WandaVision | Paul Bettany is in this | Fridays on Disney+

[Sandstar]

After a few days to think about it and a rewatch, I still feel the same about the finale and show as whole as I did when the finale aired:

WandaVision makes a lot more sense if it's a setup for a villain/antagonist story.

Because there's just no washing away the horrible things Wanda's done, and continues to do. They've hit this "Wanda does bad things but she really didn't mean it oh super tragic" story beat multiple times now. And it's like...shit or get off the pot, there's really no justification for it. I'm sorry, but her grief doesn't cut it when she's literally torturing a town full of people. Vision is technically still alive, and the kids ARE fake. You don't get to use the kids as some ex post facto excuse for torturing a town full of people.

WandaVision made me understand Wanda; it did not make me sympathize with her. And that's a pretty damn good setup for a villain (or a misguided antagonist, which Wanda has already been). I just really don't see the MCU going through with it; it really felt like, through Monica, the show just wants to gloss over that Wanda essentially created a human rights atrocity that only ended because an evil witch rolled through town and trolled her.

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Exactly. I know everyone wants wiccan and speed, but they're fake. They were never real. Neither was Vision. People go through loss all the fuckin' time, especially because of Covid. It doesn't give them the right to hold a town hostage. And we're just supposed to go "welp, that's what happens." I don't blame Lagos on Wanda. That was Crossbone's fault. I do blame what happened in Africa, and Westview, on her. She's not a hero, and maybe she never was. I...kind of feel like Agatha was the better person, between the two of them. (Vision is the hero. Man's fuckin' dying, and all he does is beg sword to help the people)

 

[AWizardDidIt]

The show keeps saying things in its text that point towards how fucked up everything is and then framing it completely inconsistently in a way that communicates sympathy for Wanda for "what she had to go through" and not a lot of sympathy for anyone else

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What part of one of the townspeople begging Wanda to kill her wasn't supposed to engender sympathy for their position?

You can be sympathetic to both. Wanda has experienced a life of repeated trauma. What she does to the people of Westview is awful but it was never done out of malice or with any real understanding for what she was doing. Her powers were out of her control and she was in a vulnerable enough space that she surrendered to the fantasy without investigating it or understanding the harm she was doing to those around her. That doesn't absolve her of responsibility, but it does make her situation tragic and complicated.

 

[Dark_Castle]

I mean... he ain't wrong.

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Well comics is comics. I'm not one who call for an absolute punishment for Wanda but there should still be some consequences of some kind I feel. She really just got away freely, with some upgrades to her chaos magic and a free darkhold to further her power to boot, and things returned to status quo. I guess one could argue Wanda has turned into a sort of villain by the end, potentially for her appearance in future of MCU but specifically for this show, it felt like there should be a bit more they could depict as the aftermath in the finale.

 

[Gay Bowser]

What part of one of the townspeople begging Wanda to kill her wasn't supposed to engender sympathy for their position?

You can be sympathetic to both.

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A nuanced take? On the internet?

 

[rottenpie]

This scene is just mindblowing, she looks so good 😭

 

[Royalan]

Exactly. I know everyone wants wiccan and speed, but they're fake. They were never real. Neither was Vision. People go through loss all the fuckin' time, especially because of Covid. It doesn't give them the right to hold a town hostage. And we're just supposed to go "welp, that's what happens." I don't blame Lagos on Wanda. That was Crossbone's fault. I do blame what happened in Africa, and Westview, on her. She's not a hero, and maybe she never was. I...kind of feel like Agatha was the better person, between the two of them. (Vision is the hero. Man's fuckin' dying, and all he does is beg sword to help the people)

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I think the show struck the perfect tone with Agatha. Because I can totally believe that she's motivated by selfishness and a desire for Wanda's power; but, at the same time, there was a sincerity in her "...wtf? This is chaos magic Wanda you have no idea how fucking dangerous you are. And you don't even know what runes are holy shit you're going to kill us all."

