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MarvelVision

10 Episodes

47 minutes | 20 hours ago
MarvelVision: WandaVision Episode 9 – “The Series Finale”
It’s time for the series finale of Marvel’s WandaVision, appropriately titled “The Series Finale,” so let’s break it all down on our podcast. Agatha Harkness stands fully revealed, and is going witch versus witch with Wanda Maximoff, aka The Scarlet Witch. Meanwhile, White Vision and Westview Vision settle things the only way a synthezoid can, Monica tries to escape from Fietro and discovers a surprising secret about him, and Billy and Tommy step up to the plate, with their lives – and the fate of the whole town – in the balance. From what happened to White Vision, to Skrulls, to Ralph Bohner, to the TWO WandaVision Episode 9 post credit scenes, to what this all means for Captain Marvel 2, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Spider-Man: No Way Home, to all the WandaVision finale Easter eggs and comic book references you can shake a gnarled, withered old hand at, we’ve got you covered. SUBSCRIBE TO MARVELVISION ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. Full Episode Transcript [NOTE: This is a machine generated transcript, a more human one is coming later today.] Speaker 1  Welcome to Marvel Vision, a podcast about Marvel MCU, an right now.  Speaker 1  The finale of Wanda Vision is a very secretive title called the series finale.  Speaker 1  I’m Alex.  Speaker 2  I’m just incoming actualy from the children’s bedroom, the very hub where all great content comes from. I’m Pete.  Speaker 1  At Pete is awake this time, that’s very excited.  Speaker 2  Yes.  Speaker 1  I’m excited that your alarm went off here for the series finale.  Speaker 1  Now, requisite spoiler warning here.  Speaker 1  Go watch one division the series finale.  Speaker 1  We’re going to spoil it.  Speaker 1  We’re going to talk about everything, all the Easter eggs, all the Marvel secrets also talk about the two.  Speaker 1  Post credit sequences.  Speaker 1  So if you watch through the regular one division credits and then tuned out, keep watching through the regular credits because there’s another sequence after that.  Speaker 2  And I.  Speaker 2  Actually, even beyond that, there’s this whole credit sequence called the Age of Ultron that I actually really enjoyed that you can keep watching, and then at the end of that, there’s another.  Speaker 1  Post credits sequence.  Speaker 1  Oh man, what was that next post credit sequence?  Speaker 1  Was it Ryan the last dragon?  Speaker 2  Yes, and that one was expensive I.  Speaker 2  Oh well.  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  Had to pay for that one.  Speaker 3  Wow, Matt Marvel.  Speaker 1  They get that they’re taking us for everything we worth now.  Speaker 1  You just said that.  Speaker 1  Speaker 2  Firstly, there is a whole pre credit sequence.  Speaker 2  I don’t know if you watched which was the actual episode of television.  Speaker 1  Talking about.  Speaker 1  I skip that completely.  Speaker 2  Yeah, yeah, that’s sort of the important part.  Speaker 1  Let’s talk about this. This is of course the final episode. It’s bringing everything together certainly. I’m sure there’s some things we want to talk about that weren’t necessarily touched on, but huge episode we got the Fantastic Four we got X-Men. We got the 5th of every theory.  No.  Speaker 3  What the **** Shut up.  Speaker 1  That’s 100% true and that was great. I was very excited about that. What did you guys think?  Speaker 2  About the episode.  Speaker 2  I mean this was this was good.  Speaker 2  This was I earlier this week that I would direct a right match.  Speaker 2  Jackman came out and said, hey, you’re probably gonna be disappointed.  Speaker 2  Which is always a weird thing to hear from one of the main creatives on a project before it comes out.  Speaker 2  But I see what what he was saying, where it’s just a great.  Speaker 2  It’s a classic end of third Act of Marvel movie where it’s mostly a big fight.  Speaker 2  There’s some nice touching.  Speaker 2  There’s some really smart moments in this, and then everyone just sort of goes back to their corners and we see what happens going forward.  Speaker 3  Except for the fact that there’s you know a lot of loss and a lot of sadness that is still there.  Speaker 3  You know what I mean?  Speaker 3  I mean, we said goodbye to a whole family in this episode.  Speaker 3  Man, that’s a.  Speaker 3  It’s a tough way to start your ******* Friday, especially still ******* early in the ******* morning.  Speaker 3  I didn’t.  Speaker 1  Do that every Friday every Friday I.  Speaker 1  Wake up I say goodbye to a family.  Speaker 2  Yep, then I go.  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  Yep, he’s a man.  Speaker 2  He is an Ant farm that he smashes an entire family of ants every morning on Fridays when he gets up.  Speaker 2  Uh.  Speaker 1  Teaches me about mortality.  Speaker 1  That’s how I like to add my.  Speaker 2  Week, yeah, that’s a good way of saying it when you’re murdering tiny little creatures.  Speaker 2  The The thing is, Pete, I don’t think we actually said goodbye to very many characters.  Speaker 2  Yeah.  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  The vision gets to could.  Speaker 3  There’s two visions now.  Speaker 3  Which one you’re talking about?  Speaker 3  Well, now.  Speaker 2  I think there’s eventually only one the ghost vision that I think he, our old hex vision converts ghost vision into the one true vision.  Speaker 2  He just goes off the kids.  Speaker 2  We we hear there’s no way we’re not gonna see them again when we hear even in the post post credit sequence, a little whisper from some some sort of time.  Speaker 1  Help mother help.  Speaker 1  Help mother.  Speaker 1  I just before we get too into the minutiae of the episode, I’d also like to drive it and just say that I thought this is great.  Speaker 1  Yep.  Speaker 1  Speaker 1  I thought this is a really good finale.  Speaker 1  Interior point.  Speaker 1  And yeah, one of the pleasures of talking about Wanda Vision Week to week has been talking about the theories and speculating about it and throwing out who is this TC X-Men, is this teasing Fantastic Four is this teasing Mephisto whatever other Marvel characters you want to throw in there is Doctor Strange is going to show up. What are those cameos going to be an like? We started talked about last week.  Speaker 1  What they did really smartly was the story was the story you know.  Speaker 1  So as long as I think as a watcher, as a fan.  Speaker 1  Can go crazy, theorize as much as you want. I think this is what Matt Chapman was saying, but at the end of the day, put those theories aside and just watch it because what they were telling was a story about Wanda’s grief, her sadness, and not how you completely moved past that, but how you start to move past that, and I think that’s what they effectively did through the action sequences through the plot in this episode, which I really appreciate it.  Speaker 2  I agree, I mean, in like a lot of fans, I love speculating, but the ultimate speculation fan theory is a show about grief.  Speaker 2  I think that’s at the end of the day.  Speaker 3  Says  Speaker 2  There’s a million blogposts about like yeah, it was grief.  Speaker 2  It was grief all along, yeah?  Oh  Speaker 1  No, we should talk about the Marvel Comics origins of Grief, which is a classic character.  Speaker 3  Yeah yeah, yeah.  Speaker 1  It’s a demon, has a no.  Speaker 1  It doesn’t.  Speaker 1  I don’t know, I.  Speaker 1  I think I I like that I liked how.  Speaker 1  It like we sort of even speculated about.  Speaker 1  They ended it with this quieter moment with the family of their house.  Speaker 1  That was so sad and so poignant, but it really was that Wanda.  Speaker 1  It was alwada you know, like like they said in the third, 3rd or 4th episode.  Speaker 1  It’s one day, it’s all one day and that’s what it was about.  Speaker 1  It was about her emotional journey to getting to the point where she can let go of vision even though to your point again vision is a God.  Speaker 1  He’s still out there somewhere, yeah?  Speaker 3  Where do you think though?  Speaker 3  White vision flew to in such a hurry.  Speaker 1  I mean, now that he realizes he’s alive, he’s probably going to get like a good burger or something.  Speaker 1  Go to in and out.  Speaker 3  Really, I thought he, I thought.  Speaker 2  You could place wow.  Speaker 3  It was more like hey man go go.  Speaker 3  Go start your own family.  Speaker 3  You know, don’t don’t live like this all right.  Oh  Speaker 3  Go go, pick a town, take it over.  Speaker 3  You can do it.  Speaker 3  Better this time if you look.  Speaker 1  Look at the closed captioning.  Speaker 1  He’s actually while he’s flying off.  Speaker 1  He said.  Speaker 1  It’s time to.  Speaker 2  Get married, yeah, I love the idea of Pete that you’re like well when someone’s really sad. The best advice is to go start their own family.  Speaker 2  So when you’re an angsty teen, you were like that’s it.  Speaker 2  I’m glad to hear I’ll get.  Speaker 2  Married and obviously have kids and I could be in charge of that family.  It’s gonna be.  It’s gonna.  Speaker 2  That’s right.  Speaker 1  Alright, tell you what if you’re having problems having a whole family that will fix everything at.  Speaker 2  The heart of that.  Speaker 2  Like look at me, I make total sense I’m on top of the world and here I’m in a tiny tiny room and look at this.  Speaker 2  Thanks.  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  These are the Nordic sculptures at the end of the episode in the Double Post credit sequence.  Speaker 3  Oh, you look at you faster now.  Speaker 2  This is an Easter egg.  Speaker 3  Own spouse in your own home.  Speaker 3  That’s smart, man.  Speaker 2  Yeah.  Speaker 1  Let’s talk a little bit more about vision just to focus this in a bit.  Speaker 1  I did love.  Speaker 1  I love that not only that we got the white vision versus Westview vision or whatever we want to call him fight, which was great and fun to watch, but that it ended with this very classic vision fashion of having a philosophical discussion.  Speaker 1  Which was very much. I mean I know we’re joking about Age of Ultron, did everybody’s but like Jesus Christ Disney plus stop pushing Age of Ultron? I’ll be out at the end here, but one of the absolute best scenes in Age of Ultron is when vision just talks to Ultron in the Woods about humanity. At the end, there, right before he takes care of his did.  Speaker 3  You can’t.  Speaker 3  You can say plateaus are like one of the best things of Ultron.  Speaker 3  That’s crazy.  Speaker 3  There are so many fun little points.  Speaker 3  What about when Hawkeye threatens to shoot?  Speaker 3  He was like nobody would know I could just take you out.  Speaker 3  There’s a lot of good moments.  Speaker 3  You can’t just say one of the you know.  Speaker 1  I’m not trying to slam your favorite movie Avengers.  Speaker 2  Yeah.  Speaker 1  Age of Ultron peed all is.  Speaker 1  Alright, well.  Speaker 1  Speaker 3  Well, let’s say don’t say best moments and talk about a moment that was like alright.  Speaker 1  Well.  Speaker 1  Speaker 3  Let’s talk about life in.  Speaker 2  So of course.  Speaker 3  The right moment, you’re wrong.  Speaker 2  Alex, don’t push him too much further, he’s going to go start another family and he’s got too many ******* families.  Speaker 2  Like  Speaker 2  Speaker 1  I felt this regardless.  Yeah.  Speaker 1  I think this whole thing about the ship and discussion.  Speaker 1  It was really great at a great way of wrapping it up then.  Speaker 1  I certainly was not expecting.  Speaker 2  Yeah.  Speaker 3  If you don’t like your family, move and start a new one.  Speaker 3  Next time over, no one will know.  Speaker 2  Wow, that may be used to work, but not anymore.  Speaker 2  I I agree.  Speaker 2  I thought this was a cool way, especially in an episode that started at the very beginning.  Speaker 2  It was just fight, fight, fight and to have it sort of heightened and elevate to the point where we actually get to see this.  Speaker 2  This budding of heads and in a really smart way I thought was great.  Speaker 2  And the way that.  Speaker 2  It ends with him, sort of.  Speaker 2  We see his stone flash to the mindstone yellow briefly and then back to blue, and then his eyes go from blurted to just human, and he good old fashioned human eyes.  Speaker 3  Yeah, I mean, I really.  Speaker 3  It’s impressive how after all the action movies, Marvel is like all right, we’re going to make something that’s a little bit more sad.  Speaker 3  Something that’s going to tug on the heartstrings a little bit.  Speaker 3  An isn’t really going to be about fighting.  Speaker 3  And you know, it’s it’s great that creatively we can be doing shows.  Speaker 3  This sure you walk away, not as like pumpkin.  Speaker 3  Maybe a little bit more sad, but it is a cool story nonetheless.  Speaker 1  And shout out to my boy, Paul Bettany, for doing a great job on this series.  Speaker 1  Just he.  Speaker 1  Everybody was great across the board.  Speaker 1  Fantastic cast, but like we’ve been talking about on this podcast all along, he played so many modes of different comedy in this episode, like We’re Talking about, he got to be classic Vision.  Speaker 1  But that speech at the end to Towanda, as he’s saying goodbye, was so sweet and so sad and so beautiful.  Speaker 1  I do hope.  Speaker 1  People don’t love pot it the same way they did the.  Speaker 1  What is grief but love persevere iglide because you know.  Speaker 2  But people that wasn’t getting well. I mean, it was elevated to the point after last week’s episode. This is on Twitter. If you don’t follow all this nonsense, it was elevated to the point of like look at this perfect line. And then everyone went after it then. But I mean it was a good.  Speaker 1  Line, it’s lying.  Speaker 1  It’s a good.  Speaker 1  Speaker 1  It was well said I, I’m just saying that I think this was another good speech and I feel like people are going to equate them with their minds a little bit.  Yeah.  Speaker 1  So it’s like layoff, buddy.  Speaker 2  Yeah, I’m sorry Alex, we should give a shout out to you for calling Paul Bettany, describing himself as the actor he wanted to work with.  Speaker 1  Yeah.  Speaker 1  Speaker 1  Oh yes, thank you.  Speaker 1  Every once in a while, you know, here’s the thing.  Speaker 1  This is a little business thing that maybe you guys don’t know.  Speaker 1  Wait wait.  Speaker 3  Wait just a new.  Speaker 3  You’re kicking your own kids out of their own room, right?  Speaker 2  That yeah, this is Daddy’s time that.  Speaker 3  Now is that what’s happening?  Speaker 3  Now is what’s happening.  Speaker 2  OK.  Speaker 1  Your kid just wants to go.  Speaker 3  To it’s bad, like let that kid.  Speaker 2  If it’s bad, well for a man who has multiple families, you don’t know how to talk about kids very well.  Speaker 2  She’s awake, she would that ever since we’ve been doing this podcast, getting up at the crack of dawn, she gets up before me and sits in the living room.  Speaker 2  So we’ve really evolved as a family.  Speaker 1  Did she talk about speculation and spoilers?  Speaker 1  Yeah.  Speaker 2  She’s she’s she wanted uninterrupted state.  Speaker 3  Let’s see what you think.  Speaker 2  Like where the **** was Al Pacino.  Speaker 2  I really wanted a pet.  Speaker 3  Give that kid a bike.  Speaker 1  Right?  Speaker 3  That’s comedy gold.  Speaker 1  But yeah, I do think it’s very funny.  Speaker 1  And Paul Betty had this interview on Good Morning America.  Speaker 1  I believe he’s like, yeah, I thought it would be funny when I was saying that and it kind of blew up out of control so.  Speaker 1  So that’s great.  Speaker 1  That’s fine, I don’t.  Speaker 1  I don’t love when they’re lying about stuff like love.  Speaker 1  Tatiana maslany.  Speaker 1  The fact that she was like, no, I’m not she Hulk.  Speaker 1  And then she was cast as she Hulk.  Speaker 1  That’s not her fault.  Speaker 1  Somebody told her to say that if you die that but this Paul Betty thing is just funny enough.  Speaker 2  Yeah.  Speaker 1  I would rather they do stuff like that like it reminds me a little bit.  Speaker 1  I don’t know if you guys remember.  Speaker 1  When Michael Shattered was doing a little press and people were asking about Batman V Superman.  Speaker 1  He was like, yeah, I’m in that exotic end, but I have like flipper hands, it was really difficult to open the bathroom door with my flipper heads.  Speaker 2  Yeah.  Speaker 1  That’s the sort of thing it’s like.  Speaker 1  Sure, **** with people.  Speaker 1  That’s fine.  Speaker 2  Do you think that probably got a a phone call late at night from Kevin Fiege like Hey man, you really ****** us on this so guest star thing.  Speaker 2  You  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  Get out Good Morning America and you.  Speaker 2  Fix it, you accept.  Me.  Speaker 1  Yeah, probably, but it was good and I did like seeing him go up.  Speaker 1  Yeah.  Speaker 1  Speaker 1  It’s all.  Speaker 1  Yeah, it’s funny that we were speculating this much about the cabio.  Speaker 1  While we’re sort of talking about these things that we speculated a lot.  Speaker 1  About who was in witness protection for Jimmy Woo, we’d never type that up.  Speaker 2  That’s crazy to me, because yeah, there’s one thing that we went off on our own little wild speculation.  Speaker 2  That’s our thing, but even the little Nuggets they dropped didn’t really pay off in a way, and I was very surprised there wasn’t a cameo, I thought.  Speaker 2  Obviously, I think the last time I was like it could still be Mephisto.  Speaker 2  That was always a reach, but I thought for sure we would get Doctor Strange.  Speaker 2  Yeah.  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  We get a lot of reference to him.  Speaker 2  Sure, do we get we’re fully in his world with the Darkhold and all these other things that will probably talk about it.  Speaker 2  Uh.  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  In it, but I still was surprised that we didn’t get a resolution on the witness protection thing.  Speaker 2  ’cause what is it?  Speaker 2  Was it Agatha the?  Speaker 2  Also the rat?  Speaker 3  Also.  Speaker 3  Speaker 2  The Ralph Thing was odd, we just get this.  Speaker 3  Yeah, yeah.  Speaker 2  That was an open ended thing really.  Speaker 3  But also it was like if you’re the source is Supreme, like how do you not feel or notice this crazy **** going on?  Speaker 3  You know like there was a lot of crazy **** happening magic.  Speaker 3  Really, that like you don’t have something that kind of like senses that or kind of like points in that direction.  Speaker 1  I all credit this.  Speaker 1  Speaker 3  I mean you should.  Speaker 1  All credit this.  Speaker 1  Speaker 1  Check out I did not come up with this.  Speaker 1  What I saw somebody treated and I do not remember who treated it.  Speaker 1  But somebody very correctly pointed out you try getting somebody who lives in Midtown to come out to Jersey for a party.  Speaker 2  That’s that’s legit.  Speaker 3  Yeah.  Speaker 2  I mean, come on, he’s he’s not going to leave.  Speaker 3  His I was hoping she would that’s where she was going.  Speaker 2  I was it.  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  Was it?  Speaker 3  It was gone to New York City.  Speaker 1  I appreciate it.  Speaker 3  When she left.  Speaker 1  I expected that we would see somebody at a post credits.  Speaker 1  I was surprised that we didn’t see Doctor Strange in that last moment with one day in the cabin or something like that, but I appreciate it that we didn’t actually have any cameos that it would have felt distracting, OK?  But  Speaker 2  Oh, OK Alex, you appreciate that we didn’t have any cameos.  Speaker 3  Yeah.  Speaker 2  Why would a strong POV?  Speaker 1  No, I do because it kept it focused.  Speaker 3  After the fact, after you’ve been speculating and wanting a cameo the whole time.  Speaker 1  I have been saying people could listen back that maybe we’ll get some cameos, but I think that we would get Doctor Strange in a post credits or showing up at the very end of the episode.  Speaker 1  Or that’s.  Speaker 1  Pretty much it all along.  Speaker 1  Well, Hala al so.  Speaker 3  Uh huh, sure sure, sure.  Speaker 1  Also all of the expected Reed Richards.  Speaker 2  Yeah, exactly.  Speaker 3  Yes.  Speaker 1  Oh, this is that.  Speaker 3  How do you like how did you like?  Speaker 2  I think.  Speaker 3  Oh, go ahead.  Speaker 3  Oh go.  Speaker 3  Now you got people I was gonna say, how did you like the kind of like thing of like hey it’s OK to come back to the theater no no, no come back to the theater please pull into the theater, sit down in the seeds, pay $30 for.  But  Speaker 3  Popcorn, yes.  Speaker 3  Popcorn  Speaker 3  Yes, back in the theater.  Speaker 3  That’s where you belong that were Marvel belongs back in the movie theater, right?  Speaker 2  Do you think you that there is a little?  Speaker 3  Everybody?  Speaker 1  Oh, that’s OK.  Speaker 3  They said.  Speaker 3  Oh stuff is school.  Speaker 1  I didn’t get that at all.  Speaker 3  But right we should all be back in the movie theater and I look up look up.  Speaker 3  I yeah, look at the giant screen.  Speaker 3  That’s nice, right?  Speaker 2  Wow, the ultimate credits.  Speaker 2  Post credit sequences.  Speaker 2  Brain being brainwashed.  Speaker 1  Yeah, I think that might have been slightly more your thing.  Speaker 1  Let’s can we talk about the stuff outside of the hex.  Speaker 1  The folks outside of the hex it kind of run through them a little bit.  Speaker 1  Talk about Jimmy Woo.  Speaker 1  What happened with him in this episode?  Speaker 1  Flourish.  Speaker 1  Speaker 1  Flourish, yeah, straight out of antman and the wasp, right?  Speaker 1  Like that’s where?  Speaker 1  He learns that he.  Speaker 3  Well, that’s it’s just magictalk.  Speaker 3  You know it’s a nice.  Speaker 2  Yeah, that’s straight out of David Copperfield’s magic Show and I don’t know if I ever told you this. But David Copperfield maybe disappear. Actually, when I was five.  Speaker 3  Years old, yeah I want I want the.  Speaker 2  I know that’s right.  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  Know that’s right.  Speaker 3  Original Justin back.  Speaker 3  I don’t want this Copperfield copy, you know I.  Speaker 1  You know, yeah, did you get dropped into a basement somewhere?  Speaker 2  Mean copy field.  Speaker 1  Like in the prestige?  Speaker 1  Yeah, like yeah, existing spoilers for the prestige.  Speaker 2  Yeah, exactly what?  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  Exactly what?  Speaker 2  Alex dropping bombs.  Speaker 3  Yeah.  Speaker 2  Jimmy, who I think is it’s funny.  Speaker 2  See how much he sort of took center stage and Darcy got a little bit left on the wayside here.  Speaker 2  He said.  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  She had a couple of.  Speaker 3  Yeah, but come on.  Speaker 3  I mean that was the cat entrance was just money.  Speaker 2  Fun moment, but interesting how she really felt like the center of the sort of outside of the hex show for a bit and then was just sort of like here for a car.  Yeah.  Speaker 2  Accident I.  Speaker 3  What wait?  Speaker 3  Wait wait wait let’s not undercut.  Speaker 3  It’s a bucket list dream, I think of every person to drive a clown car into a clown.  Speaker 3  I mean come on that was just like unbelievable.  Speaker 1  Jeep I don’t wanna keep lumping on you did this the last time as well.  Speaker 1  It’s not a clown car it is a funnel cake truck.  Speaker 1  I can’t believe you of all people is getting this wrong.  Speaker 3  OK alright.  Speaker 3  All right?  Speaker 3  Speaker 2  And we should tell you Pete is driven a clown car for several years, and.  Speaker 2  Let me know.  Speaker 2  Speaker 3  Went looking for some cloud to run over and I still haven’t found one.  Speaker 2  Me know.  Speaker 1  I do wonder if maybe they didn’t have Kat Dennings really for this last episode, because it seemed like there was an insert shot and there was a credit in the end credits for double.  Speaker 2  It seems that way.  Speaker 1  Yeah.  Speaker 1  Speaker 1  For Kat dennings.  Speaker 1  Double for Darcy.  Speaker 1  So I wonder if they were able to just grab her for one shot and that was pretty much it, so that’s why we got.  Speaker 1  That way it feels.  Speaker 1  Thank you.  Speaker 1  Speaker 2  Like it was a little bit of a bummer, but I did the Jimmy who stuff is fun.  Speaker 1  You  Speaker 2  I like him in the at the end of the episode.  Speaker 2  It’s like, ooh he’s in she’s running **** The idea that he gets to be maybe a more power player in this sword area or I guess I don’t know.  Speaker 2  He’s not technically in sword, right?  Speaker 1  Well, I think that’s an interesting thing to talk about in terms of the MCU is.  Speaker 2  He’s connected to the FBI.  Speaker 1  We’ve seen SHIELD dissolve, then we get sword here, which we haven’t seen most of the development of, but certainly with Hayward.  Speaker 1  God, it seems like obviously there’s going to be some big changes there that’s going to be.  Speaker 1  But it’s almost like they’re realigning the absolute to be the power player in terms of law and order.  Speaker 1  Is the FBI like very straightforward, which is interesting?  Speaker 2  Well, and let’s not forget the Jimmy Woo is a character from the comics who ran the Agents of Atlas.  Speaker 2  Is that correct?  Speaker 2  So like I could see him like wow, good job with the hex situation in Westview.  Speaker 2  Yeah.  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  Maybe you can take over this random organization we just made up where there’s a talking gorilla and some other people.  Speaker 1  Yeah, first Choice, first choice talking gorilla.  Speaker 2  Yeah.  Speaker 1  Also we’re powered by a dragon.  Speaker 1  Don’t worry about it, it’s fine.  Speaker 1  Yeah, that was good.  Speaker 1  We also got Monica.  Speaker 1  Of course an the full reveal definitely has powers.  Speaker 1  She protects billion tabi pretty ******** that Hayward was trying to shoot a bunch of.  Yeah, well I guess.  Speaker 1  Yeah, why?  Speaker 1  Speaker 1  Why?  Speaker 3  Hayward, like just finally gets out of the truck to shoot gives that’s his black Jesus from.  Speaker 2  A leadership position.  Speaker 2  It’s really hard to imagine being, I thought, let me assess the situation.  Speaker 2  Alright, shoot the kids first, baby.  Speaker 1  Yeah.  Speaker 3  Like man, that’s like that.  Speaker 3  Men in black training where they took one shot at the the poor kid the whole time.  Speaker 3  It was crazy.  Speaker 1  Well, particularly because all Billy and Tommy did with her.  Speaker 1  Like all right, we’re going to take care of the army, steal their hats, yeah?  Speaker 3  Oh man, military hates when you steal their hats.  Speaker 3  Though I mean at.  Speaker 1  That’s where all their power is.  Speaker 1  Least the power is they just shut down absolutely.  Speaker 1  They just shut down.  Speaker 2  Absolutely it was. If I will say it’s a very Olsen twin type movie choice. At the end there too. Maybe there’s a subtle nod to Elizabeth Olsen’s family.  Yeah.  Speaker 1  Yeah, and then of course we get Wanda.  Speaker 1  Let’s go over to Wanda and the big which battle.  Speaker 1  With Agatha, what was your take on that?  Speaker 1  How do you think all of that pad?  Speaker 3  I thought it was fun.  Speaker 3  It was cool how we had like a witch off and then a vision off and it was, you know it was stuff because like they did a great job of being like oh man I don’t know if Wanda is going to be able to win this because she doesn’t know she’s The Witcher is kind of like denying it and then like a fun kind of turn of like.  Well.  Speaker 3  Oh, I was.  Speaker 3  I listened to your first lesson and I’m now using that against you.  Speaker 3  That was really bad.  Speaker 2  Yes, yeah, I agree.  Speaker 2  I liked it was sort of at a standstill for a while where I was like, oh, she’s sucking her powers and it really feels like there’s no way for her to get around this.  Speaker 2  Yeah.  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  Yeah, I liked the twist of the runes in in the hex.  Speaker 2  I thought that was a smart way to to do it.  Speaker 2  And I guess I don’t know.  Speaker 2  I wanted with between those two battles and then the vision battles.  Speaker 2  I wanted to switch for just one little sequence.  Speaker 1  Yeah, I thought that was gonna happen.  Speaker 1  Have the classic like we’re equally powered.  Speaker 1  Let’s switch partners, but.  Speaker 2  It’s fine.  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  It would have made a lot of sense.  Speaker 2  Yeah no.  Speaker 2  Just for even a second I thought that would be cool just to break up the action of it a little bit because it was just such a clean transfer of who’s winning from.  Speaker 2  Agatha was like winning the entire time, and it was like flip.  Speaker 2  Nope, I will.  Speaker 2  I want later and I wanted a little bit more nuanced a that I think.  Speaker 2  And Kathryn Hahn didn’t have a ton of chance to just not be spouting.  Speaker 2  Super villain lines from from hovering in the air so I would have liked a little bit more stuff for her.  Speaker 2  She’s such a great character, such a great actor.  Speaker 2  Such a great villain for this series I like where we left her though in a great.  Speaker 3  Way, Oh yeah, that was really crazy the way it was.  Speaker 3  Kind of like, you know, touch the side of her head and now she’s just like this little.  Speaker 3  The nosy neighbor and it was fun to kind of see her back in that, and it just made it seem more empty and hollow than it was before.  Speaker 3  Or and so added a nice kind of flavor to that.  Speaker 1  Yeah, I 100% agree just there was. I think we talked about this a little bit. The last episode there was just too much which make up on Kathryn Hahn. Like they poofed up her face and gave her these enormous brows. She’s great but it felt like she was sort of trapped in this whole thing.  Speaker 1  Whole thing also.  Speaker 1  Speaker 1  Also.  Speaker 3  I have a question like so the whole town is free except for.  Speaker 3  Her and so like she’s playing a 1950s nosey neighbor like is that I’m gonna be.  Speaker 3  Like yo, what’s with this lady?  Speaker 2  That’s really funny.  Speaker 2  I didn’t think of that like, hey Agnes, cool it alright going home.  Speaker 3  Yeah, it’s not 1950. What are you doing out here baking?  Speaker 1  Okie dokie artichokie  Speaker 2  Go home, we’re trying to do our taxes.  Speaker 1  That was great.  Speaker 1  I also like the fact that they didn’t back down from the damage that she had done to Westview.  Speaker 1  I was sort of surprised she didn’t turn herself in at the end one day.  Speaker 1  I mean, I mean, but the fact that everybody was looking at her, the fact that they were like, please, we’ve been living your nightmares, let us die.  Speaker 3  Yeah, that was oh man, the living here.  Speaker 1  I like the fact that they, well, they didn’t back down from making it very dark at the end there, which I.  Speaker 1  Big is a tribute to the production. It would be very easy to be like 01 does save us. It wasn’t your fault, it was Agatha’s all along. But no, it was actually Wanda all along. She was the one that was doing this. She was wrecking them and it did a terrible job. So she didn’t completely fix it.  Speaker 3  Yeah, did you?  Speaker 3  I was hoping for after the post like we get a little Wanda song that was like actually it was me all along.  Speaker 3  You know, like well how come she didn’t get a fun stuff?  Speaker 2  We have pirap.  Speaker 2  We have  Speaker 3  The wander app.  Speaker 2  Yeah Pete right, and record it.  Speaker 2  Release it.  Speaker 2  You have a couple hours before the Internet.  Speaker 3  Don’t be a white guy.  Speaker 1  Maximov is going off.  Speaker 3  Beatboxing stop it.  Speaker 3  Stop stop stop.  Speaker 2  I I appreciate it, Alex, thank you.  Speaker 2  Running off with off this early in the morning is is confident.  Speaker 1  Well I was gonna ribwich with something but it felt it appropriate.  Speaker 3  Speaking of inappropriate, let’s talk about Ralph Boehner.  So yeah.  Speaker 1  Just to be clear, be OHNERP is Bonner. It’s Ralph butter. It’s not Ralph Bodor. OK yeah I was OK with that. It sounds like you guys were a little disappointed that it wasn’t Quicksilver. It wasn’t PA.  Speaker 3  Responder is bohners how you pronounce, yeah.  Speaker 2  Yeah, well.  Speaker 1  Intro actually or anything.  Speaker 1  It was just an.  Speaker 2  Actor I’m fine with us.  Speaker 3  Just an actor.  Speaker 2  I’m fine with that choice.  Speaker 2  Any actor, especially a classically trained actor, is a star in my mind.  Speaker 2  But I do think it was weird that there wasn’t one little extra turn there.  Speaker 2  It went.  Speaker 2  Alexa turn there, you know.  Speaker 2  So my daughter wants her bedroom back.  Speaker 3  Did she?  Speaker 3  Did she have night?  Speaker 3  Yeah, does your daughter have an idea about the extra turn?  Speaker 3  Is that why she jumped in, yeah?  Speaker 2  Yeah, she was like maybe he’s Wong.  Speaker 2  I don’t know what she’s.  Speaker 2  Talking oh wow.  Speaker 1  Huh, interesting there I will see.  Speaker 1  Interesting there.  Speaker 1  Speaker 1  Eh, it’s interesting.  Speaker 1  I mean, we could probably talk.  Speaker 1  There’s a lot more to talk about in the episode, but since we’re kind of touching on this now, there was a lot of speculation it was well about how this Tees up the next couple of Marvel movies, and they said, you know, this is really going to open up the multiverse.  Speaker 1  It’s going to tie into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.  Speaker 1  It’s going to tie into Spiderman.  Speaker 1  No way.  Speaker 1  So it doesn’t specifically right.  Speaker 2  Yeah zero, which again like that’s fine, it’s just there was rather than closed.  Speaker 3  Yeah.  Speaker 3  Speaker 2  They had these open threads and they didn’t close them in a way, they just sort of let them hang.  Speaker 2  And I guess if you’re not going to use them for all these wild speculation ideas, which is totally fine, at least close them.  Speaker 2  Up a little bit, yeah.  Speaker 3  Yeah, I mean.  Yeah, go ahead.  Go ahead.  Speaker 3  Also was on Jimmy Fallon and she said, you know, this puts me exactly where I need to be for the Sorcerer Supreme movie that she’s shooting now.  Speaker 3  So I was hoping for a little cameo or a little something, but I guess sort Supreme finds her in a little cabin in the Woods which.  Speaker 1  Well, no, I I mean, I think that’s the one that to talk about.  Speaker 3  Is Florida.  Speaker 1  The two post credits sequence one is setting up Captain Marvel to the other one is setting up to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.  Speaker 1  But like a lot of this stuff when they do the end credits and I feel like people have probably forgotten because it’s been so long.  Speaker 1  It’s not specifically like.  Speaker 1  Here’s the first scene.  Speaker 1  Most of the time it’s something that Tees up the idea, so talk about the second one first.  Speaker 1  We got Wanda.  Speaker 1  She’s making tea.  Speaker 1  She’s in a cabin.  Speaker 1  You think she’s dealing with her grief.  Speaker 1  She sort of sweatsuit she’s in quarantine, just like the rest of us.  Speaker 3  I think it’s like casual activewear is what she’s wearing, like, I don’t know why.  Speaker 3  Pairing like I don’t know what.  Speaker 3  You’re having bad years.  Speaker 3  Speaker 2  All right man. Interesting standard.  Speaker 3  Having bad years.  Speaker 2  Big Pete, yeah, Athleisurewear, is that what you’re talking about?  Speaker 3  Yeah, exactly.  Sure.  Speaker 1  But at the same time she is also in her full Scarlet Witch outfit.  Speaker 1  She is floating in some magic keys.  Speaker 3  Reading the darkhold.  Speaker 1  Rating the Darkhold when she hears Billy and Tommy calling out from somewhere and Billy says mom help mom please and Tommy says help mom please.  Speaker 1  So we know even though seemingly they disappeared in Westview, they’re out there somewhere, so I guess it’s a question of.  Speaker 3  Do we know that or is she just like hearing their cries because she’s breathing?  Speaker 1  This is this is the open question right?  Speaker 1  Like I think the thing that kicks her head is she’s exploring her powers.  Speaker 1  She’s been told in this episode she is more powerful than the Sorcerer Supreme.  Speaker 1  She thinks her kids are out there somewhere.  Speaker 1  Are they in the multiverse?  Speaker 1  Do they still exist in the MCU?  Speaker 1  Is it somebody tricking them?  Speaker 1  Clearly she is going to seek out Doctor Strange to find them, and that’s going to be at least the part of the plot of that movie so.  Speaker 2  I think that was a very Direct Line there, and it’s interesting she is in that in that post post credit she’s in the pose in the Darkhold that Agatha referenced.  Speaker 2  As the problem of very problematic pose.  Speaker 2  So I we speculated a little bit that maybe Wanda was some sort of villain in this Doctor Strange movie, or at least a agent of chaos. And it sounds like she will need a catalyst to push Doctor Strange into the Multiverse of madness on a quest for Tom, Billy and Tommy though, is that is the Doctor Strange movie. Can’t be about finding Wanda’s kids right.  Speaker 3  Yeah, because Wanda.  Maybe?  Speaker 3  Killed her kids.  Speaker 3  So where is she looking for her kids for?  Speaker 2  No, I think I don’t think that’s what happened, but but.  Speaker 3  Well, she controls the kind of field around the thing and she was studying everything back to the way it was.  Speaker 1  I just just did touch on this a little bit.  Speaker 1  She took the field.  Speaker 1  We presume they disappear.  Speaker 1  I expected there to be a little thing at the ad where she’s standing in the ruins of the house.  Speaker 1  And they pop up with like what’s up?  Speaker 1  Bob, yeah, but obviously they didn’t.  Speaker 1  So yeah, I mean to please point?  Speaker 1  Yes, they disappeared.  Speaker 1  So we don’t know.  Speaker 3  He killed them.  Speaker 1  We don’t know how she hears those voices.  Speaker 1  Do their spirits exist?  Speaker 1  Are they out of the multiverse?  Speaker 1  We’re not sure at this point.  Speaker 3  She killed him.  Speaker 2  Well, I think if I were to speculate which we can do, we have the power to do that in our own little personal hex.  Speaker 1  And so far we’ve been spot on with every bit of speculation.  Speaker 2  Listen fan spot on.  Speaker 2  I think either either Wiccan himself was like, oh, I see what’s happening here and just juked him out of there.  Speaker 3  Yeah, ’cause we didn’t see him, they died.  Speaker 2  Offscreen, they didn’t die for sure.  Speaker 3  No.  Speaker 2  They.  Speaker 2  Or like there is something to this chaos magic that we’ll get to learn more about where because they’ve had.  Speaker 2  They were fully realized people.  Speaker 2  They had souls, that they the Chaos Magic could destroy them.  Speaker 2  They were just moved to a place of pure magic or something like.  Speaker 2  Check or something like that.  Speaker 2  Speaker 3  Wow, you’re really working hard to try to save the fact that she killed their kids man.  Speaker 2  That  Speaker 1  Well, hold on we heard their voices at the end so there’s something going on there.  Speaker 1  Hold on.  Speaker 1  Speaker 1  Plus it was very pointed that we didn’t see them disappear in the same way we saw vision disappear.  Speaker 1  I think first of all that was put emotionally it back on Wanda and Vision also real rough to recover a show after watching kids die I think, but I do want to say just like while we’re jumping around here I don’t know if you feel this way just if there is a certain sense like.  Speaker 1  I thought it hit out a very specific parental thing of like when you say goodbye to your kids, you’re like.  Speaker 3  Yeah, you might never see me.  Speaker 1  Oh my God, that’s God that’s.  Speaker 3  Yeah, that’s it.  Speaker 1  Honestly, like, there’s sometimes where that goes through your head, and it’s terrifying, so.  Speaker 3  That was like.  Speaker 3  We was like oh goodnight kids and then the way they were hanging out.  Speaker 3  I was like wait a second.  Speaker 3  This is bigger than a goodnight kids and then I was like oh God, she’s she’s going to murder her kids, isn’t you know?  Speaker 2  Just like learning or I I mean there.  Speaker 2  Stop saying that, OK, why?  Speaker 2  Speaker 1  Is why did she?  Speaker 3  Do that.  Speaker 3  Do you tell me the whole thing slowly came and wiped everybody out?  Speaker 3  Reset everything.  Speaker 3  Those kids didn’t exist.  Speaker 3  Until the spell she wipes the spell kids are gone dude.  Speaker 2  MA.  Speaker 2  Monica Rambeau capture powers the vision, who was changed by the Vision in the Hex flies off is still changed like the the Hex world influence the outside world.  Speaker 2  I don’t think you have to worry about it, but to your point.  Speaker 3  We just watched 9 episodes of somebody bringing kids to life and then murdering them in front of us.  Speaker 2  You know when you.  Speaker 3  Murder.  Speaker 3  Speaker 2  When you go to bed or when your kids go to bed, that’s why you always check on them and you whisper in their little ears.  Speaker 2  Hey, I’m recording a podcast tomorrow morning.  Speaker 2  Please sleep in for a change.  Yeah.  Speaker 3  The timing on the kid attacking you as you said that was magical.  Speaker 3  Yeah, that’s.  Speaker 1  Real quick while we’re talking bout post credits things.  Speaker 1  There’s also the TF of Captain Marvel 2 Pete preferred to focus on the fact that it was at a movie theater.  Speaker 1  But I do think it’s important or nice to talk about.  Speaker 1  I guess that Botica seems to be heading into Captain Marvel too.  Speaker 1  That seems like maybe it’s going to be headed more to space because we have to reveal of the scroll friend of her friend of her mothers, who I assume is Tallis.  Speaker 1  Gotta be the scroll.  Just.  Speaker 3  Real quick if you’re in a movie theater and somebody points up, what do you think they’re talking about?  Speaker 3  You know, I mean, well.  Speaker 1  The theater right above it, yeah?  Speaker 3  I just felt.  Speaker 3  Right exactly I would like a little bit like.  Speaker 2  Yeah.  Speaker 3  Actually there’s a giant sword floating above the earth.  Speaker 3  That’s what I’m pointing at.  Speaker 3  Like being clear, like if I got called to a movie theater and then someone was like pointing up, I’d be like.  Whoo.  Speaker 1  Would you have preferred if Monica?  Speaker 1  Help me how?  Speaker 1  Speaker 1  But would you prefer it if Monica was like?  Speaker 3  He  Speaker 3  The ceiling yeah exactly are we talking bout the ceiling bro?  Speaker 3  Is there something on top of this building like healthy?  Speaker 2  No, she was like she was like let’s go sneak into Black Widow.  Speaker 2  It’s right upstairs.  Speaker 1  Ha ha.  Speaker 1  All right, as Justin’s kids are starting to get a little persnickety why don’t we start to wrap this up here? Talk about some other Easter eggs. Little things in the episode I could read through a couple of notice, but I love to hear from you guys of course as well. First of all, in the which battle right at the begin.  Speaker 1  Bing Agatha gets doctored to the house.  Speaker 1  We see Wanda looks underneath, you see just the shoes.  Speaker 3  Oh, that’s a fun little come on.  Speaker 1  It’s just like Wizard of Oz under instead of.  Speaker 2  Just class in which ref.  Speaker 1  Well, they’ve had they’ve had odd stuff throughout the entire series, so it was a fun little point there.  Speaker 3  Yeah, and if you look in the rubble, there’s like a little dog tag that says, Toto.  Speaker 3  Yeah, my dog got murdered by that car, you know?  Speaker 1  Yeah, you’re really into like murdering.  Speaker 2  Kids of John says.  Speaker 2  What do they added?  Speaker 2  Wizard of Oz Toto is going strong did.  Speaker 3  All right, right? My bad.  Speaker 3  Right, my bad.  Speaker 3  Speaker 2  But Dorothy obviously Dorothy again was just dealing with her grief every time I watch Wizard of Oz.  Speaker 1  Good.  Speaker 2  I’m like grief gang.  Speaker 2  Let’s see this.  Speaker 1  We talked very briefly about the Darkhold we had speculated about whether this was or was not.  Speaker 1  They revealed that it is in fact the Darkhold.  Speaker 1  This is probably going to be a huge issue, I assume online today because the Darkhold played throughout agents of SHIELD and also played into runaways a little bit.  Speaker 1  This looks entirely different.  Speaker 1  I think you could excuse it.  Speaker 1  One of two ways, either a yes.  Speaker 1  They are completely erasing everything that happened in Marvel TV before this, or it’s just another copy of the Darkhold either way.  Speaker 2  Oh yeah, that’s it here.  Speaker 2  You’re going with like yeah, there’s a big.  Speaker 1  No, I’m going with what but I I think.  Speaker 1  If people want to feel better about it, they could go.  Speaker 2  Oh, that’s nice.  Speaker 2  If you want to delude yourself with your own personal hex about the Marvel continuity, yeah, go that way.  Yeah.  Speaker 2  I like the idea that you’re like.  Speaker 2  Yeah, well, there was actually a pretty large print run on the Darkhold.  Speaker 2  Everybody got a copy.  Speaker 1  Hey can I get a copy of that map?  Speaker 2  If yeah.  Speaker 2  Like the college bookstore where you’re like, yeah, I just need to buy a couple of copies of the Darkhold  Speaker 1  The ********* thing I remember standing outside Barnes and Noble Little Lion before midnight waiting to get my copy of the Darkhold in some ******* walked around was like she was.  Speaker 1  The Scarlet witch man.  Speaker 1  Got spoilers come on.  Speaker 3  I don’t know.  Speaker 2  Huge spoilers, I mean, to be fair, that’s right at the beginning of the Darkhold there’s so much other.  Speaker 3  What sucks was.  Speaker 3  I was in line and then the person in front of me got two and I didn’t get one and I was like oh that.  Speaker 1  Should be illegal.  Speaker 2  At you.  Speaker 2  At.  Speaker 1  That did you get your sign though by the ******* devil.  Speaker 2  The Darkhold, like I know we were like really we referenced like it’s probably the Darkhold.  Speaker 2  I mean there is only really one super magic book in the Marvel Universe, so it’s not like we were.  Right?  Speaker 3  You want credit for recognizing the one.  Speaker 2  No, I’m saying I’m saying we shouldn’t take credit.  Speaker 1  Yeah, no, it’s it’s about on par with somebody being like hey I’m gonna go grab this Nullifier were like is it the ultimate Nullifier?  Speaker 2  Yeah, OK?  Speaker 2  The.  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  No, it’s just sort of the regular casual nullifier oh.  Speaker 2  OK, cool.  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  OK, cool.  Speaker 2  But I mean the dark hole just leaving all the TV continuity aside from this show that the agents of SHIELD, but I guess some people watched.  Speaker 2  There’s a that’s a big on you, Alex.  Speaker 2  There is a there is a yeah cool you and literally everyone else there is.  Speaker 1  I wish most of it.  Speaker 2  A lot of comic books stuff that the dark.  Speaker 2  Called sort of opens up like a whole, even beyond sort of the magic side into this sort of more horror side.  Speaker 2  There was a series called the Darkhold Redeemers, which a team of magical heroes track down and resolve, like horror monsters and stuff like that.  Speaker 2  So that’s cool.  Speaker 2  It opens the door for characters like Blade and whatnot to maybe re enter the Marvel Universe.  Speaker 2  It’s come out.  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  Come out.  Speaker 2  But  Speaker 2  Speaker 2  Obviously, we know there’s a blade movie that was announced very early on in the process.  Speaker 2  We have no idea what’s happening.  Speaker 2  There, but it’s it’s a nice doorway to have.  Speaker 1  There I think that’s a really good point about the horror thing in particular, since Sam Raimi is directing Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it was there was a whole sticky figure behind the scenes where Scott Derrickson, who directed the first movie, was like, yeah, we’re gonna make this a ******* hard are horror movie and Marvel was like maybe not.  Speaker 1  They brought in Sam Raby.  Speaker 1  I think we’re still going to see whatever it means for horror in the MCU in that movie, which is cool.  Ah.  Speaker 1  A couple of oh go ahead, beat.  Speaker 3  I I wanna say some some real some stuff I want to quickly talk about like I really love the Jimmy Woo coming into power.  Speaker 3  Especially like the part where he got that douche military guy to start monologuing like that was just like for me like a real hero moved to get the bad guy to like spill the beans on his plan and stuff.  Speaker 3  Why he’s doing the flourish.  Speaker 3  I really appreciate it and I wanted to kind of talk about the last moment there that we had with vision and Wanda where it was like.  Speaker 3  Vision cried, which was unbelievable moment.  Speaker 3  And then Wanda cried.  Speaker 3  And then I ******* cried because it was really a very touching moment that like I don’t know if we’re gonna see vision again or what’s going to happen after this.  Speaker 3  You know, like it was, it was pretty crazy.  Speaker 3  Cool moment that we got to kind of witness that.  Speaker 2  It was crazy to see a robot to cry, and by that I’m talking of course about UP. So that is truly amazing.  Speaker 1  Yeah.  Oh great.  Speaker 1  So I’m gonna admit something now that is a bad thing to admit.  Speaker 1  I’ve definitely told you guys before, but I haven’t said it on this podcast.  Speaker 1  I have never seen Blade Runner.  Speaker 1  But on the marquee.  Speaker 3  How about the second one?  Speaker 1  Yeah I watched Blade Runner 2049, but that’s it. Yeah, yeah yeah, but I know enough about references for Blade Runner. The on the marquee and they reviewed this last episode. The movie that’s actually being shown t
