Directed by Matt Shakman
Starring Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Teyonah Parris, Kathryn Hahn, Randall Park, Kat Dennings, and Evan Peters
Running time: about 30 minutes
New episodes Fridays on Disney+

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, The Red Herring

Much has happened since we last spoke. Well, much has been revealed. Perhaps most significantly is that our friendly neighbor, Agnes (Kathryn Hahn), is really Agatha Harkness, a powerful witch. But it is important to note that Agatha is not the one who created this alternate reality. As seen in the most recent episode, Wanda (Olsen) was the one who transformed Westview. Agnes wants to know how she did it. More on that shortly. 

Much of episode 7, the Modern Family–styled “Breaking the Fourth Wall,” is table-setting leading up to the Harkness reveal as well as making sure everything is in place for the final acts of the story. Episode 8 recaps Wanda’s life so far, from childhood up through the present. These are the two most purely functional episodes to date, and really don’t have much to offer from a plot perspective, other than leading up to a final confrontation between Wanda, S.W.O.R.D., and Agatha. 

Episode 8, titled “Previously On,” is one I went back and forth on as I was watching. On the one hand, for someone that has been actively engaged with and following the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) since its inception, it didn’t tell us anything we didn’t know about Wanda Maximoff. Her childhood in Sokovia did add her literally watching DVDs of old American TV shows, thus making some of the show’s previous subtext canonical. It is a good recap for casual/non-obsessive fans to show her progression from Age of Ultron to 2019’s Endgame before showing us what Wanda did between roughing up Thanos and her Leave It to Beaver episode. Fine, but maybe not that interesting.

But movies and shows exist for more than just plot reasons! While yours truly has poured emotions into the limited appearances of these two over the last few years, for many Marvel fans, this spotlight on Wanda and Vision (Bettany) is adding emotional investment where none existed. So this recap is a good way to visualize the trauma of Wanda’s life beyond what amounts to scant lines of dialogue. The most important thing about it is that Wanda’s story is finally told from her perspective. In Ultron, Pietro (Kick-Ass) does more of the talking. And she’s not a main character of the MCU except for the end of Infinity War–a very sweaty movie– and so many characters turn to dust that her grief over Vision gets only a few seconds. Seeing Wanda’s grief through her own eyes is probably the best justification for this series existing. 

This is a show all about grief, and seeing anyone–but especially a feminine character–work through grief on screen is a worthy thing for this series to spend four and a half hours doing. Unlike Padme, Leia, or Rey from Star Wars; Pepper Potts or Morgan Stark from the MCU; or any number of other characters, WandaVision has given Wanda’s sense of loss center stage. So many people are having strong reactions to this show, and this is why. Beneath all of the fun trappings of sitcoms and magic is a story focused on emotions. 

Believing Wanda and listening to her is underlined by episode 8’s major reveal, which is that Wanda did not take Vision’s body from S.W.O.R.D. HQ. Rather, as all government stooges are want to do, Director Hayward (Josh Stamberg), sees this robot body as a potential asset. So Vision has been dismantled and reassembled. This contradicts his previous story, and once again shows a man with a fancy title manipulating those around him while attempting to crush a woman under heel. The mistrust of institutions, personified in Hayward, is also something linking Wanda and Monica (Parris).

Also, a word on Agatha Harkness. She was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby way back in 1970 in the pages of Fantastic Four #94. By then, Reed and Sue Richards were married and had a child, and were too busy fighting Annihilus or the Mole Man to be full time parents, so they hired a sweet old woman as a governess who turned out to be a powerful witch that’s been around since the time of Salem. This reveal comforts me, not just because it gives Kathryn Hahn more to do, but because Harkness has rarely been portrayed as an out-and-out villain in the comics. She’s sometimes an obstacle like ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross, or the person you go to when there’s some magical stuff going down and you’re out of your element (like how Thor and Loki visit Dr. Strange in Thor: Ragnarok). She also has been Wanda’s magical mentor, and their relationship has had a lot of ups and downs. But I really appreciate the potential for taking this relationship between Agatha and Wanda in a lot of directions, and I hope Agatha isn’t reduced to yet another villain to be killed. 

VisionQuest:

• Do you think Vision will be dead or alive at the end of all this?

•  If nothing else, I really want Wanda to have friends. So I hope they don’t do Agatha dirty. 

• White Vision is a good look.

• We’ll do this one more time after the finale!