close the bedroom door, the Hex wall slides closer.
The couple meets on the couch. Vision, gentle, asks, “Before I go, I must know what am I?” “You are the piece of the mindstone that lives in me,” Wanda answers. “You are my sadness and my hope. Mostly, you’re my love.” (It’s a tender scene that finalizes this relationship and hints at another to come.) The red Hex engulfs them, Vision flows away, and Wanda is left in the real world house foundation.
NINE
She walks through the town. Military humvees still block the road. Townspeople stare at her with anger. Monica greets her: “They’ll never know what you sacrificed for them.” If given the choice, Monica would’ve brought her mom back from the dead. She sympathizes. Wanda says, “I don’t understand this power, but I will.” Lighting up her hands and changing into superhero clothes, Wanda flies up and away.
Roll credits.
First break: Hayward is in cuffs. Woo tells Monica that someone is asking for her in the town theater. When she goes in, she’s greeted by a woman who transforms into an alien. “I was sent by a friend of your mother’s who’d like to meet you.” The alien points up into space.
More credits.
Second break: Another quick Wanda sequence. (I missed it, though, which is what happens when you put information in the middle of the credits. Rewinding and finding it seemed like an annoying game I didn’t want to play.)
CRITICAL NOTES FOR THIS EPISODE
The Three and Six are clumsy. Monica appears to be a mirror potential, but her beat at the Six is scant. Quit interjecting her randomly and let her serve a purpose!
Other than that, the structure is sound. The fight for home and family commences at the Two and resolves at the Eight. Vision gets a great little arc. Agatha is defeated. The witch battle is awkward and haphazard because it’s part of the series’ Eight, but it’s happening in this episode’s Five. We have a sense of climax and much at stake, but it’s all before we get to the end. It will always feel a little off-kilter. That’s not really this episode’s fault; it can’t be blamed for the gaping hole in the series.
CRITICAL NOTES FOR THE SERIES
Let’s just cut to the chase. You can’t hang a series on Agatha. She’s a troll. She’s irrelevant to this story. The showrunners named this Wandavision for a reason: it’s the love story of Wanda and Vision, and how she copes when he dies. This is a Shakespearean tragedy about grief and power. Who gives a freaking pouf about some minor witch persona from the comics? Wanda, bordering on villain and hero, must be called back from the brink (or pushed over the edge) by Vision, by her image of him and also the newly rebooted White Vision. By any standard of storytelling, he’s supposed to be the Eight. His suspicion, his growing awareness, are the Two, the Trouble that drives this plot forward. I want to see White Vision, with his acquired memories from the facsimile Vision, confront Wanda. What she’s done to the townspeople, removing their will in order to create her fantasyland, needs to be brutally reprimanded by someone she cares about, especially if that someone is a being she can’t control. Her Vision and ultimately Agatha have less power than Wanda. White Vision does not. I want that showdown.
The way the series is now, Agatha is the Eight, but how does she identify herself at the series’ Two? The closest moment we have is in Episode 2 when Agatha/Agnes introduces us to her familiar, Senor Scratchy. It’s an odd bit, but it’s explained as part of the Magic Show. Nothing in this sequence would give us pause or raise a flag. The neighbor has a pet rabbit. Big deal. If the showrunners were trying to foreshadow or signal unease with this sequence, they failed. Frankly, they didn’t give her a proper Two because she isn’t the legitimate Eight.
At Episode 7, over two-thirds in, we’re supposed to rewrite everything we’ve seen before to make room for Agatha’s magical manipulation. How did she get there? How does she break Wanda’s mind control, especially when our final scene of her has her locked under Wanda’s mind control? How does she trick Vision when he touches her head in the car? How did she even hear about Wanda and Westview in the first place, enough to jump in at Episode 1? A deus ex machina is an iffy character and plot choice. They had so much more in the love story of Wanda and Vision.
I’ve been cheated and manipulated by the showrunners, and the more I think about it, the angrier I get. God! What a waste! It’s so sad. And Olsen, who’s really bringing tremendous acting chops, was cheated out of a scene she earned with every other episode. I hate to see a story with so much potential, so much work on the screen, undermined at the end. If the showrunners are treading water so that they can bring a juicy story to a later project — the Dr. Strange movie or Monica’s future project — they deserve to be burned at the stake. This was the place to answer who Wanda had become. Is she a grief-stricken hero who went too far and must make amends, or is she now an angry and unrepentant villain? That was their Eight, and they didn’t write it.