And I'm a sucker for a Villain with a Point.

 

[Mezentine]

What part of one of the townspeople begging Wanda to kill her wasn't supposed to engender sympathy for their position?

You can be sympathetic to both. Wanda has experienced a life of repeated trauma. What she does to the people of Westview is awful but it was never done out of malice or with any real understanding for what she was doing. Her powers were out of her control and she was in a vulnerable enough space that she surrendered to the fantasy without investigating it or understanding the harm she was doing to those around her. That doesn't absolve her of responsibility, but it does make her situation tragic and complicated.

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Sure, I'm not denying that it started as an accident. But everyone keeps acting like the only course of action she could possibly take is the one that conveniently allows her to go isolate and learn dark magic instead of doing anything actually difficult to confront her responsibility for what just happened. It's like a magical hit-and-run, even if the initial collision was an accident how you respond to the accident says a lot about you. Her situation is tragic and complicated, but so is the circumstance of everyone else in that town, and I'm guessing we're only going to see one of those stories going forward, because Wanda is a Main Character, and only things that traumatize Main Characters matter

 

[Sandstar]

I think the show struck the perfect tone with Agatha. Because I can totally believe that she's motivated by selfishness and a desire for Wanda's power; but, at the same time, there was a sincerity in her "...wtf? This is chaos magic Wanda you have no idea how fucking dangerous you are. And you don't even know what runes are holy shit you're going to kill us all."

And I'm a sucker for a Villain with a Point.

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And Agatha didn't do anything that Wanda didn't do a 1000 times worse. People go on and on about sparky, as if holding 3000 people hostage is better.

 

[Mezentine]

Monica is maybe the only other character who's pain is given really any room to breathe, and it ends up being repurposed as a narrative device to have a character we've had framed as empathetic tell us that she thinks that Wanda just screwed up in an understandable way. Even Monica doesn't ultimately get to actually do anything with her pain other than justify Wanda

Either that or the exchange the two of them have at the end is supposed to make Monica look like an idiot, which I suspect is not their intention and is a huge disservice to both that actress and that character

 

[AWizardDidIt]

Exactly. I know everyone wants wiccan and speed, but they're fake. They were never real. Neither was Vision.

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No, they *are* real. Agatha very explicitly says that Wanda's powers give her the ability of authentic creation. Wanda thanks her kids at the end for choosing her to be their mom and we're shown at the end that she hears them crying out for her after they fade away. So they very clearly came from somewhere and then afterwards went somewhere else once the hex was undone.

Sure, I'm not denying that it started as an accident. But everyone keeps acting like the only course of action she could possibly take is the one that conveniently allows her to go isolate and learn dark magic instead of doing anything actually difficult to confront her responsibility for what just happened. It's like a magical hit-and-run, even if the initial collision was an accident how you respond to the accident says a lot about you

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Ok, two things:

First of all, what could Wanda actually do to atone for what she's done in the eyes of those people? And even if you somehow buy that there's some way she could, what makes you think that they even want her around to attempt it? Her grief was slowly killing them. You can see the hate and mistrust in their eyes when she comes back. I'm sure most of them want her dead afterwards and I don't think there's much else that could possibly mollify them otherwise.

Second of all, she still does not understand her powers at the end of the show. Any attempt to help could simply blow up in her face and cause more damage. What she does at the end of the show is literally the most responsible thing she could do. Isolate and take the only source of knowledge about the powers she has to learn from it. Until then, she's a time bomb and she knows it.

 

[Sandstar]

No, they *are* real. Agatha very explicitly says that Wanda's powers give her the ability of authentic creation. Wanda thanks her kids at the end for choosing her to be their mom and we're shown at the end that she hears them crying out for her after they fade away. So they very clearly came from somewhere and then afterwards went somewhere else once the hex was undone.

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No, they're not. Why are they being pulled apart when the hex starts to go away, when nothing else (apart from vision) is? They are not real. Any more than the vision is.