40 minutes | 8 days ago
MarvelVision: WandaVision Episode 8 – “Previously On”
We’re going back in time to discover Wanda’s full origin — and Agatha’s — as we break down WandaVision Episode 8, “Previously On.” Held captive by Agatha Harkness, Wanda Maximoff is forced to relive the most traumatic moments of her life: trapped with Pietro in Sokovia; getting her powers from the Mind Stone and HYDRA; the aftermath of Avengers: Age of Ultron and falling in love with Vision; and discovering Vision’s body post-Avengers: Endgame at SWORD. And this all leads up to a revelation about Wanda’s powers that changes everything. From Chaos Magic, to White Vision, to Scarlet Witch, we’re breaking down all of the WandaVision Easter eggs, Marvel Comics spoilers, and much more from WandaVision Episode 8. SUBSCRIBE TO MARVELVISION ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. Full Episode Transcript Justin:              Zoom, good. I can’t believe I’m hiding in here specifically, so I wouldn’t be bothered. Alex:                 Ready? Justin:              Mm-hmm (affirmative) Alex:                 We’ll clap, right? Three, two, one. Feels like a little peekaboo. Justin:              Yeah. Alex:                 One second. Welcome to Marvel Vision, a podcast about Marvel, the MCU, and specifically right now, WandaVision. I’m Alex. Justin:              I’m Justin coming at you live from the most adult Marvel place I can, my daughter’s bedroom. I got the unicorn balloon popping in the background. We are ready to go. Alex:                 So here’s what we’re fighting about taping these early episodes. Before we get in and talk about episode eight, “Previously On”, and this will give you enough time to go watch the episode, check it out because we’re spoiling the heck out of it. Typically, this early in the morning, sometimes you tape stuff right in your daughter’s bedroom. Sometimes one of you Pete, over sleeps. Justin:              Could be, that could be. Marvel Vision is what happens when you get up too early in the morning on a Friday to watch TV. You have to develop Marvel Vision. Alex:                 Exactly. In case I wasn’t totally clear, Pete our third member did in fact oversleep. So we are taping this without him. I’m sure he will have many thoughts once he finally wakes up luxuriously at 10:00 AM. Has his brunch breakfast, he usually has five eggs and two biscuits, I believe. Justin:              I can’t believe he can’t wake up this early. I’m up, like five, four or five in the morning everyday just to check and see if WandaVision has been premiered. Even on a Monday or Tuesday, my calisthenics, prepare my farm-fresh breakfast that I send out to Pete. Alex:                 I’ll tell you what, I didn’t sleep last night. I just kept waking up and now I’m totally jazzed because the title of the episode was previously on and I guessed it. I called it. Justin:              I was going to say, Alex credit to you. So you couldn’t sleep because you were so excited about getting the title right? Alex:                 I was nervous honestly. I was lying there, my brain going up like, what if it has this other title? What of the other title? What if I get it wrong this time? It’s not going to be previous now. This is going to damage my reputation for real. Justin:              Your shattered reputation. You’ve never guessed correctly yet so far. So this is [inaudible 00:02:47] Alex:                 I did get now in color. So at this point, I have a two out of eight, which is 25%, which is like, I’m going to say what, B+, A, is that how that works? Justin:              I believe that is how That’s grading works. It’s been so long. Let me ask ne of my daughters that I know that will be bursting in here any minute. Alex:                 What other shout out that I want to make? An actual shout out before we get in and talk about the episode, a shout out to Rachel Thompson who plays Major Goodner on the show popped up in the last episode. Watched her last episode on YouTube and posted a little clip on her Twitter and was very nice about it. So thank you for that. That was a very cool surprise. Justin:              We called her out as the big reveal, which she clearly was because she’s such a nice person. Alex:                 There you go. Surprise. People are nice sometimes. Let’s get into this episode. This is a big one, the overall plot, as you could probably guess from the title and also hopefully again, watching it. Justin:              From watching it. It’s not called a guest when he just watched something and then know it. Alex:                 That’s very true. Justin:              It’s the ultimate guess. Alex:                 This is the big reveal episode, we walk through Wanda’s entire history with the MCU, get a bunch of recoms there thanks to Agatha Harkness, Kathryn Hahn, officially playing witch, straight up, not like, “I’m a science witch.” But, “I’m a witch.” Justin:              Actually, Salem based witch. Alex:                 Yeah, walks her through her history, therapy style to try to find out how Wanda pulled off the Hex. A lot of the things that we thought were true, turned out to be true. We were talking about this actually before we came on. So let’s broad strokes before we get into any specifics, Easter eggs theories or anything like that. How do you feel about this? Justin:              I thought it was good. I liked the areas that the show’s covering. I liked the backstory they’re building for Scarlet Witch. Vision by the end of this episode lands in an interesting place. It was interesting that the big reveal by the end of the episode is knowledge we already had. Like to hear her be like, “You’re the Scarlet Witch.” Is like, “Yeah, we know. That’s why we showed up here.” Alex:                 The funny thing about that end note, if we want to jump ahead to that last thing is for comic book fans. I’m sure there’s three levels of this almost, right? There’s comic book fans of like, “Yes, we’ve been calling you Scarlet Witch, even if you’ve been call yourself Wanda Maximoff. We know who you are from the comic books.” There’s also MCU fans who’ve been waiting for her to be called Scarlet Witch and I’m sure a bunch of them we’re like, “Oh, shit. They said it. They said the words.” So probably totally worked for them and then there’s the non comic book fans who were like, “I don’t know what that means.” Justin:              “Is that a big deal? Is that Scarlet? Alex:                 Which is fine. It’s all fine. What I liked about this episode is sometimes the reveals don’t have to be, [inaudible 00:05:42] all the time or 30 layers of Easter eggs. One of the things the show has been doing really well is it’s been layering in, like we’ve talked about it here on the podcast, lots of different things, all the time, different layers of Easter eggs for sitcoms, for MCU, for Marvel Comics, for everything. Some of them are just like color and some of them mean something, but in this episode, they’ve been doing all along, they’ve just been telling us what’s been happening. It’s more about the outside world has been pulling it apart like we’ve been doing here, when the show has been pretty straight up about what’s happening. Justin:              Yeah. That’s what Marvel does really well. They’re like, “We have a story we’re telling and we’re going to give you little tangential teases to light you up.” Like the Quicksilver casting, just lit everybody on fire when really it’s just like, that was what it was designed to do in the end at least in this story. Maybe it’s going to be a way of dipping into the multi-verse by having that be the choice there as a larger plot choice. But I respect the move just as a like fun nod or poke to the fan base to be like, “Whoa! They’re doing it. They’re doing the thing.” But they aren’t doing yet, but they got us. Alex:                 To get a little behind the scenes on that, there was a talk that Kevin Feige, the head of Marvel Studios did with the Television Critics Association this past week and for those who don’t know, this is a trade organization. The panels are very weird. They’re not like Comic Con panels or anything. It’s basically virtually, but the people sitting there taking question, after question, after question from press and that’s it. It’s not about announcements or trailers or anything. Alex:                 But he did give some really good interesting information about the process of WandaVision and two the things he mentioned, one Evan Peters was very early on, he said that they blue sky everything. They did talk about Alan Donaldson, but ultimately decided, you know what, this Evan Peters thing, if he can pull it off, this is going to be the right thing for the show. But the other thing he said is exactly what you’re saying, that they felt like if they’re going to do weekly TV shows, this is their chance to try to create weekly conversation the same way that they do weekend conversation when they release a movie. So he- Justin:              By next year, there’ll be a Marvel TV show every week and a feature film every weekend so truly will be our entire lives. Alex:                 Oh my God, I love it. Bring it on. Justin:              I love it. I’m dying. Alex:                 But I respect that. I respect the fact that they were very specific about, “We want to give people something to talk about between the episodes.” That’s really nice. The other thing that I really liked about this episode that I’m curious to get your take on, this is the one that hit me emotionally the hardest. There were a couple of times where I got really teared up in this episode and I haven’t felt that same way throughout the show, but now it has enough weight, not just with the movies in the MCU, but also with the TV show that I feel like we’ve appropriately gotten to that place. Justin:              What I also give them credit for, this story, the format or the structure of it, it’s pretty like we could see that coming once the episode started, but they do a great job of upsetting our expectation like when Wanda finally sees the Vision’s body in Hayward’s lab. You think, “Oh, this is it. She’s going to lose it.” I love the choice they had of her, like touching his head and being like, “There’s nothing of him here. I don’t feel him here.” And then walking off and like, “Oh, it’s not it.” Then we see her emotional breakdown in Westview at the house they were going to build. Justin:              That hits so much harder because they got us one step later. Again same thing with the parents. You think you’re going to get this nice “vision” of her childhood life and then it’s upset immediately heartbreaking. They didn’t even have to show us the actual parents loss and then be gone. It was just, we see Wanda instantly fixing her trauma with her powers. Alex:                 That was the first one that really got me specifically because we know where the Stark bomb is. So when they have that pause where she’s watching the sit-com, I was like, “Oh, it’s coming. Oh, this is so sad.” Just having her and Pietro under the bed with the bomb, knowing that we’ve heard this story, but never seen it before, awful. The other scene that I thought was really wonderful, we didn’t get a lot of Vision in this episode obviously with the big reveal with the Vision at the end of the episode, we should probably talk about at some point. But the scene post Age of Ultron probably like concurrent with civil war, right before they really started their relationship or anything like that, I thought was great. The stuff that they’re talking about there, about grief being another form of love. I thought was really smart and pointed and very nice. Justin:              Yeah, it made their romance real. I’m assuming in the last episode, we’re going to get a lot of that payoff or how they actually feel for each other. But this was such a great little… Because we’ve never really seen too much of this in the movies we got with them together and just like fighting, but never did we see them have any real, super sweet moments. It was just the high emotion of them being together and then the loss. So this was really great. It really helped set up what I assume is going to be the big emotional payoffs next time. Alex:                 Yeah, I agree. To that point, I think a lot of Marvel fans all along have been like, “An Emmy for Elizabeth Olsen.” Which she’s great, she’s been doing a great job. Everything is super fun, but I haven’t necessarily felt that. This, if anything, is the Emmy’s submission episode for her because there’s so many different emotions and modes that she walks through here. Justin:              Wanda is obviously submit for the rabbit for the pet Emmy’s for eating that- Alex:                 Which are on the CW, I believe. Justin:              Yeah, a hundred percent. For eating that fucking bug. Rabbits eats bugs? Alex:                 Ugh, I guess rabbits eat bugs. I had a rabbit, but I don’t remember it eating flies. Justin:              Uh, good. I thought you were going to say, “Rabbits eats bugs. I had A rabbit. I fed it bugs all the time. I’m a sociopath.” Alex:                 Oh, boy. Should we talk about some of these recoms here because this is a big change to Wanda, her origin, what we get here. We talked about Agatha straight up witch, at the Salem witch trials, sucked her whole coven dry. Justin:              Sucked the coven. Hey, welcome to Marvel Vision in the morning, we got to sucking coven today. We’re going to be here in the Marvel Vision. Ail suck it up, I’m coming right out. Alex:                 That’s coffee, my man. This opening scene was great. Wow, Disney- Justin:              Disney Plus mug. Alex:                 Really compromising your journalistic integrity to kick off this breakdown of the episode. Justin:              I’ll tell you what, nothing more journalistic than a Marvel podcast that we excited comic book fans woke up early in the morning to do. Alex:                 It’s just very funny. That was like a Wayne’s world moment of the person reviewing the thing being like, “Cheers Disney blood.” I thought this opening sequence was great. Kathryn Hahn, I was imagining them filming this and she’s being zapped by a bunch of invisible CGI energy and she has to play the pain of it and then instantly switch it to like, “Ha ha, I got you. I’m sucking you dry coven.” Justin:              Now, why is that? Because I had that thought pretty much all episode two, maybe it’s because Kathryn Hahn comes from indie films and is sort of known like this quirky background or foreground potentially person. But we haven’t seen her at a big budget thing like this necessarily, maybe that’s it. All episode I was like, “Man, it’s great that they got Kathyrn Hahn to do this. Alex:                 I also think she’s really good and the energy she brings. She brings this sort of the meme going around, the winking energy to so many of her roles where it feels like she’s looking at us being like, “Is it crazy I’m in this TV show. I’m acting here.” And I think that’s what it is. The fact that she gets to… She has a real audience surrogate power to her. She’s just great to watch. Despite the fact that she’s playing big in this episode every line is like “Well, my pretty eyes, they’ve captured you this time.” Then she still lands it. Even at the end, when she’s in full, hair styled witch regalia it’s- Justin:              Oh my God, those eyebrows were out of control. Alex:                 I got them right here so I’m pretty psyched to see them on screen. Justin:              This is the first time you’ve seen yourself on screen. Alex:                 I finally see my brow. So she was great. Loved the walkthroughs here. The big recom with Wanda, I was about to say Scarlet Witch, is that she had these witch powers, All Along and the Mind Stone- Justin:              You love saying All Along, by the way, ever since last ever that’s what you talk about. I’ve seen the tweets Alex. We know you like it. Alex:                 I like it. I enjoy the song. It really is by resting state right now is Agatha All Along playing in my head and it’s driving me a little insane. Justin:              She’s deadly. That’s deadly. Alex:                 Wanda had the witch powers from the beginning. That’s what Agatha is walking her through and the Mind Stone only amp them up quite a bit. What do you think about that record? Justin:              That’s mutant, right? I think that’s being a mutant. It is. It feels weird to say that but in the comic books, that’s what it is. Your powers come to you. We didn’t get to see Quicksilver be very fast here and his youth, but this could easily be it. It’s what they showed us. They just didn’t tell us. Alex:                 For those who haven’t read the comics this is certainly changed a lot through X-Men and Marvel continuity. But initially it was always this puberty thing around the age that Wanda and Pietro are when the bomb hits. There’s a stressful situation and it activates your powers. It is this metaphor for puberty. Again, it’s been a lot of different things throughout the years, but that’s what you’re hitting on here, Justin. That’s what they do like you’re saying, without saying it. It’s interesting if they call it, witch powers or something like that instead of… There’s a, what is it? 1608 is the Neil Gaiman book where they call it the witch mark or the witch hex or something like that instead of being powers. Justin:              But I don’t know how you explain Quicksilver. If you’re going to do this for Wanda, it doesn’t make sense for him to have like a witchy amount of speed. Alex:                 That was a weird thing. I think probably for story reasons, keeping it focused on WandaVision they did and didn’t get into it too much. But I agree with you. I was definitely in that scene where Wanda came in and was like, her witch powers are calling out the Mind Stone, here it goes. Wait, what happened with Pietro when he walked in there? Justin:              Or maybe they didn’t put him in that room. I don’t know. There were a little questions there. I don’t think they could even at all touch on them because it would have been too much of a distraction story-wise and also getting us into all these questions of like, “What does this mean for the X-Men in the Marvel Universe?” And even if they will start to classify Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch as mutants going forward. Alex:                 The other thing that it does really nicely as it reminds us that Scarlet Witch and Vision’s powers are tied together by the Mind Stone, which they can kind of bumping around a little bit. They certainly mentioned it a couple of times, but it gives up that very clear line. Honestly, I was thankful for that because this is a very stupid thing. I constantly find it confusing that Loki Scepter which was blue, was holding the Mind Stone, which is yellow. Justin:              They did a good job of just being like, “Remember this guys, I know this is weird, but we made this movie before we had it really figured out what we were doing.” Someone in the VFX was like, “Let’s make this stuff blue.” And they were like, “Cool, I love how it looks.” And then later on they were like, “Fuck, it has to be the Mind Stone. What do we do here?” So I appreciate that, he cracks and we see a vision of the Vision through the yellow of the Mind Stone. Now let me throw this out to you. Does this call into question their feelings for each other at all, the fact that the Vision is the Mind Stone and she was influenced by the Mind Stone here. Is it real love they have between them or is it just the mind stone connection acting on her own? Alex:                 Oh, that’s interesting. I hadn’t really thought about that. I think it’s real love. We going to go with that at this point, but certainly that Mind Stone could have created some initial connection with them because usually you don’t fall in love with a robot. Justin:              That’s true. I’ve been in and out of a lot of robot based relationships, but that’s just me, but I also encountered them early on. Alex:                 They were all like, not love. You never said the big L word. Justin:              I know exactly we didn’t get that far, especially in robot years. But that’s an interesting question that could be posed because I agree with you. We obviously want them to have a real relationship and real love. That’s maybe something to call into question whatever they feel and whoever the villain ends up being in this series. Because despite all the Agatha- Alex:                 You really think there’s somebody else other than Agatha? Justin:              In the scene with Hayward when he’s pushing Scarlet Witch with the body of the Vision, he’s clearly pushing her into a trauma reaction moment. He’s not just being like, “Oh no, you’ve seen our horrible experiment.” He is pushing her to crack there. Maybe I’m reading too much into the scene. The way he’s talking to her and the way he’s like, “Go ahead, go down there, touch it.” It was like this person is doing this perfectly. Alex:                 I could see that. I don’t think he’s an ultimate big villain. I know you’ve been on the Hayward being pretty much this entire time. I do think he’s still a corporate dick, but he’s not able to activate Vision. Maybe Scarlet Witch will be able to do that. That’s potentially why he’s pushing her there. Maybe he does want her to crack so he can throw her into custody of the dissector as well. I really think he is just corporate dick straight out of the movies and that’s pretty much it. Justin:              Then let me ask you this… This is like getting outside of the show commentary. A couple of the actors have said, “There’s this big actor who we’re going to see in the series.” You’re telling me, you don’t think that’s happening or that was- Alex:                 No, I’ll tell you what I think is happening there. That was Paul Bettany specifically was like, “There’s an actor I’ve always wanted to work with. We have some really…” I don’t think he uses the word meaty, but “Some really meaty scenes that we have together.” I think the actor he was talking about was Paul Bettany. Justin:              Oh, really? Alex:                 That is what a hundred percent my theory right now. I don’t think we’re going to get another cameo. The reveal at the end of the episode of the mid credits, which we could probably get more into the comic book Origin Myths, Hayward has been able to rebuild Vision’s body as we saw. He is activating it using the hex energy that Scarlet Witch left on the drone that he sent in a couple of episodes back. We get this white Vision reveal, this evil Vision, if you will. Justin:              Ghost Vision. Alex:                 Ghost Vision, and that’s straight out Vision Quest from West Coast, Avengers by John Byrne. I think it was issues 42 to 50. I didn’t double-check that. I wrote that data off of the volume, but that gives us like two very clear things that they pulled on for the series. There’s one the… At least for me as a kid dichotic shot of Vision all spread out on a table. That he has been dissected as Wanda discovers him. They rebuild him. He comes back without color. He’s completely white. He doesn’t have any as memories and Wanda has just had kids. So that, and you’d probably love this Justin, clears the way for Wonder Man, to profess his feelings for Wanda. Justin:              Yes, the Vision is like an emotionless ghost essentially and that’s why- Alex:                 He’s like, “I have no interest in my family. Go ahead. Date Wonder Man. We have the same brain patterns. It’s complicated, don’t worry about it.” Justin:              “Don’t ask us any follow up questions about that.” I like Wonder Man as a character. In the comics, he’s also been powered up in the same way that Scarlet Witch has, in this series. I don’t know if there’s any real appetite for Wonder Man out there in the world, famously an actor, who’s also a superhero, come on. Alex:                 What? That’s crazy. To that point, when we get that reveal at the end of the white Vision, evil Vision, ghost Vision, whatever you want to call him, what we were talking about going to this last episode, I don’t think they are dressed suddenly have Al Pacino pop up as Mephisto or anything like that. I think it’s Paul Bettany finally getting to act opposite Paul Bettany and he was tricking everybody the entire time. Justin:              Wow. It was Bettany all along, is what you’re saying. Alex:                 Great cameo. Justin:              “That’s fucked up.” He’s going to get away with saying that about himself. I feel like there’s going to be a one more reveal. You really don’t think so? Alex:                 No, don’t get me wrong. I think we’re still going to have- Justin:              This is Marvel, there’s going to be another reveal. Alex:                 If we want to talk about the stuff after the episode, and there’s still plenty to talk about in the episode, but we got Monica and Jimmy outside the hex working with Goodner. Oh, sorry. Monica is in the hex. She’s been taken by Pietro. I really didn’t appreciate them pushing that hashtag to be honest with you. This isn’t Riverdale. You can’t do. Justin:              Wow! Okay. Strong interconnection multi-verse of madness of our podcasts. Alex:                 She’s there. We don’t know what’s going on with her. Jimmy is outside with [inaudible Major Goodner and the rest. Hayward obviously is planning an attack with white Vision. Then you have Darcy is for Vision. Like he’s not even real. He was created inside the hex. There’s a lot of stuff going on there. To throw another character into the mix is a lot given how much focus we’ve had on the characters in the show so far. But I do think we’re going to see Dr. Strange by the end of the show. Showing up and being like, “Hey, you got to come over here. We got to take this book and figure out what’s going on.” Or something like that. Justin:              You think that we’re going to get Dr. Strange. To me that feels… I understand why that’s makes a lot of sense, but that’s not even a surprise reveal at this point, because we all know that Dr. Strange is like the next chess move here. Alex:                 Right, that’s what I’m saying. We were talking about right at the beginning. As much as we’ve been dissecting the show and looking for surprises and there have been some really fun twists, a lot of the stuff is very predictable, very purposely so. I keep going back to, what was it, the second episode where they talk about the magic trick and they say, “You got to lay it out for everybody. You got to show them what the workings are so that they know.” That was giving away the whole structure of the show. Justin:              Yeah. But on the other side of the magic trick, it can’t just be like, “And that’s everything I just told you I was going to do that. Ta da!” There’s usually a surprise in there somewhere. Alex:                 Yes. I don’t know, Maybe we’ll see somebody else show up, but bringing in Dr. Strange for the end makes sense. We’ll have obviously a post credit scene or two. Frankly, given that they’ve been doing mid credit scenes for the last two episodes I guess, we’re probably going to see an actual end credit scene after that teeing up Dr. Strange two or Spiderman three or something like that. That wouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Maybe even three, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll see multiple post credit sequences. Justin:              That’s the real Marvel way. Alex:                 Yeah, really surprise people. Maybe Falcon and Winter Soldier will show up and be like, “We’ve got a series next. Two weeks from now.” Justin:              “Stick around guys.” Alex:                 Much less on the mysteries. We should probably talk about… Do we want to go through talk about other Easter eggs and things? Justin:              Yes, it is almost Easter. I know it’s time to start finding last year’s stinky old eggs. Alex:                 One thing I do want to mention just for the previous episode, two things we missed a little bit that people pointed out in the YouTube comments in particular. If you’re listening to the podcast by the way, we also have a visual YouTube version of this. If you’re watching on YouTube, you already know that. Justin:              Nice job. You get the added bonus to see my children’s bunk beds and their extensive book collection. Let’s not forget about this cute ass lion. Alex:                 Here’s the things we missed though, the opening credits we call them The Office credits and the theme music was The Office, but they were actually straight up off of Happy Endings, which is something we didn’t quite pick up on. There’s also a quick shot of the middle there of some very ransom style letters that say, “Wanda, do you know what you are doing?” Which in retrospect is weird and I’m not 100% sure what was going on there. Justin:              I wonder whose point of view that’s from. Is that a S.W.O.R.D. style observation? Is that someone in the town? Is it a further reveal that we haven’t got to yet? Alex:                 It might be the town. We didn’t really talk about this yet, but there’s this great sequence where Wanda drives into Westview. It’s a piece of shit, New Jersey town. Justin:              Wow, Alex. Alex:                 It really is. Everybody’s so sad there. They’re having a bad time. Justin:              They are having a bad time but [inaudible 00:27:45] is giving piano lessons. He’s still bringing the music. Alex:                 The postman who we’ve been very suspicious of it turns out to be a pizza delivery boy. Justin:              After all that, he’s just like, “Nope, just bringing a calzone into something.” Alex:                 Then Mrs. Hart is also there. She is sitting, looking very sad at a cafe. So we get a couple of senses of them which I thought was interesting. Other stuff that I wrote down is not necessarily Easter egg things, but I thought were interesting. We get the switch to the Purple Marvel Logo at the beginning to tee up, Agatha back in Salem, 1693. I liked the little twist of that scene too, of everybody gathering her up and then who turns out to be her mom and saying, “Are you a witch? Well, good.” Basically that was a nice little twist on that scene. Justin:              That’s a great scene in general. Talking about the switch from Agatha Harkness in the comics is just like an old grandma who’s like, wow, this is a problem. In the show, she is super powerful like a real villain. Alex:                 I love the line where she says, “Please, I can be good.” And her mom says, “No, you can’t.” And then tries to shut her down. What do you think they were trying to do? Were they trying to kill her? Where they trying to bind her? What do you think was happening in that scene? Justin:              If she was able to suck their powers out, I feel like other witches were going to suck her powers out and vanish her, basically kill her. To me I was like, “Oh, they’re burning her at the stake.” If this was the Salem witch trials, it wasn’t actually humans trying witches. It was witches trying witches, one witch remains Supreme. Alex:                 We get a little glimpse… I wrote this down. We get a glimpse of runes. I’m not a really big rune guy, that’s why I don’t read them. But there was one- Justin:              But you seem like a rune guy. Alex:                 I know. If you look over there, I have my rune lab. I don’t know what it is. Justin:              That’s a pornographic drawing that you have on your wall. Alex:                 There was clearly an M logo, was one of those runes. It might’ve been a typical rune. It wasn’t like straight up house of M logo, which is something that’s mildly imply inspired the show. But that seemed pretty blatant to me to have that big M there, either for Mutant or for Magneto or something like that. Again might just be an Easter egg versus a clue. But I thought that was pretty obvious. Justin:              What is the difference between an Easter egg and a clue, really? Alex:                 A clue is something that indicates an upcoming plot point. An Easter egg is just a fun thing that is there. Justin:              Mm-hmm (affirmative). Very fine line in this show. Alex:                 I don’t celebrate Easter, but Easter eggs usually lead to nothing, right? Justin:              No, I’ve solved a lot of murders based on stuff I’ve found. Let me just say I’ve solved a lot of the murders. Too many for a normal person. Alex:                 Also we’ve got a couple of shout outs to the comics we got. Wanda did a probability hex, which is something that she does in the comics. Also, by the end we find out that she has chaos magic, which is again, something that she messes around with way too much in the comic books. Also an interesting note, I thought we speculated what was going on with the commercials. That maybe the commercial people were her parents. They’re not her parents. Justin:              No. They do a good job of illustrating that in this episode that they were… Those two traumatic moments. I love the way when the red light starts to flash on the missile, the Stark bomb, I was like, “Yes, direct connection to that first episode the commercial there and the stress of that combined with the like, Oh, you’re feeling her stress from watching that commercial version of it. That first episode I thought was great. Alex:                 But I guess some of the commercial people are more people trapped in Westview at this point. Justin:              Yeah. I guess that’s probably on a logistic point of view. For me, the commercials then are the hurt or broken parts of her psyche as a break from the part that she’s made beautiful, how she wants, it’s the darker part emerging in the middle of it. Alex:                 A couple of other- Justin:              Commercials are evil parts of the Vision. Alex:                 Exactly, yeah. That’s why I have my TiVo so I can skip the commercials. Justin:              You’re a witch in a way. Alex:                 Absolutely. That’s their tagline right? “You’re a witch,.” The other little things we didn’t really talk about the sitcoms. We were correct about that she used to watch them in Sokovia. That’s exactly where that comes from. That’s her comfort place. That’s why she goes there with the hex, which I thought was great. I love seeing the scenes for the people who didn’t really pick up on the one-to-one of like the Van Dyke Show or Malcolm in the middle, but all of those scenes are straight up in the show. There’s one scene with a doll, that doll is in there at some point. The thing with, what’s his name, Bryan Cratson watching the thing collapse that was in one of the opening credits as well. So all that stuff is right there. I thought that was great. I also love for the MCU perspective that they layered in the Avengers music in this episode, which we haven’t really heard, which was pretty cool and fun. That’s all I wrote down. Did you have anything else you want to chat about? Justin:              I think that covers a lot of… We touched on it as we went around. Did I mention that the rabbit eats bugs? God. Alex:                 What do you think is Scratchy is? Is he just familiar, is that it? Or is Al Pacino or Mephisto. Justin:              He’s Al Pacino. Alex:                 He’s Al Pacino? Justin:              A hundred percent. Alex:                 Last shot of the show is going to be where Scratchy said, “Huhaa You didn’t think I’d be here. Did you? I can go into any role. I was the devil once now I’m a rabbit.” Justin:              “I was also the bug.”Hu haa! Alex:                 Before we wrap up here, what is on your vision board for the final episode of WandaVision Justin? What do you want to see? Justin:              We are going to get a massive fight. We’re going to see Monica Rambeau really come into power setting her up for Captain Marvel 2. I’m very curious where we end up with Scarlet Witch. I feel like perhaps she’s going to be lost in… One other thing I want to talk about. We got the word nexus last episode, which it doesn’t touch on really anything in Wanda’s past. So that makes me feel like it’s where we’re going, Scarlet Witch is going to be lost in the nexus of all realities. Alex:                 We talked about that the last episode like you’re saying maybe it’s a movie length episode, potentially. Maybe we get some enormous fight. They certainly teased that it’s one of the biggest things Marvel has ever done. Maybe a tear. That is the thing that actually tears a hole in the fabric of reality that sends off all this bolts over stuff in Dr. Strange two and Spiderman three. So we’re not really dealing with that in the show, but the after effects of what happens with the Agatha and Wanda battle is potentially the thing that leads to that. Alex:                 The other thing that I think we glanced over a little bit, that I think is super important for the last episode is the one Wanda-Vision relationship. The big thing that we’re going to get is this. Now we know non real Vision who was created by Wanda in the hex is going to have to tell her, “Let me go. You have to let go and move on with your life. You have to move past this grief.” We’ll potentially have white Vision going forward in some way, but it’s not going to be the Wanda-Vision relationship we know and Wanda is then going to go forward throughout the movies. Justin:              I’d be curious if the Vision will stick around. I like the idea that the ghostly Vision is a character that we encounter more. That emotional sadness, every time we see him we’ll be like, “Ah, shit. They were so happy when they were in TV. I still do think we’re going to get one more reveal despite your Paul Bettany theory. I know you’re riding high because you got previously on right. But I do think that we’ll get that. Did you have another theory you want to drop in? Alex:                 Just about the title of the episode. I’ll throw it out there. Again, I have this really good track record of 25%. Justin:              Cocky, confident. Alex:                 Depending on what direction we go, it could be one of two titles for the last episode. I think either we’ll see, “We’ll be right back.” If there’s a little bit of a dot, dot, dot at the end of the episode, or alternatively, it’ll be, “This ends our broadcasting.” Justin:              Wow. “Be right back” or “we’ll be right back” is really nice. Also has a reference to the black mirror. One of the best black mirror episodes that they’ve made. Alex:                 The big thing on my vision board though, I know we’re kind of going far a field of this very set section of the show. Justin:              I know, really format breaking this episode. Alex:                 The big thing I do want to see is the emotional catharsis here. Even more than the superhero fights and Agatha going better and better with Wanda and ghost Vision going against hex Vision or whatever we want to call him. The big thing is I want to see what happens with Wanda and Vision. We also didn’t talk about Billy and Tommy at all. The implication right now is, if Vision can’t survive outside the hex, neither can Billy and Tommy, but I don’t think that’s true. I think we’re going to see a reveal of teenage “Billy and Tommy” by the end of this. That’s going to be one of the big things that spurs us into somewhere down the road, several years, young Avengers. I think we’re going to get an actor reveal for both of them. Justin:              I bet we’re going to get a post credit sequence will be them being either placed for adoption or being separated and put into different lives and we’re going to just know who they are really setting that longterm Easter egg for young Avengers. Alex:                 That is it for Marvel Vision. We have one more episode here. We’re going to get up even earlier and make Pete wake up earlier, get into even weirder places when we tape the episodes that’s going to be very exciting. But if you want to support us patrion.com/comic book club, also, we do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM to Crowdcast and YouTube come hang out. We would love to chat with you about WandaVision. I choose Android Stitcher or the app of your choice to subscribe and to listen to the show. If you’d like to rate and comment on iTunes in particular, that’d be much appreciated. Justin:              We love that. Alex:                 We love it. Socially, Marvel Vision pod on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Well. right here for the end of the episode- Pete:                what’s up? I made it, I’m awake. Alex:                 AP? Pete:                what are we doing? Justin:              What’s up, man? Alex:                 How you doing? I was just doing the wrap up. Pete:                Oh man. How about that WandaVision? Justin:              What’s on your vision board, Pete. Pete:                Ah, you know what? It was Agnes All Along.. Justin:              She snuck in and pressed your snooze button. Alex:                 Real quick because we are wrapping up the episode, but I want to know your thoughts. Did you actually watch it Pete? Did you just wake up and get on the zoom? Pete:                I woke up and I tried watching and then I got a zoom invite, so I saw a very witchy beginning. Salem witch trials were real guys. Justin:              That’s a good takeaway right there. Alex:                 Thanks for tuning in Pete. Thanks for jumping in. Always good to see you. We were just talking about this, but next week we’re going to wake up at 3:00 AM. [crosstalk 00:39:52] Pete:                Might as well. I mean, what’s the difference? Justin, you are covered in adorable things. This is a lovely image of you. Justin:              Yeah. Just me and- Pete:                And the color pink. Justin:              Yeah, a hundred percent. Alex:                 This is great. I’m really glad we wrapped up like this. comicbookclub@live.com for this podcast with many more. Until next time, set your alarm folks. [crosstalk 00:40:18] Pete:                It’s not, you’ve got to turn up the volume as well. You can’t just set the alarm, the volumes important sometimes. The post MarvelVision: WandaVision Episode 8 – “Previously On” appeared first on Comic Book Club.
