WandaVision episode 4 recap: the Marvel show gives us the answers we want

WandaVisionThe series’ first three episodes jumped decade after decade as Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) lived a great sitcom life together in the idyllic (and bizarre) town of Westview. The fourth episode landed on Disney plus Friday, and gave us a dose of Marvel Cinematic Universe “reality.”

Last week’s episode left us our biggest clue to the true nature of Westview when Wanda kicked “Geraldine” (Teyonah Parris) out of the lovely sitcom town for mentioning her twin brother Pietro and his killer Ultron (which, to be fair to Wanda, was a bit rude to Geraldine). The show didn’t reveal Geraldine’s identity, but Marvel Studios didn’t exactly kept the secret.

Let’s jump into an idyllic town of SPOILERS.

Full Disclosure: I expected this episode to take Wanda and Vision’s story to the ’80s, and was saying how much I love pop culture from that decade. Alas, things have not been like neon as I hoped, we will have to wait until next week to put on our leggings.

Instead, we get a satisfying information dump of what’s going on.

The real Geraldine

We finally get on-screen confirmation that Geraldine is, in fact, Monica Rambeau (also known as Lieutenant Trouble), previously seen as a child in the ’90s. Captain Marvel. This episode gives us a flashback revealing that Monica disappeared in Avengers: Infinity War Snap right after her mother, Maria, underwent (apparently successful) surgery to remove the cancer.

In the five years that Monica was gone, Maria’s cancer returned and she died. This is the first time we see the chaos caused by everyone’s return Avengers: Endgame – Spider-Man: Far From Home took a wacky approach – and it’s brutal. She woke up to find everyone panicked and found her mother was dead. Jeepers.

Draw your sword

After teasing us with the logo so far, SWORD is revealed in this episode. The Sensitive Weapons Observation and Response Division is a U.S. intelligence agency created by Maria to monitor threats and potential allies from space – except that she shifted her focus during Monica’s absence to “the robotics, nanotechnology, AI and sensitive weapons ”. He also moved on to creating sensitive weapons – what could go wrong?

Darcy and Jimmy

The real stars of the episode are astrophysicist Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) and FBI agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park), last seen in Thor: The Dark World and Ant-Man and the Wasp respectively. This pair are essentially audience surrogates, as they try to figure out what’s going on as they watch Wanda and Vision’s sitcom existence on vintage TV.

Wanda took over the town of Westview, New Jersey, and residents were forced to become “actors” in the series. The town has also been erased from the memory of locals (even the people of Eastview, which is presumably from Shelbyville to Westview’s Springfield).

Darcy and Jimmy are totally on the show too, but where we’ve seen interruptions like the radio show and “the beekeeper” in episode 2, the show just skipped a scene for them. It cuts off when Wanda reacts to any disruption in MCU reality, censoring anything she doesn’t like.

Mounting

The beekeeper guy – Agent Franklin – in Episode 2 is confirmed to be a SWORD agent sent to infiltrate the city, but he entered the sewers in an anti-radiation suit that changed into a suit. beekeeper passing the barrier.

Where do bees come from? It seems likely that the radiation suit automatically morphed into something that would match Wanda’s artificial reality – that’s probably how Monica got appropriate clothing as well. She probably then went with the series narrative to infiltrate it and figure out what was going on.

The SWORD drone changed color “to go with the production design,” according to Jimmy, but it turned red rather than monochrome – the same color as Wanda’s energy of chaos and the Reality Stone (one of Infinity Stones destroyed).

The walking dead

After Wanda dumps Monica to try and give her a dose of reality, she briefly sees Vision as a walking gray corpse, with a big hole in its head from which Thanos ripped the Mind Stone at the height of War’s. infinite. It’s horrific and probably hints at how fragile Wanda’s reality is. It also seems likely that Vision is still dead, especially after Vision suggests leaving Westview.

“No, we can’t. This is our home, ”Wanda replies with tears in her eyes, suggesting that the reality of Westview is the only place she can keep Vision alive.

Monica’s interruption also changes the aspect ratio from retro 4: 3 to a more appropriate widescreen, but 4: 3 asserts itself with the Wanda illusion.

Wanda’s world

“It’s Wanda. It’s all Wanda,” said a shaken Monica after being kicked out of Westview.

Really? Wanda apparently gets what she wants, but could she be under someone else’s influence? Most of the identities of the townspeople are represented on Darcy and Jimmy’s board on the outside, but Agnes (Kathryn Hahn) and Dottie Jones (Emma Caulfield) are conspicuously absent. We also never saw Agnes’s husband, but she mentioned him several times.

It’s possible that one of those people is the puppet master controlling Wanda and wants her children (who would likely be super powerful). In the main comic book universe, Wanda’s sons, Billy and Tommy, have grown up to join the Young Avengers as Wiccan and Speed.

Baby voodoo

The song in this episode is absolute: 1968’s Voodoo child (slight return) by Jimi Hendrix, who includes the iconic lyrics “Well, I’m standing next to a mountain, and I’m cutting it with the edge of my hand.”

However, the following lines seem even more relevant to Wanda’s apparent actions: “Well, I pick up all the pieces and create an island, I might even lift just a little sand.” She picked up the pieces of life Thanos shattered and created an “island” in Westview.

The title “Voodoo Child” also matches the magical nature of the Wanda twins.

No wonder Jimmy Woo is now in WandaVision, Scott’s magic tricks in Ant-Man and the Wasp really had an impact on him. He’s after Wanda’s magic now. pic.twitter.com/49Xr640d7V

– alias – WV SPOILERS (@itsjustanx) Aug 24, 2019

WTF comments and questions

• Monica shows up at SWORD headquarters three weeks after returning, placing this show just after Endgame.
• When he meets Monica, Jimmy pulls out his card like a magician – something he learned from Scott Lang and Online Close-Up Magic University to Ant-Man and the Wasp Whether or not you think this move is great or silly can be kind of a Rorschach test (I’m firmly in the old category, but I’m a little proud of my idiot).
• Why was Monica pulled through the barrier when Jimmy was unable to enter? Could it be because she was dusted off by the Snap? We don’t know if he was, but it seems likely he survived.
• Monica’s SWORD jacket is adorable and I would wear it.
• What happened to Agent Franklin after Wanda kicked him out of there?
• Darcy is detecting background cosmic radiation from microwaves around the city, which SWORD interim director Tyler Hayward says is “relic radiation dating back to the Big Bang.” Since the formation of the Infinity Stones around this time, this is another suggestion that the Reality Stone (or at least its energy) is involved.
• Who is Jimmy’s missing person? They’re part of the witness protection program, and he probably didn’t see it on the show – otherwise, he’d be part of the picture. It’s also possible that he won’t mention it to Darcy, as she isn’t a law enforcement officer. Agnes’ mysterious husband seems like a major possibility.
• Jimmy answers this on the question whiteboard, but Westview is hexagonal in shape. It is not known what the meaning of this shape is, but it is the symbol of an ethically questionable scientific think tank Advanced Idea Mechanics in the comics and game world. In the MCU they were the bad guys Iron man 3.

Check back for more Easter eggs and observations next Friday, when WandaVision Episode 5 hits Disney Plus.

CNET’s Caitlin Petrakovitz contributed to this recap.