 

[Mezentine]

First of all, what could Wanda actually do to atone for what she's done in the eyes of those people? And even if you somehow buy that there's some way she could, what makes you think that they even want her around to attempt it? Her grief was slowly killing them. You can see the hate and mistrust in their eyes when she comes back. I'm sure most of them want her dead afterwards and I don't think there's much else that could possibly mollify them otherwise.

Second of all, she still does not understand her powers at the end of the show. Any attempt to help could simply blow up in her face and cause more damage. What she does at the end of the show is literally the most responsible thing she could do. Isolate and take the only source of knowledge about the powers she has to learn from it. Until then, she's a time bomb and she knows it.

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She could have asked. She could have at any point at the end realized that now is maybe a time where she doesn't get to decide what the right thing to do in this moment is, and maybe other people's opinions matter now because she forcibly dragged them into this and hurt them in the process.

Or maybe she does get to decide, maybe I'm being too harsh on her and holding her to a standard we don't hold other characters to. That's fair. She still could have at least shown some inclination to listen and consider what anyone else affected might have to say. She could have given any indication that any of those people mattered to her.

 

[Royalan]

I'm of the mind that the kids are fake, until Wanda makes them real.

I mean, they are literally figments of her mind. It's just that her mind is that of a Nexus being.

My whole point is that the kids came after she enslaved an entire town full of people and separated them from their actual, real life children to live out her Dick Van Dyke fantasy. So they are not an excuse. At all. They are a plot device.

 

[Rellyrell28]

 

[Royalan]

She could have asked. She could have at any point at the end realized that now is maybe a time where she doesn't get to decide what the right thing to do in this moment is, and maybe other people's opinions matter now because she forcibly dragged them into this and hurt them in the process.

Or maybe she does get to decide, maybe I'm being too harsh on her and holding her to a standard we don't hold other characters to. That's fair. She still could have at least shown some inclination to listen and consider what anyone else affected might have to say. She could have given any indication that any of those people mattered to her.

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Vision, the love of her life, literally had an argument with her spelling out that what she was doing to the town was wrong and that the people were suffering.

She knew what she was doing and she chose not to care.

 

[AWizardDidIt]

No, they're not. Why are they being pulled apart when the hex starts to go away, when nothing else (apart from vision) is? They are not real. Any more than the vision is.

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Their physical forms are created by her, but they're obviously more than that. I mean, I guess you can just ignore again that they're literally calling to in the after credits scene but then there's really no point in posting back to you so *shrug*

She could have asked. She could have at any point at the end realized that now is maybe a time where she doesn't get to decide what the right thing to do in this moment is, and maybe other people's opinions matter now because she forcibly dragged them into this and hurt them in the process.

Or maybe she does get to decide, maybe I'm being too harsh on her and holding her to a standard we don't hold other characters to. That's fair. She still could have at least shown some inclination to listen and consider what anyone else affected might have to say. She could have given any indication that any of those people mattered to her.

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Ask? She was *killing* them accidentally in her grief. Again, what are words even going to accomplish in this situation? Do you want someone who accidentally enslaved you for a week, who obviously isn't in control of herself to try and... make good somehow? If she wants to atone, she needs to figure out herself first. After that she can go back and try and make good, but right now that's a stupid idea when she could just fuck things up even worse.

Vision, the love of her life, literally had an argument with her spelling out that what she was doing to the town was wrong and that the people were suffering.

She knew what she was doing and she chose not to care.

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Good people are not immune to denial.

 

[Rellyrell28]

Bruh.....I can't 😂😂😂

 

[Sandstar]

Their physical forms are created by her, but they're obviously more than that. I mean, I guess you can just ignore again that they're literally calling to in the after credits scene but then there's really no point in posting back to you so *shrug*



Ask? She was *killing* them accidentally in her grief. Again, what are words even going to accomplish in this situation? Do you want someone who accidentally enslaved you for a week, who obviously isn't in control of herself to try and... make good somehow? If she wants to atone, she needs to figure out herself first. After that she can go back and try and make good, but right now that's a stupid idea when she could just fuck things up even worse.