40 minutes | 15 days ago
MarvelVision: WandaVision Episode 7 – “Breaking The Fourth Wall”
WestView is falling apart, and so is Wanda, as the WandaVision villain is revealed on Episode 7 “Breaking the Fourth Wall.” While Vision slowly makes his way back to the center of town with the help of Darcy, Wanda is taking some “me” time to recover from expanding the Hex in a The Office inspired episode. But things aren’t going well, leading to Agnes taking the twins… And revealing some less than altruistic motives. Meanwhile, outside the Hex, Hayward prepares to launch a full-scale attack, and Monica reenters, ready to try and help Wanda — leading to the birth of a new hero. From the Nexus to Major Goodner to the Darkhold, we’re breaking down all of the WandaVision Easter eggs, Marvel Comics spoilers, and much more from WandaVision Episode 7. SUBSCRIBE TO MARVELVISION ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. Full Episode Transcript Alex:                 Welcome to MarvelVision, a podcast about the MCU, Marvel, and right now, WandaVision. We’re talking to episode five… Excuse me, episode seven. I don’t know. It’s very early right now. Breaking the Fourth Wall. I’m Alex. Justin:              I’m Justin. Pete:                I’m Pete. Alex:                 And very exciting, big episode of WandaVision as usual. Spoiler warning if you haven’t watched it yet on Disney+, which maybe you did because it crashed for a good point this morning. Go away. Go watch the episode. We’re going to be talking about all the big spoilers and Easter eggs and everything going on in here. Pete:                Plus after credits. Alex:                 We got a mid credit sequence this time. Justin:              100%. Alex:                 So don’t turn it off. Justin:              They’ve been keeping that spot open in the mid credits, and it’s about time we used it. Alex:                 Yeah. I’ll tell you what, usually I turn off the episodes halfway through because I’m like, “I’m done. Let’s just move on.” Justin:              “I’ve had enough.” Alex:                 I have other things to do with my day. Let’s go. But this time I actually kept it on, not just through the entire episode, but also through the credits, and I was pleasantly surprised. Pete, I appreciate, since we’re on video now, that you’re just sinking lower and lower in the camera. Pete:                Don’t bring it here, asshole. You don’t want none of this. I’ve seen too much behind the curtain today for you to fuck with me, man. I was watching as you greased up your forehead, got the lighting all right, placed your sex dolls in the background. I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. Alex:                 Those are owls, Pete. Pete:                All right, well… They’re missing beaks. I don’t know what you’re doing to them. Alex:                 I went out a nature hike with Pete once, and he was like, “What are these fucking sex dolls doing hooting up there in the trees? What’s going on?” Anyway, let’s talk about this episode. The broad strokes, this is the mockumentary style episode, a little bit of The Office, a little bit of the Modern Family going on. In case you haven’t picked up on what’s been going on, Vision was left for dead, pretty much, at the end of the last episode after the Hex expanded. This episode, we pick up with that. He teams up with Darcy to try to get back to the center of town and get back to Wanda. Meanwhile, Wanda’s in a real funk, having a me day, and gives the kids over to Agnes, which leads to the big reveal at the end of the episode that it’s been Agnes all along. Justin:              So funny, so weird. Pete:                Can I ask- Alex:                 Wait, I just want to… The last thing, outside the Hex, we got Monica and Jimmy trying to get back inside. We finally meet the aerospace engineer. Huge moment that we’ve all been waiting for. Justin:              God, I can’t believe that. What a character reveal. Alex:                 Monica does go back inside, does finally get powers, though we don’t get to see the full range of them, confronts Wanda and ends up in some trouble of her own by the end of the episode. Pete, what did you want to say? What’s going on? Pete:                So with the title, Breaking the Fourth Wall, I got very excited because I was like, “You know what famous Marvel character breaks the fourth wall all time? Deadpool.” So I was like, “Please, please give me Deadpool in this weird world, just a throwaway.” Make him a clown in the background or something. Alex:                 I thought we were going to talk about Kool-Aid man. The Marvel character who famously breaks the fourth wall. Pete:                And a living room wall, not just a fourth wall. Justin:              Any living wall. The walls are alive and the Kool-Aid man is coming for them. Alex:                 Before we talk about specific moments, as we usually do at the beginning of episodes, broad strokes, what’d you guys think? We’re now at the end of here, two episodes from the end, we’ve got a big finale, we know who the villain is. Here’s the gig spoiler warning. It is Agnes, who is Agatha Harkness, who we suspected all along. So that’s been pulled back. We don’t have all the answers yet, but certainly we have a better understanding of what’s going on here. How are you feeling about the series right now? Pete:                I’m very excited. I feel like this is doing a great job of building momentum. First episode, not that exciting, but it’s really been building since then, and I’ve been really into it. I’m really impressed with how things are going. I cannot wait to watch the last two eps. Justin:              This episode was weird to me. There was a lot of air in it. It felt very like… Especially the outside of the Hex stuff. The scenes where like… They’re left, they weren’t moving very quickly. And I thought that was interesting. I don’t know what that means. My tooth just literally broke. Pete:                You don’t have to put it in. Alex:                 That one’s worse. That’s worse. Justin:              No, it’s good. It’s perfect. I’ll explain this later. Alex:                 This doesn’t make much sense for our audio podcast. Can you quickly explain… Justin:              I broke a crown and it keeps sliding out. I’m getting it fixed on Monday, but now I have this half… I won’t talk about it anymore. It’s great for audio. So what was I saying? There’s so much air- Pete:                You’re part clown. You were saying you were part clown. Justin:              The Hex just absorbed me. There’s so much air in the episode. I thought it was strange on the outside how the longest scenes were going and stuff. I don’t know why that was. Alex:                 That’s interesting. I had the opposite problem. I was okay with the stuff outside the Hex. Inside the Hex. I feel like they didn’t quite nail the mockumentary tone, and I think part of that is Wanda is depressed, so I get that. I think also it’s clearly falling apart, as we see, that the whole thing is dealing with. Justin:              I know all about that. Alex:                 For the most part, this is no knock on her, but she’s been fantastic so far. I don’t think Elizabeth Olsen quite nailed the voice, and maybe that was a conscious choice because Wanda is not really into the sitcom format anymore. Versus Paul Bettany, who did that very funny scene outside of the funnel cake truck, where he’s kind of scratching his ear even though he doesn’t have an ear, taking off the microphone. He got it. She didn’t. Again, maybe a character choice, but it really felt like a lot of the structure of the jokes that have been hitting over the past couple of episodes didn’t quite work for me. Pete:                I’m not going to sit here and let you take down Olsen’s acting choices. I thought the fact that she is playing unnerved heightens the tension of the scenes and doesn’t give it that just like, “Hey, this is The Office. Whoa, hey, looking at the camera, having fun.” Shit is going down. Alex:                 Hey, we’re having a good time here. Pete:                I don’t appreciate you taking shots at her like that. Justin:              Pete, very spicy when we do anything before dawn, it turns out. I mean, I agree with you. It does feel like a conscious choice in that the documentary sort of format for a sitcom is the closest to reality, and then that makes Wanda the most uncomfortable because they’re dealing with this actual real stuff that’s happening. I think it’s intentional. Alex:                 Leave it out. Careful. Pete:                No, this whole catching his tooth as he’s talking is just such a nice thing in the morning. I can’t tell you. Alex:                 I just watched a whole episode of WandaVision where she went down to a horrible dungeon. This is the most [inaudible 00:07:15]. But I think what we got here in terms of her grief and her depression and everything are really good. Like I was kind of indicating before, I think the horrifying moments are really good. Pete, I thought of you when Wanda went down to the basement. You had to be alone screaming, “Don’t go down into the basement.” Pete:                Yeah, why would you do that? Why would you do that? Justin:              You got to go down to the basement. Pete:                No, you do not have to… You fight her up here where she has no powers and secret charms. You fight her in the daylight. You don’t go into the witch’s secret room. That’s where all her power is. I mean, that’s fucking 101. Justin:              It’s interesting to me, the end of it. I mean, I don’t know if we want to talk about that now, but the way we’re getting the blend of… Agatha Harkness is a straight up witch. The science of Vision with the magic of Agatha Harkness is a totally new sort of blending, I feel like. Pete:                Justin, I think you’re really missing an opportunity to whistle while you talk, because- Justin:              I don’t know if you know, but no one wants to do that. Alex:                 I agree with you. We talked about this a little bit the last episode, the fact that magic in the MCU is not strictly magic necessarily. It’s science masquerading as magic. And I’m sure that’s the direction they could go in. They also don’t need to have somebody be like, “Well you know, magic is actually this thing.” At this point we’re over a decade into the MCU. Pete:                Just real quick, were you doing the Bunny’s voice from the TV show? Whose voice were you just doing? Justin:              Señor Scratchy? Alex:                 Yeah, that was Sir Scratchy. [crosstalk 00:08:53]. Pete:                [inaudible 00:08:56]. I really hope next episode bunny explains magic to us because [crosstalk 00:09:00]. Alex:                 Bunny might be something. I mean, he’s certainly something in the CapEx we talked about this before, but Nick Scratch is Agatha Harkness’s son. I think… We’re kind of jumping all over the place here, but I think we’re probably going to discover that there are a couple of lieutenants, like we’ve speculated, that are working for her. Justin:              I think maybe Quicksilver is Nick Scratch, right? Alex:                 Yeah. I think that’s pretty fair. Also the mailman, the delivery man. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he has Presto written on his name tag. So certainly he seems to be aware of what stuff is going on. I think we could write off… We were getting the name wrong. Herb, right? Not Hugh. I think we were calling him Hugh. But Herb seems to have been spelled by Agatha, so he may not be quite as much a lieutenant as we thought. But I don’t think she’s doing this alone. I think she has people working for her. Justin:              And Ralph definitely seems like someone who we’re going to find out is perhaps a larger bad that maybe looking forward into the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Alex:                 Well who do you think… Again, we should probably go back and talk about individual moments throughout the episode, but since we’re here anyway, who do you think that could be? Do you think given the big song and dance, literal, at the end of the episode that, yes, Agatha Harkness is the villain, that’s what we’re following. Or is there another uber-bad beyond that? And if so, who is it? Justin:              I think there is. And what do we think? Like Immortus is a possibility. It feels like we could get into some of the weirder Doctor strange villains are the good crossover points here. Or some of the larger like Chaos, all those big elemental galactic figures. I don’t know. Alex:                 The two that I’ve seen speculated about… One, everybody has mentioned Mephisto. That feels like a little bit of a reach to have a literal devil her. Pete:                Well that’s a shitty choice. Alex:                 You just don’t like Mephisto. Pete:                Damn right I don’t. Alex:                 The one that I find way more intriguing and makes a lot more sense to me is Nightmare, who is a Marvel comics villain, for those of you who don’t know, who is the literal manifestation of nightmares, has battled Doctor Strange a ton of times, Spider-Man, absolutely everybody. And if we’re going for a villain, this is a nightmare that she is living in, or she is trying to push it away and turn it into a dream. So that potentially makes a lot of sense to me. Justin:              I thought of that too, but the only thing that I don’t think it’s nightmares is he doesn’t seem powerful enough to really warrant a show across into the movies character move. He’s not that big of a villain Alex:                 To throw out another possibility, it could be like Loki and Avengers. He was working for Thanos. We don’t get that Thanos reveal until later. So we don’t get an uber-bad in these last two episodes. It really is Agatha for the show, but Agatha is getting her power, was working with or for somebody else, potentially Nightmare. I’ll throw out another piece of evidence for you. So the commercial, this episode- Pete:                Yeah, Nexus. Alex:                 Nexus, very on the news pointed to exactly what is going on now. We’ve had stuff throughout Wanda’s past we’ve speculated in terms of what’s been going on with the commercials. This very much seems to be the present. But in terms of a nexus in the Marvel universe, you got the Nexus of All Realities, which is where the Man-Thing lives and guards down in the Florida Everglades. Not in New Jersey usually, but I think we can fudge it a little bit. And that’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s this doorway to the multiverse, knowing that we’re going into the multiverse in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and also in Spider-Man 3, potentially. That certainly seems like a good indicator there. Pete:                Now I’m all excited for man thing, and when we don’t get Man-Thing I’m going to be pissed at you. Justin:              I could see us getting Man-Thing. Pete:                No way, man. Alex:                 Give us Man-Thing. All the people are demanding. Don’t go on Twitter, Man-Thing is trending right now. Justin:              Pete, we just got Agatha Harkness, like the old lady witch from a couple of random comics, and you’re like, “Man-Thing’s a bridge too far.” Alex:                 Pete, you love that, though. Agatha’s basically a granny, so you must be over the moon right now. Pete:                All right. All right. That’s weird. No, but I do- Alex:                 No, you love grannies. You talk about it constantly. Justin:              You love bad-ass grandma. Pete:                I like bad-ass people and if it happens to be a grandma, that’s even better, okay? This is kind of exciting. I’m not really familiar with Agnes too much. This would be fun to kind of have… I’m excited for this witch-off that’s going to be coming in the next two episodes. Alex:                 No, wait, I wanted to… Just to close the loop here on this Nightmare conversation. The one thing that I wanted to throw out is- Justin:              Alex, this is a podcast, not a nightmare conversation. Alex:                 What’s the difference? Pete:                I’ve had nightmares about this. Alex:                 So the Nexus of All Realities could… There’s another area of the Marvel universe, I don’t think they’re directly connected. Maybe they are in some coming that I’m forgetting, but there’s a thing called the Crossroads of Reality that’s played into a lot of different stories, particularly Doctor Strange stories. I think that’s where it came from, and it was also a fantastic Hulk arc where he was stranded in the Crossroad of Realities and tried to find his happiness there. Absolutely fantastic. But I feel like they can kind of fudge the two together, and if I remember correctly, a lot of the Crossroads of Reality stuff was… At least led in some part to Nightmare. I remember him being part of some of those stories. Justin:              He was always hanging out in there. Alex:                 Exactly. So I could see it all connecting in some way. Justin:              I think it does. The Crossroads and the Nexus are even drawn very similarly. There’s always just random planets floating around. So I definitely think that’s the case. Pete:                We kind of got that when we saw the power lines and there was all these weird kind of lights and they went on forever. It kind of looked a little bit like that. Justin:              No, that’s Monica’s powers developing. That was her point of view. So I don’t think that’s necessarily connected there. I did want to say, what do you think… There’s a book in one shot in Agatha’s- Pete:                Yeah, that’s kind of glowing, yeah. Alex:                 So one of the prominent books of the Marvel universe is the Darkhold, so- Justin:              That’s what I was thinking too. That is a weird choice. Alex:                 It is a very weird choice. They also, not for nothing, did the Darkhold on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I don’t know how much that matters, necessarily. Justin:              Which show did you say? Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.? Alex:                 Oh, I’m sorry. NCIS. Justin:              I think a reference to an NCIS moment probably matters more than a reference to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Pete:                Poor show. Justin:              Poor show. Alex:                 Poor Coulson and his team. Pete:                Come on. [crosstalk 00:15:48] was great. Alex:                 The other thing that was interesting about that book, which I’m sure you guys noticed, but it was crackling with red energy at the end, not the purple energy that Agnes, Agatha, I guess we can just straight up color Agatha at this point, is showing off. So it seems like it’s holding some of Wanda’s energy or containing it or powered by Wanda’s energy. I assume we’re going to find out in next week’s episode. Justin:              Or that that’s the conduit for all this extra energy that Wanda has, is what I was thinking. Pete:                I thought maybe just, she accidentally dumped some like Code Red over it or something. Because it kind of has that weird glow after you do that. Justin:              Of all the villains we named though, Mephisto’s sort of the most fun and the most… When I’m like, if I want to put an actor, a big A-list actor into the Marvel universe, Mephisto would be sort of the one to do, right? Pete:                No. Justin:              Red energy. Alex:                 I mean, this would be also very on the nose, but a couple of people have pointed out that apparently Al Pacino had a meeting with Marvel about a potential role. I don’t know how much I want to see that. I’ve already seen Devil’s Advocate. [crosstalk 00:16:57]. Justin:              They just take scenes from Devil’s Advocate and just drop them in randomly, Alex:                 Hopefully my scene. That would be nice. I was in Devil’s Advocate, I don’t know if you guys know. Justin:              Oh, right. Alex:                 That’s not a joke. I really wasn’t Devil’s Advocate. Pete:                You were in the background of a scene. It wasn’t like [crosstalk 00:17:15]- Alex:                 My forehead, my blurry forehead, which you already pointed out is very shiny, was featured. They couldn’t keep it out. Pete:                The wonder you shined up that forehead so much this morning. Justin:              It’s the moneymaker. Alex:                 Can I tell you what I did? I was an extra in the trial scene and I was sitting on the aisle, so to make sure they could catch me on camera I kind of sat like this. Pete:                That’s not what you’re supposed to do. Justin:              You ruined the shot. Pete:                That’s not what you’re supposed to do. Alex:                 It’s fine. You can see me right behind Keanu Reeves in one shot. Justin:              Wow. Right behind Keanu Reeves. Alex’s dream role. Alex:                 I was also supposed to be a reporter. They picked me out and then somebody, one of the the other actors was like, “Hey, are you SAG?” And I was like, “No.” And they’re like, “Well get out of here.” Justin:              That’s too bad. I was in Mystic River as an extra. Alex:                 Maybe that’ll tie it to WandaVision as well. Justin:              It has to tie into us a little bit. We’ve covered a lot of big cinema territory. Alex:                 The two most well-recognized pieces of cinema, Mystic River and Devil’s Advocate. So can we talk about Kathryn Hahn for a second, because I thought she was great. Pete:                I didn’t know if you guys wanted to go over your resumes a little bit more before we moved on. Alex:                 Pete you are even lower on the camera than you were before. I don’t know how you’re doing this. Pete:                Yeah. It’s because your guys’s bullshit is slowly killing me and pushing me out of frame. Alex:                 Can we talk about Kathryn Hahn? You got to love Kathryn Hahn, Pete, just to lift your spirits a little bit. She was great in this episode. Pete:                Yes. She’s always great. She’s a lot of fun. She’s been in a ton of stuff. I respect to work and her comedy. It’s very exciting. She got that big song at the end. I thought it was great. I feel like she’s been killing it on the show. Justin:              She got the big song. Everybody wants it. Alex:                 She does a really good job in this episode, I think, first of all of hitting the comedy. Several of her lines made me laugh out loud. She’s the one that I think almost of anybody on this show just gets the sitcom tone perfectly, but also her turns and her little notes of danger, particularly as things go on with Billy and Tommy, with Wanda, obviously at the end, as you mentioned, Pete. Her song at the end was fantastic, and all the mode she played there. She was great in this episode. Justin:              She can do everything we need from the character here. She’s very funny, she’s been funny throughout the whole series with this undertone of a little bit of menace or a little bit of wink that we don’t exactly know what it means, and then we get the full reveal here. Very excited for the fight that will come. What do you think now? Do we want to get into more speculation, the kids- Pete:                Hang on. I just wanted to say… Alex brought this up and I didn’t want it to pass by. The line of don’t worry, she doesn’t bite, and then the cutaway of like, “I bit a kid once,” was just so funny. Alex:                 It’s very funny. Pete:                Really funny. Alex:                 It was great. What happened to Billy and Tommy? Is that what you’re getting towards? Justin:              And I guess what is Agatha’s role there? She clearly wants to control the kids. We talked a lot in the past about maybe she lost her kids or kid and maybe that’s a Nick Scratch situation that we were mentioning, because I think in the comics, Nick Scratch got pushed into another dimension at one point as a punishment for one of the things he was up to. So maybe she lost him and he’s taking the kids to fill that gap. I don’t know. Alex:                 Right now, I was surprised at the end of the episode that it went so hard on, “I’m a straight up witch villain.” That’s it. “I’m cackling. I killed the dog. I killed Sparky. I’m the absolute worst because.” [crosstalk 00:20:53]. Like we talked about, or like you’re mentioning Justin, with most of the MCU villains, there’s some sort of actual motivation. They’re not just straight up evil. That doesn’t happen. So I feel like we’re still going to get that. I will note, this is not a big thing, but while I was frame by framing looking for Easter eggs in this episode, right at the beginning, there is a carton of milk that Wanda is holding and it’s very blurry, but you can see there’s a lost kid thing on there. So I do wonder if maybe there’s something with that, potentially. I’m still kind of sticking with that theory. Pete:                Well yeah, because there’s the whole thing of there were no kids and then for Halloween it was all kids and then the kids went away. Justin:              But I also think that to put her in that spot and make her be so obviously villainy feels like maybe there’s a deeper reason for doing that and we’re going to get this other villain. She’s play acting as well through this. Alex:                 Yeah, that’s potentially possible. The other thing, maybe I’m remembering this wrong because a lot of things happen in the comics, but I think what actually happened was Agatha used two pieces of the devil’s soul, gave them to Wanda to create Billy and Tommy so she could have kids, and then Master Pandemonium, who’s this villain who’s like… I honestly don’t remember it, but minor devil character, works for the devil or something like that, comes back and then absorbs Billy and Tommy to start completing his soul and turns them into arms and it’s one of the most horrifying covers in comic book history. We could see something like that. Like you’re saying, she’s trying to resurrect somebody, she’s trying to bring somebody back. Something like that. Pete:                There was a moment where the douchy army guy was like, “We launch today,” and I thought there would be some kind of attack, but that never really paid off in this ep. Alex:                 I think we’re going to get some sort of potentially a two-part finale, where we’re getting Hayward is attacking Westview with everything at his disposal. Inside Westview you got Wanda, you got Vision, you got Monica now with powers protecting things and taking the fight to them. You also have the people who are loyal to Monica outside potentially on her side. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have Agnes and whatever is actually going on with her causing this magic fight. So I think we’re going to see this all out brawl span out over the course of the next two episodes potentially. Justin:              Yeah, I totally agree. Hayward’s setup as the villain, I think, for the other side of it. And I think we’re going to get… Everybody inside the Hex is going to have to fight Hayward, I think. Alex:                 Yeah. You think Agnes potentially will team up with everybody? Justin:              I don’t know. I think there’s potential there. Pete:                I think they might have to team up for what’s coming at them. That could be interesting. Justin:              The post credit scene or the mid credit scene where we have Monica discovering Agnes’s basement, they’re all going to be there. I can’t imagine we’re going to get that fight at the beginning of this next episode and that’s it. I feel like we need… Beginning of that fight Hayward is the… Because Hayward’s the dumb villain that is clearly not going to have bigger implications for the Marvel universe perhaps. So then he gets defeated and then they go deal with the larger stuff. Alex:                 Potentially I could see that. I could also see them skipping entirely and having next episode be called previously on or something like that, and zooming back and showing how we actually got here and what’s actually going on in the series before we get the blowout fight in the last episode. Justin:              You love predicting the titles. Alex:                 I’m always wrong. I’ve had it in one. So far I’m one for seven. Justin:              Previously on’s a pretty good guess if they do the flashback. Alex:                 Yeah. We’ll see what happens. Lots of other stuff going on, but I do want to jump back and mention something that we kind of brushed by that Pete mentioned is Monica getting her powers, what’s going on with her, that amazing moment when she jams herself through the wall and we get all the voices from Captain Marvel, we get to see young Monica Rambeau as well. I love this character. She’s great. I’m so excited to see her go forward in the MCU. Justin:              Yeah, really cool. The establishment of her powers here I thought was great. The different color spectrum that we’re seeing with all the different people here is really cool, and just the fact that her eyes went super blue and then we slowly dial that up throughout the episode. I’m here for it. Alex:                 Yeah, that was very cool. We also didn’t really talk about the Vision Darcy team up that happened this episode, which was a lot of fun as well. Pete, you want to talk about that one? Pete:                Yeah, it was really fun because we see Darcy, she’s fully in her escape artist character and then Vision touches her and snaps her out of it, and the first thing she said is, “Secretly I wanted to have a guest cameo, but that really sucked.” I really loved that moment. And then the fun very slowly them trying to get there in the the waffle truck was… I really thought this was a lot of sweet moments. And then her kind of catching Vision up I thought was nice. We didn’t hear the whole conversation, but since we saw the show we don’t we don’t need everything, but the little parts that we saw, it was nice to see Vision coming to grips with everything that’s happened to him, and then Darcy being like, “You two really do belong together. That’s real love there.” I thought that was very touching and nice. Justin:              And really we get to see just how sad the story is. The tragic fall of Vision and how he doesn’t even know about it, and to hear it from an outside source, I thought really hit all the emotional moments. Alex:                 And I don’t want to harp on this too much, but a little bit of a correction, Pete, and I can’t believe you got this wrong of all people, but it wasn’t a waffle truck. It was a funnel cake truck called funnel [crosstalk 00:26:55]. Justin:              Oh Pete. Where are you, dude? Alex:                 Food, your number one. Cars, your number two. Wrong on all counts. Pete:                See, I was too focused on getting the other details right. Justin:              Your notes. Your note is just a big funnel cake though, right, [crosstalk 00:27:12]. Pete:                Yeah, that I’m slowly eating. I wish, man. Before you started busting my balls, I felt like there was another… Oh yeah, when Vision was trying to convince her when she was kind of in character was really funny and sweet too. He was like, “No, no, we had a moment before this whole circus thing happened.” And I’m glad we got to see some fun circus stuff. It was also cool to see Darcy knock down the strong man. That was really fun. Justin:              Not so strong. Not so strong. Alex:                 Couple of notes that I jotted down, and you guys jump in obviously at any point, but as I was- Pete:                Oh, thanks for giving me the okay to do that. Alex:                 No problem, Pete. Sometimes you just sit there and raise your hand. That’s why I’m saying. But other things as I was looking through for Easter eggs. I don’t think there were actually a ton this episode, which was surprising, but at the beginning scene, the bedspread was Hexagons that Wanda was under. So that was pretty fun. Also I looked at everything that was going out on the TV and the answer is pretty much nothing. The weather was going from the 40 to the 60s or 70s, which is a pretty far range. Justin:              Perfect weather. I mean, the weather is the ultimate Easter egg. Let’s be honest. On any show I’m like, “Is it going to rain?” Alex:                 The Office opening. That was pretty much straight up, though I think everybody noticed this. It was all Wanda up until the end it was called WandaVision, but created by Wanda Maximoff. I thought that was a nice detail. Also Darcy being the escape artist based on the fact that she was handcuffed to the truck in the last episode, that’s what she got changed to. Thought that was a fun detail. The stork was back briefly as everything was starting to break down. Pete. Justin:              Stork watch. Who’s on stork watch. Alex:                 Pete’s on stork watch. Pete:                Yeah, that was kind of crazy, but I wanted more stork for sure. Alex:                 We all did. Pete:                No one wants more stork. The fact that it was in here for that, I was like, “Enough stork.” Alex:                 Did I imagine this or at one point did somebody speculate that the stork is maybe Mephisto? Justin:              I think you said that on a previous podcast, but let me say, when the stork appeared and vanished in a cloud of red smoke, I was like, “It is weird.” And also the fact that… If we’re saying the stork delivered the children, the souls would come from somewhere. Alex:                 Could you imagine if in the last episode of the show, the stork is like, “I’m the real villain here,” and morphs into Al Pacino. Justin:              I agree it’s weird, but also it’s weird that there’s red smoke there. There are weird moments around the stork and the fact that the stork is such a thing. We don’t need all this stork. So why do we keep seeing it? Alex:                 Here’s the thing about that, that I felt like with this episode, which we kind of brushed over a little bit, but there was so much speculation about who the aerospace engineer was that Monica was contacting, and ultimately it ended up being this character called major Goodner who is still loyal to Monica’s mom, played by an actress named Rachel Thompson. And that’s it. She’s not from the comics. She hasn’t previously appeared in the MCU or anything like that. It’s just a random army person from S.W.O.R.D. who is loyal to Monica. Maybe we’ll see more of her going forward as Monica continues- Pete:                Or maybe she’s actually the stork. Justin:              Or another bird. What is she’s another- Alex:                 Here’s the thing, Al Pacino is one of the greatest actors of all time. He could be major Goodner. He could pull that off. Justin:              I think he’s… If you look at the stork, it has a lot of Al Pacino’s features, and you can barely hear it going “Hoo-ah” if you listen. Pete:                If you really listen, yeah. Alex:                 But that kind of points to me that in the best way, everybody is analyzing every single piece of this show and pulling it apart and looking for clues and try to figure out what’s going on, but sometimes it’s just a thing. It’s just a piece of the plot. Not everything is a clue to something. Justin:              Sometimes a stork is just a stork is what you’re saying. Alex:                 Exactly. Justin:              I agree with you. Major Goodner, maybe that’s a huge new character for the MCU. Sounds like a good guy when you think about it. Alex:                 It’s not major Badner. Justin:              That’s right. And I was definitely not on the Mephisto train at all, but I do think of all the villains we’ve talked about, that’s the one with the most intrigue, I think. And I don’t think Mephisto’s going to be the villain who’s like, “Ha ha, it’s me,” in the last ep so they have to fight. But I do think a post credit sequence where Agatha reports back to Mephisto makes a lot of sense. Pete:                No, Mephisto is not that… Don’t bolster up Mephisto. He’s a side bullshit character that they use to retcon shit. Alex:                 I’ll throw out another possible villain to you guys. This is based on this episode, but when Wanda goes over to the house and sees Tommy and Billy missing, there’s a brief snippet of an actual TV show, which is Yo Gabba Gabba, which is a fantastic show that unfortunately is streaming nowhere. But that indicated to me, to anybody who’s seen Yo Gabba Gabba, what if it’s DJ Lance Rock, the guy who hosts Yo Gabba Gabba. You don’t see them in that shot, and that’s a little weird to me. Justin:              Wow. Interesting. Pete:                Why can’t you just accept what the show told you, and its Agnes? Stop looking deeper. That’s it. It’s Agnes. She’s doing it all. She clearly said that. Alex:                 I think it might be Stilt-Man. Justin:              You got to look deeper. I think it’s Optimus Prime from Transformers. He’s been wanting to go bad. Think about it. We see a lot of trucks in this episode. Alex:                 That’s true. Justin:              Obviously the funnel cake truck. And here’s the thing, they’re robots in disguise, so you’re not going to see them. You’re not going see them first. Because here’s the thing, Pete, I don’t know if you know, a lot of this stuff in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is actually based on comic books, which is an ongoing medium where a lot of times they set up the next story within the confines of the story that’s being told. Alex:                 This is a really interesting. Somebody should do some sort of a Marvel podcast. Justin:              Oh, that’s an interesting idea. Oh, to talk about. Boo. Let me be honest, I don’t have much going on in my end of the world, so I’m happy to jump in and do a Marvel Podcast. Alex:                 I love how you say that when you’ve got a dog and a couple of kids running around. Pete:                Your teeth are falling out. Alex:                 It looks like you have an open lesion on your hand. I don’t know what’s going on with you. Justin:              Life’s good. I’ve just got to get up early and record podcasts. I made all the right choices. Pete:                You guys also agree with me though that it’s a horrible idea to go into the creepy basement, right? Why would you do that? Alex:                 My sense of that moment is that’s what she has to do. She can’t do anything else. She’s scared for her kids. She realizes something is wrong. Pete:                Take on an Agatha right there. Don’t go into her trap. Alex:                 She doesn’t know that it’s Agatha. She thinks it’s her friend Agnes, and I think Agnes is at the point where she is revealing herself to Wanda. So if anything, you could probably posit that its Agnes’s influence that is sending Wanda down there, giving her this need to go down to the basement and explore things. But it was great, it was great moment. Justin:              Let me throw this out to you, Pete. If you’re watching a horror movie, which I know you don’t love, the character’s about to open the basement door to go in the basement, and then they don’t. They go back and go to sleep and then you just watch the character sleep for the next 20 minutes. Pete:                That’s why I’ve lived my whole life and haven’t had a horror story moment because I won’t… If I hear something I’m not going to go investigate. Are you fucking out of your mind? I want to live. Justin:              Well that’s why your basement’s flooded several times, because you hear a noise down there and you’re- Pete:                I don’t care. Yeah, I don’t care. I hear cries from help sometimes from my basement. But I’m not going to go down there. Justin:              But so you would be happy with a horror movie that just was the last- Pete:                I would stand up and applaud if a horror movie was 10 minutes long, and I didn’t have to have nightmares. Alex:                 Hey you guys want to go to that abandoned sleep away camp and have sex? No. Credits rolling. Justin:              Let’s have sex right here, and then you’re watching pornography, Pete. I hope you’re happy. Pete:                Don’t say that next to your child. Alex:                 It’s fine. Before we start to wrap up here, though, any other moments from the episode either of you guys want to call out? Pete:                I was like, “Oh, they’re not going to have Quicksilver in the whole episode,” and then really this snoopers got to snoop line was really nice. Alex:                 Yeah. It’s great. Fun to have him around. It also seems… We didn’t really talk about this, but Paul Bettany had a quote where he said the actor that he has always wanted to work with but never worked with who is some sort of secret cameo or a part on the show, he’s not Evan Peters. So there’s still somebody else who’s going to show up at some point. I don’t know if if we necessarily [crosstalk 00:36:17]- Justin:              I mean, that’s what I’m saying. That’s a big reveal. I can’t believe I haven’t gone all the way through the looking glass on the Mephisto thing, but I think I’m back on a last episode Mephisto reveal. Alex:                 Al Pacino is the stork. There we go. That’s our number one theory that we all agree on on the spot. Justin:              We all agreed on that. We’ve all said it. We’ve all said it in different ways. I think we touched on everything. Like I said, this episode was very direct with its storytelling. The final payoff of all of the sitcom tropes being this, I thought it was the least fun version of it, and like we said, maybe that’s purposeful. I did think the Agatha being the documentary team filming the Modern Family podcast, I thought that was a good little hit there at the end. Alex:                 That was great. That whole Agatha all along sequence was fantastic. That was the highlight of the episode for me. Before we wrap up here, what’s on your Vision board for the next episode. Pete, you want to go first with this one? Pete:                Well, my Vision board just says no Mephisto ever. Never again. Don’t ever put us through that again, ever, Marvel. Alex:                 Most people don’t know what you’re talking about, but let’s go on, but Justin… You’re talking about an event that happened at this point probably 15 years ago. Pete:                Just don’t care. I don’t want it again, ever. Alex:                 Justin, over to you, what’s on your Vision board? Justin:              I’ve got to say, to your call for a previously on episode that establishes everything I think would be very fun. Pete:                Don’t feed his ego, please. Justin:              I just mean like we do have to get this backstory at some point and we’ve revealed Agatha, Agnes, Agnes/Agatha as the villain. We have to hear that story, whether it’s a short sequence or the full flashback episode. Alex:                 Yeah, that was kind of mine as well, but given you took that one, I’m going to go with I want to hear a stork say “Hoo-ah.” Justin:              Sorry to rob you of your thunder there, but I also think we are going to get everybody working together to fight some sort of series of Vision clone bots that Hayward has made. Alex:                 Good call there. I like that. And I like all of you, particularly if you support us at patreon.com/comicbookclub. Also we do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM to Crowdcast and YouTube. Come hang out. We would love to chat with you about WandaVision. iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice to subscribe and to listen to the show. Socially MarvelVisionPod on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Comicbookclublive.com for this podcast and many more. Un
47 minutes | 22 days ago
MarvelVision: WandaVision Episode 6 – “All-New Halloween Spooktacular!”
