Some may call the homages to classic television in the first episodes of Wandavision a “slow start” but the same cannot be said of episodes 3 and 4. The show truly begins to unfold into an unsettling mystery and meta sitcom all in one go. We go from the 1970s to the current day and really get into what is going on in the sleepy town of Westview. Spoiler ahead for the series.
Episode 3: “Now In Color”
Wanda and Vision’s journey into the colorized world kicks off with a Brady Bunch theme song homage and a visit from Dr. Nielson, portrayed by Randy Oglesby. The doctor confirms Wanda’s sudden pregnancy and reveals her to be around 4 months along much to Vision’s chagrin. Vision pleads with Nielson to keep this a secret who agrees due to his impending vacation to Bermuda, of all places. From the jump, you can tell that Wandavision is actively choosing to make the show more unsettling earlier in each episode. Following his discussion with Dr. Nielsen, Vision finds his neighbor Herb, who has a penchant for trimming his hedges, mindlessly cutting into the stone partition separating their yards.
Vision returns inside to find Wanda even more pregnant and reveals an as-of-yet unseen ability–superspeed much like Wanda’s brother, Pietro. As they prepare the room for their child, Wanda puts up a butterfly mobile above the crib that turns into real butterflies revealing that Wanda is subconsciously using her abilities. The baby kicks and thanks to Vision’s thorough research on childbirth, he divulges that Wanda has quickly progressed to being six months along.
Vision suggests naming their child Billy after William Shakespeare and going on to quote the famous “all the world’s a stage, the people merely players” adage subtly hinting that things are not what they seem in idyllic Westview. Wanda’s powers seem to be getting more unstable by the moment as contractions from the baby cause Wanda’s powers to go on the fritz. The false contraction causes the entire block to lose power and Wanda and Vision to question what is truly going on in the world. However, when Vision begins to openly question their existence the world is rewound and edited once more just like in their encounter with the beekeeper from the previous episode. Wanda’s subconscious once again comes to the forefront, after her rewritten conversation with her husband the sprinklers come on, symbolically representing her water breaking.
Another “commercial break” takes place, this time for Hydra Soak. The commercial parodies the Calgon commercials of yesteryear and the couple from the previous commercials once again reprise their roles. The commercial ends on the tagline “when you wanna get away, but you don’t want to go anywhere,” which could be a nod to the prevalent theories about the show. Each commercial ties in heavily to Wanda’s past, with this one referencing the experiments conducted on Wanda and her brother by Hydra following the death of their parents.
Vision takes off with his newfound superspeed to retrieve Dr. Nielsen and while Wanda attempts to mitigate the pain of her contractions while attempting to keep her power in check. Soon after Vision’s departure, Geraldine shows up asking to borrow supplies to clean her home as not only has Wanda and Vision’s home flooded but Geraldine’s as well, revealing more of the scope of Wanda’s abilities. When Wanda begins giving birth her powers go fully haywire causing chandeliers to drop from the ceiling, pictures to spin, and flames to explode from the fireplace. Luckily, Geraldine refuses to question the strange goings on and offers her assistance in birthing the couple’s baby boy, Tommy.
Vision returns soon after with Dr. Nielsen and surprise, a second child is born, Billy. Vision and Dr. Nielsen’s discussion after he checks up on the twins is an excellent example of how Wandavision uses the lens of television to be creepy, the two discuss Dr. Nielsen’s vacation to Bermuda to which the doctor declares that the trip is off due to it being “hard” to leave a small town like Westview. Vision overhears his neighbors Agnes and Herb having a discussion about Geraldine’s presence in town and the dangers she may bring. When Vision tries to discuss this further, Herb ominously says “she’s here because, we–” but before he could reveal the show’s big secret Agnes’ kooky demeanor dissipates and she chastises Herb into keeping his mouth shut.
Inside, Wanda and Geraldine marvel over the children causing Wanda to finally have a recollection of her life outside of Westview. Wanda tells Geraldine of her twin brother and their Sokovian heritage seemingly sparking Geraldine’s own memory of the events of Age of Ultron. Geraldine inquires about the death of her brother at the hands of Ultron to which Wanda responds aggressively urging Geraldine to leave. Vision, still reeling from the encounter with his neighbors, comes in to find Geraldine missing. As the credits roll on Wanda and Vision, the screen begins to widen to the modern 16:9 aspect revealing a militarized base located right outside of Westview.
Episode 4: We Interrupt This Program
The fourth episode of Wandavision is a drastic departure from the ones preceding it. It begins with Geraldine aka Monica Rambeau recorpealizing from the results of Thano’s snap, finally giving us a timeline of the show’s events. Viewers have seen the effects of The Blip played humorously during Spider-Man: Far From Home but Wandavision takes a very different approach. The sudden reappearance of millions of people after 5 years is pure and utter chaos with those living through The Blip frantically scrambling to check on their loved ones and those returning showing up in the context of where they were prior.
