WandaVision

[Sky]

In a similar vein...I actually prefer the look of the 'halloween' costumes for Wanda and Vision over their MCU versions thus far 

[HaemishM]

It is the old school '70's Avengers costumes and I absolutely loved them, despite their ridiculousness.

I did always like that Grant Morrison's run on Justice League  portrayed Plastic Man as one of the most powerful supers on the planet. Kind of like how super-speed of the kind depicted in Flash would make him so much more powerful than almost any villain he could face. If your body is so malleable that it can make almost any shape regardless of size or mass, I think that'd be a pretty powerful set of abilities if you had enough imagination to use it.

And gross. Definitely gross.

[Riggswolfe]

I used to read Plastic Man comics back in the day and am overjoyed to learn I'm not the only person that's heard of him. On the whole "depicting stretching powers hasn't worked thing" I think it'll requite really well done CGI to make it work. The Incredibles made it work because they did it without it seeming out of place in their world. Seeing it in live-action always looks kind of weird and fake so far in my opinion.

[Sky]

It is the old school '70's Avengers costumes and I absolutely loved them, despite their ridiculousness.

I did always like that Grant Morrison's run on Justice League  portrayed Plastic Man as one of the most powerful supers on the planet. Kind of like how super-speed of the kind depicted in Flash would make him so much more powerful than almost any villain he could face. If your body is so malleable that it can make almost any shape regardless of size or mass, I think that'd be a pretty powerful set of abilities if you had enough imagination to use it.

And gross. Definitely gross.

I had a phase where the Vision was my 'who would be who' champ, until I met an ultimate pedant and stopped wasting my time with such nonsense 

[Khaldun]

Who would beat who kind of had its ultimate day in the JLA/Avengers comic they produced a while back, both because they had some clever match-ups and because every fight had to be approved by both companies...

[Raguel]

Not really a fan of this week's episode but it did explain a lot. It did feel like they left an important 5 min or so on the cutting room floor though.
I should say that there was a lot of good in the episode and it may be spoilerish if I said why I didn't like it that much so just in case
Agnes' behavior from 1-6 didn't really match episode 7 IMO; there's a resolution to that here.

I think opinions may vary on this episode but I think most people will be pleased with the direction of the story now.

I'm not sure why I am surprised but it looks like they are also looking at a 21st century Scarlet Witch series as inspiration as well. Pretty neat trick to tie disparate storylines from several different decades into one MCU show.

There's another mid credit scene that pays homage to the comics.

[eldaec]

The mid credit scene is a bit more than a homage, it is very plot central - though wasn't sure what was meant by 'energy from the original source'.

I liked the episode.

It does show they hit the wrong note with the Agatha reveal though.

I'd like them to have squeezed in more on Agatha, but I probably only think that because of the apparent conflict between the last episode and this one.

I can't think of anything in the MCU that transitioned to the final showdown that well.

[Teleku]

So

The mid credit scene is a bit more than a homage, it is very plot central - though wasn't sure what was meant by 'energy from the original source'.

While they showed that Wanda had some small innate talent with magic, she got all her power from the Mind Stone.  The Mind Stone later is what powered Vision.  They recovered the drone infused with her Mind Stone (and Chaos?) Magic, and syphoned it off to use.

[Threash]

I'm glad that they actually stuck to Wanda being the one who made the whole thing happen and not Agatha.

[Father mike]

My contribution to the argument about the big bad reveal

But I get these things wrong.  A lot.

[Khaldun]

I will note that Haemish is the one who put the D theory in play here first.

[Teleku]

Ah, thanks for bringing that up.  Yeah, I felt exactly the same way.

Edit:

I will note that Haemish is the one who put the D theory in play here first.

Whoops, missed that along the way somewhere!

[eldaec]

I'm glad that they actually stuck to Wanda being the one who made the whole thing happen and not Agatha.

I think they did a fantastic job of making it Wanda while not making her unavoidably a villain now.

I also really like the angle of Agatha being broadly neutral rather than a flat out antagonist.

They'd get all the gold stars if the 'I've been trying to snap you out of it for 6 episodes' thing was better supported. But this was still smarter than anything else we've seen in the MCU.

I don't think sword guy is working with anyone though. I think he just wanted his robot to work. He lied about what was happening in the footage because he doesn't want two visions and is happier without Wanda around to potentially turn off his vision.

[Velorath]

I think opinions may vary on this episode but I think most people will be pleased with the direction of the story now.

For the most part. I still think the Agatha reveal was a bit of a misfire, and I think it also betrays a slight lack of confidence in the writers that they felt they couldn't write an MCU story that didn't have a super-villain in it.

Still don't see Hayward as necessarily a villain either. I know by comic book logic we'd generally consider him as such, but it's also kind of a "yeah, no shit this is how a government agency would act" when it comes to dealing with something like Vision's corpse.

