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Well, if you’ve been perplexed by the first three episodes of WandaVision, the fourth episode answers a whole lot of questions … or does it?
First and foremost, they’ve revealed the identity of Geraldine (not that Marvel was any good at keeping that secret) and now I can comfortably use her real identity here — Monica Rambeau. We also now know for sure that the pendant she wore in Episode 3, along with the in color helicopter and back of the beekeeper uniform, represents S.W.O.R.D. (Sentient Weapon Observation Response Division), a version of S.H.I.E.L.D. that deals with threats from space. But there is something curious about one of the words the acronym represents. In Marvel canon, the W stands for ‘World’ but the on-screen text shows it now represents ‘Weapon’. Hmmmm.
And that could all be because of when the episode, and series, takes place in a post-Avengers: Endgame Blip world. The episode itself is actually a flashback to the beginning of the series as Monica rematerializes after the Blip, thinking it’s only been 15 minutes or so. She also learns her mother, Maria, is dead and has been dead for three years. As more and more people begin to reappear, Monica makes her way to S.W.O.R.D. HQ to find out what’s going on … but her clearance has been deactivated since she disappeared.
The new acting head of S.W.O.R.D., Director Hayward, brings her in and fills her in on what’s happening, but also tells her she’s grounded, not by him but by her mother’s orders that anyone who reappeared had to work in the field (Maria basically built S.W.O.R.D.). With the astronaut program in a shambles, that seems like a short-sighted directive but is he telling Monica the truth?
For now, Monica is sent to the town of Westview, New Jersey with a drone to find out what’s going on and to assist the FBI, with Agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park, who made his debut in Ant-Man and the Wasp), on a missing person case. Except it seems no one knows the missing person (nor do we) and, in fact, the town of Westview doesn’t even exist. According to the police at the border of the town, for which a sign clearly says ‘Westview’, they are from the town of Eastview. (Curiously, there was an exit sign on the highway for Westview.)
Monica walks down the road a bit and notices some kind of energy field and sends her drone (which bizarrely looks like a toy helicopter instead of what we know drones today look like … it’s pretty retro) into town but it disappears when it hits the energy field. Monica sticks her hand into the energy and is promptly sucked in.
With Monica now vanished, S.W.O.R.D. calls in some reinforcements, among them is Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings, who made her debut in the first Thor movie). She discovers very high, yet contained, levels of radiation (CMBR) and within that energy is a signal, one for which she needs an old cathode ray television. With everything connected, she is able to tune into the signal and we see what was the first episode of the series. As Darcy begins to become invested in the sitcoms, they began running ID checks on the various cast members, positively identifying quite a few of them, but some such as neighbor Agnes remain unidentified (and there is a lot of speculation as to why and who Agnes actually is).
We also learn that the voice on the radio Wanda heard in Episode 2 was Jimmy, trying to communicate with her. But Darcy also noticed some odd things while watching the shows — key moments have been edited from what we’ve already seen, while we have also seen moments during the broadcasts that appeared to be glitches or edits (especially noticeable in Episodes 2 and 3 … many viewers actually thought a glitch in the third episode with Vision was a real glitch). The moments Darcy is missing are key things that could help them determine what’s going on, so they appear to be purposely edited, but by whom?
When Darcy spots Monica in an episode (remarking how in Episode 2 she now has a speaking role), Director Hayward sends one of his men into Westview through a tunnel under the town without knowing if the energy field extends underground. Spoiler alert: it does and as he crawls through the tunnel, his HAZMAT outfit becomes … a beekeeper outfit, and his tether to the real world is disconnected. As the ‘sitcom’ moves into the third episode, pretty much everything that happened with ‘Geraldine’ after the births of the twins has been scrubbed. But the scene shifts back to Westview, this time in full widescreen and we see Wanda becoming enraged at her neighbor, insisting it’s time for her to go home. Wanda uses her power to blast Monica through the walls of the house and several fences and shrubs until she shoots out of the energy field as we saw at the end of Episode 3, bringing the show’s timeline to this single point now. And she has some shocking news — it’s all Wanda’s doing.
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And perhaps we get a confirmation of that back in the Westview world when Vision enters the house but … it’s the dead Vision from Avengers: Endgame, skull crushed, jewel missing. At least for a split second before Wanda sees him as she wants to see him. Darcy mentioned when first seeing the sitcom that Vision is dead, so all of this does suggest that Wanda has created this post-Blip environment for herself because she can’t accept the fact that Vision is no more. And that also brings into question the twins (who in Marvel lore are actual characters Wiccan and Speedy, both of whom have the characteristics of their mother and her twin Pietro) — are they real, or has Wanda just conjured them up as well?
Of course, the bigger question is has Wanda truly created this world for herself single-handedly, or at all? We still don’t know who was watching at the end of the first episode. We also don’t know if Monica should trust Director Hayward, or why the name of S.W.O.R.D. was altered. And what happens if the currently acceptable radiation from the CMBR is released? CMBR radiation dates back to the Big Bang, which in Marvel lore created the Infinity Stones. Does Wanda have possession of one, perhaps the one that was in Vision’s head, to help her sustain this fantasy world she seems to have created? And who is Agnes? She’s one of the few ‘cast members’ to not have been IDed, nor has her thus far unseen husband Ralph. We also don’t know who Dottie is either, with Jimmy asking at one point if she’s even a real person. One key thing Darcy misses is the commercials that play during the shows. While being engrossed in the story, she blanks out when a commercial comes on (the Strücker watch ad), thinking that it’s of no importance … but it almost certainly is considering Wolfgang von Strücker created the superpowers of Wanda and Pietro when they first joined Hydra (also a brand name in the ads). We also have to ask if Vision is real, simply a creation of Wanda’s imagination, and if the show’s plotline will somehow tie directly into the next Doctor Strange movie, in which Wanda is one of the featured characters.
These are a lot of questions to ponder and answer over the course of the show’s final five episodes, but if you were unsure about sticking with WandaVision after the first couple of episodes, it’s certainly worth being invested in now!
New episodes of WandaVision premiere Fridays on Disney+.
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