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I mean, we don't know that they're calling out to her. She could be remembering them as she studies the Darkhold. There's just as much evidence for that as for your version. *shrugs*

 

[Alien Bob]

If I were a resident of Westview all it would take me to forgive Wanda is to see a picture of baby Vision

 

[Mezentine]

Ask? She was *killing* them accidentally in her grief. Again, what are words even going to accomplish in this situation? Do you want someone who accidentally enslaved you for a week, who obviously isn't in control of herself to try and... make good somehow? If she wants to atone, she needs to figure out herself first. After that she can go back and try and make good, but right now that's a stupid idea when she could just fuck things up even worse.

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I would like to have input on if she tries or not, even if it's only so that I can tell her to "fuck off" if I never want to see her again. I would like the barest minimum of engagement to know that what happened to me and all of my friends was important to her beyond just what it cost her personally. I would like to not be a background extra in a show that doesn't seem to think I actually matter except as a narrative device.

If the message we're supposed to take away is "Wanda is a bad person now" as some people seem dead set on asserting than why are so many people also making excuses for her, for why anything she possibly could have done other than the thing she wanted to do, which was go study magic more, would just be impossible and implausible.

 

[Dark_Castle]

This scene is just mindblowing, she looks so good 😭

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The producer of Wandavision must have saved all their CGI budget for the entire season for this scene alone. Absolutely breathtaking. Her facial expression gives me chill.

 

[Royalan]

Good people are not immune to denial.

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I mean, this is true. It just doesn't seem like a story the MCU wants to tell. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

I see a lot of potential in Wanda as a complex villain, and that's thanks to WandaVision. Because she is not "good" in her actions. Oh no she is not.

 

[Mezentine]

I mean, this is true. It just doesn't seem like a story the MCU wants to tell. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

I see a lot of potential in Wanda as a complex villain, and that's thanks to WandaVision. Because she is not "good" in her actions. Oh no she is not.

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I'd almost believe they were going to go with something more complex except for that damn exchange with Monica at the end. Monca is an audience surrogate in some ways for big chunks of the show, and she's also someone who we're sympathetic with because she's shown being empathetic to others. We're supposed to take her opinion on what happened seriously

 

[Cuburger]

No, they're not. Why are they being pulled apart when the hex starts to go away, when nothing else (apart from vision) is? They are not real. Any more than the vision is.

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It's probably because her spell was flawed like Agatha points out, not because they weren't real. Vision was made of literal Vibranium that Hayward was tracking from outside the Hex. They fell apart because of the spell and not because they were illusions.

 

[Mezentine]

The kids are definitely real, which is also supremely fucked up, but not in a "Wanda is bad" way, just in a "holy shit I cannot believe that was the premise of this show, that's fucking dark for a Disney property" way

 

[Forkball]

 

[Callibretto]

I mean, we don't know that they're calling out to her. She could be remembering them as she studies the Darkhold. There's just as much evidence for that as for your version. *shrugs*

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I mean, we know Wiccan and Speed is coming sooner or later in MCU, so maybe their bodies are tied to the Hex, which is why it disappear when Wanda dispel the hex. But their 'soul' or whatever obviously still out there somewhere.

Unless you think the Wiccan and Speed we're going to get is going to be totally new character with no relation to Scarlet Witch. Which I think is just not likely. they deliberately add the line for Wanda saying thank you to the kids for choosing her as their mother.

 

[Sandstar]

I mean, we know Wiccan and Speed is coming sooner or later in MCU, so maybe their bodies are tied to the Hex, which is why it disappear when Wanda dispel the hex. But their 'soul' or whatever obviously still out there somewhere.

Unless you think the Wiccan and Speed we're going to get is going to be totally new character with no relation to Scarlet Witch. Which I think is just not likely. they deliberately add the line for Wanda saying thank you to the kids for choosing her as their mother.

