the hiding tags work! I wonder if they googleproof
― grab bag cum trash bag (sic), Monday, 1 March 2021 20:46 (three years ago) link
You don’t have time to watch one damn show on Disney plus and suddenly you have no idea what anyone is ever arguing about on Twitter anymore.— Dewayne Perkins (@DewaynePerkins) February 28, 2021
― stuck in the version layer (morrisp), Monday, 1 March 2021 21:08 (three years ago) link
that vanessa beyer skit on that show was easily the funniest thing on the show and also one of the funniest things I've seen in the past 25 years
― akm, Monday, 1 March 2021 21:14 (three years ago) link
it's my favorite part of the show and also a pavlovian trigger for me to post the aunty donna ellen sketchhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5FGOaz__W0
― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Monday, 1 March 2021 21:27 (three years ago) link
I sincerely feel the book LEAN IN should be about Vanessa Bayer's performance in that sketch and not some Facebook shit
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, 1 March 2021 22:08 (three years ago) link
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/kathryn-hahn-steals-the-show-again
― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Thursday, 4 March 2021 20:02 (three years ago) link
ok that finale left me an emotional mess and that’s the first time I’ve been able to say that about an MCU thing after 22 movies and several series
Wanda!!
― Roz, Friday, 5 March 2021 15:55 (three years ago) link
This was good. I had a confident guess about a mid-credits scene which of course didn't happen.
― Motoroller Scampotron (WmC), Friday, 5 March 2021 16:55 (three years ago) link
As a library worker I must protest some collateral damage.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 5 March 2021 16:57 (three years ago) link
Note that there's a bot mid-credits scene and a post-credits scene... The mid-credits one is just a set-up for Captain Marvel 2, but the post-credits one is way more significant for this series.
As for the episode itself, it was kinda meh. They didn't do anything wrong, and the emotional beats worked, but again everything happened just as I had expected. The real Vision is restored. Monica becomes Spectrum. Agatha isn't shown to be truly evil, she doesn't die, and they're setting her up to become sort of a trickster mentor for Wanda. Tommy and Billy didn't actually disappear with the illusion either, and we're probably gonna see them in Young Avengers, if not Dr. Strange 2. So yeah, it was competently done, but not much originality or surprises, just lining everyone up with their comic counteparts and setting up future movies and series.
The biggest surprise for me was that Pietro turned out to be just random Westview dude. How'd he get the super speed, then? Is Agnes powerful enough to just casually give people superpowers? And him looking like Quicksilver from the X-Men movies was just a meta joke and nothing else?
― Tuomas, Friday, 5 March 2021 17:32 (three years ago) link
Well his "man cave" looked very much to me like the basement he lives in in Days Of Future Past, I'd be more confident but can't be arsed looking at DOFP to check.
― Well *I* know who he is (aldo), Friday, 5 March 2021 17:45 (three years ago) link
Sure, but he can't be this universe's counterpart of the X-Men universe's Pietro Maximoff, because there already was one who died. So even if the man cave was supposed to look similar, I don't see any signifigance to that?
― Tuomas, Friday, 5 March 2021 17:50 (three years ago) link
It reinforces (to me) that it was exactly just a meta joke and nothing else. Very much fanwank.
― Well *I* know who he is (aldo), Friday, 5 March 2021 18:34 (three years ago) link
thought the series was fine as something to look at during a pandemic or whatever, especially when it was "what is going on" type thing, but the last 3 or so episodes were awful, with this final one being incredibly stupid, imo
― Bongo Jongus, Friday, 5 March 2021 18:38 (three years ago) link
Well, I suppose I liked the final scene with Wanda and Vision (how many times is she going to see him die?), but we thought this finale was pretty bad. There was a point early one where I thought, man, this is like watching some Disney show, and ... well.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 5 March 2021 23:23 (three years ago) link
I quite liked it.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 5 March 2021 23:39 (three years ago) link
This ruled
― Hello Nice FBI Lady (DJP), Friday, 5 March 2021 23:58 (three years ago) link
agnes's husband ralph is gonna be confused
― mookieproof, Saturday, 6 March 2021 00:12 (three years ago) link
yeah, didn't work for me either. may type up some more reasoned thoughts later but my 2cents is this ended up being deep true emotional story sabotaged by laser beam blasts and midair punch'em-ups... and vice versa! Everything after Agatha All Along was too absurd for me to take seriously and too serious for me to effortlessly enjoy.
― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Saturday, 6 March 2021 00:12 (three years ago) link
Lots of people just standing around watching while stuff happened around them in this episode.
