Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase 4 & Beyond (and a chance to change your vote)

I agree that the parts about Wanda's grief were the best in the episode. The movies, having multiple main characters and being structured around action scenes, barely even touched the fact that her parents, her twin brother and her partner have all been killed tragically, and what that must've been like for her. So it's great that a series like this has space to address the grief, and the idea that sitcoms were comfort food for her during hard times, and that's why she made Westview like it is, was great.

If the kids are not real, then how did Agatha get them, hide them, capture them?

enjoyed this episode a lot but also enjoying the thought that marvel studios spent $200m solely to give mcu wanda a reason to use her superhero name

man this episode made me cry so much

i have zero connection to the comics so it was all just character for me & i loved it. just the unfolding of how completely she turned inward in her grief, and the added detail of why she chose that location was such a gutpunch

and that line grief is just love persevering is <3
i have some dear friends who have struggled for years w the loss of a loved one & that line just crystallizes what that process really means & why some ppl do struggle for a long long time

I was hoping this story to be a bit more imaginative and less derivative, but everything that happened here was pretty much what people had speculated before the series even began.

People have speculated a lot of things though - remember the aerospace engineer that was definitely going to be Reed Richards? The choices they make touch on the comics, but have made this actual great story that's in front of us.

she sought out Wanda because she suspected Wanda might be the Scarlet Witch/Nexus Being

I think that's a little more than the episode says, she seems just drawn to powerful magic and realises after taking a trip through Wanda's head that this is what's going on.

It's worth acknowledging the other person in the two-hander - Elizabeth Olsen is great, but Kathryn Hahn keeps up with her.

I am amused that for all the furious speculation that I've seen (here and elsewhere) I've not seen anyone prior to this notice that the footage of Wanda stealing the Vision doesn't show Wanda stealing the Vision.

I was hoping this story to be a bit more imaginative and less derivative, but everything that happened here was pretty much what people had speculated before the series even began.

People have speculated a lot of things though - remember the aerospace engineer that was definitely going to be Reed Richards? The choices they make touch on the comics, but have made this actual great story that's in front of us.

Familiar to a very small percentage of the viewers, though.

T-dogg has been posting excitedly itt for months about the ways he thought or anticipated this was differing from the comics, the context of disappointment is personal

Yeah that's fair, my apologies.

Yeah, I don't doubt the show is still very exciting to the 99% of viewers who're not familiar with the source material, like Vegemitegrrl said above. I guess my point is only that in the previous works they'd been pretty good at making it unexpected and exciting for us Marvel geeks too, and this is the first time I felt they kinda failed at that. Though I guess the final episode can still give us some curveballs, we'll see.

this seemed to be the suspicions-confirming episode which is fine, but it also makes me wonder why they structured this thing like a mystery box to begin with. we didn’t learn anything that wasn’t heavily hinted at in previous episodes, and the stuff that we did learn felt like retconning wanda’s inconsistent personality from the films. and the final reveal didn’t really work without the layers of extra-textual knowledge that viewers already bring to the table. we’ve known she’s the scarlet witch since 2015. the next episode needs to prove why we should give a crap she’s the scarlet witch beyond the leo dicaprio pointing meme.

that said, the scene with vision was great and it needed to be, to provide a real emotional foundation for the core relationship of the show

I am amused that for all the furious speculation that I've seen (here and elsewhere) I've not seen anyone prior to this notice that the footage of Wanda stealing the Vision doesn't show Wanda stealing the Vision.

Me, last week! "how/why did Wanda steal his body (assuming she actually did)?

Still expecting a reveal/hint of another villain, still not expecting a tidy wrap up. Leave the viewers wanting more in the lead up to Spider Man 3 and Dr. Strange 2, especially given the stuff on deck (Falcon, Black Widow, Eternals, Shang-Chi, maybe even Loki - these are all in the can, right?) doesn't seem like it would offer much of a continuation of the supernatural/multiverse stuff. Who knows when and how any of these movies will actually show up, anyway.

Loki may indeed involve multiversal themes (multichronal themes, at the very least)

Which makes sense. Though we don't necessarily know the tone of the show yet, whether it will be an adventure or drama or comedy or something in between. No one had any idea what WandaVision would be or be like until it actually aired, right?

Okay fine, no-one except Josh, who has acclimatised to the multiverse as a way of believing in everything at once.