Westview celebrates Halloween in the creepiest way possible on WandaVision Episode 6 – “All-New Halloween Spooktacular!” Wanda and Vision are on the outs, after the revelations of the last episode — and the reappearance of Wanda’s dead brother Pietro (played by Evan Peters) isn’t helping things. While Vision heads to the outskirts of Westview to figure out what’s really going on, Wanda goes trick r’ treating with Billy and Teddy, leading to the twins figuring out what their powers are. And outside the Hex, Jimmy, Monica and Darcy get closer to figuring out what Hayward is really up to. From Yo-Magic to Cataract, let’s break down all the WandaVision Easter Eggs, Marvel Comics spoilers, and much more. SUBSCRIBE TO MARVELVISION ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. Full Episode Transcript Alex:                 Welcome to Marvel Vision, a podcast about Marvel, the MCU and WandaVision. Justin:              WandaVision. Alex:                 We’re going to be talking about WandaVision, Episode six, all new Halloween Spooktacular. Justin:              Oh, fun title. Alex:                 Fun title. I’m Alex. Justin:              And I’m Justin. Pete:                I’m Pete, Happy Halloween motherfuckers. Justin:              Happy Halloweenie. Alex:                 So, as mentioned, we’re going to be talking about Episode six, usual spoiler warning here, we’re probably going to jump pretty much right into it, so go watch the episode, come back here. We’re going to be talking about highlights, we’re going to be talking about Easter eggs, we’re going to be talking about theories- Justin:              Low lights. Alex:                 Low lights, absolutely, all that stuff. But first off, we’ve been waking up pretty early to do this, I’ve been really appreciating this wake and Wanda, you know what I’m talking about? Pete:                Oh my God. Don’t. Justin:              Yeah. Another day, wake and Wanda, man. I love it. Kicking off the weekend. Pete:                So hardcore man. Justin:              It is hardcore. Pete:                Getting up early. Wanda. Alex:                 Now Pete, it seems like, I don’t know if you want to talk about it this here, but it seems like you were very emotionally affected by this episode of WandaVision. Pete:                Well, it’s just crazy, this idea of living in a bubble and when you go outside of the bubble, all this crazy stuff is going to happen, is just… with everything that is happening right now, it’s just weird how some friends seem to be bubble affected, others acting like there isn’t a bubble. I don’t- Justin:              Oh, shit. Is this a Pete… are you having a PeteVision? Pete:                Yeah. It’s just… the show is very crazy right now. It’s- Justin:              Because I feel a little bit like Quicksilver. Pete:                Yeah? You do? Alex:                 You definitely have the hair. Justin:              Exactly. Pete:                Cool. Well, yeah. I wouldn’t say you’re the fastest of the group. You’re a quick guy. You won’t shut the fuck up. Justin:              I can’t believe that landed in a compliment. Oh, there it is. Okay, great. Pete:                Yeah, yeah. Wait. Pete. Justin:              And Alex is the Agnes. Alex:                 How was that? Good? Justin:              It was good. Alex:                 Actually, yeah. Justin:              It was too good to have just done it randomly. Alex:                 I’ve been practicing for weeks, at this point. Six weeks. So broad strokes about the episode, as you can tell from the title this is the Halloween episode. It is set in the 2000s. We were- Justin:              Did not see that coming. Alex:                 Well, we were a little off in our guesses in terms of what this was, because at least for the opening, very specifically Malcolm in the Middle. Justin:              A hundred percent. And I was not ready for that. I guess what it was is, last episode we did the Full House and Family Ties. There was a double… and this just jumped forward past where we thought, and Malcolm in the Middle, wow. Strong choice. Alex:                 Strong choice down to Billy and Teddy doing the narration directly to camera, which I thought was super fun. Also- Justin:              Billy and Tommy? Alex:                 Tommy? I keep doing that in my head. Justin:              It’s okay. Names are hard. And I guess you’re just a comic fan like the rest of us. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 Oh, I’m sorry that I keep mistaking two members of the ARG Avengers who have very similar names. Justin:              Don’t try to flex with more knowledge to make up for your mistake. It doesn’t work that way. Alex:                 [inaudible 00:03:14] Pete:                I’m having fun. This is great. Justin:              Alex, I didn’t mean to do that. It’s the PeteVision. He made me do it. He made me do it. I would never correct you like that. Alex:                 Pete. It’s all Pete. So Billy and Tommy doing the narration directly to the camera- Pete:                Can you fucken move that wire that’s right in the middle of your fucken shot? It’s driving me nuts. Alex:                 Who are you talking to? Pete:                You, man. The wire that’s right running down the front of your fucken cameras. It’s driving me insane. Alex:                 The wire? Pete:                Yeah. There’s a… right there. Alex:                 This is great for our audio podcast. This thing over there? Pete:                Yeah. Yeah. What is that? Alex:                 It’s a beam gorgeous light that is lighting me up, Pete. Pete:                Oh, Jesus Christ. Justin:              This is- Alex:                 I cannot bend light the way that you can. Justin:              See, we can’t do this, this early in the morning because nothing makes sense. Alex:                 Lots going on this episode, just a broad [inaudible 00:04:03] what’s going on, Pietro is here now. It is evident who Pete is from the X-men series, a lot of mystery that we’ll talk about, I’m sure in a moment. He seems to know what’s going on in Westview. He is talking to Wanda about that throughout the episode, but he’s also acting as the cool brother-in-law, Uncle Dude hanging out with the kids, kids start to develop their powers, Vision tries to make his way outside of Westview, because very poorly, and as a result, Wanda expands the hex, capturing Darcy as well as most of the members of S.W.O.R.D. Hayward makes it out with two people, probably that we don’t 100% know, Jimmy Woo and Monica Rambeau manage to make it out, they’ve had a break with S.W.O.R.D. this episode, after they’re kicked out. They are going to need- Justin:              We’re on a break. We’re on a break Pete:                We’re on a break. Alex:                 They’re going to need Monica’s contact outside of Westview, so we’ll probably pick up on that and I’m sure have some theories there, so outside of Westview, where things are getting real bad, inside of Westview, things getting even worse and it’s still up in the air exactly who is behind this? Who is controlling this? Who is in charge? What is causing this, as we go through the episode. Justin:              We’re going to speculate. Yeah. This episode was interesting. It started to… the format starting to really fall apart. The way this episode ended, I was like, “Oh, that’s not an ending place.” Pete:                Yeah. It was a very interesting ending, where I was like, “Wait, what?” And then I was like, “Is there something pass the credits or something, because it feels like there should be a button of some kind.” Justin:              I always watch all the credits, including the Dutch ones, because maybe that’s where it’s buried. Pete:                Oh, nice. Alex:                 You’ve got to read all of them. That’s the important part. Justin:              Duh. I got to learn so many languages. Alex:                 It somewhere in there. Justin:              Yeah, exactly. Alex:                 I agree with you, but we’ve talked about the structure of the season and we’re not going to fully know how it lands obviously, until the final episode, but I do feel like here, we’re kind of getting the end of the second act of the series, but also we’re just kicking into high gear, into the MCU movie. To my mind it feels like this episode, the last three episodes, that’s the MCU movie, the rest of it, there’s no slagging off at all, but the rest of it was set up that was the setting up the House of Cards, so that everything can start tumbling down this episode. And I think that’s what we’re going to see happening. Justin:              Yeah. And it is interesting we talked about how the different eras of television bends to more realistic storytelling. And then but we didn’t say, and it makes total sense, to make the jump into full movie storytelling, I think it is to your point, what’s happening here. But it makes for… it’s not TV. It’s fully- Alex:                 It’s for HBO. Justin:              Exactly. Wow. How dare you. You’re about to get hexed in a major way from the Disney Corporation. But it does… it makes for a whole other way of telling the story. We’re just going to get little chunks of a movie basically, I think, going forward. Pete:                Yay. Movie chunks. Justin:              Yeah. Alex:                 So what [inaudible 00:07:01]. Justin:              Love [inaudible 00:07:03] Alex:                 In the episode, what was something that you thought was particularly interesting or dramatically or plot wise? Justin:              Pete, what cars did you like? Pete:                I really identified with the crying lady who was putting up just frozen in a one move thing, where she was trying to put up Halloween decorations. Justin:              You identified with her? Pete:                Yeah, because I feel like because… time is weird right now, so it’s like, “Oh,- Alex:                 Are you okay? Justin:              Yeah, Pete’s [crosstalk 00:07:29] Pete:                We’re all in this loop that we can’t stop and it’s just so weird and what are days anymore? I really identified with her and her single tear. Justin:              Wow. That was the most haunting moment of the episode. I think they did a good job of making it actually scary. I don’t think this is a purposeful connection, but it felt very Stranger Things to me. The vision sections here, because it was just like the Halloween connection and the way that they just went from very normal look/feeling and looking things into a very unsettling imagery by just freezing people. Unfreezing them when you don’t expect it. Pete:                Yeah, that was really… just seeing people frozen, that was very unsettling. Alex:                 And I like how it hasn’t exactly been a slow progression, but the progression through the episodes where they’ve let things fall apart, where we start to get hints that things weren’t right, the reality was breaking down into little bits for the first couple of episodes and then it felt like the lid got popped off there in that last episode, where it’s with that moment where Agnes says, “Hey, do you want me to take it again?” Where now we know there are people who are aware, they know they’re in a sitcom, we get that from whatever’s going on with Pietro this episode, we get it from Agnes, we also get it from [Hugh 00:08:48], I believe that’s the name of the character which I thought that was interesting. Alex:                 We got a little bit of that when he was trimming the hedges a couple of episodes back, but he seems to be on maybe the same kind of level of awareness as Agnes, in terms of the sitcom world. But also, like you’re saying, with Vision walking out of Westview, seeing outside of wherever Wanda is, things are frozen and people are just trapped. And that’s it. And that’s terrifying. Justin:              And while we’re talking about this, maybe it makes sense to talk about the commercial, the Go [Group 00:09:23] commercial, because that was ominous as well, where you have some Claymation characters, he’s just hungry, the kid on the island and he gets a YoMagic yogurt thing and just we watch slowly die. Pete:                Do you know how hard it is to peel off those things, especially when you’re on a deserted island. Justin:              Exactly. I was like, “If there’s a character Pete’s going to identify with, it’s going to be the kid who can’t open the yogurt.” Pete:                Oh, my God. Yeah. I feel like I’m that kid waiting for Black Widow to come out. It’s just… I’m going to slowly turn into a skeleton. Justin:              And Pete, I’ll be down to your apartment to open your yogurts. Obviously from outside your front door. Pete:                Well, make sure you open them and then leave them. There’s no point in [crosstalk 00:10:02], Jesus Christ. That would be… kids of the neighborhood walking by, “Oh, there’s the guy with the bunch of open yogurts.” Crazy old Pete. Justin:              “What’s your main form of income?” “I open a friend of mine’s yogurts and leave them on his welcome mat.” Alex:                 You know it will a fun surprise Justin, just to wrap it all together, fill one of those yogurt with a bunch of actual black widows. So it’ll be, “Oh, [crosstalk 00:10:25]. Justin:              It’s a tie in. It’s a product tie in. Pete:                I walk with that together. Alex:                 What do I think is going on there? Because I feel like a lot of the other commercials, if a [inaudible 00:10:36], and this is the popular interim theory as we’re sort of progressing through Wanda’s history with all of these commercials, all the traumatic events she’s dealt with, what are you doing? What is this thumb? Pete:                There’s this- Justin:              The light. Pete:                … beam of light streaking down your thing and it is… I don’t know what to do with it, and it’s just… Justin:              I will say, Alex, did you shoot a gun into the sky recently? It looks like a bullet hole. Pete:                [inaudible 00:11:00] 77. It’s just like Pete have WandaVision this morning- Alex:                 I was just so excited about this episode about WandaVision, I was like, “Oh, darn it. Living rabbits.” Pete:                Dude, when you were looking for places to live, do you have a single beam of light that will come down into my basement? Alex:                 I’m sorry, when you looked for your apartment, you asked about the breathing calls, right? Pete:                Yes, of course. That’s smart. Justin:              It’s suffocating in here. Alex:                 I’m going announce to get air if there are no holes in my apartment. Justin:              That’s great. If we can move past the shaft of light. I imagine it’s shining down on a button that says upload or something like that, or don’t download. Alex:                 Can we get back to YoMagic? What’s going on there? Justin:              So I don’t know. This one is confusing me a little bit, because I didn’t know if it was a way of showing that the town’s people are slowly dying because they’re not eating, because the magic is killing them, which I thought was interesting and ties into the Vision being like, “You have to help these people,” when he gets past the bubble. And maybe that’s where it will turn and the Scarlet Witch will be like, “I have to stop doing this. I’m killing this town of people.” Either that, or maybe the magic is killing the Scarlet Witch. And that’s maybe about a reference to her past or something. And we’re going to find out that it’s related to her powering up in this show. Pete:                It was just weird how the shark was like, “I remember hunger.” He’s always full. What is that about? That doesn’t make any sense. Alex:                 Whatever is going on there, I thought it was great to get in a Claymation commercial. I thought that was really a fun thing. Pete:                Do you think it’s a tease for a full Claymation episode? Alex:                 Oh, that will be great. I didn’t see [inaudible 00:12:58] Justin:              Oh yes, definitely. Alex:                 Well what we’re… if we’re moving to the 2000s and the 2010s as we all know the majority of the sitcoms in the 2010s were Claymation. That was the popular form. Justin:              That’s true. It started with the California Raisins, if you don’t what that is, I guess Google it or don’t. Just guess. Pete:                Don’t Google it. Justin:              Or guess what it is. Pete:                Don’t Google. Alex:                 It actually also ended with the California Raisins. Justin:              That’s absolutely right. Alex:                 That’s a little sitcom history for you all. Justin:              Do you think that they are going to push into 2010 sitcoms or are we done with it? Alex:                 Yeah, I think next episode is going to be The Office style episode with confessionals and things. We’ve seen… there’s been footage in the trailers of Wanda talking directly to camera, so I do think we’re going to get that, but that’s going to be the final iteration of sitcom. Pete:                You mean we’re going to skip past Friends, like no Central Perk, nothing? Justin:              Well, let me just say it- Alex:                 What is different about Friends that any of… I don’t know. Justin:              What an indictment of Friends from Aflix. He hates friends. Pete:                The guy hates Friends. Justin:              You didn’t watch all of Friends? Alex:                 I didn’t. Justin:              Wow. Maybe I don’t know who you are- Pete:                Did you even get Justin’s reference from them before? Alex:                 Could it be any more obvious? Pete:                Oh, wow. How could you do that? How did you do that? You’ve never even seen the show. Justin:              He can’t sit. He can’t sit. Alex:                 Listen. I’ve watched two shows. Friends, just the first season, and California Raisins and that’s it. But I think I get a sense of what’s going on here. Justin:              Yeah. You understand television. Let me ask you this. Are we going to get a Two Broke Girls reference? Alex:                 That… I know we’re a little off on the end of the episode, towards the beginning of this podcast here, but I love the ending here. I thought Wanda expanding the hex, really amped up the danger. I thought seeing everybody turn into a carnival, that’s something that we haven’t seen on the show yet. What happens when the hex wall comes over people, I thought that sequence was awesomely done. And having everybody switch over to just doing the miming and everything, it was great. And getting to see Pete. I feel like you asked for this the last episode, you were bummed that we weren’t going to see Kat Dennings in [inaudible 00:15:07] land. It was a very obvious way to set it up there by having her handcuffed to the truck and left and everything. But it’s still fun. It’s a good setup and getting her thrown in there is delightful. Pete:                The “Oh, fudge,” comment was hysterical. Where she goes, “Oh,” and then goes, “Fudge.” Because she was being… that was really fun. Justin:              And Kat Dennings I feel like, for whatever it is, she exists outside of all realms, because she had to some hacking lines, she was doing a lot of talking to herself like, “I got you now, Hayward”. It sounds like that very melodramatic stuff that usually are like, “This is lame.” But for whatever reason, her line delivery somehow works. Pete:                It really does. It’s great. It’s also very funny because she was on Kimmel talking about how she didn’t even about that brother reveal until the last second, they had them covered in a shroud and then moved down to set, so- Justin:              A shroud? Pete:                Yeah. So very interesting how we’re in the dark, the actors are in the dark until the last second. It’s scary. Justin:              Pete, speaking about scary and unsettled. Did you do some research for this podcast? Because you watched another thing about it. And provided that information for the rest of us to know something. Pete:                Yeah, things are weird, man. It’s a new world. Justin:              The hex. The Pete hex. Alex:                 A couple of other things outside of the hex, just to wrap up that area before we move back inside, because there’s lots of comic book stuff we can talk through there that we’ve already touched on, but we don’t find out who Monica’s contact is, but I do feel more confident after this episode that we’re actually going to see whoever it is. So, any further feelings on that? I feel like the Reed Witcher thing has definitely gained speed on the internet, but I don’t know how likely that necessarily is. Justin:              No, I don’t- Pete:                Because- Justin:              Go ahead. Pete:                For Reed, you can just show a bendy arm- Justin:              Just an arm reaching on camera? Pete:                … holding your cellphone. Be like, “Hey, don’t worry, I’ll be right here.” Yeah, yeah. Real easy to do. Justin:              No I don’t think it can be a heavy hitter. We are going to get a new heavy hitter. I think it’s going to be a callback to somebody else. And I think it is going to be, I don’t know which one, but it’s a character from the MCU that we’ve already met, is what I think. And it’s going to be someone that helps her out in some way, but doesn’t go fight with her. Alex:                 Yeah, I think it’s going to be a quick show-up. I felt a little more confident this episode on it being Talos, Ben Mendelssohn’s character from Captain Marvel, because they keep dropping Captain Marvel references- Pete:                They sure do. Alex:                 … and it certainly could be a aerospace engineer and she had a good relationship with him as a child in Captain Marvel in the movie. Pete:                That Duchy guy was like, “Hey, Rambo, I’ve seen Captain Marvel.” Justin:              Even the movie. Alex:                 Well, yeah. That’s the thing. If you’re in the MCU world, you’ve got to go see all the movies, what everybody’s talking about. Justin:              In the theater. Opening weekend, so. And you have to buy the big popcorn, if you live in the MCU. Alex:                 Right. And now it’s even worse in the MCU. They’ve got to wake up at 3:00 AM and watch their own show, otherwise they’re going to spoiled on Twitter later on that day. Justin:              No one would do that. That’s crazy. But, what was I going to say- Pete:                Something about water balloons? Justin:              Yeah. I was going to like, “I got to get my water balloons filled with shaving cream.” Going right now. Pete:                Yeah, you’ve got to be ready for Halloween, yeah. Justin:              You don’t think it’s going to be actual Captain Marvel? You think Talos isn’t more- Alex:                 I still think it feels like Monica has something weird about Captain Marvel. There is another mention there, there’s that showdown with Hayward that she has, right before they kicked out of S.W.O.R.D. where Hayward just drops, “I’m glad your mother died,” or whatever that line is. Justin:              I’m glad you weren’t here. Pete:                Yeah, y’all. That was messed up. How could nobody punch him? Justin:              I’m glad you weren’t here. Pete:                A room full of people, nobody punches him in the face for saying that? Alex:                 But he mentions Captain Marvel and they cut to Monica and there is a little micro expression that she has. So again, I think there is some bad blood there or something like that and we don’t know exactly what it is yet. A couple of other quick little things to throw out, Cataract. So when Darcy is searching, she finds the secret file, it’s called Cataract. She sends it to Jimmy Woo. I did a big search while she’s putting in the email, she sees James D. Gold, James J. Alexander and James X. [Sackler 00:19:45]-MD show up when she’s searching for Jimmy Woo. It’s a email address- Pete:                I think this is smart. Alex:                 Hold on. Hold on. Hold on, let me actually finish this thought. When she’s searching for Jimmy Woo’s address, she sends him the file on Cataract, so presumably next episode, since they’re outside the hex, probably they’re going to get that. James J. Alexander is a VFX producer for Marvel, so I think that’s the only real Easter egg there. But what do you think Cataract is? What’s going on? Pete:                Well, I think this is a smart way to have shows talk about cataracts, because it affects so many people, and if we’re not talking about it, you might have the symptoms and not even realize it, so I like this. It’s like a nod to the old G.I. Joe lesson at the end of the episode. Justin:              Oh, PSA. Pete:                Yeah, yeah. I think it was seamlessly introduced and I really… I think it’s important to make sure people are aware. Justin:              Well, let me throw this out to you. Cataract, obviously an eye… something that afflicts your eye. In the flashback to Sokovia, where Quicksilver had an eye patch at the beginning of the episode. I feel like Quicksilver, we’ll talk about this in a little bit, I feel like Quicksilver is maybe the villain in disguise as her brother. Is there a one eyed villain is somehow maybe at play here? Alex:                 Can I throw something else out at you with that flashback? Justin:              Yes. Alex:                 So, first of all, love that. Just classic sitcom flashback, really well done. Do think they were dressed up as Black Widow and Nick Fury? I think that’s what was going on there. Justin:              That’s what I thought, yeah. Alex:                 Yeah. So I think that’s what was going on. She has even antennae and some sort of weird bug thing and she had the Natasha hair. So I think that’s what’s going on there. I think if anything, the eye can refer to the fact that every single credit sequence so far has zoomed into Vision’s eye. We’ve had that. That is a repeated riff right at the end of the episode, in the credits, we go directly into a shot of Vision from the episode into his eye. Clearly Hayward is very interested in Vision, he’s tracking him, inside of the Hex, who he seems to be potentially experimenting on his body back at S.W.O.R.D. So, if anything, I think Cataract probably has something to do with Vision, not necessarily anything else. Pete:                Well, I want to talk about in that flashback. That lady was giving away full size fish, not the small fish. That was full size fish she was giving away. That’s [crosstalk 00:22:12]. Justin:              I always hated going trick or treating and just getting a bunch of minnows. You always got to go to the house with the big fish. The full fish. Alex:                 I’ll tell you what, one of the weirdest Halloween experiences I ever had with my kids was, we went to a house that was giving away celery and they loved it. They kept asking for celery. Justin:              Your kids loved it? Alex:                 They kept asking for celery for weeks afterwards. It was the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me. Justin:              That’s real? Alex:                 This is a 100% real story. Pete:                Why would you eat celery from a stranger’s house, man. That seems so creepy. Alex:                 I don’t know. It wasn’t this past Halloween. Justin:              That’s fine. Alex:                 We just went around in COVID times, we were like, “Give us celery.” Justin:              Yeah. Now I think you’re the one that’s having a psychotic break, not Pete. Were they handing- Pete:                Waking Wanda, man. Waking Wanda. Justin:              … naked stalks of celery? Alex:                 Yeah, that was it. Pete:                No peanut butter, ants on a log, nothing? Alex:                 No peanut butter, ants on a log, nothing. Justin:              Not prepackaged? Pete:                And your kids liked it? Alex:                 No, it wasn’t prepackaged celery. What are you talking about? Justin:              Like the ones that go in the bloody Mary’s. Pete:                Just loose celery? Alex:                 Single serving you pick up at a deli like, “Hey, give me a pack of smokes and one of them a single serve celeries, please? Justin:              Yeah, like the product I started, which is like Goger, but for celery? Speed is called speedlery? Pete:                I can’t believe your kids liked it. Alex:                 Pete, you always have that problem with opening up the celery package, right? So you’ve got to love that. Pete:                Oh, it’s so hard. It’s so hard. Alex:                 Can we get inside of the hex because there’s so much stuff to talk about and we’ve- Justin:              Oh, just real quick, I have to make a note to myself when I open Pete’s yogurts to make sure I pre-open the celery and slice it up so that he can eat it. Pete:                Dip it. Justin:              He can eat it. Pete:                Celery dip [inaudible 00:23:44]. Justin:              Celery and yogurt. My favorite. Pete:                Who’s excited about celery? What is wrong with your children? What are you doing to your kids where they’re excited about celery? Alex:                 I mean, they don’t have breeding holes in their rooms. Justin:              They’ve never tasted anything quite so interesting as in one stalk of celery. Alex:                 Lots of stuff going on here. Love the dynamic with the whole family. I thought this was super fun. Also, as we talked about in the last episode, people aren’t being very secretive with their powers anymore. If you’re going to talk about the lid popping off, Speed, Wiccan, for those who don’t know, for those who are new to the comics, Billy and Tommy are Wiccan and Speed, I got that right? Pete:                Don’t flex because you remembered it, right? Alex:                 No, I have it written down here, so I actually don’t forget. Justin:              When you advance into older age, remembering anything is a flex. Alex:                 Here’s the problem. In the comics there’s Tommy and there’s Teddy. And Teddy and Billy are boyfriends and I constantly confuse the names. Teddy and Tommy and I’m sorry. They are the same first letter and the same last letter and the same number of letters. Also eyeballed. Pete:                Sounds like a whole lot of excuses, you know what I mean? Alex:                 So, in the comics there are two parts of the Arg Avengers we talked about this a little bit last week as well. As we saw on the show, Tommy gets his speed powers, they’re very like Quicksilver, they can move fast. He also has a very similar costume, though not exactly the same costume as Quicksilver, and Billy has kind of undefined powers. In the comics he basically has to repeat things a bunch of times and he can warp reality like how Wanda can do in the comics, we get things that I think are a little more in line with her MCU nature here, where he has seemingly a little bit of telepathy. He can definitely move things, we see blue come out of his hands instead of red like his mom, but I like this. I’m excited that they’re pulling off their powers already. Justin:              Yeah, it’s exciting because this is the thing for sure now. Eventually we’re going to get… we talked about this. I think we’re going to get the Young Avengers. I don’t know what capacity they will be in. Pete:                I’m really worried about if they leave the bubble, if the kids can leave and they do leave, what that does to them, because in this episode they’re talking about how people’s cell structure changes if you go in and out, but if you’re born in there, what does that mean for you, trying to get anything into the outside world. Alex:                 I do think there’s something to be said for the fact that they seem to be aware and able to control the narrative in a very similar way to how [Nawanda 00:26:20] is. I think that’s the purpose of them doing the direct to camera throughout this episode, it’s not just the sitcom [inaudible 00:26:25], it’s also the fact that, like we see Billy can see outside the dome. He sees what’s going on with Vision, not dome, Hex. He see’s what’s going on with Vision, he understands there, so yeah, I think that’s the question, I think they need to get to a certain age where they can venture outside the Hex, because that’s probably the whole point of this, as they told us from the very beginning. Justin:              Exactly. Pete:                What? Alex:                 Yeah. Pete:                I don’t remember the beginning of the show where they said, “Listen, the whole point of this thing is we’ve got age some kids, so they’ll be okay to live outside of this bubble. Alex:                 For the children. For the children. For the children. It’s all for the children. They told us that in the third episode, where they also said, “You got to tell people what the magic trick is.” Justin:              Now in light of it, because we speculated that Agnes was the one driving a lot of this taking care of the kids stuff, and then in this episode, we see Agnes and she is fully under the hex, she… Vision breaks her out of it briefly, and she’s acting like just another scared person. Do you think… my theory is that she was doing that to try to push Vision even harder. So that was a little bit of play acting there. Alex:                 Yeah, I’m back on the Agnes Speed as of this episode, because versus the creepy lady that Pete calls out earlier, everybody else seems to be frozen in a very specific way, where they really cannot move. The lady is crying and she’s not moving. But when we cut in on Agnes in the car, it’s such a little thing, but she’s breathing. Justin:              And then we saw there’s a little movement that I thought was like, “That’s a purposeful thing.” Alex:                 So, whatever she is doing, she’s dressed as a witch, which just doubles down on the idea that she is Agatha Heartless in some form from the comics and is a witch, certainly that might turn into the YoMagic thing in some way potentially, because Scarlet Witch’s powers aren’t exactly magic, they’re science based. Pete:                Well, I think… wait, back up for a second. First yogurt is magic, so that’s what that is. Alex:                 How do they even make it? Nobody even knows. Pete:                Exactly. Justin:              It’s like milk, but hard. Pete:                Yeah. Justin:              And not too hard, but harder. Alex:                 If you translate yogurt from the Native Socovian, it means hard milk. So yes, I agree with you Justin, I think Agnes was pushing Vision in some way. I think she was aware the entire time, even when he did the mind stone touch on her head. What her purpose is, what she’s trying to do, I’m not 100% sure, but it might just be what happens at the end of the episode. They set up a situation where the hex gets expanded. Justin:              It feels like she’s been pushing Scarlet Witch to break through whatever this is. So I think she’s seeking some sort of end to the hex and maybe that’s to then take control of the children, but is she doing it for the children? Does she care about them or is she trying to use them as a weapon. I guess it goes to like, “Is she a good guy or a bad guy?” At the end of the day. Alex:                 I don’t know. I wonder. Because the show has this complete raw speculation that I’m just thinking about right now, but given that the show is really doubling down on trauma and that it is the whole point here that Wanda dealt with the death of Vision and many, many other people throughout her life, that we’re getting that from Monica, who very explicitly says, “I know what Wanda through,” and is relating that there. It certainly seems like, I think we talked about this the last episode, that Agnes went through some trauma herself. She has… there’s the moment when Billy and Tommy… looking at my notes here, say, “Why don’t you just bring Sparky back to life?” And Agnes starts crying and says, “You can do that.” Alex:                 I wonder if her kids died? I wonder if there was some sort of deal of she is manipulating Wanda, saying, “I can bring Vision back and in return I get these kids.” Whether Wanda knows that or not, whether she said that out loud, she’s trying to make new children for herself. Justin:              That’s interesting. That goes Pietro mentions the kids when he’s talking to Wanda later in the episode like, “Where do all these kids come from?” These kids. Pete:                Yeah so, well first off I wanted to say, I understand what you’re saying about Agnes but she was stuck on the edge of the town. So maybe she was trying to drive out like the doctor was before, and then they both, when they got to the edge of town, had this thing of, “Nobody escapes.” So I feel like she was trying to escape a little bit. Or you know those drives you take, where you just stop at a stop sign or a stop light and you just start crying and you just question your life and what’s going on and what are we all doing here? Are we in some fish tank of life, but I think that when the kids thing is, because all a sudden kids appeared in this episode and the Quicksilver sit down with Wanda, where he’s like, “Hey, I’m fuzzy on the details, but you know what’s going on, right? How did this all start?” Pete:                And she’s like, “I’m not sure.” Yeah, it goes back and forth, because Quicksilver seems like he’s the fun Quicksilver we know, but then when we see him with a bullet holes and stuff, it really just- Justin:              It’s less fun. Pete:                Yeah, it’s very less fun and it’s also like which is this actually the Quicksilver in that scene. Alex:                 This also might just be Evan Peter’s acting, but there’s much more of an edge to him than Aaron Taylor Johnson had in his performance. It feels like there’s something more going on there. I’m still not convinced this is Pietro from another universe or anything like that. I don’t know. They seem to strongly imply this episode, that this is Pietro’s re-animated body, but similar to others that we in the moment, where Vision doesn’t know that he was an Avenger, and there seems to be gaps in his memory, and he died, same as there’s gaps and things that are different and changed in Pietro’s memory. So, I guess what I’m saying is, I think it could go either way at this point. Alex:                 It could I guess be Pietro from another universe, though I’m not convinced, it also could be something that was created out of thin air in a way, similar to how Vision’s body was reconstituted, but maybe his mind wasn’t exactly. I’m not 100% sure, but we’ll find out. Justin:              These are all great points. Do you remember when Pete says he just goes for drives and cries himself out. Alex:                 I’ll tell you what, I don’t know about you, but my mind immediately went to him sitting there, listening to Driver’s License by Olivia Rodrigo, yogurt just pouring down the front of his shirt, his trunk full of celery, stocked. Justin:              Imagine if someone, a friend of yours was saying, “Oh, look at all this celery I bought.” You’ll be like, “This person’s lost it.” Because you don’t ever need more than one packet of celery. Alex:                 [inaudible 00:33:24] Justin:              That’s always… but [inaudible 00:33:29] bottom of my fridge? Alex:                 How many chicken pot pies are you making? Justin:              I’m having one bloody Mary and the rest goes straight in the trash. On the Pietro tip, I feel like he’s, if there is a villain in this show, I think he is the villain who is dressing up like Pietro. I think he’s working with the Agnes character. They’ve got Agnes’s job, up until this episode, was to be with Wanda and to watch her, push her, mind the kids. And then I think her job… because Pietro was there doing that. Agnes then switches to pushing Vision further through the story. Pete:                He also didn’t answer the question, he just deflected it. She asked him a very specific question, and he was like, “You’re testing me.” And didn’t answer the question. Justin:              She’s clearly suspicious of him. She’s asking him questions- Pete:                Why wouldn’t she be? Justin:              Yeah. So she knows subconsciously that this isn’t Quicksilver, but it’s playing on the same thing the trauma and the nostalgia factor that she’s… this caused her to create this hex anyway. Even in the beginning, she needs to see Vision. She wanted to have a family, she wants her brother to be there. So they’re taking advantage of what they know about her to serve their ends, whatever that is. Alex:                 Yeah, I think that seems fair. What other things, there’s a bunch of different Easter eggs and little things that I wrote down, but were there any other big seams you guys wanted to talk about that jumped out at you? Pete:     &nbs
36 minutes | a month ago
MarvelVision: WandaVision Episode 5 – “On A Very Special Episode…”
