Episode 4 of WandaVision is another offering of surreal, confusing television that audiences
clearly cannot get enough of. This genre-blending Marvel Cinematic Universe addition continues
to impress, as well as confound. Here's some insight into the end of the latest installment.
The fourth WandaVision episode opens with a flashback to the Avengers: Endgame moment
when Hulk snapped everyone back into existence — an event known as "the Blip" — from
Monica Rambeau's perspective. She awakens in a hospital where her mom, Maria Rambeau
from Captain Marvel, received successful cancer treatment just before Thanos eliminated half
of all life in the universe.
Frantic, Monica learns that five years have passed, and that her mother is long gone thanks
to her cancer's return. Nevertheless, she presses on, returning to work at S.W.O.R.D.,
an organization for which her mom served as director.
Monica's first assignment back takes her to Westview, New Jersey, where a person in the
FBI's Witness Protection Program went missing. She arrives on the scene to meet with Agent
Jimmy Woo of Ant-Man and the Wasp fame, and attempts to get a glimpse inside the town
from a distance. Monica soon finds herself sucked into its energy field and unwittingly
adopts the persona "Geraldine," as we've seen in previous episodes.
By the time the credits roll, Wanda shoots Monica out of Westview, as she did at the
end of WandaVision Episode 3, but Monica appears to have all of her memories intact.
In past WandaVision installments, the show has dropped minor hints as to who's on the
outside, attempting to break into this pocket reality. Given the organization's logo has
appeared all over the program at this point, it should come as no surprise that S.W.O.R.D.
is behind these various plans, although their success is middling at best. WandaVision Episode
4 at the very least gives everyone a fresh and informative perspective as to where S.W.O.R.D.'s
presence in Westview came from, and explains their desire to snap Wanda out of her trance.
First and foremost, when Monica arrives at the energy field surrounding Westview, she
flies a miniature S.W.O.R.D. helicopter right into it. This is the same one that Wanda finds
in her front yard early on in the second episode, given a dated appearance to match the '60s
vibe. Later on, Jimmy Woo and astrophysicist Darcy Lewis from the first two Thor movies
try to communicate with Wanda via radio to no avail, just as Episode 2 depicted. Finally,
there's the mysterious sewer dweller whose true identity is S.W.O.R.D. Agent Franklin.
Under Westview's spell, his hazmat suit was swapped for a beekeeper outfit, and the wire
rope connecting him to the S.W.O.R.D. Response Base was transformed into a period-appropriate
jump rope.
Considering their heavy military presence in the region, it's unlikely that S.W.O.R.D.
will leave Wanda and her new home alone any time soon. Although, with her power levels
hardly scratching the surface of their fullest potential, they would be wise to tread lightly.
While this WandaVision episode largely focuses on S.W.O.R.D.'s involvement in Wanda's sitcom
world, it also explains quite a bit about the town of Westview and its residents. As
revealed by Jimmy Woo early on, the odd town is somehow very stringent about who enters
and who leaves. Not to mention, everyone around it seems to have collective amnesia about
its existence, with a police officer from the town of Eastview denying it's a real place
while standing next to its welcome sign.
Thanks to Darcy's input, it's discovered that Westview gives off a television broadcast
frequency entwined with Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, or CMBR, allowing them to observe
it on an antique TV as if it's a classic television series. S.W.O.R.D.'s acting director, Tyler
Hayward, calls CMBR "relic radiation dating back to the Big Bang."
"So you're saying the universe created a sitcom starring two Avengers?"
"It's a working theory."
In a startling revelation, it's deduced that some of the program's mainstays are living
beings trapped inside this simulated reality. With the notable exceptions of Agnes and Dottie,
we discover that they all have true identities and lives away from Westview, details of which
S.W.O.R.D. are able to uncover with relative ease. Whether or not they're aware of it or
if they're under some kind of spell that makes them act accordingly remains to be seen — and
so does the identity of the FBI's missing witness.
In the closing moments of the episode, we get a glimpse at what seems to be Vision's
true form, and it's absolutely horrifying. He appears not as the vibrant, lively synthezoid
we've seen him as previously, but rather as the colorless, husk Thanos reduced him to
in Infinity War, with a gaping hole where the Mind Stone used to be.
This seems to indicate that he's still very much deceased, with someone apparently puppeteering
his body and altering his appearance to ease Wanda's trauma over his demise. It's cruel,
twisted, and heartbreaking, but hey, that's WandaVision.
In a shocking revelation at the end of the episode, Monica — now back on the outside
of Westview and free of her Geraldine identity — tells her fellow S.W.O.R.D. associates
what she thinks is going on.
"It's Wanda. It's all Wanda."
To someone on the outside, it may appear as if Wanda is in complete control of this reality.
After all, her abilities arguably have the most potential of the MCU's entire current
roster.
However, eagle-eyed fans of WandaVision continue to pick up hints that a larger, even more
powerful entity could actually be behind Westview's creation and is deceiving Wanda into believing
she's the one controlling things. For instance, there's this exchange during the planning
committee scene in episode two:
"The devil's in the details, Bev."
"That's not the only place he is."
That's certainly a decent enough laugh line for an old sitcom — after all, Dottie is
seen as an unfriendly and "devilish" character by the other ladies on the committee at this
point. However, plenty of MCU theorists have taken this as a clue that has huge implications
for WandaVision's future – specifically that Agnes may be the MCU version of Marvel
Comics character Agatha Harkness, a witch who's been involved in Wanda and Vision's
lives in the past.
Additionally, the arrival of Wanda and Vision's kids, Tommy and Billy, also seem to hint that
the "devilish" Marvel Comics character Mephisto might not be too far behind either. Will either
of these clues pay off in the next episode? Maybe!
By now, we've gotten more than a few glimpses behind the curtain — and Monica's explanation
that "it's all Wanda" definitely fits with what we've seen. She's the one who rewound
time when she saw the beekeeper in Episode 2. She's the one who blasted Monica out of
Westview. She seems to be the one who changes Vision's appearance at the end of Episode
4, after we catch sight of his dead eyed face and gem-less forehead.
After all, one of the most famous Marvel Comics storylines involving Wanda was House of M,
in which she creates a new version of reality as a way of dealing with the trauma of her
personal life — specifically in response to the lingering trauma of realizing her children,
Tommy and Billy, aren't real, and they disappear from existence. And we've gotten other hints
and references that seem to point to the House of M storyline in WandaVision, like "House
of Contempt" in French on the wine bottle's label in Episode 1, and the butterflies in
Episode 3, which recall the mutant Butterfly from House of M, aka Layla Miller, who is
immune to the alternate reality.
It's not much of a stretch to surmise that Wanda created Westview in a similar reaction
to the trauma of losing Vision to Thanos in Infinity War. Her reaction to seeing his dead
face in this episode seems to prove that she's aware of Vision's true form and is doing everything
in her power to deny that reality — and that may include creating and controlling
Westview. And the ending of Episode 4 — where we see Wanda forcefully smashing Monica through
walls to maintain her sitcom-reality's illusion — contrasts pretty hard with the ending
of Episode 3, in which it's merely implied that Wanda simply ejected Monica out of Westview.
However, with more than half of the nine-episode series left to go, it's a decent enough bet
that there's even more going on underneath the surface. We're meant to infer that Wanda
is in control, and being told that "it's all Wanda" is certainly a good way to reinforce
that idea.
But then why are Agnes and Dottie not identified with real-world counterparts, like most of
the other main cast members? Is there more to them than meets the eye...or are we just
finding clues wherever we can, trying to stay one step ahead of WandaVision's showrunners?
We'll at least have to wait to see Episode 5 next week to find out.
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