This was the trailer from last September:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj9J2ecsSpo

Anyway, per observations above, that line is landing hard elsewhere:

I have lost several dear friends, both parents, and a son. I hated my own sorrow until tonight, when I heard: "But, what is grief, if not love, persevering?" Heart-healing poetry. Thank you, @wandavision. pic.twitter.com/9nENdIGHSs

— ralphgarman (@RalphGarman) February 27, 2021

it was also his gentle delivery, where it wasn't just Vision being left-brained and logical, but trying to understand human emotion and comfort her despite still adapting to how humans think and feel.

Something I saw noted somewhere else. When Wanda removes the infinity stone from his forehead in Infinity War, he says "It’s alright. I just feel you." In this ep, when she holds her hand over his disembodied head, she says "I can't feel you." Also noted elsewhere that when Wanda is introduced to the mind stone, in a sense this episode sort of shows that Vision had an attraction to her even back then, when his soul was embodied in the stone.

the "i can't feel you" was pretty heartbreaking

There are still friends of mine floating the Mephisto theory and I think that's nuts. To expand Agnes's arc gradually over multiple episodes and then abruptly interrupt it to throw a new baddie into a one hour finale?

I could easily be wrong but I would hate it at this point. If he was going to be the one, it should have happened by now.

I think Heyward is pretty obviously the real baddie. He inspired the anomaly and used it to repower White Vision!

I'm probably wrong (duh) but that's what I mean with my another baddie/cliffhanger suspicion. That the final episode (or two, we don't know for sure) will maybe reveal Agatha as less evil than she seems, Heyward as perhaps even more villainous than he seems, and maybe something else going on. With let's say just one episode left, is that enough to resolve Vision's quest (I assume a merging of Wanda-Vision and the just introduced White-Vision), the more or less just introduced as who she really is Agatha, the barely introduced as superpowered Monica, the still mysterious twins, getting Wanda under control, etc? There are a lot of balls (and exposition) in the air for just 50 more minutes left.

Aw man I think I've just worked out what Paul Bettany's been on about this whole time.

He's been trailing for ages that there's a non-leaked actor he gets to play against that he's wanted to for years and nobody has guessed who it is, leading to speculation there must be some big be still to come.

I started thinking about how that knocked out every Avengers co-star then it struck me - it's himself, isn't it. It's Red Vision Vs White Vision. Well played.

One of the good things about the way this show has developed is that there is in fact no baddie!

trauma is the baddie

didn’t love trauma in the comics tbh

Falcon/Winter Soldier start date is 3/19, two weeks after WandaVision finale.

I half wonder if on Friday the 12th there'll be one of those Disney Gallery episodes as with The Mandalorian where they go into the making of WandaVision.

Didn't they say they were going to do a making-of show?

'Assembled: The Making of WandaVision' premieres March 12, 2021 on Disney+

Ah well, there you go!

Very good. I haven't seen much of the Mandalorian making-of, but if it's the same quality I'll happily watch that

Am I missing something or is Agatha All Along anything more than a tweaked Munsters Today theme?

That's the whole point!

Some good tweets from the writer of the episode:

I told a therapist once that my trauma defined me. She said no: It shapes you.

It was paramount to the writers of #WandaVison to not just look at where Wanda has been, but to spend time with her there. To give space & voice to her grief, to her loss.

To watch her take shape. https://t.co/4OPn2Ux7M8

— Laura Donney (@LMdonney) February 26, 2021

The response to this episode has been so meaningful. TV writing is a group effort, & in our case, a beautiful one. Heres to our fearless and heartful leader #jacschaeffer and the entire writers room:

— Laura Donney (@LMdonney) February 27, 2021

Worried I’m gonna lose all my new WandaVision followers once they realize all I do is tweet about being Jewish and loving my Aunt.

— Laura Donney (@LMdonney) February 28, 2021

<3

I'll reword my question then - why on earth are people losing their shit about a retooled Munsters theme?

(As an aside, thinking about this made me realise the Munsters theme shares a hell of a lot of DNA with the Flintstones theme but I suppose you'll tell me that should be in the "old when you realised" thread)

(I did not know Munsters Today even existed until your previous post but) have you noticed that any of the other episodes, or the beginning of this one, contain riffs on sitcom themes of yore?

On the one hand, the reaction to Agatha After All is considerably more hype than the other tunes.