Things start breaking down in Westview as we recap WandaVision Episode 5, “On A Very Special Episode…” While the sitcom world transitions to the ’80s, outside Monica Rambeau tries to figure out what happened to her while she was under Wanda’s control, leading to a showdown with Hayward. And inside the Hex, when Tommy and Billy begin to grow up too fast, Vision starts to realize things are very, very wrong leading to a series of confrontations — and a surprise that we bet you didn’t see coming. Let’s break down all the WandaVision Easter eggs (that X-Men cameo!!), comic book references (Sparky!!), MCU references (Lagos!!) and more. SUBSCRIBE TO MARVELVISION ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. Full Episode Transcript: Alex:                 Welcome to MarvelVision, a podcast about Marvel, the MCU, and specifically WandaVision episode five, On a Very Special Episode. I am Alex. Justin:              I’m Justin. Pete:                I’m Pete. Alex:                 And man alive, guys, this was a big one. This is a potential universe changing episode of WandaVision. Justin:              Our universe. Alex:                 Yeah. What are you guys doing differently after this episode? I feel like just a new, fresh person, honestly. Justin:              I got a dead dog as a pet. I was like, let me just jump to the end. Alex:                 Nice. I electrocuted my dead dog. Pete:                I’m going to go back to sleep. Alex:                 Oh man, this is very early for Pete, but we’re very excited to talk about this, because again, this is a huge episode of WandaVision. Requisite spoiler warning here. We’re not going to talk about every single aspect of the episode. We’re not going to recap beat by beat, but we are going to get right into spoilers and talk through it. And there’s a lot of big things that happen. So if you haven’t watched episode five, again, episode five, On a Very Special Episode, check it out right now, and then head back here. Broad strokes, here’s what’s going on in this episode, just as a reminder. So now we’re splitting our time between the sitcom world of WandaVision and the real world of the MCU, which of course is our real- Justin:              Our reality, yes. Pete:                Very meta. Alex:                 In reality, Monica Rambeau is out of the Wanda Hex. We have a name called Hex. We’ll talk about that in a second. Darcy and Jimmy are trying to help her out and figure out what’s going on with Wanda. There’s a big confrontation outside with Hayward, who attacks Wanda inside, and we find out a lot of more…. There’s a lot of Easter eggs, a lot of questions there that, again, we’ll get back to in a moment. Inside the sitcom world, we’re in the 80s, Tommy and Billy growing up real quick. Lots of weirdness going on here, both with the residents of Westview and with Wanda and with Tommy and Billy. Agnes is getting more in the mix of everything that’s going on. And Vision is definitely becoming self-aware. Alex:                 We get a couple of notes that we’ve certainly wondered about. Some answers, more questions. And then the biggest one of all at the end, I don’t know if we want to talk about this right now, or we want to save it for a little later [crosstalk 00:02:29]- Pete:                Probably save it. Alex:                 But I’ll mention what it is. You all know if you’ve seen it. But Evan Peters shows up as Quicksilver, which is wild. Justin:              It is wild. Alex:                 Let’s let’s put it a little pin in that and come back because we have a huge discussion. First of all, as we do, let’s talk about the episode. What’d you think? I thought this was phenomenal. I was so excited that they’re bringing everything together, splitting the time between the two worlds. This is great. Justin:              So good. And a lot of people were like, “This is moving so slowly.” There’s all this criticism of how weird it is. It’s all laying the groundwork, and that’s the confidence that you get from a Marvel show, from the MCU, where they’re like, “We understand you might not get everything right from the first one, two episodes,” but it’s all worth it when they start to weave this stuff in and it’s just so much happening and so many revelations happening in this episode. Pete:                Guys, I want to go back to the 80s. You know, Jazzercise, you could give your kids liquor. I mean, those were the days, you know what I mean? Justin:              If the Vision grabbed your temples, you’d be like, “Hi, I’m Pete. I like it here. Please leave me here. I want to live here in this sitcom world.” Alex:                 Vision, get it together, right? We’re all stuck in this. Stop fighting it. Go get an Orange Julius, Julius. Things are going to be cool. Yeah, instead of calling your family and letting them know where you are, you’re going to immediately run off to a 7-Eleven Justin:              Just have someone punch me right in the crotch before the commercial break. That’s all I’m living for right now. I’m the funny one. Alex:                 To the point you were saying, Justin, I love how fast they’re whipping through story. I think going back to the first episode, we were like, “They’re going to be in sitcom land for eight episodes, and then we’ll see what the revelation is in episode nine.” Nope. They pretty much announced how quickly they’re going through it, I think, with episode four. We talked about this last time. This is only my suspicion here, but it really does feel like you got this first act, which is sitcom land, something’s wrong. The second act is Wanda versus Vision. And I still do think we’re going to see a twist here that this is not all Wanda, even though they’re doubling down very hard on it in this episode in particular. Justin:              But I do think we’re seeing what the cracks there in the theory that Wanda’s bad. Hayward’s clearly an overarching villain here, and I think Agnes is- Pete:                Agnes is in on it. Justin:              At the core of this somehow, obviously, as well. So I do think we’re going to get… Even the mailman at the end of sort of like… He seems suspect. And I just don’t trust mailmen in general. [crosstalk 00:05:01]. Alex:                 What’s their agenda? That’s what I want to know. Justin:              They’re always at my house. Alex:                 Deliver mail. Justin:              Every day they got something to give me? Suspect. Pete:                Well, if you didn’t order all those crazy Amazon packages, maybe they wouldn’t have to be there. Justin:              I’m on my computer and they show up in real life from this guy. Alex:                 Let’s talk about Agnes. I think that’s a good place to start, because we get a lot of Easter eggs here about that. Certainly there’s been a lot of speculate… Pete:                I mean… Alex:                 Yes, Pete, Pete:                Let’s talk about that Jazzercise outfit. That was glorious. It brings me right back. Justin:              Brings you back? What are you talking about? It’s not like you were an adult in the 80s Jazzercising. Pete:                No, but my mom was. It was fun to see those outfits. Like, “Hey, you know what? Kids will shut up if you give them booze.” I was like, “Oh yeah, this was the time.” Justin:              Could you send us that picture of your mom in the Jazzercise outfit that you keep talking about? Pete:                That’s creepy and no. Justin:              You said it. You said it. Pete:                No, no, no. When you say it it’s creepy. Justin:              You said it, it’s creepier. Pete:                The binkies bit was just fun television, you know what I mean? The dad coming in with them in both ears. I mean, that’s classic physical comedy. Alex:                 I do want to talk about, actually, the easter eggs with Agnes in a second, but to the point that you’re making, Pete, I love getting back to the sitcom tropes here. I think something that they’ve been pushing really hard that I think a lot of viewers have been struggling with… Forgive me, I know Pete’s going to yell at me for this, but the jokes aren’t very funny most of the time, but that’s okay. They are very much 80s sitcom style jokes. They perfectly fit the era. Pete:                Still hold up. I don’t know what the you’re talking about, not funny. Alex:                 Nope. Pete:                Did you see those binkies? Justin:              Stop saying binky as such an adult man. Well let me say this. I think the jokes in the first couple of episodes when the sitcom world- Alex:                 Hey Justin, take the binkie out of your ear. Justin:              Those are headphones. In the first couple episodes, the jokes were strong when the sitcom reality was strong. And now that Wanda’s attention is split between so many things and there’s all these problems starting to emerge, I think this is purposeful. She doesn’t have as much time to mentally write good sitcom jokes. I really think that’s… My takeaway from this episode is the stories in the sitcom are getting dumber because Wanda’s attention is split. Alex:                 Yeah, she’s got so much going on. The little writer’s room in her head is having a tough time keeping up with all of it. Justin:              How’s the writers’ room in your head, Pete? They’ve been passing out booze for a couple of seasons now, let me be honest. Alex:                 Let’s get back to the Agatha/Agnes easter eggs. We’ve certainly spent- Justin:              Dropping Agatha [crosstalk 00:07:39]. Alex:                 A lot of people have speculated that she is Agatha Harkness from the comics who ends up taking care of the kids. I believe takes care of Wanda and Pietro’s kids. Here she straight up calls herself auntie Agnes, says she has some tricks up her sleeve. But the big thing, I think, for overarching with the show that you were mentioning, Justin, is she seems to be aware in some way. I don’t know if she’s the villain necessarily, but she certainly has known what is going on and does know what’s going on. We talked about this with the last episode… Not last episode, two episodes back as well, where people seem to have different levels of awareness of what’s happening. But Agatha… I keep calling her Agatha. Agnes is definitely at the top of that chain. Justin:              And we see in this episode that Wanda is comfortable enough with her to use her powers in front of her. There’s definitely some… I feel like she’s being manipulated by Agnes in some way. I think when the Vision calls out that she used her powers in front of her, that was a moment where it felt like Wanda wasn’t quite sure why she did something, which is the only instance of that. And I also thought it was telling the Agnes is like, “Do you want me to take that again?” Because I should have the kids in my care. She wants the kids, the kids are her focus. She seems like she’s operating in and around Vision and Wanda so that she can have more time have control over the kids. Pete:                Oh, that’s interesting. But you know, as a classically trained actor, the take it from the top is something that is used in stage and television. Wouldn’t you say that? Justin:              Thank you, yes. Alex:                 That’s a great inside baseball tip right there, Pete. Pete:                But this show does love sitting in these awkward moments, these kind of painful moments of like, “Let’s take it from the top.” “What are you talking about?” [crosstalk 00:09:25]. Oh God, yeah. Justin:              When the reality breaks. It’s almost like they were going to go back to one. Pete:                Look at this guy. Alex:                 Like you’re saying, Pete, I think this episode did this really well in particular. We got, in the first episode, just that, “No stop it, stop it” moment that broke the reality. Here we’re going back and forth from the camera angles to what’s going on in the scenes. It comes in close and has a more modern style whenever the reality starts breaking down. And it’s pretty much constant. It’s non-stop here. To the point that it’s alarming to watch, and I think purposely so, because it’s breaking cinema convention. You’re getting all of these things all at the same time. Justin:              But what also, I think, is so cool about this is cinema convention caught up with reality over the course of these decades of television they’re dealing with it, so that modern TV is meant to feel as much like everyday life in a lot of ways. You get hand held camera work and all that now. So as reality is creeping in on the sitcoms world of the show, the same pace that reality crept in reality looking television crept in on TV. It’s a little bit of a mindfuck, And I think that I’m in a Hex of some sort. Alex:                 It’s catching on. Justin:              But it makes everything really works so well, I think. Alex:                 Yeah, the other thing… I know I’ve been doubling down on this pretty much every episode, but one thing that I really liked about this one in particular, given everything that was going on, it really had a very strong theme about grief and how you deal with grief and it hit it on every level. I know a couple of people commented and pushed back on me, both in our Patreon Slack and on Twitter about- Pete:                It’s my favorite thing to do. Alex:                 [Crosstalk 00:11:10] love… Oh, was it all you, Pete, with different alts accounts? Pete:                Burners? I love pushing back on you, regardless of what’s happening. Alex:                 I didn’t love last episode because I liked what they did, and I thought there were some really smart choices, but particularly when it came to Monica Rambeau, I liked what they set up, but it didn’t feel like it panned out over the whole entire episode. The theme with her and her grief over her mother’s death and missing that really played out in this episode. It played out with Wanda, of course, in the quote unquote real world. But it also played out in the sitcom world, which is what I think the last episode was missing a little bit, because we get this whole storyline with Sparky that ties in with the kids, with Wanda, with Vision, with everything. Very smartly written across the board, and I liked that quite a bit. Pete:                Well, you guys had to be nervous when you saw that dog because you know the rule in television, that dog’s got to die so those kids learn about responsibility. That was a scary moment when they’re teaching this dog tricks. I was like, “This is going too well.” [crosstalk 00:12:09]. Alex:                 Is that a thing that regularly happens, they kill dogs on television? Pete:                That’s how I learned about responsibility. Justin:              Yeah. That’s how Pete learned how to kill a dog. Alex:                 I do remember there was an episode of full house where they got a dog and then by the end it was just a bloody smear on the pavement. Pete:                You got it, dude. Justin:              To your point, Alex, I do think Monica dealing with her mom’s death makes her the only character that really, I think, sympathizes and understands what Wanda’s actually going through. And we see that in the scene, the confrontation scene at the end of the episode, and that’s why Monica is so important, and she’s really the leader of the Jimmy and Darcy triumvirate that are going to be sort of our outside heroes here. Alex:                 Do you want to talk about outside the Hex a little bit, because I think there were so many different things going on there that we possibly could plumb through. Certainly, like you mentioned, there’s the grief thing. I do love the three of them working together. I think that’s super fun. Justin:              Great trio. Pete:                Oh, for sure. Alex:                 The Hex, I’m sure comic book fans caught onto this, but just in case, there are people who are not diehard comic book fans listening to this podcast. Wanda’s powers in the comics are called hex powers. They riff on this a little bit when Hayward and Jimmy Woo talk about does she have a cute nickname or anything like that? No, she doesn’t. She’s not really called Scarlet Witch in the MCU, though I expect we’ll be calling her that by the end of the series. So that was all fun. But there’s a bunch of questions that get brought up as well. Little things that are teases. One, Monica goes through these scans after she comes out of the Hex, and it seems like maybe she is empty from the scan, they need to do blood tests again. We know from the comics, she becomes Captain Marvel, Photon, bunch of different names, Monica Rambeau sometimes. So this certainly seems to be the first hint of her powers. But what do you think’s going on here? Are we actually going to see her power up in this series? Justin:              I think so. That’s what the test results really told me. And I think she’s going to be called Photon, which is what her mom’s nickname was, and I think she’ll take on that moniker. It seems like tests weren’t working on her because she is perhaps made of light or something like that. Pete:                Oh, I thought she was dead and a ghost, because usually when you can’t see organs and stuff like that, that’s what that means. Justin:              Usually when you can’t see organs. How is your ghost hunting going, Pete? Pete:                That’s great. Shh. Oh, I thought I heard something. Alex:                 I love the idea that when you look at people, Pete, you’re like, “I don’t see skin color, I just see a big bag of organs.” Justin:              Or you’re like, every person you see, you’re like, “Yep. Organs. Not dead. So far so good. No ghost.” Pete:                Not dead. Not a ghost. Don’t fuck with me, man. Alex:                 In the comics I believe she’s able to turn herself into different wavelengths of light, is that right, or is it different wavelengths of energy? Justin:              I don’t know. I mean, Photon, I think it’s light focused [crosstalk 00:15:07]. Harsh question from Alex. Pete:                It’s too early for that kind of shit. Justin:              Yeah, the sun hasn’t come up yet. Alex:                 So that’s one thing. Another thing that is going on with her is she comes up with a method of getting inside the Hex. We’ve actually seen some of this in teasers. So it is something that they potentially try out. But she figures out if she has basically a huge lab on wheels, she might be able to get in there and says, “I know somebody who can help me with this,” and texts, I believe an aerospace engineer. Who she texted? This is my favorite part of the show. Justin:              Who she texted. Pete:                Who she texted. Who she texted. Alex:                 I liked the pause there, where we’re like, “Oh, now we need to follow this up with information.” Justin:              But we were letting theme song end, for who you’re texting. I mean, my first thought was Captain Marvel. Alex:                 Well probably not. She has a weird reaction when somebody mentions Captain Marvel and I do wonder… They haven’t explicitly stated this, but I do wonder if there’s some sort of her relating Captain Marvel to letting her mom die. That maybe Captain Marvel’s space radiation gave her cancer or something like that. I wonder if we’re going to find that out, because again, I think it was Darcy mentioned Captain Marvel and she just brushed over that and moved past it. Justin:              What I thought that was, was she was like, “I’ll text my aerospace engineer friend,” and then a second later she like, “Captain Marvel,” I thought she was like, “How’d you know who I was texting?” That was my take on it, but I don’t know. Pete:                She was like, “I’m going to text Samuel L. Jackson,” and then look right at the camera. Alex:                 Find out what’s in his wallet? Justin:              Who did you think? Pete:                Oh, I thought it was originally, when they were kind of describing things, I was like, “Oh man, I want it to be a van time machine so bad because I think Paul Rudd would be hilarious in this little trio of people,” but I don’t know. Alex:                 Okay, so you thought maybe Ant-Man? Pete:                Yep. Alex:                 All right. I wrote down a couple of possibilities. The first one that I thought it was Bruce Banner. That made sense to me. I know he’s not an aerospace engineer, but you know, Marvel universe. Pete:                Why would that makes sense, then? Alex:                 Marvel universe scientists, it doesn’t matter, they can do anything. The other one that came to mind was Talos from Captain Marvel, Ben Mendelsohn’s character. I don’t know if he’s an aerospace engineer necessarily, but I think kid Monica in Captain Marvel, if I remember correctly, was friendly with Talos. They hung out together, right? Justin:              Yeah. But of the ones we’ve just said, between Samuel L. Jackson from the Capital One commercial campaign, Captain Marvel, and Talos, I think Captain Marvel is the more likely get. Alex:                 Hold on. Hold on. I have two more possibilities. I have two more. Are you ready? Pete:                The dog. Alex:                 The dog. She was texting the dog. As we know, his name’s Sparky. Justin:              His name’s Sparky, Pete. It’s Dr. Sparky, aerospace engineer. Alex:                 Riri Williams. What about Riri Williams? We do know there’s an Ironheart show coming down the road. She certainly knows a lot about tech. We haven’t met her yet, so that might be kind of a fun introduction there. Justin:              That’d be very cool. I would be surprised if she was introduced in this fashion, but that would be awesome. Alex:                 I have another one. This is a crazy theory. Pete:                Wow, this is fun. You’re just spit balling ideas. Alex:                 This is the last one. This is the last one. Justin:              Who she texted? Pete:                Who she texted? Alex:                 This is what our podcast is about, just brainstorming. Justin:              This is a game show within the podcast called Who She Texted? Pete:                Who she texted? Alex:                 What do you think, is there a possibility that it’s Mr. Fantastic? Pete:                What? Justin:              Yeah. Do you think they’re going to… Because there was some speculation in some of the earlier episodes, I guess last episode when she’s walking into the lab, but you see them working on a spaceship of some sort. If they just drop Reed Richards as like, “Hey, this is a young doctor, aerospace engineer named Reed Richards,” and then we don’t say anything about it. That feels crazy for a mid season drop, but… Pete:                I was rewatching it, and if you look really close, while she’s texting, she’s mumbling, “This fucking stretchy piece of shit better answer.” So maybe it is. Alex:                 Well, just to talk about that theory, Pete, a little further, and then we’ll move on from here. But what Justin was saying about the Fantastic Four thing. Last episode we saw Monica goes into S.W.O.R.D. There’s a rocket they’re building in the background. Hayward talks about how everybody has failed out of the space flight program, and certainly the S.W.O.R.D uniforms are blue and white, which is the classic Fantastic Four colors. So there’s a way of drawing a line that they don’t have to follow this. Like a lot of the MCU things, sometimes they drop things and then they go in an entirely different direction. Pete:                Do they? Alex:                 Well they do sometimes. Like they mentioned Dr. Strange, but it didn’t necessarily follow up. There’s other things like that. Pete:                That’s who I thought it was at the door. Alex:                 We’ll get to that in a moment. But it’s possible that this could be setting up a thing where they failed out, they get these astronauts, the Fantastic Four, who steal this rocket, take it into space. We get a riff on their classic origin story. And introducing- Pete:                Nothing like a riff. Alex:                 Whoever is Reed Richards this way would be huge, and I think make a lot of sense. Justin:              Yes, that would be such a strong… Don’t you think that would overtake some of the story here? Alex:                 I do think so. I agree with you, except for what happens at the end of the episode, which already established that sort of thing of taking things over. All right, a couple of other things we should… I mean, there’s a lot else we should be talking about, but let’s go back inside of the dome. Pete:                We should be talking about postcards. Do you remember postcards? That was a nice ad for postcards right there at the start in the opening credits. Man, those are fun. Justin:              We get the opening credits to Family Ties obviously here. My daughter has entered the chat, so she’ll be speaking briefly over the course of this. But we get the Family Ties opening sequence, which we’re all a fan of. Alex:                 I did love, and this reminded me, how nonsensical 80s theme songs are. This always bothers me. The entire theme song, which they nailed perfectly in this, is we’re doing the best we can over and over. So you’re like, “Oh, the name of the show is Doing the Best We Can,” but nope it’s WandaVision. Justin:              That’s very true. And what was the other line in there? We’re making it up as we go along, which I thought was very cool. Alex:                 The theme song was great. Love seeing Vision as a baby, Vision growing up in the credits. That was also very funny. Pete:                Very interesting to see the kids rocking the Vision stuff as well for a little while. So that was kind of cool. Alex:                 Lots more to talk about, though. We haven’t really even talked about the meat of the episode, which is Vision versus Scarlet Witch as he becomes more and more aware over the course of this episode, pushes back on Wanda, by the end they’re in the air yelling at each other. He doesn’t know his life before Westview. What’d you think about this whole arc? Pete:                I’m glad he’s finally putting things together because for a machine he was kind of acting dumb. And then finally when he calls out her entrance. She was like, “Oh, why do you look so formal?” He was like, “Probably someone’s going to pop by right in time with the thing we need.” Yeah, I thought that was great the way he called that. And he’s putting things together and it’s not adding up. And the part at his job made a lot of a sense, and I’m so glad that he did that. I’ve been impressed with the Vision in this episode… Alex:                 I know we’re releasing this as an audio podcast, but I love the fact on video just more and more things are coming in Justin’s view. Justin:              Reality is being invaded right now. I got daughter who woke up way before she usually does, and my dog is going to be hearing all this dead dog talk, and it’s like, “What the fuck are you talking about?” Pete:                Pip don’t slip, so Pip’s not going to stand for any bad talking Sparky. Alex:                 This conflict is so hard to watch. And I loved the job that Paul Bettany does in this episode in particular, just how broken he is by the end. He doesn’t remember his life. He doesn’t know what’s going on. We know that he died. We talked about it, I think, the last episode. What did Wanda do? Pick up his corpse and walk across several states? Turns out she did. Justin:              She did. And I think we see that Hayward has been experimenting on the Vision corpse, which Jimmy Woo is like, “Hey, that’s not cool.” And he totally just glosses over it. So I thought all that stuff was cool. It is weird to me that Hayward is just being a straight up villain. Alex:                 I don’t think he’s an overarching villain so much as corporate dick. We’ve seen this time- Pete:                Douchy kind of agent dude. Yeah, that’s classic. Justin:              But he’s just outwardly… I thought he would be a little more secretly evil. Alex:                 No, but he’s shooting Wanda with a rocket. He does the classic, “No, it’s a drone. It’s fine. Just kidding. Shoot her down with a missile,” which leads to that moment that made me say, “Oh shit,” at home alone, watching this, when Wanda [crosstalk 00:24:26] comes out of the dome… When Wanda comes out of the dome wearing her costume the last time we saw her, and that was Endgame. She is talking with a very deep Sokovian accent, which has been a big question people have had throughout the series. This moment was great. Justin:              This episode, we haven’t really talked about it yet, is about Wanda’s powers. She is powered up in the Marvel universe in this episode in a way that we knew from the comics, but it was a big move for the show. Alex:                 Well, I think this is a big question that, to my mind, and maybe I’m thinking about it too much, points to the fact that she is not the villain here, because… And Jimmy and Darcy bring this up. We know that she had telepathy. We know that she had… What’s the other one? Telekinesis. And she’s super strong. But manipulating and changing matter is not something that we’ve necessarily seen in her power set. So there’s steps missing there. The mind stone is not in Vision anymore. It is destroyed. She has Vision’s body, but just because she has Vision’s body doesn’t mean that she can do all of these other things. Maybe it does, but there’s certainly like… Right now, we’re A to C and we don’t have the B. Pete:                Also, speaking of her powers, it was kind of crazy how her powers didn’t really work on her kids at all. That was very interesting when she was trying to get the babies to shut up. And I was really worried what she was going to do to those kids. But it seems like the kids are controlling themselves and aren’t succumbed to her power at all. Alex:                 Yeah, what’s your take on Tommy and Billy right now? Justin:              I think because they were created in this reality, they aren’t beholden to it. And I think they are going to… We’re going to walk out of this show with them being real people that have a power set and that know everything about what happened in there. Wanda sees it, and I think it works great in two ways. As a superhero story, the fact that these kids were created out of nothing and now are going to be characters is really cool. Pete:                You don’t know that, though. Justin:              I don’t know that, but that’s what… Pete:                When the sitcom ends, maybe they end. Sitcoms are sad like that. Justin:              Wow. Interesting. They don’t kill the actors at the end of a sitcom, Pete. I hate to tell you. Not like the dogs. My daughter just grew up too. Now she’s 10. Pete:                Oh wow. Congrats. Happened fast. Alex:                 That’s great. Let’s talk about the end of the episode. I think we need to jump and talk about that because that’s obviously the huge thing that’s breaking the internet right now. We’ve gotten mentions of Pietro before, which was very emotional, a couple of episodes back. But here we get the thing that we kind of speculated about and turns out to be exactly what happens. We get a classic 80s recasting, as Darcy points out, but it’s not just any recasting. It’s Quicksilver at the door, but it’s played by Evan Peters from the X-Men franchise. This is huge. People are freaking out. They’re like, “This is it. This is the multiverse. It’s coming.” We know this show is setting up Doctor Strange 2: Multiverse of Madness. We know it’s setting up in some way, Spider-Man 3, which also deals with the multiverse. Here’s what I’ll throw out to you guys. Pete:                Wait wait wait. Alex:                 Yes. Pete:                When you saw the back of the head of the person at the door, what were your guys’ first thoughts? Justin:              I was like, “Old person.” Gray hair. I was like- Pete:                Captain America. Justin:              Oh, interesting. Pete:                I thought Captain America was going to ring the doorbell and be like, “Yo, I need that stone. I got to go back and fall in love and have some real fun. So I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I need the stone.” Because it did look like an old person. And then I thought maybe Mr. Fantastic because of the gray. But then I was completely shocked by Quicksilver. Alex:                 I mean, I think what you’re supposed to think is that it’s Quicksilver, it’s Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and then the camera comes around and it’s actually Evan Peters being classic 80s brother coming into town douchebag, which is great. Pete:                Don’t call him a douchebag. You don’t know that yet. Alex:                 No, but that’s what the character is in the 80s sitcom. But the question in my mind, is this Evan Peters as Quicksilver from the X-Men franchise or is it a town member of Westview who has been recast as Quicksilver? Or is it something else entirely? Justin:              And don’t know how they’d justify any of that? Where is that going to come in? Who’s manipulating this? Is this someone from the Agnes/Agatha side of it, who’s pushed this out there to help the manipulation of Wanda? Because this isn’t a plan coming from the S.W.O.R.D. people. Pete:                It’s not planned from Wanda, because she doesn’t know who’s at the door. Alex:                 Right. There’s certainly something else going on here. Regardless of what’s happening, it’s very exciting to see Evan Peters as Quicksilver. He was one of the highlights of, not the best [crosstalk 00:29:31] one might say, X-Men movies, but he’s awesome and he’s an awesome actor. I’m very excited to see what he does. Pete:                His parts in the X-Men movie were my favorite parts, the reason that I would watch it. Alex:                 Absolutely Justin:              The sequence where he puts on Time in a Bottle. That’s just epic. Alex:                 And also it’s going to be… I’m curious to see how they execute this. I’m curious to see how it happens, whether they do reference X-Men at all. I’m doubtful they will. I think it’s more going to be about Quicksilver and we may see Aaron Taylor-Johnson down the road as well. Pete:                Because I thought maybe this was the twins’ doing, because one of the kids was like, “Mom, where’s your brother. Do you have a brother?” And she’s like, “Yeah, but he’s not here.” And when she was like, “Oh, I don’t know who’s at the door.” I was like, “Could be the twins making some magic happening.” Alex:                 That’s interesting. I wonder about that theory because we don’t know a lot about them yet, but I do like the idea of- Pete:                They’re 10 now, so… Alex:                 Well they’re 10 now- Pete:                Good to know. Alex:                 Which is a bad age. Pete:                Shots fired. Justin:              Wow, slammed. Alex:                 It’s fine, [crosstalk 00:30:38]- Pete:                Isn’t one of your kids 10? Alex:                 Yeah. Before we wrap up here, I’m sure there’s a couple of other things we need to call out. We didn’t mention this earlier, but Sparky is from the Vision comics by Tom King and Gabriel Walta. He is a- Pete:                Died in that comic too. Alex:                 Died in that comic too. Very sad. But nice to see him here, albeit briefly. What else? There were a couple of other things. Justin:              The commercial. We want to talk about the commercial? For Lagos brand paper towels. And that’s obviously a reference to Captain America: Civil War, the fight in Lagos. And I think this cements our theory we had that maybe these commercials are just all the trauma moments in Wanda’s life. Pete:                Because that paper towel didn’t look like it was doing that good of a job. I mean, that commercial wasn’t… Justin:              You nailed it, Pete. You’re right. Alex:                 Well that’s the point. The narration says, “For when you make a mess you didn’t mean to.” And if you don’t remember Civil War, Wanda accidentally took Crossbones, threw him into a building and a bunch of people died, which caused the Sokovia Accords, which we also get a little mention of here. Last thing I had a question about, this bothered me a little bit, and they’ve been doing this throughout the series. I think Monica says she could have taken out Thanos on her own if he hadn’t initiated a blitz. Did everybody see Avengers Endgame? Did they watch the movie? What’s going on? How do they know all of this stuff? Justin:              A blitz that she said, right? Alex:                 Yeah. Justin:              I don’t know. Maybe that just means the attack. Pete:                Didn’t she say a blintz? Those are delicious. Alex:                 Yeah, [crosstalk 00:32:10] a cheese blintz. I’m sure they read the reports, but there’s something about it where they’re like, they’re all fans of Avengers Endgame, they saw it four times in the theaters. Pete:                I was hoping they would all quiz each other. Alex:                 Cheered at the portal scene like everybody else. Pete:                Be like, “Did you stay after the credits.” Alex:                 “There was nothing, but it was still really nice, like there was a little bit. It was just really nice to pay tribute to the whole cast. Hey, did you know we have like 10 minutes of credits on this show.” Last little thing that I’ll mention that I thought was interesting. Pete:                Don’t say that. Anytime you say last thing- Alex:                 I know, there’s several more things, you’re right. Pete:                It’s never the last thing and it drives me fucking crazy. Alex:                 I’m really sorry. This really is the last thing that I have to say. Pete:                Not it’s not. Alex:                 We talked about this previously when they were putting up Jimmy Woo’s theory wall, Agnes didn’t have an ID and Dottie wasn’t on the wall. We see the wall again. Same thing, even though time’s past, Agnes still doesn’t have an ID, Dottie still isn’t on the wall, which definitely raises some questions about that, I think. Pete:                Great. Well you can’t say another thing on this whole podcast because you said last thing. So Justin, let’s have some fun. Alex:                 Before we wrap up here then, what is on your vision board for the next episode, Pete? Pete:                You said another thing. Alex:                 What are you talking? Justin:              I think we’re going to get the big confrontation between Vision, a larger version of the confrontation between Vision and Scarlet witch. Alex:                 Pete, what about you? What’s on your vision board? Pete:                I just wanted to say that what’s nice is they had a great moment in the show where they showed her outfit from when she was on the sitcom, and something in the 80s that is great can be bulletproof in today’s world. So just think about bringing back some great outfits from the 80s, because they’re really [crosstalk 00:33:45]. Alex:                 For next episode? Justin:              Quite a takeaway from this episode, Pete. Pete:                Things in the 80s are bulletproof now, is what I’m saying. Justin:              80s fashion is bulletproof is what you’re saying. Pete:                That’s right. Alex:                 Two things I want to see on my vision board for the next episode. I want to of course, find out more of what’s going on with Evan Peters’ Quicksilver. That’s very exciting. We need to get some sort of potential answers there. But also the overarching thing, bouncing off of what you mentioned, Justin, is I still think we’re going to see the Vision Scarlet Witch confrontation conclude, not next episode probably, but yeah, I guess next episode, potentially propelling us into the final act, revealing whoever the real villain behind this whole thing is. And that’s what we’re going to see in the last three episodes is them teaming up together to figure out this issue and get past it. That’s what I want to see. We’ll see if that actually happens or maybe they’ll double down on Wanda’s trauma and she really is the real villain after all. Justin:              What sitcom do you think we’re going to jump into next? Obviously we had Family Ties here and a lot of Mr. Belvedere as I predicted. What do you think- Pete:                Definitely Mr. Belvedere? I’m done with that. Justin:              Really happy with a lot of Belvedere stuff. Alex:                 I don’t know, are we going to jump ahead all the way to the 2000s and get The Office style sitcom, or is it going to be… What is a 90s sitcom? Justin:              I think any of the TGIFs [crosstalk 00:35:00]- Pete:                We’ve got a lot of rad dudes. What are you talking about? Justin:              The fact that they introduced Quicksilver as the brother feels very Full Housey to me, where they can be like, “What are we all doing in here? Cool uncle Quicksilver’s here.” Pete:                Uncle Jesse. Alex:                 Wait, what about Seinfeld? Could they do Seinfeld? Justin:              Feels like a strong tonal shift. Alex:                 I guess we’ll see what happens. And thank you all for tuning in for this episode. If you’d like to support this podcast, patreon.com/comicbookclub. Also we do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM to Crowdcast and YouTube. Come hang out. We would love to theorize about WandaVision with you. iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice to subscribe and listen to the show, @MarvelVisionPod on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Comicbookclublive.com for this podcast and many more. Until next time, Marvel you later. Pete:                Give your kids booze. Justin:              Give your kids booze. Is that what you said? Wow. Okay. Maybe that’ll get her to go back to sleep. The post MarvelVision: WandaVision Episode 5 – “On A Very Special Episode…” appeared first on Comic Book Club.