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That's the only reason, because you assume they're coming someday. Of course, everyone was *sure* he was the fox quicksilver, and Dr Strange was totally gonna have a cameo.

 

[ErrorJustin]

Holy crap what a bad finale to an otherwise really great, incredible show.

I think WandaVision pretty much got worse as it went. Or, more accurately, it peaked around Episodes 4-6, as we got some payoff for the excellent, creepy setup from the first three episodes. But then it's a steady downhill slide from there as it becomes more and more MCU-y, and not in a good way.

I still loved the journey enough to rate the show an overall 8/10 but man... I really didn't like that finale and I'm actually a little upset that it's all MCU canon now and not some elseworlds / What If story.

I get that a lot of these points (Darcy and Monica specifically) are probably a result of COVID-related production changes and re-writes, but ugh:

- Monica busts into Westview (with her cheesy eye-glow powers that feel right out of a CW show circa 2012) but then promptly disappears into Pietro's house and the show itself, doing and contributing nothing.
- Speaking of Fietro, his big "reveal" doesn't land... at all. It's confusing, and very limp. Is his real name supposed to mean something to me? Or the fact that this is his house? Does WANDA care about who he actually is? Because she just bounces without ever finding out.
- Speaking of Wanda, she's a full-on war criminal now and is just allowed to casually walk out of town. Really not looking forward to the screen time Strange 2 will have to spend addressing this all.
- I know this is TV but the Vision vs. Vision fight had downright terrible CGI (some of the phasing action beats were nice at least).
- Agatha's fate is also pretty confusing. She didn't actually live in Westview, soooo....? What is her life, now? She's just mind controlled forever? Once the hex collapses she'd be ale to do magic again, assuming the mind control wears off....
- I keep coming back to Wanda just LEAVING. In addition to not having any further concerns about Fietro or Agatha, Wanda also never says ONE WORD about White Vision. She sees her husband in a fight to the death with a clone and doesn't bother to find out what's up. And for that matter Vision doesn't bother to let Wanda know "yo I may have given my clone a soul and/or true sentience so you might wanna follow up on that."

There were great moments - the goodbyes with the boys and Wanda/Vision were especially effecting. But man.... overall it felt like a jumbled mess, completely unlike the controlled, measured way nearly the entire rest of the show played out.

Man.... typing all that out maybe the show isn't an 8/10. It might be down there next to Iron Man 2 in my MCU rankings. The opening episodes have SO much suspense and mood-setting (remember the bee keeper?) and the curtain is pulled back so expertly mid-season. But then it all ultimately falls apart. And it does so in a way that I worry will ripple out into other MCU projects in annoying ways.

 

[Cuburger]

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lol Now I'm imagining if Thor was wearing a durag instead of a cape when he saw him after he was born in Age of Ultron and Vishawn creates his own.

 

[AWizardDidIt]

I mean, this is true. It just doesn't seem like a story the MCU wants to tell. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

I see a lot of potential in Wanda as a complex villain, and that's thanks to WandaVision. Because she is not "good" in her actions. Oh no she is not.

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It was the story they told tho. Even when she was confronted with the townspeople when Agatha dispelled her hold on them, she was insistent that she was making things better for them and had convinced herself that she was giving them the same happy life that she was enjoying. It was only when directly confronted with their suffering that she was able to be convinced otherwise.

I think you're setting yourself up for disappointment if you think they're taking her down the villain road and I'd argue that it'd be a shitty sexist road to take her down to start. She's a troubled anti-hero if anything.

 

[Mezentine]

I really don't want her to be a villain! I also think that would be a really shitty approach! I wish I trusted that the MCU had any vision for what redemption looks like that isn't probably "showing up to help defeat someone else in a future movie"

They have written a story in which Wanda Maximoff is shown to be selfish, self-centered, and cruel and people are bending over backwards to justify why all of that isn't who she actually is as a character instead of maybe getting mad that the writers made her react this way to everything that happened

 

[Royalan]

It was the story they told tho. Even when she was confronted with the townspeople when Agatha dispelled her hold on them, she was insistent that she was making things better for them and had convinced herself that she was giving them the same happy life that she was enjoying herself. It was only when directly confronted with their suffering that she was able to be convinced otherwise.