[Riggswolfe]

So, my takeaways from the episode:

Hayward:

Agatha:

My biggest letdown with this episode was no Monica and Pietro. Next episode is the final episode correct? Or are there 2 more?

[Velorath]

So, my takeaways from the episode:

Hayward:

[eldaec]

I wasn't fussed about the lack of monica and pietro - they are already final showdown ready. Especially as I expect they are all on the same side as Agatha and Wanda next week.

I was a bit surprised they didn't explain the multiverse but I guess they need to do that in a film anyway so no point being explicit here.

I noticed this one crept up to 46 minutes and wonder if it might be even longer next week.

[NowhereMan]

I'm glad that Agatha got the exact sort of role I was hoping they were going to go for, she never really seemed to be evil in what were revealed to be her interactions and was more prodding Wanda. I'm guessing we're going to see a Vision v. Vision showdown next episode. I am curious to see if Hayward is going to be just a power mad creep or is going to tie into some other big bad. His only goal does seem to have been getting himself a real working Vision but it seems real odd that he knew Wanda had the power to bring him back. Some potential Hydra connection to know about the Mind Stone and Wanda?

[Khaldun]

In the comics, the Vision "dies" because he'd previously attempted to take over the entire world via integrated computing systems due to his fury at how badly mistreated he and Wanda were when they tried to have a normal suburban life in...New Jersey, but also because he encounters a sentient computer system that runs the very small world of Titan (where Thanos is from) and concludes that running the world is a snap.

This fails badly for a bunch of reasons, but basically the people who really run the world are so alarmed that the Vision was able to take over their computing systems that they kidnap him, dissemble him, and make sure he can't do it again. They don't care if he gets reassembled after that as long as they feel they understand how he did it in the first place and can reliably prevent it from happening again.

[SurfD]

I was a bit surprised they didn't explain the multiverse but I guess they need to do that in a film anyway so no point being explicit here.

Well, coincidentally, I just re-watched Dr Strange last week, and the Ancient One did actually explicitly state that an entire multiverse of alternate realities exists and one of the duties of the Sorcerers is to protect earth from the interference / influence of those other realities in one of her early lectures to Strange.   It's just that when that movie came out, most people didn't directly connect that bit of exposition to the possibility of "specific" multiverse style interaction (a-la Spiderverse etc) and rather just took it as a passing reference to "the multiverse" in abstract, or in reference to things like the Mirror Dimension.

[MahrinSkel]

I think the entire zoo of predatory realities in Marvel continuity is something the normies need to be walked into slowly.

--Dave

[Abagadro]

Heh, all day I thought this latest episode was the finale and all I could think was "that was a weird way to end it".

[HaemishM]

Thing you have to remember about Agatha Harkness is that she's not a super villain and I think they have pretty accurately captured that with her role here. She's not the super villain and the big bad, though she may end up being an antagonist for this one. Her role in the comics in relation to Wanda was to train her to use her mutant powers in combination with actual magic, and it was called Chaos Magic. Later, when Wanda went insane and killed some Avengers (Hawkeye and the Vision as well as others) in Avengers Disassembled, Dr. Strange came in and said that there was no such thing as Chaos Magic (which probably got retconned away anyway - Wanda is almost as bad as Hawkman for repeated contradictory retcons).


I do like that Wanda isn't let off the hook for controlling Westview, though I think it's clear she didn't exactly know what she was doing or even that she could do that. The explanation for the sitcom thing was really well done. I have to give this show a ton of credit for not only not making this a black/white binary good versus evil story. There's a lot more nuance here than most MCU stories.

[Raguel]

 Speaking of countless Wanda retcons: what I was alluding to earlier was, during a 2015 SW series, it turns out Wanda's REAL mother (this is like her 4th real mother  ) was a witch, specifically going by the name Scarlet Witch. Agatha knew all along but never told her (also at this time Agatha is a ghost, because comics). I never read the entire story so I don't know how it was resolved. I got the feeling however that Wanda was just the latest SW in a long line of SWs. It sounds to me that that's what Agatha is saying in this episode.

[Velorath]

Thing you have to remember about Agatha Harkness is that she's not a super villain and I think they have pretty accurately captured that with her role here. She's not the super villain and the big bad, though she may end up being an antagonist for this one. Her role in the comics in relation to Wanda was to train her to use her mutant powers in combination with actual magic, and it was called Chaos Magic. Later, when Wanda went insane and killed some Avengers (Hawkeye and the Vision as well as others) in Avengers Disassembled, Dr. Strange came in and said that there was no such thing as Chaos Magic (which probably got retconned away anyway - Wanda is almost as bad as Hawkman for repeated contradictory retcons).