43 minutes | a month ago
MarvelVision: WandaVision Episode 4 – “We Interrupt This Program”
WandaVision Episode 4 takes things outside the dome, and officially brings Monica Rambeau, Jimmy Woo and Darcy Lewis into the series. Geraldine, a.k.a. Monica, post-Blip, discovers that something is very wrong in WestView. Things only get weirder from there as SWORD tries to find out who is manipulating Wanda, leading to a shocking twist. Join us as we break down all the WandaVision Easter eggs, spoilers and comic book references in “We Interrupt This Program.” SUBSCRIBE TO MARVELVISION ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. Full Episode Transcript: Alex:              Welcome to Marvel Vision, a podcast about the MCU, Marvel, and specifically WandaVision. We’re going to be talking about episode four of WandaVision. Pete:                We interrupt this program. Alex:                 Thank you, Pete. Justin:              That’s… Wow, way to show and not tell, Pete. Alex:                 I’m Alex. Justin:              I’m Justin. Pete:                I’m Pete. Justin:              Shouty Pete. Alex:                 And we are very excited to talk about episode four of season one, maybe the only season, we don’t know. Right now it’s a limited series, we’ll see what happens. Justin:              Alex, stop talking about these harsh realities. Pete:                Yeah, geez. Alex:                 Maybe this is the final season of humanity. Pete:                Oh, wow man. Justin:              Jesus, Alex is going through it. This show is in your head. Alex:                 Pretty soon, as soon as my reality bending powers, as soon as my hex powers develop, that’s it for all of you, that’s all I’m saying. Pete:                Well, if you keep eating those sketchy ass Oreos, yeah, I’m sure it might happen for you. Alex:                 Fair enough. Justin:              Yup, that’s how it works. Alex:                 So, here’s what we’re going to do, first of all, go watch WandaVision episode four, because we’re going to be talking very broad strokes, probably immediately veer off into theories and things like that, there’s so much to talk about in this episode. Justin:              Certainly. Alex:                 So definitely watch that first, because spoilers past this point. We probably could talk quality-wise what we thought about this episode versus the other episodes, as well as theories, speculation, and Easter eggs and things like that, but before we do, it’s time for everybody’s favorite segment, or rather, Pete’s favorite segment, which is corrections and additions. Corrections and additions. Pete:                We interrupt this program! Justin:              Just so we’re clear, this is when Alex walks us through things that he found, that he said incorrectly, and Pete and I don’t ever acknowledge any mistakes. Pete:                That’s right. Alex:                 Yup, pretty much. So the first one, right off. This is one that we called right off at the beginning of the third episode, I griped about the lack of episode titles for the show. Justin:              Yes. Alex:                 The little caveat here is we actually taped episode three of our podcast before they released episode titles, now they are there. Justin:              Yes. Alex:                 I’ll read them off, so I don’t get them wrong. The first one is Filmed Before A Live Studio Audience, second one is Don’t Touch That Dial, third one, Now In Color, and the fourth one is We Interrupt This Pro- Pete:                We interrupt this program! Justin:              He gets it, he gets it. Alex:                 I feel like there’s a pattern there, I haven’t really caught on to what it is yet, but there’s definitely something going on. Justin:              I can’t think of anything because of all the shouting from Pete. Alex:                 Regardless, though, that’s what’s going on. Obviously, they’re calling on TVTropes throughout there, so that’s pretty cool. A couple of other things, these are little Easter eggs people have mentioned to us either on Twitter, or on our Patreon slack, Patreon.com/comicbookclub. Come join us, hang out, we’ve been speculating wildly about- Justin:              It’s fun. Alex:                 It is fun. About WandaVision. So one thing, this is from the first episode, a lot of folks caught on to this, but Agnes called out if she, I’m forgetting the exact line, but she mentions some beer, and she says the beer would be named June 2nd, after her anniversary with Ralph, that was the start of the Salem witch trials, a lot of people caught on to this, certainly there’s been a fair amount of speculation about what’s going on with Agnes, I’m sure we’ll have more this episode as well, but yeah, there you go. More evidence that maybe she is not just a regular resident of Westview, but perhaps the witch, Agatha Harkness from the comic books. Justin:              Hundred percent. Alex:                 This is one that nobody thought it was as interesting as I did, but I thought it was interesting. The name of the town they’re in is Westview, which is W V, just like Wandavision, I don’t think that’s a clue. Pete:                Oh! Justin:              No, that’s just letters, that’s just reading letters. Alex:                 No, but what the show is doing really well, even through episode four, without jumping ahead, is they’re layering in things that aren’t necessarily like, this is a clue, this is a clue, but just additional things that show that they are paying attention to every detail that is going on. Justin:              That’s right, and that’s not an Easter egg, that’s what we call an Easter basket, which is the not fun part, but a detail that did happen. Alex:                 It’s equally tasty though. Justin:              True, eat your whole basket, and I mean the whole thing. Alex:                 Start with the basket, eat your basket before you get your candy, that’s what my parents always said. We’re Jewish. Justin:              I save the basket for last. Pete:                I want to just say though, in the beginning of the ep, when they ask the cops where they’re from, and they say Eastview, I touched my heart, because Eastview mall is where I grew up and would ride my bike to to play video games and stuff like that, so that was just like, a little personal shout out. Alex:                 Are you an Easter egg, Pete? Justin:              Yeah, he’s our Easter egg, and eventually he’s going to hatch into a full blown Easter monster. Pete:                They had this creepy theme song though that always fucked with me, it was like ‘Eastview mall, just around the corner’, like it was this creepy thing that you couldn’t escape if you ever went there and I did feel like I was in this kind of like, time warp trap thing playing video games for hours on end. Justin:              There it is. Alex:                 I’m very excited about this, you’re going to bring the Jersey to this podcast going forward, Pete. The last two things that I wanted to mention, I’m sure there are plenty more Easter eggs that we have not mentioned in the first three episodes of the podcast, one that I thought was super neat, as the color was changing at the end of the second episode, you could see the hydro facility that Pietro and Wanda were held at, it’s even like, legitimately the shot from [crosstalk 00:05:18] that they put onto the wallpaper there. Justin:              Very cool. Alex:                 Certainly bringing credence to some theories, perhaps we’re going in other directions with this episode, which we’ll get to later on. Then the last one that I saw a couple people catch onto on the internet, the house number is 2800, which I believe has long been rumored to be the universe number of the MCU, if you wanted to put it in with the comics and everything, but specifically it’s a call out to the fact that the house in Vision, the series by Tom King and Gabriel Walta was 616, after Earth 616, which is the designation of the main Marvel universe in the comics. So just, again, I think it’s not pointing to anything, it’s not like suddenly they’re going to go into comic book world, so much as we’re getting more fun Easter eggs and attention paid to detail. Justin:              And one other thing, the headpiece from what’s his name… Alex:                 Grim Reaper. Justin:              Grim Reaper, the vision series, is at least partially, perhaps used as a source material, here, was hidden in the credit sequence, I want to say, the title sequence. Alex:                 Yeah, I feel like we talked about this actually. Justin:              Did we? Alex:                 Because we went on a whole riff about Wonder Man and whether they’re going to turn Vision into Wonder Man at the end or something like that. Justin:              Yes. Alex:                 But again, there’s probably many more things we didn’t catch onto, let’s move into episode four, before we talk about plot points or anything like that, because a lot of stuff is going on here. This of course, is the episode that does, as I speculated… took us outside- Pete:                Don’t you fucking do that. Justin:              Hold for applause, hold for applause. Pete:                Don’t you fucking do that. Don’t like, list the points that like, ‘Oh, I missed all this’, and then be like, ‘Oh, I got this one thing right!’ Justin:              I mean, you’ve got to give it to him. Alex:                 I’m allowed to be proud of myself. Justin:              You’ve got to call it when you see it. Alex:                 I’ve got to get it back somehow, that cred. Justin:              How many times did Babe Ruth point to the outfield, and then he finally hit a home run, right? Alex:                 Hey, one out of a hundred is still one out of a hundred. Justin:              That’s a hell of a motto. Alex:                 This is the episode that takes us outside, we loop back to the very beginning, we go back even to the blip, which I’m sure we’ll talk about. Big deal right there. Followed Geraldine, she disappears into the dome. We get to see outside with Darcy, from the Thor movies- Justin:              Kat! Pete:                Kat! Alex:                 We get to see Jimmy Woo from the Ant-Man, Ant-Man and The Wasp. I was about to say Ant-Man movies, but he’s just in the second one. They’re all teaming up together with some new folks, trying to figure out what’s going on in this dome, by the end of the episode, we loop back to where we left off with Geraldine, aka Monica Rambeau, though we kind of knew that based on casting, popping out there and saying “Wanda, it’s all Wanda, this is her fault,” and that’s where we leave off, so that’s the broad strokes of the plot. What did you guys think about this episode? Very different episode, obviously, because we’re not in sitcom land at all at this point. Pete:                Yeah, I was like, geeking out when we saw the dust reverse from the movies where it was like people coming back. I was like, holy shit. I thought it was really cool the way we’ve been in this separate TV world, and then went into what we know and love from the movies. So I thought that was a really cool, crazy way to start. Justin:              It was- Alex:                 How’d you feel about this one, Justin? Justin:              There are two things that really stood out to me. One, the way that they were able to just really drop into the Marvel cinematic universe tone here. Having the first three episodes are very much their own thing, and then instantly, it was like, oh, this is a series of scenes that could be in any marvel movie, and I love that. It’s amazing that they are able to do that so quickly, and how much I as a viewer, love the one liners, action, everything’s movie very quickly, but at the same time, we’re really getting character moments, they’re so good at that in all of the Marvel shows and movies. And the second point is just how they wrap everything up in this episode so we can move forward from here into a totally… the actual story of the show. Alex:                 I’ve been worried about Pete yelling at me all day at this point that I’m about to say, he’s definitely going to be like, no, fuck you. Justin:              Yes. Pete:                Oh, this is very exciting. Alex:                 So I’ll just pull the bandaid off here. I really like this episode, I agree with you guys, just seeing the MCU literal cinematic nature of it, getting the cold open, going to the Marvel studios logo, going into the main episode, wrapping everything up, well filmed, I loved a lot of moments that I’ll definitely be talking about, I also think this was the weakest episode of the series so far. Pete:                What the fucking shit are you talking about?! Justin:              That was like when your dog is waiting for food and you hold it over his nose for like a couple minutes, and then finally throw it in his big old mouth. Pete:                We can’t keep living in crazy town, we need some reality so we can enjoy it! Alex:                 Here’s why, I agree with you, I think this episode was necessary- Pete:                So don’t say that- Alex:                 I liked it, I didn’t hate this episode, I’m not saying it’s garbage. Pete:                It sounds like that’s what you’re saying. Alex:                 What I’m saying is something that we’ve been talking about, or at least I’ve been talking about with the first three episodes, is- Pete:                Sounds like you’ve been talking about it. Alex:                 I’ve been trying to look at them as like, an episodic nature, like how do they work as an episode of television. Because even though they produced Falcon and The Winter Soldier first, this is the first chance we’ve seen Marvel studios do a TV show. So are they trying to do the classic, ‘Oh it’s more of a six hour movie’, or are they actually trying to do TV shows. So far they’ve been really successful on multiple levels in each individual episode of layering in little tiny bits of the plot, making it work as a classic sitcom, but also tying it to something emotionally with Wanda and Vision. Here, I do think there was something thematic, definitely, which we can talk about in a second, but on an emotional level, it felt like more it was filling in gaps in the plot, versus having that strong emotional theme weaving throughout. Pete:                No, no. It was going back and being like, all these weird things we’re going to explain so you don’t seem like a crazy person who’s hanging on to this stuff being like, ‘what does this mean, what does this mean?” We’re going to kind of go back, show you from a different vantage point of what’s going on, so then when we get to the end of the episode and we’re right back in the motion of after she gets thrown out, now we’re really feeling things. Alex:                 So you feel like it’s the sort of thing where somebody explains something, and then they explain the same thing back to you, but in a different way. Pete:                No, what I’m saying is, you can’t say garbage statements like ‘This is the weakest episode’ when this episode explained things so you could enjoy it moving forward! Alex:                 To be very clear, I’m talking about you, Pete. You were explaining the thing back to me, what I just said. Justin:              Yeah, that’s what just happened. Alex:                 We’re in agreement, you’re just ignoring the last point that I made, Pete. Justin:              I feel like I’ve been trapped in a scarlet witch bubble, with this especially shouty episode of crossfire. Alex:                 Here’s what I think is going on, I mean I’ll just throw it out there[crosstalk 00:12:21]. Justin:              Here, let me say it. I think you’re both actually right. This, dramatically, was the weakest episode, because they had to do all the work that Pete’s talking about that he was looking forward to. This is like, a classic middling episode, where you have your fun, you eat your steak, then you’ve got to eat your vegetables before you get your candy. And this is the vegetables, and here comes candy when we get to see all the ways they’re going to confront scarlet witch. And I think they gave us tastes of that when we get to see her hex powers activated, we get to see the stuff that we’re like, yes, we’ve wanted this, but we’re still not getting it. So it’s an explanation episode tied in with what we’re going to get next. Pete:                Yeah, but here’s the thing. As you get older, the vegetables become something that you look forward to as well, okay? Justin:              That’s not true about you, for instance. Pete:                Okay, well, fine. Me aside, but normal people would agree- Alex:                 Pete, like me, is a basket first kind of guy. Pete:                I just think that, regardless of how… I just can’t believe that you guys want to say that this is a shitty episode when there were so many great moments. Alex:                 Nobody is saying that. Justin:              We both liked it. Pete:                Literally both of you people- You called it a middling episode, you said it was the weakest one of the thing. I was saying Justin, pay attention. The thing is, it had those great Marvel moments, which is why we’re all here. So saying that this is a bad episode is insane to me. Alex:                 Nobody said it was a bad episode. Pete:                Oh my god. Justin:              I think what it is though is the first three episodes had these great, especially the first two, for me, had these great breathtaking moments where you’re like ‘Oh! I can’t believe they’re doing that, that’s such an interesting way of doing that, it’s so meticulously done.” While this dropped back to a form of storytelling that we’ve seen before, that we’ve seen in the movies, and I’m welcoming seeing that, but it doesn’t have those big swing moments that I think really made it stand out in the first two. Pete:                Oh, really? When you got to see what Vision really looks like, that wasn’t a big swing? Justin:              That was cool, but that wasn’t a big swing? Pete:                What are you talking about?! Alex:                 Can we get away from this? Because I feel like we’re going to get stuck in a Pete yelling at us episode. Pete:                Well don’t set me up for madness and then get mad at me when I fucking react the how you wound me up to react. Justin:              You’ve set me up for madness! Alex:                 That’s my favorite part of King Lear when he shouts that. ‘Your fault Cordelia!’ Justin:              You daughters of mine, you’ve set me up for madness. Alex:                 Classic, classic scam. Here’s what I did like about the episode that I thought was really smartly done. It was more an intellectual theme than an emotional one, and what they were playing with here, I think, is the idea of people viewing and analyzing and breaking down TV. Like, it’s kind of an obvious thing, but I like the fact that they got to the point where in the middle chunk of the episode, love the stuff with Monica, but she disappears for most of the episode, so it’s hard to hang in emotionally on her. The stuff with Darcy and Jimmy Woo, they’re reacting like us, the TV viewer. So I think the theme that they were playing with here, was spoiler culture, Easter egg culture, analyzing these things, you need to look no further than Jimmy Woo at his whiteboard, jotting down the very things the viewers have been talking about, which is a smart, cheeky meta thing to do, but also something that, potentially, they could have taken and pushed a little further, but I liked that it was there. It made the episode feel richer throughout. Pete:                Also- Alex:                 I’m going to hold back from saying anything else there because I don’t want to poke the bear one more time. Pete:                Thank you. Justin:              Poke that bear. Pete:                Also the fact that like, you had Jimmy Woo white boarding it, and then Kat commenting on it being like, ‘Oh, I’m so into this.’ It was really just a fun kind of both worlds type of thing. Alex:                 Yeah, I mean, the implication there, this is very much jumping into the episode properly, which I feel like after seventeen minutes of a podcast we probably should do. No, it’s not your fault Pete, don’t give me the finger. It’s all of us, we’re all at fault here. There seemed to be an implication that there are more episodes than we’ve seen. Justin:              Yes, I thought that was cool. Alex:                 Like that she’s been binge watching this, she was the binge watcher, Jimmy Woo is the guy that’s analyzing it, he’s looking for the Easter eggs, trying to figure out the mystery, which I thought was great. Like playing on those two levels of how we view TV shows I thought was pretty neat. Pete:                Yeah, who watches the binge watcher. I agree, that felt like definitely a sort of slight hum underneath the whole episode. A lot of TV now is just sort of, hang out TV, like watching people hang out. And this was like watching us watching this TV show in an interesting way, which I’m always here for. But I also think it added some nice little small turns into the mystery, like you’re saying, the fact that there are other episodes. What actually makes them transition between different eras of television? They asked that question and we don’t know the answer. I think it might be the outside influence from S.W.O.R.D. or from whatever. Wanda gets unsettled in the era of television, so she has to reset. It’s all about her resetting once a mistake enters this reality that she’s created. So I thought that was fun, they do a good job of really laying in the mystery in little clues throughout the series. Alex:                 Let’s jump back, because we kind of skipped past this moment, and I know that Pete mentioned that he really like it, but I definitely, right at the top of the episode when they started with the great shot of the dust floating in air and I was like okay, is this scarlet witch, what’s going on? Immediately when it started to reform, I said oh shit out loud when I saw it. It’s one of those things that I think is such a great touchstone for bringing you back into the MCU nature here. I don’t think we’ve ever seen an unblip, right? Justin:              At first I didn’t know what it was. I was like, oh, this is a weird thing, I don’t know… and then I was like, oh, of course, it’s a reverse of the blip, that was very cool. Pete:                Very cool, because it was like this thing that the movies would pass by, but because we’re doing this TV show, the fact that we can kind of live in this moment at a hospital where people are just running around like ‘They’re all coming back!’ And just seeing these people appear five years later was just so intense, and then watching somebody come to the realization of that was just unbelievable. Alex:                 Well, and I loved… this is definitely, we were talking about this also, not to keep plugging our Patreon slack, but we were talking about what movies you need to watch beforehand. It’s super necessary not just to watch Endgame, but also Captain Marvel before this, because you hear Captain Marvel over Monica Rambeau reforming. Pete:                Yeah, you do! Alex:                 Clearly, we find out that her mom has died, which is super sad. Justin:              Sad. Alex:                 And then we get a little hint of her with the Captain, was she Maria Rambeau? Was that what it was? Justin:              Maria, yup. Photon. Pete:                Photon. Alex:                 Maria Photon Rambeau, when she got in the movie as well. Super fun. Pete:                I was happy we got the picture because I was like wait, where is the Rambeau that I know, and then we saw it, that’s when it really clicked for me, seeing here picture. Justin:              Rambeau? Alex:                 The Rambeau you know. Better the Rambeau you know… Justin:              Than the Rambeau you don’t know. Than the Rambeau you don’t Rambeau. I was also going to say the fact that the snap was such a big part of the Infinity War, Endgame movies, I feel like another franchise might be like, all right, we did that, let’s move on. But Marvel does such a good of owning every piece of the mythology here, and to use that as, like you said, a touchstone, I think is just so smart and keeps us always invested in everything that’s come before. Pete:                I mean, I would love it if movies do things, and then TV dives into the minutia about all the little things… Alex:                 Yeah, that’s great. Pete:                Very nerdy, very cool. I was losing it. Alex:                 So as we’re starting to walk through here, I think two other things that we could potentially talk about. One, sentient weapon observation and response department, that’s what we encounter pretty quickly that was established by Maria Rambeau, up until she died, she passed it off to this guy, Tyler Hayward, who doesn’t seem suspicious at all, but in the comics, it’s a sentient world observation and response department. There’s definitely hints that there’s something more going on there, they’re starting to build weapons. Pete:                Oh yeah, just walking through- Alex:                 What are your theories, what do you think is going on here? Does this tie into WandaVision, are they setting up other things for down the road, what’s your take? Justin:              Feels like they’re setting up other things for down the road, I think. The difference between weapon and world is huge. Sentient weapon are like humans. They’re like super heroes, essentially, so the fact that they’re trying to control them kind of reminds me of the comic book civil war, the iron man side, the hero registration act, like a lot of things in the comics that end up being villainous, or something that the heroes have to rally together to defeat. The other side is S.W.O.R.D. was a big part of Skrull, of defeating the Skrulls. One, in disguise, shape shifted into S.W.O.R.D. to try to take control of it over a ton of different comic book stories, maybe that’s another direction we’re going to get here. Alex:                 Yeah, I mean, no go ahead Pete. Pete:                The fact that when they’re walking through and it looks like they’re building giant evil robots, I was just like… Alex:                 I think that was a space shuttle. Pete:                Was it? Justin:              Maybe a sentinel. Alex:                 Oh, there we go. There it is. This is a crazy connection. I did want to talk about this, just because we’re talking about this suspicious guy Tyler Hayward. Pete:                Tyler, don’t trust anybody with that name. Alex:                 100 percent. There’s no Tyler Hayward from the comics, but there was a character named Bryan Hayward who was on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., he was working for Hydra, he was part of project Centipede, which was the super power spine thing that they did for a while. People… we talked about this before on the podcast, but people have picked up a lot of potential connections to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., what are the chances they’re actually going to tie into Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. versus just kind of like, skim the surface there, or ignore it entirely and it’s just coincidence. Justin:              I think, at most, skimming. Just like most people, skimming the surface of S.H.I.E.L.D. is sort of the way that it happened. Alex:                 Pete, you think full on, the cavalry’s coming? Pete:                Yeah, it would be interesting if it was a sort of S.H.I.E.L.D versus S.W.O.R.D. type of thing that could happen, I don’t know, I’m very excited for more S.H.I.E.L.D. references just because I want to get Coleson in there. And the cavalry. Alex:                 This is interesting, Coleson actually was in there. He was in avengers. Pete:                Yeah, no shit dickhead, I’m talking about…[crosstalk 00:23:15] Justin:              I think Jimmy Woo is our Coleson for perhaps, going forward. It’s really cool to see him here, and I think… the Ant-Man and Wasp connection, obviously, but also starting to think about him from the comics, who he goes on to run Agents of Atlas, which is this whole other organization that I think could be fun. Pete:                Plus, I really hope that he does get a family, it sounds like that’s something he really wants, it’s a beautiful little moment there. Justin:              That’s nice, and he also, to carry on his game and style from the original Ant-Man and Wasp movie is super fun. He’s such a different energy from Kat Dennings’ character who is just like, sarcastic and in everybody’s face, and he’s just sort of like goofy and being funny in a totally different way, it’s great. Pete:                I really did like the way Kat showed up, walked through all the madness and was able to right the ship. Alex:                 So, two quick things about that. Jimmy Woo introducing his card, he finally learned the card trick from Ant-Man and the Wasp. Super fun, just a fun little bit there. Justin:              Great, so fun. Alex:                 Darcy, she’s now got a doctorate, so that’s very exciting. We last saw her in Thor and the Dark Worlds, that’s pretty cool. The other thing that I had a question about, and I think this is like, classic action movie stuff and I’m not mad about it or anything like that, but it was very funny to me that after Monica disappears into the dome or whatever it is, there’s suddenly hundreds of people there, but the only people who are doing anything are Darcy and Jimmy. What are the rest of these people doing? Justin:              They do say it. They do say it’s a huge cross organization, cross military thing, so I think there’s a lot of people just being ready in case something emerges from there. I think it’s soldiers setting up perimeters… Pete:                There’s people who are just studying the force field and stuff like that. I mean, they’re the people who care about what’s trying to happen. There are other people there for different nefarious reasons. Justin:              Nefarious? Pete:                Oh yeah. Justin:              Who? Pete:                You get a giant group of people like that, not everybody’s on the same team there. Justin:              Like people overcharging other people for a bottle of water and stuff? Pete:                Oh, yeah, yeah. Justin:              Like selling T-shirts? Alex:                 There’s probably a hot dog man hanging out there and he’s like yeah, they’re five dollars now. Justin:              I used the sell them in this empty field but now all you people showed up and now I’m charging five. Pete:                Now I’m going to be able to retire. Alex:                 So there are a couple of those interesting things, talking about the staff that’s working outside here. We find out that the beekeeper, as far as we know, nothing to do with A.I.M. potentially, that was kind of our theory there, but actually is working with S.W.O.R.D., crawls through, and gets changed into this beekeeper once he passes the TV annihilation wall, whatever it is. Yes Pete? Pete:                Not only the beekeeper, but then one of the worst jump ropes ever made. You guys remember that jump rope? It would pinch your skin when you were trying to use it. Just seeing that jump rope made me so angry. Alex:                 [crosstalk 00:26:21] No, go ahead. Justin:              Sorry. Pete, how long were you on the Olympic jump roping team, as a child? I know this is a big issue for you. Pete:                It was just a shitty gift that I had to use. Justin:              Sorry, Alex, you probably had a… Alex:                 If any of you kids out there are listening to this, use your shitty gifts, too. You can make the Olympics someday like Pete. Justin:              Like Pete did. Alex:                 I do think it’s interesting, on that note, we did talk a little bit about Geraldine/Monica having the clothes that she had in sitcom world when she came outside. Same thing happens with this jump rope, coaxial cord, whatever it actually is. So that was kind of fascinating as well to see that some things are left over, some things do make it outside. Justin:              That’s actually an important point I think, because it shows that what Wanda affects in the bubble lasts after it leaves the bubble, or after the bubble goes away. For instance, her children, perhaps. Pete:                A little bit… oh… Alex:                 I think the two big ones there are her children, and also Vision, who we get reaffirmed, the Marvel universe knows he’s dead. We do get that horrifying moment, so well done. But the way that was shot, with him blurry in the distance and then cutting to the close up. Like he is caved in on his head from Thanos pulling out the gem, but we don’t get that reveal until she turns around. We’re jumping over so many things that we probably need to get back to in the episode, where Wanda sees Vision, clearly dead, convinces him that he’s alive, says she’s totally in control, and then Monica reveals outside, Wanda, it’s all Wanda. Maybe I’m overthinking it, I’ve certainly been of the opinion for the first three episodes, that yes, this is Wanda, this is all Wanda, and the second I heard that, I was like, no, there’s something else going on here, somebody else is in control. Pete:                Wow. Justin:              Really? That’s interesting, maybe that’s where Agatha Harkness comes in, because I did think it was interesting there’s the montage where they’re naming all the townspeople and what roles they’re playing and we never get Agnes here. So I think that just shows that she is definitely outside of a normal towns person. I don’t know, I took another fact to hear the other way, they talk a lot about the CMBR, the background radiation, or relic radiation, that was there from the Big Bang. I think that is a signal of just how powerful she is, and the fact that what she does is permanent, like as permanent as the Big Bang was. Alex:                 The popular theory is this is how Monica is going to get powers. She has powers in the comic books, she’s probably going to take on the name Photon. To take it one step further, I don’t know how much I believe in this, but there’s certainly been a lot of speculation about maybe this series is going to lead into mutants in some way. Certainly Ms. Marvel lives in New Jersey, and we know that’s coming up pretty soon. So if there is some sort of Wanda explosion M. Day style event, or something like that, where it just irradiates all of New Jersey and gives people powers, that would be pretty funny, right? Mutants coming from New Jersey? Pete:                [crosstalk 00:29:35] scary. Justin:              All mutants come from New Jersey? Bummer. Alex:                 I’m into it. Pete:                No way, man. Alex:                 Wolverine, total hairy dude from the beach. Pete:                Oh my god. Justin:              Ey, it’s me, Wolverine, hey. You like Bruce Springsteen? Alex:                 Hey, it’s me, Wolverine “The Situation” Howlett. Justin:              Everybody’s dream. I don’t think that’s the way they’re going to go. I think it cheapens mutants as a thing in the Marvel universe, to have it be just an off hand creation of the Scarlet Witch. Pete:                I had the opposite reaction happen when she was like, it’s all Wanda, I was kind of like yeah, that would explain why she went in and then all of a sudden was kind of mind wiped, and she didn’t know who she was until she touched Wanda’s hand and then she was like oh, and got right into character. So I feel like it does make sense that Wanda is, through this trauma, kind of creating this whole thing for herself. Alex:                 So a couple of quick things about the residents, just because we talked about that. Most of their names, as far as I can tell, don’t mean anything. Except for the guy who plays Herb, is named John Collins, which, by the way, I thought it was a very funny note where they were like Herb, played by John Collins, Ms. Hart, played by Sharon Davis, very funny in joke thing. Pete:                Yeah, that was really fun. Alex:                 But John Collins who plays Herb, and Sharon Davis, who plays Ms. Hart are both art directors, on WandaVision. I don’t think that means anything, that’s just a fun little Easter egg they put in there. Pete:                A little nod. Alex:                 Also, I definitely don’t think this is an Easter egg in any way, it just made me laugh. Mustache man, his real name is Harold Copter, which is basically helicopter, very close, he just has a doofy name, there you go. And then there was one other thing… Oh, let’s talk about Agnes, and how she does or does not connect to whoever’s in witness protection, because that’s a very offhand thing that they throw out. That’s the impetus for Jimmy Woo being there at Westview, because their person in witness protection has disappeared. He used him, as a pronoun, and then Darcy enters he, so we can kind of assume this is a man. My first thought was oh, okay, Agnes is the one in witness protection. Probably not, who is it? That’s got to play in at some point. Justin:              I agree. I’m curious, maybe this is where we get the Grim Reaper and Wonder Man connection, and maybe that’s what sets her off initially? Because we do need to find out what triggers this trauma, because it clearly wasn’t the death of the Vision, like we had speculated. Pete:                It seems like it is. Justin:              I think that’s the underlying issue, but that’s not the actual catalyst that caused her to take over the town with her hex powers and build this TV reality. Something happened there, and we just don’t know anything about what that is, and that may be the mystery that we’re going to unravel going forward, and I think it will have to do with Agatha Harkness, Agnes in there, and whoever this missing person is going to end up being. Pete:                So just real quick, you’re saying if somebody you died, you wouldn’t go to New Jersey, kick everybody out of a town, and then start your own town based on television shows that you saw from your childhood? Justin:              I mean, are you saying if I have scarlet witches powers, or I just have to, myself, go to a town in New Jersey, and be like, hey, get out of here, I’m doing a little play about my dead friend. Pete:                I’m going through a loss and I need to work this out. Justin:              My friend Pete died, and he wanted me to come to this small New Jersey town and take it over briefly. Alex:                 Very briefly turn it into Tommy Boy, a fantasy of Tommy Boy. Pete:                Oh! Please! Alex:                 I’m with you Justin, I think- Pete:                If I die, you’ve got to re-enact Tommy Boy. Justin:              Re-enact. Alex:                 This is what, in my mind, pushes the ‘no, they’re telling us to early that Wanda is the villain of this piece’ there’s something else going on here. To throw out a couple of theories that are probably very wrong, but the person in witness protection could be Ralph, Agnes’ husband that keeps getting mentioned that we’ve never seen. It’s also possible it could be a villain, it could be a Strucker, like we’ve talked about before, or somebody from Hydra who had to be in witness protection, started A.I.M. there and there was some sort of inciting incident event that kicked Wanda into high gear here. We don’t have enough information yet, but it’s too much of a dangling detail not to follow up in some way. Justin:              I also think- go ahead Pete. Pete:                I was just going to say the fact that Kat is watching the shows and taking notes, and then the commercials came up and she didn’t say anything, to me, kind of felt like it would be Hydra, that that would be the… Justin:              It is very funny. Alex:                 I feel like they’re not quite looking into enough theories. Justin:              100 percent, they’re treating commercials like actual commercials in TV shows, like oh, we don’t need to watch this let’s go to the bathroom. But it’s like, no, those are clues! Those are big clues guys, pay attention. Pete:                Fast forward through this, we don’t need to see this commercial. Alex:                 What other clue, and again, maybe I’m reading too much into it, but those weirdly ripped cops from Eastview right at the top of the episode? Definitely felt like there was something going on with them. They were a little too ominous, I felt, for what the role demanded. Justin:              I feel like those are somehow creations of Wanda as well, to try to keep people out, and their job is to turn people away who happen to go in, despite the sort of hex on the town. Jumping back a little bit though. Alex:                 Wait, sorry, one last thing that I want to say about the cops. I didn’t even catch on to this, this was Brett White, a friend of our show who we work with, caught on, but their license plate does say 1966 on it, and that’s the year that A.I.M. was introduced in Marvel comics. Pete:                Wow, that’s a deep cut. Justin:              That’s a deep cut right there. Could also be pretty arbitrary, because I do think to your point earlier about who’s causing this. The fact that in the comics, Agatha Harkness was the next door neighbor to Vision and Scarlet Witch and was observing Wanda, I feel like maybe in the years since Vision died, her powers started to deepen, and maybe she was losing control of them, so Agatha’s there to monitor her as a danger, because she’s sort of losing control, and then perhaps this villain that was there, is someone who is pushing her powers, pushing her trauma, which causes her to finally go into this fantasy world. And that would, I think, play into the Grim Reaper Wonder Man side of it. Alex:                 Well, I guess we’ll see what happens there. Before we move on here, we’ve certainly speculated quite a bit, but there’s lots of other great moments in the episode. Pete, anything you want to call out in particular? Pete:                I couldn’t get enough of Kat in this episode, where she talks about… she has so many great one liners, and it’s also really fun how quickly she’s able to assess what’s going on, process it, and make decisions, like that whole clown car comment and then when she was breaking it down, like they have no idea what’s happening, all of us in here are just kind of like a crazy shot in the dark, I did really like how she broke down, she washes dishes once an episode, barf, and then the twins, what a twist, I love that. Alex:                 Yeah, Justin, what about you, any moments you want to call out? Justin:              The whiteboard, I think is something we didn’t really talk about. You do see on one side of it, Skrulls sort of on the edge, I thought that was interesting, and then the first question up top was ‘Why the hexagonal shape?’ Which I thought was something, that feels like a clue as to maybe… Pete:                Yeah, because there’s a beekeeper, and then that shape. Alex:                 Yeah, I do wonder, getting back to the A.I.M. theory, we talked about the hexagons, I think in the first episode of the podcast, so I like that we weren’t necessarily on the wrong track with that, but what if it is, again, I know I’m sticking with this thing, but what if it is Wanda into this, because Vision is alive, she has kids, she’s happy, so that’s what’s keeping her along, but at the same time, her subconscious is giving out clues of A.I.M. with the beekeeper, with the hexagons, with these other things sort of shouting under everything that’s going on to try to free herself. Justin:           