What seems like just moments for Monica has actually been 5 years during which her mother Maria “Photon” Rambeau has passed away. Instead of trying to acclimate to the new circumstances in the revelation of her mother’s death and Thanos’s snap, Monica heads back to the S.W.O.R.D. headquarters. There she encounters acting Director Hayward, who explains the renewed direction of S.W.O.R.D. and under the directions crafted by Maria Rambeau herself, restricts her to terrestrial missions only. Monica begrudgingly agrees to assist the FBI with a missing persons case by piloting a S.W.O.R.D. drone. Monica travels to New Jersey where she meets Scott Lang’s favorite FBI agent Jimmy Woo (portrayed by Randall Park).
Jimmy soon reveals that there is more at play here than just a missing person. When they talk to police officers right outside of town the officers act if Westview doesn’t even exist, even though they are literally right in front of the town’s sign. Monica flies the drone into the town of Westview and it immediately disappears from view once it crosses the barrier into the television dimension. Jimmy tells her that something emanating from the town is preventing him from entering, yet Monica is quickly absorbed inside of the anomaly.
Kat Dennings makes her return to the MCU as Darcy Lewis who has earned her doctorate in astrophysics since the days of her last appearance in Thor: The Dark World. She quickly deduces that S.W.O.R.D. is out of their wheelhouse and looking for whatever help they can get. The ever astute Darcy slices through the seeming air of mystery in the S.W.O.R.D. base, deflating Hayward, and discovering the bits of radiation emanating from Westview. Darcy notes there’s a broadcast frequency trapped in this primordial radiation and requests an old television to decipher the mysterious code.
A S.W.O.R.D. operative named Agent Franklin prepares to journey to Westview through the sewer system at the behest of Hayward, despite the logical points of contention made by Jimmy Woo. As Franklin crosses underneath the town of Westview, his tether separates from his uniform and his hazmat suit morphs into the beekeeper uniform we see ascending from the manhole in episode 2.
After receiving the television she requested, Darcy is able to access the broadcast signal tucked inside the Big Bang radiation and unearths the actual sitcom taking place inside of Westview, New Jersey. As they begin to watch from episode 1, just as the real world viewers did, Woo begins to mark down all the questions we’re asking as viewers on a whiteboard, marking the moment where the show fully embraces the meta. The group watches the show and begins to discern that the people of Westview are real people being forcibly cast into their roles. Using those same broadcast waves, our resident genius, Darcy Lewis, devises a way to contact Wanda inside the insular world. Then our outsiders get a picture of what’s happened to the drone to which Woo asks, “why did you colorize it?” and the officer responds “we didn’t.”
The group at the S.W.O.R.D. base finally has their chance to reach out to Wanda at Dottie’s swim club meeting and takes their shot but instead of seeing Dottie go haywire the episode simply skips forward to the Hydra Soak commercial. They then follow that up with the beekeeper situation and skip right past that much like Wanda did in that episode. Next, they’ve jumped into the 70s where Wanda is giving birth but during the scene with Geraldine, another edit in Wanda’s world causes Darcy to speculate that someone is “censoring the broadcast.” Before they can get to the bottom of this, however, the alarm sounds and we hear over the PA that the boundary has been breached.
The aspect ratio changes once more and we find ourselves inside of Westview for the first time in the episode. We pick back up at the end of the last episode with Wanda facing down Monica saying “You’re not my neighbor and you’re definitely not my friend.” Monica pleads with the woman that she thought was her friend as Wanda surges with energy saying, “you are a stranger and an outsider. And right now, you are trespassing here. And I want you to leave.” Wanda blasts Monica through the entirety of the house and through the barrier surrounding Westview. Wanda momentarily looks at her hands as if she’s shocked at what she just did but then proceeds to rebuild her home and tend to her sons. Just as Vis returns and inquires where Geraldine is, we cut to Monica’s crash landing in the area outside of Westview. Wanda swivels to talk to her husband and is met, horrifyingly, by a dead-faced Vision, with a gaping hole in his head where the Mind Stone once was. Vision returns to his picture-perfect visage and tells Wanda they can go wherever they want to, to which Wanda responds that she has “everything under control,” seemingly confirming what people have thought up to this moment.
Outside of the show, we see Monica also seemingly agreeing with that by uttering “It’s Wanda, it’s all Wanda” once she awakens the field between the S.W.O.R.D. base and Westview, NJ. We return back inside the world where Wanda asks Vision and the boys what they should watch tonight while a slightly disturbed looking Vision looks directly into the camera.
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