The following contains spoilers for the eighth episode of Marvel’s WandaVision.
“What is grief, if not love persevering?” The penultimate episode of WandaVision brought the central forces of the ongoing interdimensional conflict into full focus, serving as a haven of answers to questions circling the series since the pilot. If the seven preceding episodes were almost entirely composed of setup, the eighth is all about payoff: Wanda’s origin story, the creation of the “Hex,” S.W.O.R.D.’s true intentions, and more were given the spotlight for which millions of fans had been waiting.
2021’s first breakout TV show is reaching its curtain call and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Thanks to this episode’s guided tour of Wanda’s trauma, many of the biggest blanks have been filled, and a greater understanding of the title character has taken center stage. The end may be nigh for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s cutest couple and their televised hijinks, but this episode shows their story hadn’t truly been told until now. This is the most essential information in WandaVision’s eighth episode, “Previously On…”
Since first entering the MCU in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, Wanda Maximoff’s powers have never been given much of a concrete description. It’s easy to understand her late brother Pietro’s set of abilities just from a cursory glance, but Wanda herself has always been a tougher sell (this difference was spelled out appropriately by agent Maria Hill in Age of Ultron: “He’s fast, she’s weird.”). Though it’s been known Wanda acquired superhuman abilities through experiments with the mythical Mind Stone conducted by the evil organization HYDRA, it’s never been made clear why these experiments resulted in her magic-esque psionic and telepathic abilities.
“Previously On…” brings viewers into Wanda’s missing chapters, as Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness uses her dark magic to manifest Wanda’s memories into a guided tangible scene selection of lost innocence. When Wanda and Agatha revisit the explosive death of the former’s parents, the latter deduces the only reason she and her brother survived was through Wanda unwittingly casting a “probability hex” that prevented a Stark Industries missile from obliterating them both for two days.
Years later, as an imprisoned Wanda enters within proximity to the Mind Stone, it moves toward her at its own free will and exposes her to its power (in doing so she sees the silhouette of a woman in the outfit of a Sokovian fortune teller’s outfit (which fans will recognize as her original outfit from the comics). Agatha theorizes the Mind Stone didn’t bestow Wanda her abilities but instead amplified what was already there. By the end of the episode, the centuries-old witch claims Wanda’s too dangerous for her own good, unchained and overflowing with what she calls “Chaos Magic,” dubbing her “the Scarlet Witch.” It’s about time!
More than simply the second-to-last episode of an expensive Disney+ miniseries, WandaVision‘s eighth episode is also a dark meditation on grief and trauma’s personal costs. As Agatha explores Wanda’s memories, she and the audience come to understand the Avenger as a person burdened under the weight of personal tragedy, having lost her entire family and the only person she’s ever loved. Through four flashbacks, the most important parts of WandaVision’s premise are given full context: Wanda’s affinity for sitcoms comes from her childhood, explaining her world’s likenesses to shows like I Love Lucy, Bewitched, and Malcolm in the Middle; additionally, the reason she’s in Westview at all is that it’s where she and Vision dreamed of settling down once upon a time.
Most importantly of all, this episode confirms the weird world of WandaVision is produced solely by its star. It’s not Agatha, S.W.O.R.D., or a last-second final boss like Mephisto – it’s Ms. Maximoff herself, generating an entire reality out of her unrelenting grief, designed to evoke the one time in her life when she lived without it. The Scarlet Witch transformed the entirety of Westview into an ever-evolving sitcom backdrop, orchestrating plots and mind-controlling the masses to be part of her escapist fantasy.
Above all other parts of the perfect little life of her dreams, she recreates Vision purely from psychological scratch (contradicting a claim made in a previous episode that will be discussed later), who “returns” unaware of his existence as a fragment of Wanda’s psyche. In hindsight, it’s so obvious Wanda would take on a “witch” mantle – after all, most of her show has taken place in a “Hex.”
Last week’s episode ended with the hilarious (and hugely marketable) reveal of WandaVision’s true antagonist. A trail of episodic bread crumbs throughout the event series led to one of the most hysterical heel-turns in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Wanda discovers her eccentric and friendly neighbor, “Agnes,” is actually Agatha Harkness, a classically-styled master of dark magic. A Salem witch who refused to burn, Agatha has lasted for centuries, seemingly made immortal through the forbidden arts. From mind-controlling the Pietro doppelganger (“Fietro”) to playing dumb with Vision during the show’s Halloween special, Agatha has been quietly keeping an eye on the Hex’s creator, choosing to play along until the time was right to trap and interrogate the grieving Maximoff.
Even though WandaVision’s seventh episode declared it was “Agatha All Along,” its eighth proved she’s only in on part of the unfolding conspiracy. The episode’s conceit is entirely designed around Agatha’s own search for answers, probing Wanda’s past to understand how she came to wield such intense “Chaos Magic.” Though Agatha is undeniably powerful, this episode shows she’s not actually pulling the strings like many assumed.
Surprising absolutely no one, it appears S.W.O.R.D. director Tyler Hayward has been playing a game of deception this whole time. Revealed in the sixth episode, Hayward has been quietly carrying out a mission titled “Operation Cataract” while everyone else was investigating the Hex, complete with a puntastic objective: regain Vision. Initially claiming the synthezoid’s mangled body had been seized by his unhinged lover before creating her sitcom-styled reality, Hayward and his S.W.O.R.D. cronies have been secretly scouting for a new power source to defibrillate the most expensive and powerful sentient weapon ever designed.
Thanks to Wanda’s generous return of a Stark Industries-branded drone infused with her energy a few episodes ago, Hayward and his team finally resuscitate the $3 billion man. However, Vision doesn’t look like himself – he’s almost entirely painted white, and his eyes are beady and digital. Even the few seconds spent on his regained consciousness show a very different Vision than the peaceful and playfully awkward robot last seen in the MCU’s Infinity Saga. This “White Vision” draws influence from the pages of Marvel Comics, as an emotionless version of the Christmas-colored synthezoid. If this pale-faced Vision is anything like his comic counterpart, the zombified sociopath resembling Wanda’s beloved will arrive at WandaVision‘s grand finale, and the newly-christened Scarlet Witch will bear witness to a battle of Visions, between the remembered and the resurrected.
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