In the penultimate episode of WandaVision, entitled "Previously On" (which is the greatest, most meta episode title of any show ever), Marvel tries really hard to straddle the line between pushing the story forward while simultaneously fleshing out Wanda's history and giving us valuable context to things we thought we already knew, which likely will prove to be important going into the finale and beyond. It's a tricky balancing act because they're trying to cater to two audiences at once, though there's probably quite a bit of overlap. We finally get the big namedrop we've been waiting for, and we get a lot more context to Wanda's powers, her history, and the creation of Wanda's hex, but these moments will hit differently depending on which audience you're in (more on this later).
The opening scene gives us more context for Agitha during what I would consider the darkest, most adult-themed scene in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Agitha apparently is a centuries-old witch who was hunted down by her own kind. She was going to be killed at the stake, but her powers turn out to be too strong for the rest of her kind, and she ends up killing all of them. It's kind of a grotesque scene with visuals that don't hold back. I felt particularly uncomfortable hearing these witches chant their spell. For me, it crosses a line between the fantasy superhero world and the darker, uglier side of real-world evil. I'm well aware that we're dealing with witches here, but I would've preferred it to be kept a little more child-friendly.
Moving past that, we pick up where we left off last week. Agitha rigged the room Wanda wandered (that's fun to say!) into at the end of the previous episode in such a way that only Agitha could use her witch powers. So she demos her strength and skills to a helpless Wanda, then convinces her to take a trip down memory lane. Agitha is trying to uncover (or rather, confirm a "theory" of hers - again, the writers were a little too on-the-nose when they used that word) a truth about Wanda.
You ready for this? Agitha wants to know if Wanda is the legendary...Scarlet Witch! Whoa, big twist there. I know there's still one episode left in this season, but looking back, the whole point of this show may turn out to be rather dull for a large portion of the audience. Ever since Wanda was introduced to the MCU, we've known she's really "The Scarlet Witch." It's just ironic that Marvel would write a story that reveals what the audience so obviously already knows, yet present it in a way that assumes the audience does not already know, even though throughout WandaVision and the MCU, so many easter eggs, nods, and references were written with the assumption that the audience would pick up on or would scour Reddit and the rest of the Internet to find out what they missed. I mean, I get it. Scarlet Witch was never really a term we've used in the MCU, and now we see why. But Marvel is coming across a bit tone deaf to me. For the portion of the audience that knows what's going on, there's no revelation here. But this whole storyline has turned into sort of a re-introduction to a character we already know about, and it's being written in a way that brings the portion of the audience that has no clue up to speed. I mean, seriously, is that necessary? More than any episode to this point, Marvel heavily references Age of Ultron and other story arcs established in the movies knowing full well this audience has watched all these movies, but Marvel isn't confident enough to know that people understand that Wanda is also Scarlet Witch?
What this suggests to me - which likely will justify all of this in my mind - is Wanda/Scarlet Witch is getting redefined and will be a key figure in a major way going forward. Marvel may be taking its time to invest in the history and "true form" of this character for the sake of continuity. We can't get to a point later on when we need her established as the Scarlet Witch if they hadn't actually made that official. If we have to indulge Marvel a bit to lay the groundwork for what it means to be "Scarlet Witch" within context of the MCU, I guess that's fine.
I also suspect that Scarlet Witch may, in fact, flip flop between good and evil as we go forward. Agitha has so much knowledge to share with her, and she's going to be key to helping Scarlet Witch unlock her true nature to which she is mostly oblivious. This possibly could be a mislead of course; this week's episode indicated Wanda had her powers at a young age, but how much did the Mind Stone play a part in unlocking her true powers? After all, during her testing with Hydra, the Mind Stone seemed to react and "behave" around her, and the stone shows her a vision of her as Scarlet Witch, as if she's destined to become that person. To go in line with what I said a moment ago, we now need more background information on what it means to be the Scarlet Witch. Agitha seemed to imply it means Wanda has special chaos magic (allowing for spontaneous creation), which may be fulfilling this prophecy (What, is Wanda like "The Chosen One" or something?...Dang it, I mixed up my references again). I hope we get the bulk of what we need in the season finale, but I also wouldn't be surprised if they hold back some of that information for a later story.
What they did clarify this week was the nature of Wanda's powers as it pertains to both WandaVision and what we've seen her do in the past. Remember in Age of Ultron when Wanda uses her powers to make Captain America think he was at a dance with Peggy during the war? Or when Thor was taken back to Asgard and has the vision of the Infinity Stones? Or when Natasha was back in Russia finishing her Black Widow training? I remember theorizing why those characters would see those things when Wanda used her magic on them. But this episode reveals that Wanda's magic simply manifests one's deepest feelings - regrets, grief, or whatever emotion that person might be carrying in the back of their mind - into a visual, interactive simulation/alternate reality of sorts.
That's how Wanda created her version of Westview. She's been holding onto the final night she spent with her parents as they watched the Dick Van Dyke show just before the Stark bombs dropped and killer them and most of the village (hence the sitcom homages; we even got a look at her collection of I Love Lucy and Bewitched DVDs).
Later during Agitha's tour of the past, we get the most intimate scene maybe of the whole show when Wanda and Vision are living on their own after Captain America: Civil War. Wanda continues to struggle with her coping abilities. Vision tries offering the "better to have loved and lost" theory by saying grief is simply persevering through the pain. When Vision dies, he isn't there to help pull her through her painful moments like he once did, and Wanda clearly hasn't learned how to do it herself.
We get more context for Director Hayward, who definitely is a bad guy in some way. He apparently falsified the video feed of Wanda stealing Vision to make her seem bad (unless Agitha rewrote Wanda's memories of this moment, which is doubtful), when really she just went to S.W.O.R.D. to actually let go of Vision (she was finally ready to cope!). Turns out he is actually recreating Vision himself using Wanda's very own magic as a power source. During the mid-credit scene, we see the new Vision, who looks like a mash-up between himself and Silver Surfer. A weird clone version of Vision, Agitha, Scarlet Witch and Monica Rambeau/Spectrum all figure to lead us on a wild ride next week for the finale.
Notes:
-The idea that we're dealing more and more with magic rather than superpowers lends further credence to the future involvement with Doctor Strange, who is a student of mysticism and such.
-Again, the witch scene in this episode is maybe the darkest in MCU history. There might be comparable scenes (I'm not considering scenes of just violence like the end of Captain America: Civil War or the fight scene in Incredible Hulk) in some of the movies. Maybe Thor: Ragnarok since he's in hell at one point, or Black Panther when he activates the soul stone in the flower bed, but I don't think anything has come close to creating the level of discomfort I felt with that scene.
-Kathryn Hahn has been fabulous this whole season, but this episode may have been my least favorite performance of hers. She really overdid her dialogue most of the time.
-The mention of Wanda's accent "coming and going" again was too on-the-nose, even for the portion of the audience that does know what's going on.
-Agitha mentions necromancing, which implies that we may see characters who have died get resurrected later, which is standard operation procedures for superhero stories.
-It's kind of funny watching Wanda drive in a car. I guess she wouldn't want use her powers to fly everywhere, huh?