Camestros Felapton

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WandaVision Episode 7: Breaking the Fourth Wall

Well that was very entertaining. As always an episode that is night on impossible to review without spoilers, even though the biggest twist was one I think most people had guessed. Aside from that, this was one of the most integrated of the episodes since the external-world plot was introduced. As our sitcom history has reached the 2010s, the inspiration is the mockumentary style of Modern Family. That’s a surprisingly effective medium as it allows several characters to talk directly to camera about the plot. Meanwhile Darcy finds herself part of the show and Monica gets a new toy.

The rest is spoilers.

So, the big reveal which everybody guessed was that a. Agnes is up to stuff and b. Agnes is Agatha Harkness a notable witch from Marvel Comics (I think largely on the side of good?) Delightfully she gets her own TV show opening sequence and theme song that recaps past episodes and shows what bad things she did along the way (including killing poor old Sparky). The song has a bit of an Adam’s Family vibe to it, which is nice.

Meanwhile, Wanda is not coping well with everything or anything. Vision isn’t coping well either but by teaming up with Darcy, he gets to learn his own backstory up to and including being killed twice in Infinity War.

Monica tries to drive what looks a lot like the Eagle spacecraft from Space 1999 but with wheels, through the Hex barrier. When that fails she just pushes herself through but may have accidentally got blue eyes and superpowers in the process (her eyes don’t stay blue).

And that’s largely it. We still don’t really know what is going on but Darcy, Monica and Vision all have a better idea of their circumstances and Wanda knows that Agnes is Agatha Harkness. Also, it was just a genuinely fun episode which really pulled the comedy format and the superhero antics together well.

There’s two more episodes to go but I don’t think we’ll get two more sitcom templates. It’s probably all plot reveals and the walls of Wanda-reality collapsing from here. The overall explanation is likely to suck but I think I don’t care. It’s been wacky fun and Olsen and Bettany have been great.

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48 responses to “WandaVision Episode 7: Breaking the Fourth Wall”

  2. Yeah I tend to agree with you about the actual ending. It doesn’t feel like everything’s coming together for a satisfying conclusion. Unless something really amazing happens in the next two episodes, I’m prepared for a let down

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    • I mean, we already know that it’s 1. infinity stone related (Vision & Wanda) 2. wacky science hand-wavium and 3. magic (Wanda & Agatha). So the mechanics of everything is already pretty much any explanation works.

      The why of it is Wanda is sad and traumatized and the baddies were trying to turn Vision’s body into a weapon.

      Pulling that altogether in a way that feels narratively like an explanation will be the tricky bit.

      Liked by 2 people

  3. Something rubbed me the wrong way about this episode and I try to find out what exactly.
    This epsiode has been built around the twist in the end – the rest is not happening much and Pietro doesnt even show up until the mid.credits. Mostly people talking about the past and getting themselves into position for the finale. Then the twist happend and thats it. I probably expected a bit more?

    It doesnt help that Im not a fan of the twist. For one I dont know Agatha Harkness, so I have no emotzonal connection, where others might be celebrating a beloved character (I dont know!). But mainly, I dont particulary like the “this side character is beyond everything!”, especially if the solution is “shes done it with magic!”. I hope there is a bit more to the story. The Why and How can be extended, also the “What will happen to the kids and what is the deal with Pietro”. The latter could be very disspointing or very cool. I just hope its not “Mephisto”, that would be a bit too much of “introducing new characters on the last 20 pages” (to quote Murder by Death). Lets see if they do anything interesting with it, but my hope has been lowered considerably since last week, which is a shame.

    At least the ad was about the “present” of Wanda (she is in a type of Nexus that seems to resolve around her), which seems that my theory that the ads are repesentative of Wandas Life could be true.

    (P.S.: Pietro asked Wanda last week something along the lines of “Controlling a whole city and creating a reality is far beyond giving nightmares” which indicates to me that he is not a mere creation of Agathe . bc why would he bring it up if he is?)

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  4. Seems it was Agatha all along. If so, the misdirection during her chat with Vision was good misdirection, and the “act as if asking for a re-take” from Herb was also excellent misdirection.

    But, then, we did see Agnes/Agatha purple him in today’s episode, so who knows.

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  6. I would be okay with a Vision and Darcy team-up for many stories.