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LOL! But this is TERRIBLE. I literally cringed watching this scene.

"Yes, I completely robbed you all of consent and your bodily autonomy, but my happiness is your happiness, right?"

There is absolutely no good way to contextualize what Wanda did to those people. It was awful, and she was awful for doing it. Regardless of whether or not the MCU wants to tell that story. I doubt they will.

Spoiler

And, just getting meta for a moment, it's not lost on me that within a year we've had not one but two superhero properties based on women that featured gross violations of consent. Yeah, WW1984 went even more over the line with Diana sleeping with Fake!Steve, but the whole thing is really problematic to me.

 

[Callibretto]

That's the only reason, because you assume they're coming someday. Of course, everyone was *sure* he was the fox quicksilver, and Dr Strange was totally gonna have a cameo.

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You really think there's a chance that Feige is going to skip Wiccan and Speed in MCU?

 

[Sandstar]

You really think there's a chance that Feige is going to skip Wiccan and Speed in MCU?

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I'm saying maybe we should wait, and see what happens, rather than assuming, like we did with the REST of Wandavision.

 

[AWizardDidIt]

LOL! But this is TERRIBLE. I literally cringed watching this scene.

"Yes, I completely robbed you all of consent and your bodily autonomy, but my happiness is your happiness, right?"

There is absolutely no good way to contextualize what Wanda did to those people. It was awful, and she was awful for doing it. Regardless of whether or not the MCU wants to tell that story. I doubt they will.

Spoiler

And, just getting meta for a moment, it's not lost on me that within a year we've had not one but two superhero properties based on women that featured gross violations of consent. Yeah, WW1984 went even more over the line with Diana sleeping with Fake!Steve, but the whole thing is really problematic to me.

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It was awful what she did but she was not fully conscious of what she was doing. You're framing this from the angle of her having full control of enslaving those people. It happened automatically as a product of her powers and then she slipped into the fantasy as a way to avoid dealing with her grief. She never understood how people were suffering and was in pure denial of it until the end.

The WW84 isn't comparable. That's a movie that just doesn't even want to deal with that issue even as it poses it. WandaVision does deal with it, regardless how how 'Cringe' you felt it was. I personally felt it was handled fairly well, especially when Dottie starts begging Wanda to let her child have a part so she can leave her room. That line especially got me.

 

[Royalan]

It was awful what she did but she was not fully conscious of what she was doing. You're framing this from the angle of her having full control of enslaving those people. It happened automatically as a product of her powers and then she slipped into the fantasy as a way to avoid dealing with her grief. She never understood how people were suffering and was in pure denial of it until the end.

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This doesn't track.

Yes, it started as an accidental manifestation of her powers. But throughout the show, we got multiple instances of Wanda letting on that she was well aware of what was going on:

1) Her reaction to the bee keeper.
2) Her reaction to the SWORD drone.
3) He reaction to Agatha "breaking character."
4) Her argument with Vision.
5) Her conversation with Fietro at the Halloween festival, where we literally watch her attempt to rationalize what she's doing.
6) Her final confrontation with Agatha, where she admits she knew what she was doing, knew that she had enslaved the town, but just didn't think it was hurting them...as if that makes it better (it doesn't).

Wanda's denial is only an issue for Wanda. There is no reason why anyone else in this world should care. It's the insidiousness of imparting the responsibility of one's feelings onto other people.

 

[AWizardDidIt]

This doesn't track.

