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| WandaVision "Breaking the Fourth Wall" |
In Westview, reality is glitching. After Wanda's expansion of the bubble, it seems that her mastery over the town's reality is harder to maintain. This has the knock-on effect of a greater sense of self-awareness on her part, as delivered in direct address to the camera, The Office-style. Complete with cutaways and a new logo reminiscent of Modern Family, the WandaVision sitcom has adapted to a house style of the new millennium. And with it, the show balances humor and hexcraft in delivering its most dynamic episode yet.
The more modern format of the sitcom enhances the humor; see particularly Tommy and Billy's reactions to Wanda's non-explanation of what's been going on. There's also the sense that as TV history has progressed, the show-within-a-show version of Wanda is allowed to be more of a human being, more relatably imperfect.
Meanwhile, Monica Rambeau makes her way back into Westview, confronting Wanda and coming to realize that the rewriting of her cells is making her a "sentient weapon" in her own right. As they face off, they reckon with the central issue of the show: Wanda's villainous culpability in holding the townsfolk hostage. The show as a whole has challenged me, in the sense that as a big Wanda fan, I'm challenged by her decidedly non-heroic actions as presented in the show. As Wanda engages with that and flirts with owning it, it's an electric moment.
And that's not the only monkey wrench in the situation. It is revealed that Agnes is really the powerful witch Agatha Harkness. We're informed through song that she has been responsible for manipulating a lot of the situations in this situation comedy, not least of which, conjuring Pietro. So if nothing else, I am also relieved that the show may have an arch villain for Wanda to fight, besides herself.
Vision, aside with Darcy in the circus, also has a poignant moment as he pieces together the history that he can't remember. As Bruce Banner reinforced in Avengers: Infinity War, Vision is a "complex construct of overlays". Vision, in another new configuration of life, wonders, "What am I now?" Darcy offering that it must have been hard for Wanda to watch Vision be killed after having made the impossibly hard decision to kill him herself is another rich example of the show incorporating fan conversations of the characters' histories into the text of the MCU.
The episode is the broadest canvas yet for the show to display everything it can do: offbeat humor, poignant character moments, malevolent mystical atmosphere. It's also revealed that Agatha/Agnes killed Sparky the dog. I did think it was weird that dog just up and died! 8/10.
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