On the other hand, isn't most of the hype about the remix?

I didn't notice anything else sitcommy but since most of the other themes have been for shows that either weren't broadcast or are largely unknown in the UK (e.g. Dick van Dyke show, which I'm aware of but have never seen more than a couple of eps of) that maybe isn't surprising. Or just more recent things like Malcolm in the Middle or Modern Family that I just haven't seen so wouldn't know if it slapped me round the face.

But this is different from them, this is a show not directly referenced by the visuals (and not in the Maximoff dvd library as seen in ep8).

Actually I saw an interview after ep7 where they said it sounded like it fitted so well because they'd shared the theme with other score writers and they had left clues to it in the rest of the soundtrack.

Hype absolutely not just around the remix e.g.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pFne_gwjQk

Maybe it's just the Frozen effect, like Let It Go.

most of the reaction is to its narrative function, not to the melody

the 80s and '00s "sitcom themes" are very definitely making specific musical and visual references to specific sitcoms of the referenced eras.

most of the reaction is to its narrative function, not to the melody

Vs

On the other hand, isn't most of the hype about the remix?

Remixes not notably about narrative function.

As I said, I'm not familiar enough with the contents of the Maximoff Blockbuster Suitcase to recognise they're straight lifts from them but this is still different as The Munsters wasn't in there (that I could see, happy to be corrected). I suppose possibly the answer is the other themes are created by Wanda and this by Agatha so <shrugs>. What do I know.

what is going on here??

I have not had the same experience as Andrew re: the alleged "remix" (one of several trap bootlegs afaik?), cf

btw I can't get that Agatha theme song out of my head

― if you meh them, shut up (Neanderthal), Saturday, February 20, 2021 3:00 PM (one week ago)

knowing that it's her actually singing it just makes that song even more delightful

― Nhex, Sunday, February 21, 2021 5:58 AM (one week ago)

if we assume that the show's meta-asides are to be taken as messages from a reliable narrator (as they have so far wrt theme lyrics, visual asides suggesting not all is as it seems), Agatha is described in the song as insidious, perfidious and "messing up everything." She also admits to killing a dog with Wicked Witch of the West flair

― That's not really my scene (I'm 41) (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, February 23, 2021 2:18 AM (five days ago)

that fucking agatha song has been stuck in my head constantly

― tiwa-nty one savage (voodoo chili), Tuesday, February 23, 2021 6:01 AM (five days ago)

Meantime, new interview with Anderson-Lopez/Lopez

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/arts/television/wandavision-agatha-all-along.html

("Meet" probably the most famous songwriting duo on Broadway/at Disney etc? Change that headline.)

Honestly this week's episode was among other things just an amazing tonal shift after having said song in my head off and on throughout the week.

― Ned Raggett, Saturday, February 27, 2021 6:27 AM (yesterday)

Agatha definitely an interesting villain(?) as the intro is definitely... open to some kind of interpretation. Glad they went this route (maybe?) rather than keeping her as evil as the end of the song implied. Also, did they use some funky de-aging tech or was it just incredible makeup for her flashback?

― Nhex, Saturday, February 27, 2021 10:59 AM (yesterday)

yeah sorry i just don't get this whole latest back and forth about the agatha song, and the 'hype', and some remix somewhere, and that it sounds like the munsters... what's the bone of contention exactly?

“people like something but still wanna complain about it.”

- ILX

aldo didn’t know that the other sitcom themes sounded like sitcom themes*, so he’s latched on to Agatha sounding like one he knows, and is thus fixating on the melody being pastiched, rather than on it being a fun way to do a plot reveal

* 100% fair obv

other ppl are enjoying being earwormed by the catchy fun joke that delivered a narrative twist. aldo is confused bcz he just thinks of The Munsters if he plays the tune in his head, and thinks he must be missing something, so asked if he’s missing something

no big deal in any direction rly

lol okay

i do like that the episode is called 'breaking the fourth wall' and there is this unsettling slippage about who, in fact, the audience is for agatha's theme/montage. it's us, mainly, and serves its delicious reveal function to us, but does wanda 'see' it, too? no, i think?

'fietro' = a+

this whole episode was amazing imo. the moment we see vision being remade in the 50s world, and he looks at wanda, and they just assume their roles, and then we see the sets and the lights.. ahhh directly into my veins plz