    They did get me on the twist that Agnes/Agatha is sinister (in a Munsters like way.) There had been hints that she might be but they were very successful with misdirection so that you couldn’t be sure. Whether she’s a full out villain or not, we’ll get to see in the last episodes. I also had bought into Monica getting Reed Richards’ help instead of just random SWORD/military folk. My husband said I was over-expecting tie-ins to the movies, which is probably true. And as expected, Monica turned into Photon. But it was all very delightfully done with The Office and Modern Family traits. Olsen was brilliant in the episode, I thought, as was Hahn.

    For those bummed that Agatha has magical abilities, one tie-in we do know for sure is with Dr. Strange, whose next movie Wanda will be in, so multi-dimensional, supernatural stuff is going to come up. I don’t think though at this late date that they’ll add Mephisto in any concrete way.

    Liked by 2 people

      • Yep, Paul Bettany specifically said it was someone he was honored to work with and there can’t be that many people out there with that kind of rep. Current fan forecast is James Spader.

        Liked by 1 person

      • My understanding is that the big character was Doctor Strange — that Benedict Cumberbatch was confirmed to show up, probably at the end. But there may be somebody else. My daughter believes so.

        Liked by 1 person

        • Look, keep this on the q.t., but it’s me. I play mailman Willie Lumpkin, and it’s pivotal in bringing the FF into the MCU. Like I say, Mum’s the word. By reading this, you are bound to secrecy &c &c.

          Liked by 2 people

      • @lurkertype: Bettany and Spader would’ve been on set together, I’m pretty sure, for the final Vision/Ultron scene. Ultron was animated but Spader played him in motion capture, and that scene is all about the dialogue so it would’ve made sense to have them act it together.

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      • “Yep, Paul Bettany specifically said it was someone he was honored to work with and there can’t be that many people out there with that kind of rep.”

        Get ready for the credoits reading “And starring Ian McKellen as Gandalf the Grey”…

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    • Even if they said that this will feed into the next Dr. Strrange movie, the latter needs to be somewhat possible to understand if you havent watched WandaVision. I think Wanda will be in that one too, so whatever her journey will be, it feeds into Dr Strange 2 – probably new powers.
      Or -more generally – the idea of a multiverse, which would come back to Pietro being an x-men
      (and to completly do a long shot, the character we will se at the end is Patrick Stewards Charles Xavier 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

  7. I was less pleased b/c it was what we knew (Agnes/Agatha’s fault)

    However, we got Darcy being Darcy, which I am always here for. And Monica being Monica, ditto. She’s so awesome neither she nor her clothes changed.

    A’s theme song was magnificent. Just perfect. Even ending with “and your little dog too!” (a reference Cap would get)

    Have we ever seen Pietro and Agatha at the same time? The post-credit scene made me wonder.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Aside from ‘Agatha All Along’ credits, we haven’t. My suspicion the other reason we didn’t see much of her in the last episode was that she was using him as a ventriloquist dummy and being in the room with him would have been distracting for her.

      Liked by 2 people

    • I dug a bit into the comic history of Agatha Harkness and in the comics she has a son called Nicholas Scratch. Meanwhile, Agnes/Agatha’s rabbit is called Senor Scratchy, which is certainly interesting.

      Liked by 2 people

      • I suspect he might be her husband Ralph, since we never see him. And considering that Agnes/Agatha clearly doesn’t have a high opinion of Ralph, it’s not inconceivable that she turned him into a rabbit.

        Meanwhile, it’s possible that the fake Pietro will turn out to be Agatha’s son Nicholas Scratch, even if the age difference between Kathryn Hahn and Evan Peters is only fourteen years.

        Liked by 2 people

  11. CPaca:

    “Get ready for the credits reading “And starring Ian McKellen as Gandalf the Grey”…

    Better than that. “And starring Tom Baker as the Doctor.” (that sound you will hear, wherever you are in the world, will be me squeeing”

    Liked by 3 people

    • Andrew, you ignorant slut, this is a show about *magic* now! The Doctor is a show about *science* – he;s not some wizard who wanders around changing shape and waving a magix wand everytime the plot calls on him to do something!

      Liked by 1 person

    • And starring Tom Baker, Peter Davidson, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi and Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, for why settle for just one, when you can have all of them.

      In fact, why not add in David Bradley, David Troughton and Sean Pertwee as Doctors 1 to 3?