I do like that Wanda isn't let off the hook for controlling Westview, though I think it's clear she didn't exactly know what she was doing or even that she could do that. The explanation for the sitcom thing was really well done. I have to give this show a ton of credit for not only not making this a black/white binary good versus evil story. There's a lot more nuance here than most MCU stories.

Agatha isn't a villain in the comics, sure. It remains to be seen what they'll do with her here, but I don't know that there are any die-hard Agatha Harkness fans out there who are going to be terribly upset if they change the character around.

Other side-note about the time Dr. Strange said there was no such thing as chaos magic, it was especially dumb even at the time because there was a period in the 90s where Strange himself got his powers from chaos magic (the comic kept going through creative team changes, each one coming up with some new take on the character).

As far as the ongoing Dormammu speculation here goes, would anybody actually be excited to see him return, especially as a lead-in to the next Dr. Strange movie? He was the main villain of the last one, and wasn't especially interesting there. Sure I can see how he would work as a plot device, weakening dimensional barriers and such, but as far as memorable MCU villains go he kinda ranks down there with Malekith.

[Threash]

I don't get how anyone is getting a "not a villian" vibe from Agatha in this show, that Salem flashback was a villain origin story if i ever saw one and kidnapping then choking children is not "grey character" behavior. PLUS SHE KILLED THE FUCKING DOG.

[Khaldun]

There have been at least four really dumb turns in the life of the Scarlet Witch character in the comics, and Brian Michael Bendis is responsible for at least two of them. House of M and Avengers Disassembled powered her ridiculously up and did some dumb crazy-woman tropes along with it. The other two were John Byrne deciding that she actually had the hots for Wonder Man because the Vision's mind was based on Wonder Man's (always an incredibly ridiculous premise, considering that the two characters really have very little in common in their expressed personalities and besides Wonder Man has been a horribly written and wildly inconsistent character for his entire existence); and then finally more recently deciding that Wanda and Pietro weren't actually mutants and Magneto wasn't actually their father, which apparently was just to simply the legal exposure at the time (e.g., to keep Fox from claiming that they were X-Men characters and couldn't be used in the MCU).

Agatha Harkness isn't a villain exactly in the comics but she's also been manipulative and creepy in at least some of her appearances.

I am really beginning to wonder if

[Threash]

Current rumor is that he meant himself :P

[eldaec]

That certainly makes the most sense. Seems almost certain white vision talking to wanda's vision will be a thing.

I really don't see why sword guy has to be working with anyone. And seems especially unlikely it would be anyone magic themed.

I can still imagine an epilogue scene linking Agatha to anyone convenient for a future series or movie.

[eldaec]

I don't get how anyone is getting a "not a villian" vibe from Agatha in this show, that Salem flashback was a villain origin story if i ever saw one and kidnapping then choking children is not "grey character" behavior. PLUS SHE KILLED THE FUCKING DOG.

Didn't she kill her cat or something at one point to not die?

She's not a villian in the sense that she can't be bothered to conquer the world or anything equally silly.

But not a hero in the sense that she mostly wants to stay alive and gives limited shits about the wider world.

In the next episode, when faced with SWORD trying to kill everyone, I expect her to be on Wanda's side - if only for the giggles.

[HaemishM]

She's not a villian in the sense that she can't be bothered to conquer the world or anything equally silly.

But not a hero in the sense that she mostly wants to stay alive and gives limited shits about the wider world.

This is what I mean by Agatha not being a villain. She wasn't moustache-twirling levels of badness in this one, and she genuinely seemed interested in what Wanda is more than how she can use Wanda. The origin scene for Agatha clearly showed that she was more interested in knowledge than power for power's sake. She was technically defending herself.

As for Dormammu being the villain and working with Hayward, I don't think Hayward knows he's working with Dormammu so much as Dormammu is influencing him subconsciously, much like I imagine he's been tempting Baron Mordru in the Dr. Strange movie.

[Khaldun]

In the comics, Agatha deliberately fed other witches/sorcerers to the witch trials in Salem and to later persecution not because she was trying to protect herself but because she thought it got rid of the weak witches and kept the strong ones. That is pretty deep into villain territory. Her interest in people like Franklin Richards was also never altruistic.

[Khaldun]

Just had a thought.

[Riggswolfe]

This is what I mean by Agatha not being a villain. She wasn't moustache-twirling levels of badness in this one, and she genuinely seemed interested in what Wanda is more than how she can use Wanda. The origin scene for Agatha clearly showed that she was more interested in knowledge than power for power's sake. She was technically defending herself.

As for Dormammu being the villain and working with Hayward, I don't think Hayward knows he's working with Dormammu so much as Dormammu is influencing him subconsciously, much like I imagine he's been tempting Baron Mordru in the Dr. Strange movie.

One thing I was struck by. During Wanda's memory walk there was definitely a moment where Agatha, I believe, shows genuine empathy.

[HaemishM]

You are correct, Riggswolfe.