Spoiler Alert… Spoiler Alert! We’re going to jump right into the latest episode of the mind-bending MCU show, WandaVision, with spoilers. So, please go watch episode 4 before reading the rest of the article if you want to preserve the surprises.
Episodes 1-3 have given MCU fans a LOT to talk and speculate about, but very few concrete details or answers to the many questions in the minds of viewers. The closest thing I can remember is Lost, where viewers were very much in the dark about what exactly was going on season after season. Even as some answers were revealed, some of the biggest ones remained a total mystery until the end of the series.
I expect WandaVision won’t make us wait until the final episode to reveal ‘what the heck is happening here!’ but time will tell. In the meantime, we have a brand new episode to discuss and it is the most revealing to date.
What Happens in Episode 4
First off, here’s what doesn’t happen – we don’t jump the sitcom story ahead into the 1980s, as the previous episode arc of 50s, 60s, and 70s had us prepped for. Instead, we pick things up basically where we left off at the surprising end of episode 3, where the character we’ve come to know as Geraldine was literally thrown out of Wanda’s house and outside the town of Westview.
We quickly learn that Geraldine wasn’t just a neighbor in the very strange time-jumping town of Westview. Instead, she is someone we already know from the MCU, Monica Rambeau, the now grown-up little girl from Captain Marvel.
In the years since, she grew up and eventually went to work for SWORD, the outer space counterpart to SHIELD that was founded by her mother (surprise!). We also learn that Monica was one of the victims of the Blip and we witness her reappearance after being gone for years with 50% of the universe.
We learn that Monica went back to work for SWORD shortly after coming back from oblivion and her first assignment is to help FBI agent Woo (from Ant-Man!) near the town of WestView NJ. A town that you can’t enter or leave and that locals seem to have forgotten about entirely. Monica is quickly sucked into Westview, prompting Woo to call in the SWORD cavalry, who surround the town and begin investigating.
We next get Darcy from the Thor films, as she tries to help SWORD figure out what is happening to Westview. It doesn’t take her too long to identify the TV signal coming from the town, and she and the rest of SWORD begin watching the WandaVision sitcom, just like the rest of us. However, their versions are slightly edited from what we have seen.
We learn where the beekeeper character from episode two came from (a SWORD agent sent in through the sewers to figure out what is going on), the toy helicopter from episode two was also an actual drone sent in by Monica and Woo to try to see what was happening.
The episode ends with a recently thrown out Monica announcing that ‘It’s Wanda. It’s all Wanda.”
Lots and lots to unpack here, but let’s hit some big things we now know.
- The show definitely takes place after Endgame.
- Wanda is definitely in control of at least some of what’s going on, if not everything.
- The characters on the show-within-a-show are ‘real’ people from Westview, with different names than the characters they play in Wanda’s reality.
- The edited footage shows an obviously dead Vision, but Wanda changes it up before it ‘airs’ so he appears alive again.
And, what we still don’t know.
- Is Wanda entirely in control or is someone else getting her to create this alternate reality?
- Is Vision really alive? It seems maybe not, but we still aren’t sure.
- Why Westview?
- Are the twins real or just part of Wanda’s imagination/fake reality?
- What do the other Westview residents know about what is going on?
- Who is Jimmy’s missing person in Westview?
- Why hasn’t SWORD found ‘real’ identification for Agnes and Dotty?