40 minutes | a month ago
MarvelVision: WandaVision Episode 3 – “Now In Color”
Wandavision Episode 3 “Now In Color” jumps from the ’60s to the ’70s, but those aren’t the only big changes in store for Wanda and Vision. While Wanda is rapidly getting more pregnant by the second, expectant father Vision is freaking out as he prepares for the impossible prospect of having children. And in the middle of everything, the mystery of who Geraldine is, and what’s really going on in Westview expands in a big, big way. SUBSCRIBE TO MARVELVISION ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. Full Episode Transcript: Alex:                 What’s up, y’all? Welcome to MarvelVision, a podcast all about the MCU, Marvel TV shows, specifically WandaVision. Third episode… Justin:              We’re in a Wanda world right now. Alex:                 It’s Wanda’s world, Vision’s just living in it, and so are we. I’m Alex. Justin:              I’m Justin. Pete:                I’m Pete. Alex:                 And as mentioned, we are going to be talking about the third episode of WandaVision that just dropped on Disney+. It is very creatively titled Episode 3, I believe. Justin:              Whoo. Pete:                Oh-ho. Justin:              See, there’s a clue. Alex:                 Yeah. Pete:                There’s a clue. Alex:                 I got to tell you, before we get into the episode, and regular note, we’re going to talk about spoilers here for the entire series up until now. We’re not going to recap every little plot point. So go watch the episode first, then come back here, because we’re going to get into it. Justin:              Yeah. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 But doing a little bit of pickup from the first week, from Episode 1 and Episode 2, I got to admit, I- Pete:                Wait, Justin, do you have any corrections that you want to give first, or… Alex:                 Hold on, I’m not into the corrections. You are jumping ahead of the narrative here, Pete. Pete:                Oh. My fault. My fault. Sorry, sorry. Alex:                 It’s fine. You’re very… Pete is very excited, because I told him before we got on that I had made some errors on previous episodes. Pete:                Yeah? Alex:                 He’s just excited that he was not the one that made errors. Justin:              Oh, no, he made errors, it’s just he didn’t clock them. Alex:                 Oh, yeah. He didn’t check them. He didn’t fact-check them at any point. Pete:                Nobody cares if I make errors, but… Alex:                 The one thing that I wanted to say first, though, I got to admit I was a little bummed that the episodes don’t have titles, that they’re just calling them Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3. It felt like an opportunity for some fun and creativity there that’s a little missed, personally. Justin:              Yeah. I hear that. I think that’s a very modern thing. I would argue that while older TV shows did have titles, most often, we would never hear them or see them. Pete:                Also, it’s very Kendrick Lamar, you know what I mean? Just releasing an untitled album, just kind of giving you the track numbers. I like Marvel on the cutting edge of what’s hot and cool. Justin:              Plus, there are clues here, like Episode 1 is obviously like, “Oh, this is the beginning. This is where it all starts.” Alex:                 Episode 2 is the one that follows up on Episode 1. Justin:              Exactly. And Episode 3… Alex:                 Episode 3. Justin:              Everything changes, specifically the number. Pete:                Oh, wow. Alex:                 I mean, it’s kind of like, if you think about it, Episode 3 is like two plus one, which is pretty cool. Pete:                Wow. Justin:              Exactly. You got to think. You got to think. Open your third eye in Episode 3, specifically. Alex:                 By the way, we should mention this week’s episode is sponsored by the Children’s Television Workshop. Pete:                What? Alex:                 Yeah, we’re teaching her how to count in this episode. Pete:                Oh, okay, okay. Alex:                 So I don’t know. That was a little bit of a bummer. I just wanted to mention that right off, but it’s fine. I think we’ll all move on emotionally from there. The corrections and additions that I wanted to mention that I thought were interesting, first of all, I messed up. That was not Saul Rubinek as Mr. Hart in the first episode. Very different character actor. That’s actually Fred Melamed in the episode. My bad there. Also, there was the sign in the opening credits to Episode 2 in the supermarket, which I thought maybe was milk or cereal or something like that. It’s actually Auntie A’s Kitty Litter, which is an even stronger indication, because you got a black cat, you got Auntie A, that Kathryn Hahn is probably some form of Agatha Harkness going on there. Alex:                 Another couple of things that I thought were interesting that I didn’t pick up on, now that other people have seen Episode 1 and 2, they did. One, this is a little dicey, I think, but also in the animated credits, some people noticed what looks like maybe the Grim Reaper’s headgear in the opening credits. Now, this is getting pretty deep into comic book stuff. Yes. Justin:              Yeah. I was going to say Grim Reaper, famously in the Tom King Vision story is sort of the villain. Alex:                 Yes. Yeah. So Grim Reaper is the brother of Wonder Man, who in the comics is the template… His name is Simon. He is the template for Vision’s brain patterns, or am I reversing it? Justin:              Uh, no, I think that’s accurate. And it’s sort of a weird thing. Wonder Man is not a super-popular character. He’s an actor who’s very powered. In the last like 15 years in Marvel comics, he’s been way powered up. Because before, he used to be just super-strong, he could shoot some lasers out of his eyes. And then, yeah, I think the Vision’s brain patterns were modeled on Wonder Man. So that has created in the comics a weird relationship between Wonder Man and Scarlet Witch and his brother, Grim Reaper, who hates them. Alex:                 Yes. And Wonder Man has had romantic relationships with Scarlet Witch. They’ve kind of switched off between Vision. So it’s definitely possible he could be mixed in there. It might just be a weird Easter egg. I guess we won’t know until later. The other theory that I thought was kind of neat that I wanted to throw out there, we talked about the people in the commercials. Right? There’s two people. We see them again in Episode 3. Pete:                Same two. Alex:                 Same three people. They seem very separated from everything that’s going on. I thought this was an interesting catch, and I don’t know if I’m 100% sold on this theory, but I like it anyway, is that those are Wanda’s parents. Now, in the MCU, we never met Wanda’s parents. We just know that a Stark bomb blew up, killed Wanda’s parents, and Wanda was trapped there with, I believe, Pietro for about two days, staring at her parents’ dead bodies before she was finally rescued in Sokovia. And the fact that you got this toaster in the first episode that’s doing a very bomb-like beep, and it’s a Stark toaster, seems to indicate that might be a potential there. Justin:              So are we saying that those are manifestations of her parents, maybe dealing with all that… She’s dealing with trauma, with Vision having just died, perhaps, and maybe these are other traumas in her life coming out? Because that would explain the Strucker stuff, since he’s dead in the current continuity. Alex:                 Mm-hmm (affirmative). I mean, I think so, and I think the fact that they’re walled off, like they don’t exist in the same part of the reality as everybody else in… it’s Westview, right? I’ve been very terrified about getting it wrong. Justin:              Yeah. Alex:                 But Westview. Justin:              Terrified, you say? Alex:                 Yeah, terrified. Might mean that they don’t actually exist. They are figments of her imagination, perhaps in a different way than everybody else is. Pete, what were you going to say? Pete:                I just wanted to say, this is my new favorite part about doing a podcast with you, is the part where at the beginning, you admit your flaws and that you’re not perfect. This is really… Alex:                 We’ve moved on from there. That was the last topic. Pete:                Well, I’m just saying. Alex:                 We’ve now moved on to theories, Pete. Pete:                This is really enjoyable. I got to say, as a long-time listener of the show, this is my new favorite section. Justin:              Oh, Pete, news flash, you’re actually on the show. Pete:                Oh, dang it! Oh, man. Busted! Justin:              But Alex, we would love to hear an official apology for your mistakes, if possible. Alex:                 All right, everybody. Before we get into talking about Episode 3, I want to look all of you in the eyes here, and I want to say I’m sorry for everything… Pete:                Wow, he’s looking right into… Alex:                 Pete has gotten wrong for 14 fricking years. Pete:                This is great [crosstalk 00:07:09]. Justin:              Didn’t want to swear, buddy? Hold it back in the end there. Alex:                 No. I want to keep this safe for kids. Pete:                Could actually apologize. Alex:                 Children’s Television Workshop, again. Justin:              Yes. Pete:                Oh, right, right. Alex:                 We have a lot of kids tuning in this episode. I know we’ve spent a lot of time here at the beginning of the episode. I do want to move on to actually talking about episode 3 in a second, but the last little thing that I thought was kind of neat, after Episode 1 and 2, they released this behind-the-scenes thing to tease the episodes that are coming up. And at least for the first episode, the one set in the ’50s, we knew it was filmed in front of a live studio audience, but I didn’t know until they showed the behind-the-scenes stuff that everybody on set and in the audience is wearing vintage clothing as well. Pete:                Wow. Alex:                 Which is crazy. Justin:              I mean, the thoroughness with which Marvel makes their products is admirable. Alex:                 I do wonder… Pete:                I wonder… Alex:                 I was just going to say, I do wonder if that’s just for fun, they were like, “Have a little fun with it and live in the moment,” or if we are going to loop back to the ’50s thing, see the studio audience at some point, and kind of break that fourth wall. That seems like a place the show could go. Pete:                Yeah. Otherwise, it would be kind of like a waste. I don’t think that Marvel would just waste money like that, so I feel like we would have to see something. Alex:                 Yeah. Marvel, famously frugal. Justin:              The House of Frugal Ideas. Alex:                 Let’s get into the episode. There’s so much to talk about here in Episode 3. Pete:                About time. Alex:                 Broad strokes, the sitcom plot here is Wanda is now pregnant. They’re dealing with the fact that she has a much-expedited pregnancy that’s going on, to the point where it takes under a day for her finally to give birth to twins. Our new… I keep blanking on her name. Is it Gabrielle? Is that what we’re calling her? Teyonah Parris’s character? Justin:              Geraldine. Alex:                 What? Justin:              Geraldine. Alex:                 Geraldine. Pete:                Yeah, Geraldine. Alex:                 I don’t know why I keep messing that up. Geraldine is coming into the house, and Wanda’s trying to keep the pregnancy secret. Meanwhile, Vision is going to get the doctor, who’s about to head off on vacation. So lots of stuff going on there, and by the end of the episode, we’ve gotten a lot more information about what’s going on outside this bubble that’s been created or whatever’s going on. We’ve certainly found out a lot more about what’s going inside the bubble as well, and the town. They’ve given birth to twins. They are Tommy and Billy, who fans of the comics know grow up to be Scarlet Witch’s twins, so great not just Easter egg, but plot point there. Justin:              That’s just a regular egg. It’s an egg. Alex:                 Yeah, it’s just an egg. Justin:              It’s an egg. Alex:                 Yeah. Maybe even omelet, to be honest. Like something that’s come to fruition. I don’t know [crosstalk 00:09:40]. Pete:                Don’t make omelets out of your kids. Justin:              Whenever I eat an omelet, I’m like, “I’m so happy these eggs came to fruition on my plate.” Alex:                 Oh, boy. Okay. So that’s broad strokes about the episode. A lot of stuff to dive in there. What do you guys want to start with? I mean, I think- Pete:                The fun new intro is what I want to start with. Alex:                 Go for it, Pete. Pete:                I like how every episode, we’re getting a kind of different time period intro. I think it’s kind of a cool thing to look forward to with each ep. Also, now, we got the kind of “WandaVision in color,” which was something they actually did back in the day when television went to color. “It’s in color!” So that was just kind of a funny bit. And also, the house is different. It seems like it’s a completely different house, which is kind of fun. Alex:                 It’s basically… Maybe you’re about to say this, Justin. It’s basically the Brady Bunch house. Pete:                Yeah, it’s the Brady Bunch house. [crosstalk 00:10:37] Justin:              I was going to say our TV references, to me anyway, are Mary Tyler Moore, Brady Bunch here. Especially with the opening credits. And I do think the set is a slightly tweaked version of the reference show in each episode, I think. In the first two, same thing. But I would also argue it’s a slightly purposefully uncomfortable version of the set. Like the way that door is on the left, and the stairway is awkwardly in the shot the whole time, and maybe I’m reading too much into this, but it feels like it’s oppressive, like it’s being laid on them in a way that’s awkward. And I think that’s true of the previous sets. Like the double doors that opened in the first episode were way too big and felt unruly and sort of oppressive when they were in the kitchen, and I think that’s perhaps an intentional thing to show that these shows are really bearing down on our heroes. Pete:                Now, let me ask you guys. You both have kids. When your wives got pregnant, did it feel like same day, just shooting out babies? Does it go by so quick? Alex:                 Certainly to me. Pete:                Yeah? Justin:              Wow. Uh, let’s bring Alex’s wife into the stream, just to [crosstalk 00:11:48]. Alex:                 She’s ready. Justin:              Yeah. Alex:                 No. I do think… We talked about with the previous episode how well this is balancing the whole MCU nature with, thematically, does it work as TV episodes? And certainly, I think that’s where my head is really at when I’m looking at this, is, “Does this work as a TV show?” Or the thing that makes me super annoyed when people say it, “Is it more of a six-hour movie, but on TV?” And right now, I actually think they’re doing a good job of making it episodic. Specifically, what they drive in immediately, and particularly with Paul Bettany’s performance in this episode, is the panic of being new parents. Alex:                 It’s sped up, it’s magical, so they get to go through all of the different parts of it very quickly, but that feels like a sitcom episode that they would’ve done back in the ’70s with some sort of magical couple, with all of the emotional… To your point, Pete, all of that panic that you potentially feel as a father, “What am I going to do? Do I know how to do it right? I’ve got to practice putting on the diapers so I get it right, so I know what I’m doing.” And then, it all changes when you actually have the kid in your hand, and it becomes something entirely different, which is exactly what happens over the arc of this episode. Pete:                Now, did you guys both practice on dolls, putting on diapers and stuff? Justin:              Nah. The diaper stuff, you sort of figure it out, and then once you do it once, it’s like, “Well, I’m going to do this 1,000 times going forward.” But this parenting workshop, if I can put it on hold for one second, I feel like when last episode’s… I feel like the reference was Pleasantville. This one feels almost like Too Many Cooks, the Adult Swim sketch that was released like maybe 10 years ago now, which was about the circular nature of sitcoms and how it’s almost… family sitcoms over the years, and it’s sort of how they make you crazy by the end. I feel like that is so accurate for this. Justin:              And then, as we’re moving into this sort of 1970s sitcom world, no more workplace. All the workplace people have moved to become neighbors or people that they bump into. I think that’s very accurate for the decade. And that’s when we start to see the reality really start to degrade around Vision and Scarlet Witch. Alex:                 Yeah. I mean, in terms of references, this could probably be applied to all three episodes at this point, but it really drove home to me with Scarlet Witch’s reaction to… oh, my God. Why… Geraldine? Justin:              Geraldine. Pete:                Geraldine. Alex:                 Geraldine. I don’t know why I haven’t been… I think my mental block there is because I know her character’s name is Monica Rambeau, and I know who Monica Rambeau is, and the fact that she’s using a different name, I’m like, “Oh, I can’t shove that in there.” But Geraldine, her reaction to her, and how she looks at her, and is like, “What are you doing here? What’s going on here?” And clearly, even though we don’t get to see it, kicks her out of this bubble, it felt very… I don’t know if you guys have seen the Twilight Zone episode It’s a Good Life, the one with the kid who has basically wish powers and sends people into the corn and stuff. Justin:              Yeah. Alex:                 Everybody being very careful, also Kathryn Hahn and everybody else being very careful around Scarlet Witch and everything going on, I got a lot of shades of that, of sort of this wish-kid who they don’t want to piss off in the wrong way, or things are going to go very badly. Pete:                Just to correct you, Alex, I haven’t seen ahead, obviously, but I’m pretty sure when we get to the ’90s era, you’re going to find that she Fresh Prince of Bel Air-style threw her outside of the house. DJ Jazzy Jeff style. Alex:                 Oh, okay. That isn’t really a correction so much as just a thing you’re saying. Justin:              That’s not a correction. Yeah. Pete:                Well, I’m just saying, when we get to the ’90s, they’re going to show it, and then you’ll be wrong. So you don’t have to do a whole corrections thing again, I’m trying to help you out. Justin:              Oh. Alex:                 Oh. Thanks, Pete, I really appreciate it. Justin:              Like a pre-correction, also known as being a dick. Pete:                Well, I’m a precog, you know what I mean? Justin:              Yeah, definitely, that’s what that means. Alex:                 Uh, I did figure out one other reference while we’re talking about comic book stuff. This was mentioned to us by Stray Ward on YouTube. And I don’t know if they’re specifically pulling on this, but I do think this is a fun one to read, anyway. There was this book called Avengers Standoff, where all the villains were sent to a small town called Pleasant Hill. They were living there, their minds were wiped, and I think Winter Soldier shows up and is like, “What is happening here?” And it slowly starts to unravel. Spoilers, you find out S.H.I.E.L.D. is behind it, and they’re trying a new type of prison for the villains, but it’s a very fun crossover that probably has similar themes, if not necessarily what they’re pulling on for this show. Justin:              Yeah, that was one of those sort of micro-crossovers from three or four years ago that just sort of came and went and was a good story. Pete:                Yeah. That was probably when Micro Machines were popular, you know. Justin:              Yeah, probably that. That’s probably [crosstalk 00:16:33]. Alex:                 Thanks. Just want to do a little correction: no. Pete:                Yeah, but I want to get back to Paul Bentley in this episode- Alex:                 Just a little bit of a correction, his name is Paul Bettany, Pete. Pete:                Oh, thanks. Yep. Alex:                 No problem. Justin:              This is spinning out of control. Alex:                 It’s a good bit. Pete:                PB&J was… I really liked his like, “How did this happen?” to the doctor moment. Really funny, his kind of playing catch-up to everything happening so fast was a very kind of a cool theme that was happening throughout this episode. Justin:              And sort of on that, the way that the reality falls apart throughout this episode I thought was great. Hub working on his hedges and cutting into the fence I thought was very cool as a way of just… Pete:                A cement brick wall. Justin:              Yeah. Just being like, “Uh, what’s happening here?” And it’s unsettling, and you see it unsettle Vision, and us the viewer being like, “We know this is wrong, because we know the format of these sitcoms.” You get her water breaking as rain. Pete:                Sprinklers. It was almost like sprinklers going off. Justin:              Yeah. Sprinklers are inside rain, so I think… Pete:                Well, it was raining inside their house, so I figured it was a sprinkler system. Alex:                 I think it was rain. I think the joke was that she was creating rain because she was doing… I don’t know if you know, this is a little bit of an Easter egg. She was doing magic throughout the show. Pete:                Oh! Alex:                 Yeah. Justin:              Very little Easter egg. More of an egg, really. I hope we can bring it to fruition. Alex:                 Well, actually, this is something that I wanted to bring up. Not to interrupt your flow here, Justin, but we’ve already done it, so I’m going to go ahead. One thing we haven’t really talked about with the show is we haven’t seen Scarlet Witch’s powers manifest this way in the MCU. She has been able to move stuff, she’s been able to mind-control, she created that dream in Tony Stark in Age of Ultron a little bit. But she hasn’t had reality-bending powers the way that she does in the comics, which is what we’re getting here. So I don’t know, this is getting into speculation, and I don’t really have an idea, but what do you think is going on here? Is this all imagined? Has her powers been amped up? What’s your best theory at this point? Justin:              I think it’s going to be that there’s a shift in her power set because of the trauma of Vision dying, and this is her way of dealing with it. And that’s why I think Agatha Harkness being part of this, I think, is key, because she’s maybe trying to shape it. Maybe has more of an understanding of the powers, while Monica Rambeau is in there purely as a like, “I need to try to fix this.” Sort of doing the full superhero thing. Pete:                It’s Geraldine. Justin:              Uh, yes. Great. Corrections Department. Let’s mute the Corrections Department until we need it, which I guess will be next episode. Yeah, so I think it will be considered a new manifestation of her powers. Alex:                 Pete, what’s your take? Pete:                I don’t know. I’m still thinking that she has kind of formed this protective bubble over herself and just kind of locked out everything as she’s dealing with these problems. And I think that’s why she threw out Geraldine, because she’s not fitting into her… everything that’s going on. She’s starting to kind of question it. And the fact that Vision was kind of restarted or mind-wiped, and it was like he said, “Something is wrong,” and then she kind of re-did it, was very telling that… For me, it feels like this is all her doing. Alex:                 I’m definitely leaning towards that at this point, but I did want to jump back and talk about the Geraldine/Wanda conversation, exactly what you’re talking about with Vision as well. All that stuff was fantastic. We got a sense… we talked about this with Episode 2 a little bit, that Geraldine is kind of poking at them very gently, and it feels like when she mentions Pietro, first of all, kind of a maligned storyline from Age of Ultron that I think comes back here phenomenally, in a very emotional way that’s very surprising. But it feels like, based on Teyonah Parris’s performance, that I think she realizes she goes a little too far. She thinks she’s hooking into Wanda remembering things, but she pushes her too hard. We’ve seen this beekeeper who had the S.W.O.R.D. logo on it. We’ve seen the helicopter, very invasive, with the S.W.O.R.D. logo on it, and now… Pete:                Her necklace. Alex:                 Yeah, now she sees the necklace with the S.W.O.R.D. logo on it. I think Wanda’s assumption is that these are people attacking her and attacking her town, and she pushes back on that. I still think they’re good guys, but I don’t think Wanda knows that yet, and I don’t think Vision knows that yet. Justin:              And I think to her, it probably doesn’t matter, because whatever it is, it’s a threat to what she’s trying to do here. And to get into sort of how our theorizing may be changing, before, we had talked about it as like a pocket dimension, they’re the only real people. I feel like this episode sort of put this in the direction like this is a real town. The residents of the town are trapped there, and they are forced to go along with it. I think Hub’s line in this episode where he’s like, “It’s hard to escape a small town.” Pete:                Small town, yeah. Justin:              “A small town’s so hard to escape.” I thought… and you could see he’s clearly upset, and Kathryn Hahn talking to him. And I think the strategies between Geraldine and Kathryn Hahn’s character are interesting. Kathryn Hahn feels like she’s doing everything to preserve this environment. She’s trying to keep the game going, keep the sitcom stories moving along, as quickly and cleanly as she can, while Monica Rambeau, Geraldine, is in there trying to push, trying to be like, “Hey, there’s a real world out there.” And here, she sort of punctures the reality too much too quick and gets punished for it. Alex:                 Yeah. The thing that I thought was interesting about Kathryn Hahn… What is the name of the guy who’s trimming the hedges? What was his character? Justin:              Hub. Alex:                 Hub? It made me feel like Kathryn Hahn, like we’ve been kind of talking about, is not necessarily the villain, not necessarily the bad guy, like you’re saying, Justin. They seem scared of something, and my best theory, I think the show is leading us along this, but it certainly feels like they’re living in the sitcom reality, maybe they think they can escape at some point. They can get out. Some people certainly seem to be more cognizant than others. We have that break with Dottie in the previous episode, where it seems like she came back to reality a little bit, versus Kathryn Hahn, who kind of seems to know what’s going on. Alex:                 But I do think the birth of the children is the thing that set them back. Particularly with the doctor, he has the very dumb, very sitcom-y line of going, “Bermuda, baby!” earlier in the episode, which I thought was very funny and on point. And then his reaction at the end, it seems like once he sees the babies are born, he knows, “We’re not getting out of here anytime soon. Whatever this experiment is, it’s moved on to the second phase, and now we’re going to continue to be trapped here.” Pete:                Yeah. The doctor’s the one that says, “Small towns are hard to escape.” But the doctor’s arc was really fun, of like this, “Oh, yeah, no,” and then, “This is fine, everything’s good,” and then when he is basically Flash-run in to deliver, and then once the baby is delivered, that whole demeanor’s changed. Like, “We’re all trapped now.” Which added a real kind of interesting, scary element to it, to see this fun doctor go through that. Justin:              It almost… Maybe it feels like that Kathryn Hahn’s strategy and maybe some of the townspeople’s strategy is to “finish the story.” Finish each sitcom story, and that will be their escape, like she’ll almost release them once she’s lived out everything she needs. While Geraldine, Monica Rambeau, is there to be like, “We need to solve this now. I don’t think this is… She just keeps regressing, keeps getting deeper into this false reality.” But I thought it was interesting when the twins were born, that’s a real moment between Vision and Scarlet Witch. You can see she’s genuinely happy. He’s genuinely happy. And I think that’s what her goal is. If the Vision is dead or dying in this moment, in this town, and she’s preserved this moment, she’s living out their lives as best she can, and so these moments are what it’s all about. Pete:                Yeah, that’s interesting. It’s almost like before he dies, she’s slowing down time to give them a life together, and then he can die at the end. Justin:              Yeah, it’s sort of… I said this earlier, but Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is an old… I think it’s an O. Henry story, and then a film I saw in like elementary school, where a guy is dying. He’s being hung because he was a criminal of some sort, but you watch, and the rope breaks, and he escapes, and the story’s all about his journey, how he… he gets away, he dodges all these close calls, and then at the very last minute of the story, it flashes back, and he just dies. So it’s like living out that bit of your life in the last moment of your life. Alex:                 Yeah. Do you wonder if they would go back to that moment in Infinity War? It does feel like maybe regressing it a little bit, but I also, on the same note, don’t know how past Endgame, you get Scarlet Witch… She’s not necessarily in this distraught place at the end of the movie, so if this does take place after Endgame versus what you’re saying, Justin, in that moment in Infinity War, what triggers it? Is it just spiraling grief of, “We’re past this massive war with Thanos, now I can sit down, and I realize what’s happened,” or is it something else? And I’m just not sure at this point. Justin:              Yeah. Pete:                All right, we- Justin:              It could also be a break later, past Endgame, where she just fully hasn’t dealt with all this, and it’s a full disaster. Pete:                Okay. We got to start talking about the real hero of this episode, the stork. I mean, come on, that’s just comedy gold. Alex:                 That bit went on a little too long for me. I’m just going to throw it out there. I liked it, there was good beats, there was a good pickup on… Geraldine. Pete:                Geraldine. Justin:              Geraldine. Alex:                 Jesus Christ! What is that? Oh, my God. Justin:              Pete broke your brain. I’m so sorry. Alex:                 I think so. Geraldine wearing those fish pants, and that paying off with the stork kind of picking at them, that’s fun. It all feels very ’70s sitcom, but there was something about that bit where I was like, “Let’s move on.” Just from a comedic perspective. Pete:                You didn’t like when the stork got right up next to the picture of the stork and kind of stood there? You didn’t think that was… Alex:                 I think it was that I liked other bits earlier on better. I think the fruit bowl is a fun little thing. I think the jackets changing while she’s going through labor is a lot of fun. Justin:              Yeah. Pete:                And when she stopped to enjoy the mink, that was hilarious. Alex:                 That was a great beat as well, and I think even little things like when she starts to go through… I think it’s the Braxton Hicks at this point, and the kitchen goes crazy, and they’re screaming and running out of the kitchen. It all felt very in the ’70s moment, down to her poses at the end and everything. This episode, to me, I’ve loved Paul Bettany in the previous episodes, and I thought he was great here. Here in particular, I noticed how much Elizabeth Olsen has been modulating her voice every episode to embrace the era, and I was very impressed. Justin:              Well, I think just the detail work, performance-wise, and the pacing of the story is really amazing. The way they’re able to tweak their performances as they move in an out of the sitcom stuff and then in these moments where reality starts to come in, like that back-and-forth montage between Vision outside talking to Kathryn Hahn and Hub and Wanda inside with Geraldine is so great. The performances are sort of ping-pong-y back and forth. The shots are changing as it’s getting out of the sitcom world and more into the stressful reality of the false world they’re in. And even in the end, when we switch over to the letterbox, and it goes into movie form, which I guess is meant to be the real reality, and Monica Rambeau flies out of the town, military surrounds her… Pete:                Geraldine. Justin:              Geraldine. My name is correct as well. Daydream Believer playing, which I think is such a fun song choice. Alex:                 There were a couple of interesting things about that moment, I thought. I mean, first of all, just visually, you kind of see the energy crackling around as she gets thrown out of the dome. I know we keep calling it a dome. We don’t know that it’s a dome. I just kind of assume that. But you see sort of this TV test pattern as she’s being pushed outside, but then when she’s outside, two things happen that I’m not quite sure how to parse. One is you definitely see the Scarlet Witch energy signature crackling around her and swirling around her, so that seems pretty clear. But also, her clothes didn’t change back. They stay. I kind of expected her to suddenly be in a S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform, or a S.W.O.R.D. uniform, or a beekeeper’s uniform, or something like that, but nope, she’s still got the Geraldine outfit on, and I thought that was an interesting detail to kind of hold onto going forward. Justin:              Well, I think that points to what we were saying earlier, that Kathryn Hahn and all the townspeople were in the town when this happened, and that’s why they’re main characters, and Geraldine, Monica Rambeau, has inserted herself. So I think she’s sort of undercover. She put on those clothes so she could blend in with the era of sitcom that they’re dealing with. Pete:                Yeah. I kind of want to talk about… like in three episodes, just short episodes, we’ve gone through so much. So much has happened, but because of the TV show format, they were really able to pack a lot of stuff in. It’s really impressive, everything that’s gone on in these three episodes, and the arcs, and all the stuff that has happened. I went from, after the first episode, being like, “I don’t like this. This is scaring me,” to really- Justin:              “Wah, wah, I’m scared. This is stupid. I need smelling salts to wake me up, because I’m just not doing well right now.” Pete:                Yeah, thanks for recapping all that. But I just feel like from where it started to where we are now, in three episodes, is really impressive. Alex:                 Can you… I’m sorry. Can you say, “How it started, how it’s going”? That’s kind of the internet meme, so. Justin:              Oh, nice, dude, yes. Alex:                 It’ll be much more fun to do that. Pete:                Yeah, I’m not going to do whatever. Justin:              Yeah, brand manager. So let’s take that back. We’re just going to rewind, because you sort of fucked it up in the same way Vision does in this episode. “Something is wrong,” and then speak only in internet speak, if possible. Alex:                 Yeah, that would be good. Pete:                Yeah, yeah. Cool. So I- Alex:                 Can you talk about Bean Dad real quick? Pete:                I just think that… Justin:              Don’t… Pete:                It’s impressive what they’ve done so far, and I know that I started off not enjoying myself, but man, I can’t wait for the next episode, and it’s really awesome. Alex:                 Awesome. I’m glad you’re coming around. Justin:              You just got to trust. You’ve been on a journey. The one thing I think we haven’t talked about in the episode is the commercial, and that felt like… the other commercials felt very specific about certain things. This one felt like a big clue for the overarching situation. Like, “Do you need a break? A world all your own? Want to get away but don’t want to go anywhere?” That feels very commentary on literally the story and what’s happening. Pete:                But it’s- Alex:                 Yeah, 100%. And… Oh, go ahead, Pete. Pete:                But it’s also called HYDRA Soak, which made me think like, “Oh, HYDRA, that could be an interesting idea that’s injected in there.” Alex:                 Like the organization from the MCU? Pete:                Yeah. Yeah, just- Alex:                 Or the mythological creature? Pete:                Ooh, it’s hard to tell. Alex:                 It is hard to tell. So here’s what we got in terms of commercial clues so far, right? The first one is the Stark toaster. We talked about that a little bit, potentially that being the Stark bomb. The second one, we got the Strucker watch, which does have HYDRA on it. It has the HYDRA symbol on it, which could indicate a bunch of things. It could indicate they’re behind it, like we talked about. It could be an offshoot of HYDRA. It could be A.I.M., that it dresses like beekeepers in the comic books, so you certainly got that indication there. Or it could just be Scarlet Witch’s history, where she was taken in by HYDRA, and that’s part of her. That could be the same thing with the HYDRA Soak in this episode, where it’s just kind of as she walks through her own personal history, it’s riffing off of that. Or it could be indicating the bad guy behind it. Justin:              Yeah, it’s also… It’s a commercial break. You call them a commercial break. That’s also like she may be having a psychotic break. Maybe those are sort of lining up. Alex:                 I certainly feel like that every time I have to watch commercials. Justin:              Yeah. Pete:                Oh, wow. Alex:                 Speaking of which, thank you to this week’s sponsor, Children’s Television Workshop. “Me want cookie.” They asked me to say that. I don’t know why. Justin:              They make you say that. Alex:                 Yeah, every time. Pete:                I want cookie, too. Alex:                 As we start to wrap up here, any other moments you want to call out? I just wanted to mention we talked a lot about the supporting cast, and I wanted to mention them by name. I wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget, but Asif Ali as Norm, Jolene Purdy as Beverly, and we’ve been calling him Mustache Guy, but David- Pete:                Mustachio! Alex:                 Mustachio. David Lengel as Phil Jones, and I thought it was such a weird but funny reveal that it turns out he’s married to Dottie. There’s that great scene in the middle where she comes in and asks, “Do these earrings make me look fat?” And his deadpan… Pete:                The power goes out. Alex:                 “Oh, thank God.” Very funny. Pete:                Yeah, the power goes out, and then he goes, “Oh, thank God.” Ah, that was- Alex:                 He’s the real hero of this show right now for me. I’m enjoying him quite a bit. Any other moments you guys want to mention that we may have skipped over? Pete:                I just feel like if somebody knocks on your door and asks for a bucket, you can just be like, “Go fuck yourself, all right? I’m not going to give you a bucket.” Alex:                 You could cut out a couple of words there and say, “Bucket? Fuck it.” Justin:              Nice. Okay, I’ll know not to darken your door when I need something to bail out my house. Pete:                Well, I feel like there’s real things, and then there’s, “What do you mean, you need a bucket? How do you not have a bucket? How do you exist without a bucket?” Justin:              What are some things I could borrow from you that would be reasonable to your mind? Pete:                Uh, sugar. If you were like, “Hey, man, I really need to get drunk right now,” I’d give you some of my booze or beer or something. Like normal things you ask somebody. But a bucket was just so out of- Justin:              So if I came over to ask for a bucket, you’d be like, “Fuck this guy”? I’m concerned about this. If I came over and was like, “Hey, I need to get drunk right now,” you’d be like, “Totally normal. Come on in.” Pete:                Yep. It’s happened. It’s happened. Justin:              Okay, makes sense. Pete:                I always have extra booze just in case friends need it. Alex:                 Let’s wrap this up with our Vision Boards. What are on our Vision Boards for the next episode? Justin, let’s go to you first. Justin:              Well, I mean, if we’ve done Brady Bunch, are we moving into ’80s? Are we going to get perhaps a Mr. Belvedere situation? Pete:                No doy. Alex:                 Mr. Belvedere? I feel like the reference is probably Full House, right? That’s what they got to go for. Pete:                You got an Olsen. Come on! Justin:              Family Ties. I feel like Full House you could edge into ’90s. ’80s TV sitcoms are like… What are the big ones? Family Ties. Pete:                Charles in Charge. Justin:              Charles in Charge, perhaps. Pete:                Webster. Justin:              I feel like that’s the world. And in the preview image… Pete:                Diff’rent Strokes. Justin:              Some of the preview images from what I assume is
39 minutes | 2 months ago
MarvelVision: WandaVision Episode 2 – “Don’t Touch That Dial”
