Tag: MCU

Note:  Arlyn Murphy will be back on the job next week!

Last week’s episode of WandaVision, The All-New Halloween Spooktacular, was highly anticipated by fans and it didn’t disappoint. From the great looks at characters in their classic costumes to the interesting and informative chat between Wanda and “Pietro”, to the twins beginning to use their powers, to the crazy last few minutes that saw Vision get “House of M’d” and hex expand to include S.W.O.R.D. headquarters and turn it into a circus, fans got a lot packed into a short time. Fans were also left, as usual, with more questions than answers but with only 3 episodes left, we know the answers are coming soon!

One of the biggest questions still out there is who exactly is doing this. In last week’s primer, Arlyn speculated that while we are being led to believe that Wanda is in charge, she might be under someone else’s control similar to how Doctor Doom manipulated her in The Children’s Crusade. There are no shortage of fan theories out there as to who that someone could be, but after Episode 6, Agnes seems to be the prime suspect. As we discussed on the podcast, Episode 6 seemed to confirm that while everyone in Westview is being controlled, only the residents who are part of the main plot of each of Wanda’s “episodes” seem to be active. It’s sort of like a video game where there’s a whole world out there, but the game only renders what needs to be on screen. During Vision’s exploration of Westview, Agnes was the only “non-active resident”  of Wanda’s fantasy who seemed to be able to speak and be aware of what was happening. With only 3 episodes left, it’s growing increasingly unlikely that there’s enough time to introduce an entirely new antagonist and get their story told in a reasonable amount of time, so Agnes stands out as the best choice for the one pulling the strings. Of course, there’s still the growing threat of Tyler Hayward’s stubborn ignorance and after Wanda’s hexpansion, it’s almost certain that he’s bound to overreact.

Assumptions

Episode 7 is rumored to be another shorter episode, with a runtime of 38 minutes. That means the last 2 episodes would be a little bit longer, so 7 is likely to serve as our last “setup” episode before we really get down to that big Marvel Studios action film Kevin Feige promised us when he introduced WandaVision at SDCC ’19. With that in mind, we have to think about what would get us from “here” to “there” in a short episode. It’s grown apparent to me that the twins are much more integral to the plot of the series than I originally thought, so it seems like a safe bet that something is going to happen to them very soon that will push us down the path towards resolution. We’re also likely going to see Monica finally come into her powers, Hayward make one, last desperate attempt and then the realization that this is a threat that can’t be handled by the clowns at S.W.O.R.D. With Wanda’s hex threatening reality, there’s only one guy for the job: the Sorcerer Supreme of Earth!

Episode 7 of WandaVision will stream tomorrow!

As WandaVision has proven time and time again, sometimes, things are not always as they seem. Even outside of Westview. Over the course of Marvel Studios’ hit show, we’ve seen a number of things that seem to be out of place here and there. An American sitcom through the ages starring two Avengers. Two characters that somehow have been revived, one of them bring in the wrong face from possibly another universe. People with suppressed personalities and Wanda inside everyone’s head. As Vision would say, it seems that something is clearly very wrong inside of Westview. But that doesn’t exclude the outside world as well. Recently a small mistake was pointed out to our fellow contributor Lizzie Hill by Twitter user @Cameron16549707.

The image and tweet refer to Episode 5 of WandaVision; “On A Very Special Episode…”. The detail mentioned by this fan truly is interesting. When we go to analyze the scene, as we can observe below, for just a split second, we can see Dottie’s name on the S.W.O.R.D. document in the Alias section.

In the next shot, when Monica pulls back out, we can see the information written on it and we can notice very blurrily Dottie’s name and the checkmark for the Sex on “Female”, which corroborates that the sheet does indeed belong to Dottie (or at least, it’s what was intended). What makes this all the odder is that the image of the person on Dottie’s sheet is Dennis the Mailman, not Dottie per see.

Why this is important

The devil is always in the details and that certainly includes Marvel Studios. Now, let me just shoot down those Dennis is secretly Dottie theories because I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. This certainly seems to be a case of Marvel Studios making a small mistake, hoping fans might not notice, and it’s almost certainly what was going to happen. It’s been nearly a week since Episode 5 aired on Disney+ and no one seemed to notice until very recently but it makes it all the more interesting.

If anything, it convinces me even more that Dottie may have a much larger role to play in this show than we previously thought. If we analyze Dottie’s sheet for a second, she doesn’t have a legal name, similar to how Agnes doesn’t have one either, and the fact that Marvel Studios went out of their way to CGI Dennis’ image and ID onto the sheet so fans wouldn’t notice makes Dottie’s role in WandaVision all the more mysterious and intriguing. I had previously hypothesized that Dottie may have actually been the sorceress known as Arcanna Jones, given that her husband in the show was known as Phil Jones, a character that already has some history in the comics. But given that Phil Jones was just his alias and that he’s actually Harold Proctor, that theory may have been washed away. Nonetheless, I still believe that Dottie may still serve this series as a sort of antagonist to Wanda who has yet to reveal herself. Who she might be whoever, remains to be seen.

WandaVision has been pretty good about keeping the sitcom elements of each episode true to the era they take place in. As I noted in my first piece analyzing the changing eras of Westview, the only thing that’s truly bothered me about it so far is the 1950’s episode being modeled largely after The Dick Van Dyke Show, which didn’t premiere until 1961. I bring this up because I’ve seen a decent amount of criticism and confusion surrounding the era Westview is supposed to be set in during Episode 6, and the answer to all of this explains the timeline not only for this episode but the one I myself complained about a few weeks back.

Explaining the Eras
By starting in the 1950s, WandaVision had seven decades to cover to reach the “present-day” given that the late 2010s and early 2020s in the MCU are kind of fuzzy due to the Blip, and people like Wanda who were snapped away haven’t experienced anything beyond 2018. But with only six era-themed episodes, it wasn’t exactly clear how they’d handle that matter. There was a lot of speculation that the 2000s and 2010s would be covered together in the same episode, or that we’d only see the Westview characters in the present-day once the sitcom bubble burst.
The answer to this little conundrum turned out to be neither of these scenarios, as we found out during this week’s “All-New Halloween Spooktacular!”. The episode had elements of both the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the final sitcom era (which will presumably be covered in next week’s episode) looks to be focused on the late 2000s and 2010s. This sectioning off of time periods explains the things that some viewers have pointed out as anachronistic, like the cinema showing 2004’s The Incredibles and what is most likely the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap starring Lindsay Lohan.

Why A Little Bit of Anachronism Works
Admittedly, this episode does lean more into the early 2000s than the late 1990s as evidenced by things like the Malcolm and the Middle theme song homage, characters – particularly kids – breaking the fourth wall, cheesy sound effects that accompany certain movements, and even the claymation-style “Yo Magic” commercial are all hallmarks of this time period much more than the ’90s. But some things could be seen as fitting with both “sides” of this era, like the Dance Dance Revolution-style game the twins played that first debuted in 1998 but became even more popular in the 2000s. And we did get one shot of what was most likely the actual 90’s in the form of the Halloween flashback of Wanda and Pietro as kids (assuming it was a real flashback).
Ultimately, Westview seems to operate under similar rules to ABC sitcom The Goldbergs. That show is set in the 1980s but doesn’t make an effort to introduce technology and pop culture touchstones in the order they debuted in real life. Every episode is introduced as taking place in “1980-something” and anything that was around in the ’80s is fair game to show up at any time, and WandaVision is doing the same with each era it covers.