Yes, it started as an accidental manifestation of her powers. But throughout the show, we got multiple instances of Wanda letting on that she was well aware of what was going on:

1) Her reaction to the bee keeper.
2) Her reaction to the SWORD drone.
3) He reaction to Agatha "breaking character."
4) Her argument with Vision.
5) Her conversation with Fietro at the Halloween festival, where we literally watch her attempt to rationalize what she's doing.
6) Her final confrontation with Agatha, where she admits she knew what she was doing, knew that she had enslaved the town, but just didn't think it was hurting them...as if that makes it better (it doesn't).

Wanda's denial is only an issue for Wanda. There is no reason why anyone else in this world should care. It's the insidiousness of imparting the responsibility of one's feelings onto other people.

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She was only aware insomuch as she understood that her powers were causing what was happening. What she was unaware of and in denial of was how that was impacting other people. She was confused when people confronted her with how she was dealing with the issue and when Fietro asks about the kids, she literally doesn't know how to respond because it's not even something she's thinking about.

You're right. Nobody else should care. It's not up to others to forgive her and the only person who is shown to be on her side is Monica who empathizes from a shared experience. But that doesn't make her a terrible person. She was blinded by grief and did something awful. Now it's up to Marvel to show how that impacts her as a character going forward.

 

[WrenchNinja]

Unintentionally torturing thousands of people, so much so that they wish for death, still makes you a terrible person, yes.

 

[AWizardDidIt]

Unintentionally torturing thousands of people, so much so that they wish for death, still makes you a terrible person, yes.

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"Context doesn't matter" is an interesting lens to view media through, I'll give you that.

 

[Cuburger]

It was the story they told tho. Even when she was confronted with the townspeople when Agatha dispelled her hold on them, she was insistent that she was making things better for them and had convinced herself that she was giving them the same happy life that she was enjoying. It was only when directly confronted with their suffering that she was able to be convinced otherwise.

I think you're setting yourself up for disappointment if you think they're taking her down the villain road and I'd argue that it'd be a shitty sexist road to take her down to start. She's a troubled anti-hero if anything.

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Yeah I think she was very much either in deep denial about what she was doing up until that moment she was confronted, or she has some disassociative disorder/split personality. We see her at various points genuinely not aware of what she was doing and other moments where she seemed to confidently understand some her role as having control over that reality. There would be a moment like her throwing Monica out of the Hex after being snapped out of the sitcom reality, but then looking at the damage in the wall with shock like she didn't know what she did. Then moments like the argument between her and Vision, it seemed like she may be gaslighting him and lying, but she also seems to genuinely not know how things happened and not remember anything. That continues up until the end where Agatha confronts her and she still doesn't understand how she has the powers she has and doesn't believe it's magic since she's never learned magic. There also isn't a moment where she clearly wipes her own memory, so it seems like her psychotic break that created the Hex was a moment where she was both aware enough to control everything with magic (or at least her subconscious was aware) while her consciousness was submerged in this sitcom dream-like world that she fought to wake up from.

Unfortunately, since her powers are so immense, her psychosis has direct and tangible effects on others' lives regardless of her intent and it's also something she herself was never aware of, like a latent disorder that manifest itself under times of great stress. I think that we do see in the moments where people with her best intentions in mind like Vision and Monica confront her, it does make her have to grapple with the actual role she has in everything, which we see in episode 6 and 7 where Wanda seeks reassurance from Fietro and goes into depression as the reality starts to sink in, despite Agatha/Fietro enabling her to maintain the reality, but the moment where she hears from the people of Westview for themselves, is when she really realizes that she doesn't want to be that kind of person. When the twins and Vision start falling apart, it shows that it's not just that she forgot that they'd fall apart, despite being responsible for all of it, it reinforces that she didn't know, as if she is still operating from two different parts of her personality.

So the moral question becomes something more like Bucky's situation: is Wanda still fully responsible if her body is doing the crime if her mind isn't fully in control? It's more complex since Wanda wanted to do what she is doing and part of her mind made it happen, but there is a part of her, the part of Wanda we've seen at main points in the MCU, that wants to be a hero and a good person. Is Bruce Banner a villain because part of his psyche goes out of control and may harm people despite his own intent and morality?