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 6 March 2021 00:23 (three years ago) link
Or, you know, just hovering in place.
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 6 March 2021 00:25 (three years ago) link
Nothing against you, forks, but...absurdity is built into the whole overarching enterprise.
― Ned Raggett, Saturday, 6 March 2021 00:26 (three years ago) link
Of course, but deep true emotional stories are not! I think this worked for the most part as long as it tried to tell its story on a small scale.
― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Saturday, 6 March 2021 00:33 (three years ago) link
Or more to the point, when marvel did deep true emotional stories in the books, they were couched in heavy camp, aimed at the young and the stunted and landed fairly leaden. "Even an Android Can Cry," referenced explicitly in this episode, has long been the subject of scorn and academic conversation for just that reason.
― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Saturday, 6 March 2021 00:40 (three years ago) link
It wasn’t until I became a parent that I noticed how often kids are treated as props with little concern for the real logistics, like “oh and who is watching their kids now??” questions going unanswered — but even given that baseline leaving your apparently beloved children to die, painfully, alone, awake, while you get emo downstairs is some written-for-teens nonsense.
― stet, Saturday, 6 March 2021 01:15 (three years ago) link
yeah, let's tuck in the mindbabies for dramatic effect as the red wall of reality relentlessly encroaches was a bridge too far for me too. Though obviously the second post-credits bit is meant to suggest that wanda is scouring the reaches to bring them back, so we have that to look forward to in Doc Strange 2: Doc Stranger
― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Saturday, 6 March 2021 01:47 (three years ago) link
Liked this! It's funny, whenever I read people gushing over this I'm like "come on it's good but not that good" but whenever I see people going "come on it's good but not that good" I realize I really like it! Anyway: they had a lot to do and they didn't really get it all done but it's episodic TV, I get that.
As for the kids, it doesn't bother me at all because I take that scene to be Wanda understanding that those are not actual kids, they are just projections of her wants; by contrast with Vision, who is a memory of an actual being who existed and who is explicitly set up as created in part by the Mindstone. The "kids" were inventions who at this point in the series she's known for four days. Nothing painful is going to happen to them, they are not existing people who now have to live with the memories of the torture they underwent like the people of Westview, they are just going to cease to pretend to exist!
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, 6 March 2021 02:00 (three years ago) link
I feel like this left it really unclear what the story is with white Vision. Are they saying that because he still has the memories the Vision robot still "really is" Vision, and Vision just goes back to being alive in later movies? I have to say, MCU has already been really bad about killing people and then being like "we fixed it, no longer dead" -- I guess I have to admit it's very true to the comics to do this so maybe I should just get used to it.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, 6 March 2021 02:04 (three years ago) link
Finally, I really hope Agatha Harkness had a premonition that some hardcore magic was going to happen in Westview NJ so she moved there like a year before these events and started hooking up with Ralph the doofy but strangely hot young stoner who lived alone in a house with a big basement
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, 6 March 2021 02:06 (three years ago) link
Re the kids, then again the strange line "thank you for choosing me to be your mom" suggests that maybe the kids ARE real beings who somehow entered the hex to portray Wanda's children, and who have some existence outside of it -- but then of course they're not dying in that scene, just reverting to their true selves, whatever they are.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, 6 March 2021 02:13 (three years ago) link
Honestly what's great about the [ show hidden text ] element is how it can make a whole series of responses seem like a blank Mad Libs page.
― Ned Raggett, Saturday, 6 March 2021 03:51 (three years ago) link
What is [ noun ] if not [ noun ] [ gerund ]
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, 6 March 2021 05:02 (three years ago) link
The mid-credits one is just a set-up for Captain Marvel 2Correction, set-up for future Disney+ show Secret Invasion (featuring Nick Fury & the Skrulls and now presumably also Monica R.).
― Stefan Twerkelle (Old Lunch), Saturday, 6 March 2021 05:07 (three years ago) link
Also not sure how relevant it is (possibly not relevant at all given how sidelined the Marvel tv shows have become at this point) but the Darkhold was featured extensively on Agents of SHIELD, wherein its powers were utilized to turn an LMD into a real live girl. Perhaps worthy of note.
