I actually gush after the breakdown. A rare moment, lol.
LEFTOVER 9
Echoing voices and a pixelated mist that resolves into Geraldine, bedside in a hospital room. She’s reforming, and others all about do the same. It’s chaos. Now we realize this is the moment after the blip when everyone comes back.
We really get a sense of the confusion and terror of all these people returning to the place they left off, while around them are the people who didn’t disappear, the ones who’ve had lives for the past five years.
Someone recognizes Geraldine and names her as Monica. For her it’s been twenty minutes, the moment she started napping in the hospital chair. The doctor who knows her, who hears her asking for her mother, says, “She died, honey.” Her cancer came back and she passed away three years ago, two years after you disappeared.
Cut to credits.
ONE
We’re with Monica Rambeau as she returns to work at SWORD headquarters. Her security badge won’t work. Director Hayward greets her and leads her in, bringing her (and us) up to speed. Space is now full of threats. Your mother built this place. You’re mission grounded, a protocol your mother established for the time when the vanishing people returned. She believed you’d come back, though, or she wouldn’t have made a contingency.
Here’s the folder for an FBI missing persons case in Jersey, your new assignment.
TWO
Monica drives up to a town sign for Westview, NJ. Agent Woo greets her. The sheriff, parked in the road, tells them he’s never heard of a Westview, even as he stands directly adjacent to the sign.
After the sheriff drives away, Monica asks Woo if he’s gone inside the town. It doesn’t want me to, he says. Nobody goes in, you can feel it.
THREE
From the trunk Monica pulls a SWORD drone chopper and sets it up. As she flies it into Westview, her screen goes wild and she loses the drone. Walking forward, she sees an energy wall around the town. When she touches it — Watch out, Woo yells — she’s sucked in and disappears.
FOUR
Twenty-four hours later, says the title card. In the back of a driving van are Darcy, from the Thor storyline, and a group of others. She asks what their specialties are. Nuclear biology, AI, and her own astrophysics. It’s a full clown car, she says.
They arrive at the mobile military compound. Stadium lights, activity, drones flying into the energy wall and zapping — this burg is jumping.
Each scientist has a station and their equipment. Darcy sets up her snazzy gear, lights flashing, and notices a particular reading. I need a TV, she says. An old one, not flat.
In the rain an agent in a hazmat suit enters the sewer duct, which should run all the way into the town. Find Rambeau. Woo worries: what if the energy perimeter is subterraneous?
SWITCH
Darcy starts watching her TV. Is that –? It’s the first episode of Wandavision, the exact one we watched, coming over the tube television. Seeing Vision, Darcy says, “He’s dead, right?” Hayward wants to know what this is. Authentic? Happening in real time? Darcy doesn’t know.
When the episode ends with a kiss between Wanda and Vision, Darcy gives an “awww”.
FIVE
A hodge podge of information. Darcy continues to watch TV as the episodes roll forward. Woo sets up a white board and loads it with questions. Faces in the episode are computer scanned and identified. Character names are associated with real world names.
And then Monica appears as Geraldine. Is she okay, they ask. Deep cover? Alternate reality? They have no idea.
But Darcy has a plan. In the sitcom a radio sits on the counter. They’ll set up to shoot a signal to the radio and speak directly to Wanda.
SIX
As they fiddle with the radio equipment, an agent approaches with a photo and asks, Have you seen the current episode? In the picture is the SWORD chopper, now a toy. Why did you colorize it, Woo asks. I didn’t.
SEVEN
It’s the scene at the country club pool. Woo begins his broadcast attempt when Darcy spots the radio on the episode’s table. Can you read me, he asks. Darcy tells him to keep trying. Meanwhile, we see Wanda’s reaction shot in the show as she becomes aware of the radio. “Who’s doing this to you?” comes over the radio loud and clear.
And then the episode cuts to its commercial break. Darcy can sense no response from Wanda. Nothing, she tells Woo.
EIGHT
The agent in the hazmat suit crawls through the sewer. As he passes through the energy wall his outfit changes to the beekeeper suit. The cord connecting him to the military camp snaps. When he rises through the manhole cover, Wanda and Vision see him. She says her “no”, and the next episode comes on the TV.
Darcy and Woo, confused, watch as the time period switches and Wanda goes into labor. Monica as Geraldine helps her deliver the twins. They’re completely mesmerized — “invested”, Darcy says of herself. When they hear “Ultron”, though, they do a double take. Wanda says Geraldine should leave, and she’s gone. They rewind the episode but nothing’s there, just Geraldine disappearing.
We see the replay, just for us. Push-in on Wanda, and the scene takes on new life. Wanda’s hands go red as she charges her magic. Geraldine tries to slide out of it, saying, “I’m just your neighbor.” Wanda blasts her backward through every wall of the house, across the town, and through the energy hex.
Possibly, Wanda’s surprised at what she’s done. She cries and repairs the holes in the walls, magically knitting the house back together. When Vision enters she’s not quite sure that he didn’t see.
And now again we see Monica in the dirt after her ejection from Westview. Again the vehicles surround her as she blinks and recovers from the hit.
Back to Wanda. When she looks at Vision his eyes are dead, his color is paste, and he has a nasty hole in his head. It’s horrible, but then he’s normal again. “We don’t have to stay here,” he says. We can go wherever we want. With a strange face Wanda says, “No we can’t.” This is our home. And most ominously: I have everything under control.
Woo and Darcy examine the shocked Monica. It’s all Wanda, she says.
NINE
In the episode, Wanda lifts the baby. What should we watch? Vision, seeming confused, turns on the TV. The guitar lead-in for Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile” begins.
Roll credits.
CRITICAL NOTES
Wow, what a crisp episode! Sharp, concise, detailed. Structurally beautiful. This is a story well told!
And to start with a Leftover Nine on a 35 minute program! Impressive. We all want to delve more into the blip. How did it impact regular people? This is a good little slice, a resolution to a problem introduced in another story, another movie.
The Two Trouble — what are the Rules of the Magic of this energy wall, and how will it specifically impact Monica? — is introduced here and answered at the Eight. Boom.
The Three and Six! The visual of the chopper drone mirrors beautifully, with the Three version straightforward and the Six version more complex, more nuanced. Between the two beats we learn a lot, and that’s reflected in the juxtaposition.
The Seven is surprisingly interesting. Developing the radio plan is established earlier, in the Five. The decision at this moment is actually Woo’s question. Why does he phrase it this way: “Who’s doing this to you?” He assumes that Wanda is a victim of someone else. Wanda reacts with hostility in this episode. Does this question by Woo influence her actions at the Eight? She’s not just protecting her family, her sanctuary. Olsen is playing more complex emotions, and I believe that this Seven is the foundation.
And the Eight delivers on everything established earlier. Monica completes an arc. We see a side of Wanda that’s been hidden previously. The team of Darcy and Woo solidifies. The notion that this is a frivolous show about sitcom homages is upended. This episode hits the emotions and the brain pan. Congratulations to everyone who worked on this.