I think there is a difference with how people may feel about, say, the execution of Monica's line to Wanda at the end, and about the entire show's framing of Wanda's mental state, her actions, how others see her, and how she sees herself.

 

[Royalan]

She was only aware insomuch as she understood that her powers were causing what was happening. What she was unaware of and in denial of was how that was impacting other people. She was confused when people confronted her with how she was dealing with the issue and when Fietro asks about the kids, she literally doesn't know how to respond because it's not even something she's thinking about.

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And that's not bad? Keep in mind, by the time she has the conversation with Fietro, we the audience have been told that Wanda knows that what's happening in Westview is because of her.

That she didn't spare a thought for the lives and families of these people, and even when confronted with that reality (by both Fietro and Vision) chose to say "my grief takes precedence," is pretty damn...well, villainous.

 

[WrenchNinja]

"Context doesn't matter" is an interesting lens to view media through, I'll give you that.

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There's no amount of context that can rationalize mass torture lmao.

 

[Cuburger]

I'm saying maybe we should wait, and see what happens, rather than assuming, like we did with the REST of Wandavision.

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I mean, we are getting Kate Bishop and Stature guaranteed and Billy and Tommy appear with costumes that were a nod to their grown up selves' comic costumes. Of all the things to be skeptical of, I don't think this is one of those things.

 

[Sandstar]

I mean, we are getting Kate Bishop and Stature guaranteed and Billy and Tommy appear with costumes that were a nod to their grown up selves' comic costumes. Of all the things to be skeptical of, I don't think this is one of those things.

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Just like how having Evan in quicksilver's comic outfit guaranteed he was Quicksilver.

 

[AWizardDidIt]

And that's not bad? Keep in mind, by the time she has the conversation with Fietro, we the audience have been told that Wanda knows that what's happening in Westview is because of her.

That she didn't spare a thought for the lives and families of these people, and even when confronted with that reality (by both Fietro and Vision) chose to say "my grief takes precedence," is pretty damn...well, villainous.

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I feel like there's a misunderstanding on what denial is. Yes, she was choosing her fantasy world over the reality of what she was doing. That is what people in denial do. Again, the minute she is actually confronted by the harm she's doing, she immediately tries to undo it.

There's no amount of context that can rationalize mass torture lmao.

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Nobody's rationalizing anything.

 

[devilhawk]

Agatha really didn't have a plan.

phase 1: be friends with wanda
Phase 2: ????
Phase 3: take wandas magic

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It was worst than that. You forgot "Show and tell Wanda about the book that you are absolutely certain would be a disaster if Wanda were to ever find and read."

 

[WrenchNinja]

I feel like there's a misunderstanding on what denial is. Yes, she was choosing her fantasy world over the reality of what she was doing. That is what people in denial do. Again, the minute she is actually confronted by the harm she's doing, she immediately tries to undo it.



Yes, there 100% is if you don't understand that you're actually doing it.

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The minute she was confronted by the harm she was causing, she lashed out, chained everyone by their neck, and made them hit the ground.

Not understanding that you're doing something terrible doesn't make you not a terrible person for doing it.

 

[Okabe]

It was worst than that. You forgot "Show and tell Wanda about the book that you are absolutely certain would be a disaster if Wanda were to ever find and read."

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It's the long con

trick her into reading the book specifically the chapter about her.

bring on memephesto

 

[Cuburger]

It was worst than that. You forgot "Show and tell Wanda about the book that you are absolutely certain would be a disaster if Wanda were to ever find and read."

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And take her to a room with runes and tell her about how you lured her there so she couldn't use magic because of said runes, then leave that room so you can have a magic battle with someone that is supposed to be way more powerful than you and just hope your magic absorbing powers work and she doesn't cast her own runes in the Hex she built.

She could have just been snacking on Wanda's cute Bewitched magic to drain her power, but instead she threw herself into the deep end with what she says is a mythical magical being.