― Stefan Twerkelle (Old Lunch), Saturday, 6 March 2021 05:23 (three years ago) link
there was a lot to like about this show and some fine moments in the finale (most of them with Bettany on screen) but it takes away nothing from the great moments that they stuffed a ton of exposition into the finale, which is kind of, if you’re still doing exposition in the third act you did kind of fuck it up.anyhoo, film crit hulk kinda nails this one I think: https://t.co/mJYqbUPKvN
― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.), Saturday, 6 March 2021 05:49 (three years ago) link
Yeah, I enjoyed this and am clearly a harcore Marvel stan in general but that review is pretty on point. Real rough around the edges in the home stretch. Don't know how much of that is attributable to questions that will be answered elsewhere (as I assumed at least one of the jobs of the Disney+ shows would be seeding the ground for future plot developments in the films) and how much is shit that's gonna be left to dangle.
― Stefan Twerkelle (Old Lunch), Saturday, 6 March 2021 05:58 (three years ago) link
oh god. i couldn't keep reading after a couple paragraphs of that film crit hulk blog. did i really read this kind of stuff in my salad days?
i rewatched the previous three with my brother who wasn't caught up, and still very happy with those episodes (Halloween, Spectrum/Agatha All Long and Wanda's between-the-films flashback ep)
series is still absolutely great overall, though I do have a bit of deflated feeling about the final episode, because it was impossible I suppose for all the questions to be answered (what happened to Jimmy Woo's witness? Monica's engineer friend was a total dud after all? that's Ralph?? what about X-Men??) and because the incredible final cameo that we were waiting for never materialized
― Nhex, Saturday, 6 March 2021 07:05 (three years ago) link
Well ultimately that last bit was Bettany’s amazing troll and I respect it.
― Ned Raggett, Saturday, 6 March 2021 07:38 (three years ago) link
Bettany's troll was indeed great
― H in Addis, Saturday, 6 March 2021 09:03 (three years ago) link
really enjoyed bettany’s physicality as evil vision, very subtle changes in posture and expression really made the character feel distinct
― you are like a scampicane, there's calm in your fries (bizarro gazzara), Saturday, 6 March 2021 10:31 (three years ago) link
Aw, all the TV bloggers are sad because they put all their eggs in one basket for a show that turned out to be B+ at best.
Anyway, first 7 episodes were terrific, last two were a letdown, but that's not a bad batting average. Great show! More like this.
― Chuck_Tatum, Saturday, 6 March 2021 11:06 (three years ago) link
Thinking (wondering) if Falcon & Winter Soldier will be typical action Marvel and then Loki something more interesting?
― groovypanda, Saturday, 6 March 2021 13:03 (three years ago) link
These shows (and Star Wars too) are like Kroll Show’s parodies of reality TV where every character no matter how minor or annoying gets a spin-off.
― Chris L, Saturday, 6 March 2021 13:30 (three years ago) link
Is WandaVision the Joanie Loves Chachi of the MCU?
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, 6 March 2021 14:02 (three years ago) link
Couple of other nit-picky loose ends: why was Dottie one of two unidentified people in the hex? Why was Pietro, if he was really just a resident, not identified as such? If he was just a person, how was he given Pietro's super powers? Why, after the showdown in the town square, were all the people (and Monica, and the members of SWORD, plus their evil villain leader) still just apparently standing there all night? Has Monica even acknowledged the arrival of her new abilities? What has Agatha been up to for the last 300 years? Had Darcy just been sitting in that ice cream truck for days? If the hex is now gone, then where is Agatha? The difference between Vision and White Vision is that Vision has (some version of) the mind stone, but White Vision has the same powers as Vision, so what does the mind stone get Vision?
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 6 March 2021 15:30 (three years ago) link
Didn't the necklace that Agnes put around his neck give him those powers?
― Red Nerussi (Neanderthal), Saturday, 6 March 2021 15:32 (three years ago) link
I don’t understand what happened with white Vision at all.
― akm, Saturday, 6 March 2021 15:33 (three years ago) link
I thought the necklace allowed her to control him, but if Agatha's powers were strong enough to give a dude powers strong enough to take out Monica with a flick, then what did Agatha even want?
White Vision ... flew away to float another day.
None of this detracts from the fact that at least 80% of this show was really good, which makes me hopeful for Falcon and the Winter Soldier (I keep wanting to call it Falcon and the Snowman) despite not caring one bit about Falcon or Winter Solider as characters.
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 6 March 2021 15:35 (three years ago) link
But if white Vision is now good and has all his memories restored then why doesn’t Wanda know that and go after him? This whole thing was about her grief of losing him. Now he’s back. It seemed like a weird thing to just toss off
― akm, Saturday, 6 March 2021 16:39 (three years ago) link
he had to use the bathroom for 30 years
― Red Nerussi (Neanderthal), Saturday, 6 March 2021 16:51 (three years ago) link