      Liked by 1 person

      • Also, there is an actual link between Doctor Who and the Marvel Comic Universe, because Alan Moore created some intergalactic bounty hunter type characters for the Doctor Who comic and subsequently reused them during his run on Captain Britain, so the Doctor exists in the Marvel Universe or vice versa.

        Liked by 2 people

      • Basically, my thinking is that the last time we saw Baron Mordu, he was draining sorcerers of their magic in order to concentrate magical power in himself, which would go along with the yogurt commercial last episode.

        Plus, he’s listed as being in Multiverse of Madness, so if WandaVision is being used to help set that up, it would fit.

        Liked by 1 person

  13. I just watched this episode for the second time, and it still kicks a multiverse worth of asses. Even though you could see the Agatha Harkness reveal coming a mile off, the stylish “Agatha All Along” sequence surpassed all of my high expectations — and I also love the sprightly end-credits band tune after the mid-credits video clip. Never a dull moment with this show.

    Which reminds me of another thing: Every scene is so packed with details to ponder that an episode somehow feels like an hour of goodness, and not only thirty. I’ve never seen a half-hour show pull that off, before.

    Also: It occurs to me that Kevin Feige and crew have unique knack for playing off the expectations of obsessive comics fans: The writers not only anticipate online fans’ plot predictions but tease and encourage them in order to heighten the entertainment when the writers do something that borrows from some mid-2000s plotline but with blessedly original framing and execution, and without the comic stories’ adolescent obsessions.

    And you have to love a studio that can throw in “And I killed Sparky, too!” with a cackle and get away with it. Seldom before have I seen anything on the big or small screen that so nicely captures the macabre spirit of a lot of dreams, as this one does, becoming gradually darker and weirder as the sitcom world disintegrates around Wanda.

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    • The episodes after the first two have been running about 42-47 minutes, i.e. the length of an hour-long show with commercials. That is counting the end credits, and the other-language credits, though. Still, about 40 min. of show.

      Only this last one felt anywhere close to that, though. Usually I think it’s been about 20 minutes and then there’s PLEASE STAND BY and I’m all arrrgghhhh!

      The theme song writers need an Emmy to go with their Oscar.

      I think it’s brilliant of them to only release one a week. Gives everyone time to see them who doesn’t have an entire day to binge, lets everyone watch them again to catch Easter eggs, and lets everyone spin all their theories for a week. It’s FUN!

      Me and Mr. LT grab some fast food and settle in. Actually we eat first so that every bit of our concentration can be on the screen. Dessert munchies while watching sometimes, and sometimes just staring at the screen, ignoring credentials and making surprised noises.

      I really like their strategy of releasing this and Mandalorian on the time-honored schedule of once a week. It makes it much more of an event and lets the fans be more involved. Hope Falcon & Winter Soldier is even half this good, though it will be much less weird.

      (it was Agatha all along…)

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      • Episode 7 was exactly thirty minutes from “Previously on WandaVision” to rolling of the end credits, 32:10 to the end of the mid-credits “Snoopers gonna snoop” clip, and 34:41 to the end of the exceedingly long end-credits sequence. The episode length has gone up and down (because streaming), but I still say the substance has run, in the main, around 30 minutes.

        But my point is: It seems a lot longer — but in a good way, in the sense that you’re totally absorbed every moment, and each episode is filling like a full meal. You look at your watch (yes, I do have a device that doesn’t sync to NTP; shocker), and you’re surprised that little time has passed.

        I just re-watched most of the series through episode 6 with a friend: Among the things that stood out, this time, is how economical the dialogue and action are. There’s not a phrase or gesture wasted, no clunky exposition — and Kat Dennings’s Dr. Darcy Lewis is even allowed to be smart and perceptive, instead of just a wiseass doing shtick, as in Thor and Thor Encore (sorry, Thor: The Dark World).

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  14. I got to discuss this ep and the whole series with people IRL! The other half of our bubble. Gosh, it was fun!

    They agree that the cliffhangers are both brilliant and evil, and that the episodes just fly by, all seeming less than half an hour. They pack so much content into each ep.

    And we were sorry about Sparky. Given what Dr. Darcy figured out, he was mostly likely a real dog living in Westview and now he’s dead. Someone’s going to wake up with either no memory of the past couple weeks or severe PTSD, plus a dead dog.

    I think we’ll probably binge the whole thing (providing it sticks the landing) in that week between the end of this and the start of “Falcon and Winter Soldier”.

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