What is grief, if not love persevering? — The Vision

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Disney+ started streaming the final episode of WandaVision right out of the gate at midnight. The previous two weeks it took me nearly ten minutes to get to the show as Disney+ servers broke with tons of people trying to access them.

All-in-all the series was... not great. Not terrible, but not what I wanting to see from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I understand there are people who are just loving to see Wanda get beat up on while she processes her grief, so more power to them, I guess...

I wrote my thoughts on the final episode (and the series as a whole) immediately after the show, but likely won't post until I have time to read through all this on my lunch break tomorrow. I'm tired, and there's probably a million spelling mistakes.

But anyway... it's all in an extended entry if you care to read it...

Needless to say, WandaVision and Marvel comic book spoilers abound...

   
I wanted to like this show so much.

I love The Scarlet Witch. I love the Vision. Not just in the Marvel Studio Movies, but throughout their entire history with the Marvel comics. I bought their mini series. I bought their maxi-series. I've followed their story for decades in many, many comic book appearances.

And I tuned into WandaVision, the first Marvel Studios show on Disney+.

In all honesty, I am not quite sure what to think about it, and so I'm going to try and explore that with my ramblings here.

Wanda Maximoff, one of the most powerful entities in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, is in pain. She lost her parents. She lost her brother. And she lost The Vision, which was the only thing she had left. Vision may have been a synthezoid... a synthetic human... but he was brought to life by The Mind Stone which was melded with "JARVIS," an artificial intelligence created by Tony Stark. This made him far more than a robot. He could experience emotions. He could feel love.

And because Wanda's hex powers were awakened by The Mind Stone, she and Vision were connected in a way that even they probably didn't understand.

Processing grief and loss is one of the most difficult things we endure as humans. But Wanda is no ordinary human. So when her grief consumed her, it also consumed the immense power she contains... unleashing it to create a new reality that enveloped the town of Westview, New Jersey. Shaped by her fond memories of watching old American television shows with her family in Sokovia, this reality was a better reality from a happier times where The Vision was alive and well and they had a life together. They had children together.

But then Agatha Harkness happened.

A powerful witch who has survived centuries, Agatha was drawn to the immense power being generated to build the television sitcom reality that Wanda was unconsiously creating. She infiltrated Wanda's world as her nosey neighbor "Agnes" and started manipulating everything so as to discover Wanda's secrets... and steal her power.

Unfortunately Agatha's meddling causes Wanda's reality to start to unravel. Left with no other option, Agatha is forced to reveal herself to get the information she needs... and reveal that Wanda is The Scarlet Witch, a powerful entity which comes from myth and legend. Her power didn't come from The Mind Stone... it was activated by The Mind Stone. She was actually a witch all this time.

And now... the series finale.

Way back when I was first commenting on WandaVision I predicted that this would end in one of two ways... A) Some seriously powerful villain from the comics, like Mephisto, would be revealed to be the villain of the series and that would lead into Phase 4 of the MCU... or B) Wanda would ultimately become the villain that leads into Phase 4 of the MCU.

Guess which way they went.

Option B it is.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Agatha wastes no time in revealing to Wanda that The Darkhold, an ancient book which has a long history in the Marvel Universe, foresaw her coming. Within its pages Wanda is said to have magical powers that exceed The Sorcerer Supreme (AKA Doctor Strange), and is destined to destroy the world...

Which is what this entire series has been leading up to this whole time: Wanda the All-Powerful Super Villain.

Then Wanda battled Agatha Harkness. — Wanda's colorful recreation of Vision battled the not-so-colorful corpse of Vision. — A mutated Monica Rambeau uses her Photon powers to battled Hayward and the Military (with help from Billy and Tommy and Darcy Lewis). — The good guys are victorious. — And a bittersweet ending ensues as Wanda has a heartbreaking farewell with the family that her grief created...

"I don't understand this power. But I will."

The End.

But not really, of course. In the mid-credits scene we see a Skrull telling Monica Rambeau that an old friend of her mother's wants to speak with her (Fury, dat you?)...

Which made me happy. Because other than a brief moment of her absorbing bullets with her Photon powers, the only thing she got to do this episode was reveal Agatha Harkness's fake Pietro to be an actor named Ralph Bohner (which, I'm guessing, is the "Ralph" that "Agnes" was talking about when she mentioned her husband)...

And in the end-credits scene we see Option B come to pass. Wanda... who has apparently placed herself in exile, is finally at peace...

But only half of her. The other half is hard at work reading The Darkhold to understand her power and learn its secrets. Obviously not a good thing. Especially when she hears her now-deconstructed children calling out to her for help...

See you in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in 2022!

Ultimately the series was way more straightforward than what fans like me were hoping to see. No appearance by Doctor Strange or Mephisto or Reed Richards or anybody else major from the MCU. No big secret revealed. Monica got her Photon powers, Wanda became The Scarlet Witch that she was destined to become all along, and we have the prelude to a new "Thanos" villain for Phase 4 of the MCU.

And maybe a new Vision, which I'll get to in a minute.

This is more than a little disappointing. Wanda deserved better than to be the prologue for somebody else's movie... and having her become a villain is a pretty big cop-out. She'll ultimately be destroyed or redeemed in upcoming movies, of course, because that's the way comic books work. But her own series basically came to nothing I was interested in watching. All we got an exploration of her grief via homages to old TV shows, which I'm sure will appeal to some people, but it was sure a boring slog for me. At least we got to witness a few moments showing just how powerful Wanda is, and that's always cool...

As was seeing Kathryn Hahn.

There is one thing that held promise, however. Wanda's fake recreation of Vision, which is a product of The Mind Stone, was able to reprogram Vision's bleached corpse to become a new Vision...

Complete with all of Vision's memories and feelings...

Where that goes in the future should prove interesting. Maybe Doctor Strange can separate the good half of Wanda from the bad half of Wanda somehow. Might not be all that difficult if the bad half is actually an embodiment of The Darkhold and not really Wanda at all. And since White Vision is wandering around out there somewhere, maybe once Wanda gets through all the Scarlet Witch drama they can meet up and finally find peace and happiness together?

It's really the least that Marvel Studios could do for poor Wanda. She's suffered enough...

Oh well. From the sound of her kids screaming at the end, maybe they didn't quite disintegrate after all? That would also be nice. And pave the way for a Young Avengers movie...

So, yeah. That's over. Eight weeks was more than enough.

Onward to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier series in two weeks... something that looks much closer to the kind of thing I want to see from Marvel Studios on Disney+.