Things get weirder as WandaVision heads to the ’60s in Episode 2 of the brand new Marvel Studios Disney+ series, “Don’t Touch That Dial”. Wanda and Vision are getting ready for the town’s talent show, but a stick of gum manages to mess things up. Meanwhile, Agnes introduces Wanda to the neighbors, including the tightly wound Dotty and Geraldine, who seems to know more than she’s letting on. And we break down some wild theories about what might be going on in the show, as well as the usual comic book Easter eggs and references. SUBSCRIBE TO MARVELVISION ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. Full Episode Transcript: Alex:                 MarvelVision, a podcast, all about the MCU, Marvel movies, Marvel TV shows, specifically Marvel TV shows because we’re going to be talking about the second episode ever of WandaVision, which just dropped on Disney+. I’m Alex. Justin:              I’m Justin. Pete:                I’m Pete. Alex:                 And very exciting. Lots of stuff again to talk about. Requisite spoiler warning upfront. We’re not going to recap every moment of the episode. We’re definitely going to get into it. We’re going to get into predictions. We’re going to get into Easter eggs. We’re going to talk about some of our favorite moments in the episode, but before we do, I think the big thing that we need to talk about, because two episodes dropped on Disney+ today. From now on out, it’s going to be one episode a week, but a lot of discussion on our first episode was focused on how does that episode hold up by its own? How does it pair with the second one? We’ve seen the second one, in particular, I’m curious to go to Pete who was panicked I think about the first one Justin:              He was a screaming lunatic I think we could say. His [crosstalk 00:01:06] was literally on fire. He couldn’t deal. Had to take a nap and then woke up [inaudible 00:01:10]. Alex:                 Just fell down in the middle of the podcast. If you listen to the podcast, there’s a half hour of blank space when Pete was unconscious. Justin:              I went to get smelling salts and put them under his little nose. [crosstalk 00:01:21]. It was like an old timey cowboy story. Wake up, Pete. It’s time to talk about MarvelVision. Alex:                 Finally, put a pie on the window sill and he just floated right up. Pete:                Pie or cheeseburgers will work. Justin:              Big old bucket of water in the face and he was like, let’s talk about Wanda. Alex:                 How are you feeling after this one, Pete? Pete:                A lot better, I’m feeling a lot better. And I think that’s obviously why they dropped two in the beginning because that first one is off and the second one is a lot more digestible. Not as stressful, even though there are things happening for sure. It’s just dealt with it in a way that was a little bit easier on my heart and mind, but I would like to point out something I did notice right at the beginning. We’re getting that famous Marvel logo showing all the action and oh, you know this, you know what’s up. Oh, you remember this when this happened? Oh yeah. And this show is none of that. So it is a little bit jarring for somebody who just knows the maybe movies and TV stuff to come in and just be like, where is the Wanda that I know and love? Justin:              But frankly, I think that’s exciting. I think it’s exciting that this is so different and able to still be super interesting, unique, while also being under the same banner. Because I think what that banner does at the top of the episode is it gives you that promise that, hey, trust us, we nailed all of these projects. So have a little confidence that we’re going to get there with this one. You’re going to get to see… Alex:                 Just calm a little bit. We’ll get back to this. Justin:              Exactly. Like a little… Alex:                 Eventually, it’ll get back to this. Justin:              Like a little sedative to put you at ease. Alex:                 A couple of things, not to harp too much on the first three seconds of the episode too much, but I did want to talk about it because I forgot to mention this in the previous podcast, I got so, I don’t know, excited isn’t the right word. Relieved actually might be closer, when the Marvel Studios fanfare came up at the beginning of the episode because it has been so long since anything Marvel. We’ve gotten used to this cadence of two, three movies a year, things coming out regularly. It’s been almost a solid year since we’ve seen anything. So to see something else coming up new, it felt good. Justin:              Exactly. I got so hyped. I took a bucket of water and put it on my face. I was like, [wooorrr 00:03:41]. Alex:                 I baked a whole pie and put it on the window sill. An hour later it was gone. Justin:              I took some smelling salts and poured it right in my mouth because I was like, what am I doing with this stuff, I’m so excited? Alex:                 The other thing though, and these are two little caveats and I love this episode. I thought this was a fantastic episode, but two things that I thought were, not bad choices, but weird choices. Well, still talking about the logo here. I loved it the first episode, how it changed into sort of a classic TV logo. I was expecting that again this episode and that didn’t really happen, which was strange. The other thing is the, previously on, is a weird choice here in terms of how they execute it, because it doesn’t feel stylistically consistent with the rest of the episode. I think it’s probably going to become much more important as we go out in this series, which is why they set it up here, but right now it’s like, I don’t need to remember most of this. Justin:              Well, here’s what I think. I think you do need to remember most of it. And I also think it was sort of recreating the tone because they don’t want to have to keep slow walking us into the tone of this show every episode. And I think to both of your points, the logo changed into the black and white television intro in the first episode, in this episode it’s almost reminding us what’s up, giving us a little sense of the tension, dread and classic look of everything. And then it’s almost like a hard transition into the new episode. And I think that serves a dual purpose in that we saw it’s a different sitcom this time. So it’s almost like the characters are also changing channels, changing eras a little bit into this new episode and I think that’s important. Pete:                I disagree, Justin. I think what Alex is saying is right. Somebody dropped the ball and someone needs to be fired because it was a sweet transition, really helped us. The second one, they left us high and dry. I was like, what the fuck is going on? Because it goes into this fun animated thing, maybe do a little bit of that with the logo. [crosstalk 00:05:34]. Alex:                 I love the idea that Kevin Feige didn’t watch this at all until it’s Friday morning, Disney+, wakes up nice and early, gets himself a cup of coffee, is about to sip it, sees the intro and is like, “What the fuck?” Pete:                Yes. Spits it on his brand new computer. Alex:                 Someone is getting fired. What the… Justin:              And he’s like, “Give me Tanya on the phone. She’s fired.” Well, because the two camps here, just to be clear, is me saying pat on the back, that was a cool choice. And Pete saying, someone’s head has to roll for this obvious mistake. So you be the judge listener. Alex:                 [crosstalk 00:00:06:04]. It was definitely me first and Pete was just backing me up. Pete:                I’m just supporting his choice. Alex:                 Great. I think we’ve pretty much covered everything in the episode. Justin:              We’ve covered that in seconds of dialogues so far. Alex:                 I’m going to give kind of a broad strokes about the plot. We did this last time. Pete:                Okay, you want to move forward? Okay. I’ve more things to say but okay. Alex:                 Hold on. We can get back to the logo for our middle chunk of the podcast where we do logo revisited. Justin:              Yeah, logo, go, go, go, our favorite section. Here we go. Let’s go back and talk about the logo. Alex:                 Like the first episode, this is a very typical sitcom plot. And I think I was a little too dismissive about the first episode being a premise pilot. This is what’s really driven home here is the idea of this show is twofold. Obviously whatever’s going on outside in the world, whatever’s happening with Scarlet Witch and Vision in the “real world”, but the premise of the show is they moved to a small town of they’re trying to hide their magic powers, which is a very classic sitcom premise. And I got that in the first episode, but I think that’s driven home in a really good way, thematically in a modern thematic way as well in this episode, which I thought was really cool. So we get mostly, they’re trying to prepare for the town talent show, at the same time they’re hearing some weird noises outside. So Vision joins the community watch program. Justin:              Neighborhood watch. Alex:                 Gets accidentally drunk on some gum, a very classic sitcom premise for a robot, I guess. And they go to the talent show, think they’re messing it up because they’re showing off their magic powers, but turns out they actually win the talent show. And so that’s the sitcom of the show. The other thing that I thought was really fascinating stylistically, because you compare this to the previous episode, is the performances because they’ve evolved as well. Scarlet Witch is now more sarcastic 1960s. Everything’s a little looser, it’s a little sexier. We see more different races in here as well, which is something that you wouldn’t necessarily see in the 1950s. So I thought it was neat to see that evolving, take on the sitcom in episode two. Justin:              Well, I think that all of this, there’s just so much in every choice in this show and to your point, yes, it’s just a slow natural progression from the 1950s to the 1960s typified I think by, at the beginning we see the bed separate. And then in that opening sequence, the beds get pushed together which was a big landmark choice in I think, I Love Lucy. And it was a legit controversy back in the day when they put the beds together. Which is crazy to think that back in the day… It’s not like people in the 1950s slept in separate beds. Everyone always slept in one bed. It’s just on television they couldn’t insinuate that people might touch each other at night. So they set the two child beds. Pete:                I would like to point out something that [inaudible 00:08:52] said though, is that it’s very hurtful. I felt like the lady in the horse costume in this episode, because I’ve been to talent shows and worked really hard and not only my outfit, but my routine, gotten it all down and then someone shows up stumbles through it. Everybody loves them and they win. And it is fucking heartbreaking to sit there, holding your horse head in your hand, just emotionally drained from what you’ve put in for months and months at a time. And somebody just stumbles their way through and just kills it. Justin:              Pete, imagine how I feel as the horse’s ass standing right behind you, being the butt, still coming in second place in over 100 talent shows that we’ve entered. Alex:                 I just want to give a little bit of clarity to what we’re talking about here. Back when we were allowed to meet in person, Justin, Pete and I used to do our horse centipede act. There was lot of… Pete:                Ah, don’t make this creepy, you asshole. Justin:              Pete was the head. Alex:                 I was the middle. Justin:              I like the idea that this horse centipede act with three people is one head at two butts. And you and I were butts and Pete was the head. No second head. Alex:                 What were we talking about? Justin:              I have a point to make. You said that the premise of the show is about them hiding their magic powers. And I think that is one of the central tensions of the show because they’re not hiding their identities. Their identities are, they’re called Vision, they’re called Scarlet Witch. That’s real, but they have to hide the instances of their superpowers when they’re using them. And I think that points to a lot of facts that we have yet to uncover on this show in that they are in control of this environment. And the only reason they can’t use their magic powers is because it breaks the sitcom format. If that makes sense. You know what I’m saying? They can’t be super powered because then… Pete:                And again, this is something that doesn’t make sense to us, but because you are a line producer and have worked in television for so many years, this is your kind of second calling. Like you understand how sitcoms work and their structure and everything. Alex:                 Actually, let’s take a step back there. As a line producer, so what is that? You make sure that everything lines up properly? Justin:              Yes. Exactly. Pete:                Well, no, it’s lined in frame. It’s producing everything that’s in frame. I think that’s how it works. Alex:                 Or are you a lion producer? Justin:              Yeah. I mostly make sure that the lions have the right amount of meat. So no one gets… Pete:                And that’s the lion that roars at the beginning before the movie starts. Justin:              Shout out to Siegfried who died this week. Pete:                That’s right. Man. Oh, why would you do that? Alex:                 We’re going wild today already. Let’s talk about some specific things in the episode that jump out to you, plot points you liked, moments that you thought were interesting or fun. Without getting too much into speculation, let’s talk just raw about the episode. What were sequences you were [crosstalk 00:00:11:37]. I’ll mention like, I thought the animated sequences both in the title sequence and in Vision’s stomach were very fun and perfectly done. Pete:                Now, to me that said, Jetsons. How about you guys? What was your feeling on the animation? Justin:              Bewitched. Alex:                 Yeah, Bewitched. Pete:                Okay. Justin:              Bewitched, I think is the main touchstone and I Love Lucy with some of the stuff. So they’re moving forward in time through sitcoms. One other observation there about the opening credit bit, the animated thing, they’re the only two characters introduced despite the fact that there are a ton of other recurring characters here. We talked about Debra Jo Rupp from last episode, the ultimate sitcom mom. Pete:                Dottie is in this one. Justin:              Yeah, Dottie. We see, well, she’s new in this episode, I think. But we do see the mustachioed guy and all the other supporting characters, but we’re only introduced in the title sequence to Wanda and Vision making me think that they’re the only real people and everyone else is a construct of some sort. Alex:                 Interesting. I mean, that’s definitely getting into some speculation. Pete:                Agnes isn’t real? Alex:                 Okay. Let’s talk about Agnes. Kathryn Hahn continues to be great this episode. So funny. Pete:                “How do people do this sober.” Oh, what a line? Alex:                 I love that she gets to move forward through the decades. Now she is the boozy housewife. The one that’s constantly getting drunk and wasted, very classic sitcom trope there. Her delivery of her lines are good. I love her exchange with Dennis, the mailman where she’s looking back and [crosstalk 00:13:01], checked him out, very funny. The lying about her husband, Ralph, being the assistant and making him disappear, also very funny. And all the stuff that was said, you’re a scratch, the buddy, was very funny as well. To get into like the theorizing part about it, I think there are a couple of interesting things here. This, potential spoilers I guess. We talked about this in the first episode, but a lot of focus was on maybe her being some variation on the character, Agatha Harkness from the comic books. We get a couple of clues here. Maybe I’m looking into it too much, but seeing a Scratch, in the comic books, Agatha Harkness’ son is Nick Scratch. Not the character on Sabrina. Don’t nobody freak out. We don’t have a bad boy alert here or anything. [crosstalk 00:13:47] Justin:              I was about to hit the light. Alex:                 But her son is named Nick Scratch, and I looked this up. She has a husband that we never see. We never find out who Nick Scratch’s father is. So that seems to be at least… Yeah, they’re playing with that here I think. The other thing, which is a way bigger clue is over the animated opening credits, as we see Wanda in the supermarket, there’s two sides in the background. One of them is for, I believe Auntie A’s cereal. So Auntie Agatha’s cereal. And there’s something about like it being magically delicious or whatever. It’s not exactly that, but then the other one is our Bova Brand milk. And again, this is going to get to the comics, but Agatha Harkness, at least for a little while, lives in this town that I’m blanking on the name of, I’m sorry. I’m a bad comic book fan. Justin:              Are you talking about Wundagore Mountain? Alex:                 Yes, Wundagore Mountain, which is run by the High Evolutionary. And there’s a bunch of animal people there, including Bova, a cow woman who also helps take care of Pietro and Wanda and I believe their kids later on as well. So whether it turns out to be that or not, there’s definitely like they’re typically hemmed and this gets into a bigger thing. I know I’m monologuing at this point, but this is the big thing that I took away from the episode that I really liked about this. What I was mentioning earlier, that it worked thematically in terms of a modern context as well, is the whole point of the episode is they’re doing this magic act where Wanda is saying, no, you got to show them. You got to show them what the magic is. You got to show them that it’s not real and what’s really happening. And that’s exactly what we get this episode. They’re not playing coy about it. We don’t know what’s happening, but we know this isn’t real. We know there’s a problem. We know there’s an outside world and we know eventually it’s going to have to be solved in some way. And I think that was a subtle way of weaving that in the episode and making it work for a 1960s sitcom premise, but also making it work for a modern TV show. Justin:              Yeah. It’s so smart. On the Agnes tip, I feel like in the first episode and in this episode, it feels like she’s sort of keeping the fantasy alive. She’s aiding and almost teaching Scarlet Witch on how to keep the sitcom trope going and to live within it so that she can be happy with Vision. And on the other side of that, Vision keeps pressing against the reality. He keeps logic, keeps trying to overwrite and then the sitcom world keeps gumming him up or somehow reshifting him back into the sitcom thing. And I think that may be the essential tension in what each character is sort of going through in this series. Alex:                 I mean, a couple of things that point to that, I think pretty clearly, one, Vision is dead. So something is going on there where he, I imagine if he suddenly realized that he died, he’d just poof into a puff of smoke or something like that. But on the Agnes side of things, I think it’s her first line of the episode as she walks up to Wanda and says, “There she is the star of the show”, which is like, she knows what’s going on. She’s aware. If nobody else is aware, at least Agnes is aware. Justin:              I think you’re right. And there’s also a line that I think Wanda has, “This is our home now”, which I think it also enforces like I’m going to keep this going for as long as I can so that we can be happy. Alex:                 I love Elizabeth Olsen’s performance in this episode in particular. She goes through so many different ranges and we got a sense of this in the scene in the last episode where the, stop it, stop it scene where she broke a little bit and we saw real Wanda, not sitcom Wanda. Here she gets to play that throughout. And it’s still very unclear to me. I still kind of not 100%, but pretty firmly stand by the idea that she’s the one keeping this going. She might not be the villain of the show necessarily, but she definitely doesn’t want to leave the sitcom world as strongly as maybe she should. And you get that through the performance, particularly at the scene at the end in the gazebo where she wants to tell Vision something weird is happening. And there’s clearly a level of her that realizes this is wrong, but she doesn’t want to change it. Justin:              Yeah, I agree. The performance is so strong. There’s a subtle panic all the time and sort of a wide-eyed like sadness I think, that is permeating this. And this is sort of speculation for later on, but I think they’re living their moments of a life very quickly. Last episode, they got married. This episode at the end there’s the reveal that she’s pregnant. I think my theory from last time is that these may be the very moments when Vision’s dying or if this is all happening in a split second, and she’s trying to live out the life that she wished she could have had with Vision as fast as possible. Alex:                 Well, I think… Oh, go ahead, Pete. Pete:                I was just going to say, we’re talking a lot about Wanda, her acting, but man, Vision and the way Vision was drunk and talking to the audience is really hilarious. Like, “You’re dumb little faces”, he says at one point. “I’m feeling pukey.” He had so many great lines. I know it was sitcom fun, but the fact that Paul Bettany is playing a robot and then the robot that’s drunk and it’s just really fun to see all this happening at once. It’s really impressive. Alex:                 He’s great. I know I was in the tag for him in the last episode, but seeing his drunk dad routine this episode was really fun. Just his stammering Brit, just really funny. And I even liked the line at the end, after he takes out the gum, he was like, “Oh, I’m not that funny without this”, and then throwing it behind him. Just a fun little moment in the middle of all this weirdness, particularly at that point. I thought it was really good. Pete:                Also, I just wanted to say as far as really great performances, mustache man killed it when she turns, he was like, “That was my grandmother’s piano.” Alex:                 Yeah. Well, those things, we talked about the computational systems’ thing for the last episode, which works for the weirdness of the world, but also works as a very typical sitcom joke. I love those things in that way. Also the line about, “Wait, is that how mirrors work”, which are exactly what people would say in sitcoms like that as magic is happening around them. But also these are clearly real people or maybe pretend people who are trapped in something who are trying to figure it out as well. Pete:                Well, … Alex:                 Yeah, Pete. Pete:                Speaking of that, speaking of real people, there was a moment at Dottie’s kind of thing where we got introduced to a new character who also, she seemed like she wasn’t aware of what’s going on or how she got there or even her name when she’s introduced to Wanda. Justin:              Yeah, she breaks the format. Pete:                It seems like that maybe this character is also having a Wanda experience, where she’s trapped in there as well. Alex:                 Yeah. Pete:                So it might not all be Wanda’s doing. It might be like; this could be a place where they’ve trapped different heroes. Alex:                 I have a theory about that that I want to get to in a second, but that’s Teyonah Parris. People might know her from Mad Men, which I think she was channeling probably at least a little bit here. Justin:              I love that. I love her as a guest star. Alex:                 Yeah. She’s really good. Here, I’ll throw in a theory and this is based on kind of knowing a little bit about who she is and what she’s playing. Pete:                Oh, I thought it was based on the fact that you’ve watched ahead. Alex:                 No, no, no, no, it’s not. I mean, they’ve revealed casting for other movies and things. And we talked about it the previous episode. Again, this is probably a spoiler. So if you don’t want to know, turn away, but she is Monica Rambeau. She’s the grownup Monica Rambeau. She comes from the comics. She’s going to show up at Captain Marvel 2. I think there’s a connection between the red helicopter that drops that has the sword symbol on it again, and her showing up. My theory is that that helicopter brought her in somehow, got enveloped in the sitcom world. And she is trying to figure out what’s going on with Scarlet Witch and Vision in a very direct way versus the voices outside who we hear this episode saying, “Wanda, who’s doing this to you.” She’s in there and really trying to free them because a lot of her dialogue seems to be nudging them a little bit to be like, hey, that’s a weird thing, right? Oh, that’s weird, do you remember this thing and kind of tickling them a little bit? I don’t know if you guys have the same impression. Pete:                Also the helicopter was Ironman colors. Alex:                 That’s true. Yeah. Maybe. I mean, I think it’s also Vision colors, right? Because you’ve got that Vision red and yellow and everything else. Justin:              And that makes me think that maybe that the Scarlet Witch has created some sort of pocket dimension that she was able to penetrate. Maybe it’s like a little bubble or something and anything that goes into it becomes part of the fantasy. Alex:                 While we’re just going wild on speculation, spoilers, I do you want to talk about two other things in the episode that I thought were interesting? One of them is pretty obvious, but when you’re talking about thematic stuff, the benefit from the talent show is for the children. And they keep saying, this is all for children. Which again, in terms of like thematically tipping their hand and saying, we’re going to tell you what this show is actually about, it’s clear when Wanda is pregnant by the end, whoever is doing this, whatever is happening here, it is all about these kids who of course are very important to the comics. And we know that, but that seems to be the plot of the show as well. Pete:                As people have kids, like that’s how it worked, or you guys just started talking about kids and then kids showed up. Right. Justin:              I mean, technically, yes. There’s one other step in there that I don’t want to tell you about, Pete. Pete:                Okay. All right. Alex:                 That’s for a real spoiler podcast. Justin:              Yeah. We do a podcast every time [crosstalk 00:23:42]. Alex:                 The other thing that I wanted to throw out to you guys, and I don’t know. I’m very iffy on this theory, but I do think there’s some evidence for this. In terms of who is behind this, we have that very terrifying moment at the end when they go outside to the street and they see a guy come up through the street through the manhole. Pete:                The beekeeper. Alex:                 The beekeeper. Pete:                And what’s interesting about this guy is, and I don’t know if this at all, but bees don’t usually live in the sewer. So the fact that a beekeeper came out of the sewers, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Justin:              What’s about the famous cartoon and comic book, Teenage Mutant Ninja Bees? They live in the sewer. Alex:                 Teenage Mutant Ninja Bees. Teenage Mutant Ninja Bees. Bees in the house. Justin:              Heroes who make honey. Alex:                 Confusing. Justin:              Heroes who make money or make honey. Alex:                 Oh. Make honey. No, that’s much better. Thank you. The thing that I wanted to mention about the beekeeper, this is my theory that I’m kind of iffy about is based on that and one other thing that I’ll mention in a second, what if A.I.M. is behind this. A.I.M. is an organization from the comics. They’re scientists who regularly muck with everybody. There are constantly jokes about their uniforms and how they’re wearing these beekeeper helmets. The other additional thing that I’ll throw in there, this design was at the end of the first episode as well before they cut to the TV and then again here, Wanda and Vision are trapped in this hexagon, which is a honeycomb design. So there’s something there that I think indicates, to take a wildly far field, also adding in the commercial with Strucker and knowing Wanda and Vision and Pietro’s history with HYDRA, there could be something. We know HYDRA is dead in the MCU. We know S.H.I.E.L.D. is dead. What if it is these two offshoots? A.I.M. has somehow captured them, a science offshoot of HYDRA and S.W.O.R.D. is this offshoot of S.H.I.E.L.D. that’s dealing with interdimensional incursions or something. And they’re basically battling for a Scarlet Witch and Vision Justin:              That’s what I was thinking. And so the influence is coming from both sides. We have Monica Rambeau coming in to try to pull them back on the heroic side. I think that’s what the radio is, probably a good guy voice. And I think the HYDRA, A.I.M. influence is for trying to get children. They want a creation out of this using their powers that they can control. Pete:                Because when I saw the beekeeper, I thought like, oh, maybe this world that she’s creating is sucking real people in, but when the beekeeper turned and looked angrily, it seemed like it was someone too down there. And I thought, okay, this isn’t just a regular person trapped in here. Alex:                 It might also be that the bee is sort of an illusion. Justin:              Tude is a comic book shortening of the word attitude. Alex:                 Yes. Oh, thank you for specifying. I appreciate that, Justin. Yeah. I mean, it’s possible that he might’ve been changed by this reality bubble or something like that. So he might not look like that at all. We might be just piecing together things that don’t actually piece together, but it’s definitely a weird moment and worth mentioning. Two other that I wanted to mention. One of them, Emma Caufield, Anya from Buffy the Vampire Slayer plays Dottie, which I thought was a fun little bit of casting. And I think she nailed that perfectly. And the second thing, this is more of an advanced thing that I do not think is going to happen here. But I only mentioned this because this news just recently came out with the MCU, not confirmed by Disney, but apparently Chris Evans might be coming back for something as Steve Rogers. They’ve also indicated that there’s some sort of cameo that we’re not expecting. Is there any possibility that we could see like Steve Rogers or one of the Avengers or somebody like that pop up in this fantasy world towards the end? Pete:                The thing was like, after the radio, Wanda was like, “That is strange.” And I was like, ooh, I wonder if that was like Dr. Strange on the radio or something just because the way she said that was trying to, I think draw a little attention to it. Justin:              This is just total stray observation as well, but I did think the boss from last episode had Dr. Strange facial hair. So I agree with you, Dr. Strange is a likely candidate of someone trying to get in there and influence this. Alex:                 Before we start to wrap up here, there’s obviously a lot more that we could talk about of the episode, but any other moments that jumped out to you that you wanted to mention? Justin:              Well, obviously the helicopter coming in, very Pleasantville, if you remember that movie, I thought. And that informs, I think the moment at the end, when they go into full color, which I think if our theory that Scarlet Witch is the person who’s guiding this and trying to keep them in the sitcom world, why would they then go to color? And my thought was that it is the influence, seeing that helicopter same as the movie Pleasantville, Scarlet Witch then has to make that make sense. So she pushes the whole world into color. Pete:                Yeah. I thought it was almost like a protective move. Like after seeing the creepy beekeeper then rewinding it and being like, no. The bubble got stronger. Like she colored it and tried to almost turn it up a little bit because [inaudible 00:28:55]. Alex:                 Yeah. I like that idea of the bubble getting stronger. I think that’s an interesting one. I think also just on a logistical level, it’s something that lets us again, pull back the curtain a little bit on the whole magic trick they’re doing with the show vs between episode one and episode two, where it just went from 1950s to 1960s. Now we see it go from 1960s to 1970s, presumably here at the end of the episode. Pete:                Some things that you had mentioned that I wanted to talk about. What was interesting about this commercial parody that is run in both episodes, it’s the same two people in them, which adds a nice creepy factor. And this, “Strucker will make time for you.” Like that was a crazy message as it was showing that watch. Alex:                 Yeah. I mean, Strucker is dead and there was some Strucker stuff that I’m only vaguely remembering from Agents of Shield that I do not think they’re going to refer to at all, but it is possible that we might get some sort of Strucker Jr, or Strucker the third leading up in an A.I.M. or a HYDRA or something like that as behind this, potentially. Justin:              Yeah, I think. Pete:                Also, I did want to talk about when Vision went to the neighborhood watch, the fact that their top secret stuff was gossip, was really funny. And that whole thing of norms of communists and everybody falls down, that was really just fun to see Vision trying to fit in and the choices that the robot would make. It was really… “Oh, I don’t eat food.” Like just fun. Justin:              That was [inaudible 00:30:29] the mastication joke, which I thought was sort of sitcom format breaking for that era, but super funny. Alex:                 Yeah. All good stuff. Oh, you wanted to mention something else, Justin. Justin:              Yes. Talking about the commercials makes me think another random theory. What if the commercials are sort of… If this is a Scarlet Witch constructed little pocket universe or whatever, bubble, maybe that’s what she’s putting out. She’s blaming Strucker or that’s the sort of outward signals she’s giving back to people like, this isn’t me doing this. Go chase these villains. Like red herrings for whoever’s coming after them to go deal with it. Alex:                 I do get worried about those two folks in the commercials because they seem very separate from everybody else. At least everybody else gets to interact in this real world. It’s clear, whether they’re real or not like Dottie breaking at that point and saying, “Who are you? What’s going on?” There seems to be an understanding of at least we are here with each other trapped to this thing. Wherever those commercial people are, they’re all on their own. I’m very scared for them. Pete:                It also seems like after an incident, the person, it’s almost like a Men in Black mind wipe. They’re always like, oh, hey, okay, now I’m back to normal. Justin:              Alex, do you feel that way when you see regular commercials, where you’re like, Oh God, those poor people? Alex:                 I’m terrified. Yeah. Whenever I see… Justin:              [inaudible 00:31:50] Matthew McConaughey is driving that car somewhere all by himself. Alex:                 Ah, so scary. Justin:              I was scared for him. Alex:                 I hope he’s all right, all right, all right. Justin:              Good. Alex:                 I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Justin:              Never apologize for a strong Matthew McConaughey. Pete:                Make him apologize. Fuck that. Alex:                 Before we wrap up here… Oh, you have two more things. Justin:              Two small things. I love when Wanda reveals that she’s pregnant at the end and says, “Is this really happening?” I really liked that because it feels like she’s giving away the game a little bit to Vision. She’s like, I want this to be happening. You want this to be happening extensively. Let’s agree that this is happening now so that we can enjoy it. I thought that was a real nice, subtle explanation moment. Alex:                 And well, we touched on this earlier in the podcast, but I think that also raises a lot of about what’s going on with Vision because he died and the fact that he is assuring that… Pete:                Stop saying that. Alex:                 Well, he did. Pete:                You’re really breaking my heart. Alex:                 The fact that he is saying… Pete:                Leave him in this little bubble that Wanda created and… Alex:                 Trust me, it is hard to have a baby with a corpse. It is very, very hard. [crosstalk 00:32:55]. Pete:                I trust you. Why did you say that? Alex:                 The main takeaway is that I’m proud of them. Pete:                Oh my God. Justin:              What I think Alex means is in the same way that your phone dies, that’s the way that Vision died. So do you have a little funeral every time your phone dies, Pete, or do you just recharge it and move on? Pete:                Yes. No, I have a little funeral every time. Justin:              Crying. My phone’s dead. Help. Pete:                Yeah. I’ve some people say some nice things. And drop some roses on top. Justin:              Rose petals. Meanwhile, when Alex’s phone dies, he tries to make a baby with it. Last observation. Sort of overarchingly, the way that the show is moving forward in time through television, but in the same way, in reality, television became more and more real in the way that it showed reality. In the 1950s, it was super fake, people weren’t allowed to sleep in the same beds, all that. And then it slowly became now TV today is like that you can do anything you want. It’s the same as reality. And I think that’s a nice parallel that they’re using to show as the series moves forward, everything’s going to become more and more closer to reality, the reality for Vision and Scarlet Witch. Alex:                 Now, Justin, I hate to be the one to tell you this. I feel like you should know better, but you can’t do anything in television. It’s run by ratings and views. So you can’t just show a flower pot and then have someone shit on it and be like, ah, this is my time. Pete:                Not to disagree with you, Pete. You’ve been backing me up a lot this episode, but have you ever watched the classic show, You Can’t Do That on Television? They did a lot on television. Justin:              That’s the real twist there, was it was already on television. And I will say that my sitcom that I’ve been pitching featuring a flower pot getting shit on over and over, it’s going well. Pete:                Oh, well, I’m sorry. Congratulations. Alex:                 That’s great. Before we wrap up here, here’s what we’re going to try as a wrap up for the show. What is on your vision board? What are you predicting? What are you expecting? What do you want to see in the next week’s episode? Justin, you want to take that one first? Justin:              Sure. So we’re moving into, I guess, late 1960s, 1970s television or is that going to be like a T.J. Hooker? Like we’re getting into some more action stuff, which that seemed very exciting to me. And I think in the trailer we’ve seen definitely some more action. I’m excited about that. And the evolution of Kathryn Hahn’s character, she almost feels like she’s… Pete:                How many people are you taking here? It’s supposed to be one person. Justin:              He said prediction. It’s my vision board. Alex:                 Vision board isn’t like one picture you put up there and like, this is the house I want. It’s a picture of the house. It’s more like colors and splashes. Justin:              And I’m looking forward to the color purple kind of [crosstalk 00:35:44]. I will get there. Alex:                 Okay. Justin:              Just because your personal vision board is just a picture of Wolverine, Hugh Jackman, doesn’t mean that everyone else has to be. Pete:                That’s not true. Alex:                 Well, Pete, why don’t we go over your vision board? What’s on your vision board for next week’s episode? Pete:                Okay. It’s a lot of oranges. Some yellows. Okay. Yeah. Red, which I feel like meets the theme of the show. I’m very excited about Justin said, it kind of crushed my vision board because I would love to see some Magnum PI type of stuff for Vision sliding across the roof of a car. You know what I mean? Stuff like that, where they’re solving crimes together. That would be a lot of fun, but no, I just think that I’m really impressed with how they went from episode one to episode two. I feel like they really did a good job of being like it’s going to be okay, stop freaking out and relaxed into a more palpable show. So I’m very excited about where it’s flowing into from here. But I really feel like the side characters, I’m very excited about, to see how they’re going to add to it and mustachio all the way. Alex:                 I mean that segues nicely into what’s on my vision board. The thing that I’m really excited about beyond the main plot, I want to find more about Teyonah Parris’s character. She’s really fascinating like we talked about. Really an interesting addition to the cast that throws things a little off-kilter, so excited to see more of her in episode three, as well as the side characters. I’m always a big fan in comedies of the more they could flesh out the world of the show with random side characters coming back again and again, and again, it just makes the overall show stronger. So even though we’re focusing on the mysteries, we’re focusing on the superpowers, the comic book, Easter eggs of at all, if they can continue to make it work as a sitcom, that’s very exciting to me. Justin:              100%. Alex:                 All right. And that is it. Thank you everybody for tuning in. As mentioned, the show is going to go weekly from here on out. So we’ll have one episode going up a week. That said, if you want to support us, patreon.com/comicbookclub. We also do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM to Crowdcast and YouTube. Coming up, we would love to chat with you about WandaVision on YouTube, Comic Book Club. You can subscribe right there at comicbooklive on Twitter. iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice, to subscribe and listen to the show, comicbookclublive.com for this podcast and many more. Until next time, don’t lose your Marvels. The post MarvelVision: WandaVision Episode 2 – “Don’t Touch That Dial” appeared first on Comic Book Club.
31 minutes | 2 months ago
MarvelVision: WandaVision Episode 1 – “Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience”
Our MCU podcast officially kicks off with WandaVision Episode 1, “Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience”! Vision and Scarlet Witch are trapped in a strange, ’50s sitcom world with no clear way out. We break down our reactions to the first episode of the series, as well as plenty of speculation what exactly is going on, when this takes place in the Marvel movie timeline, and Easter eggs from the comics — and movies. SUBSCRIBE TO MARVELVISION ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. Full Episode Transcript: Alex:                 What is up, y’all? Welcome to MarvelVision, a podcast about the MCU, and specifically, the kickoff of the MCU on Disney Plus, big deal. First episode of WandaVision, we’re talking about all of it right now. I’m Alex. Justin:              I’m Justin. Pete:                I’m Pete. Alex:                 And this is very exciting. We did a preview episode for this, but we are officially getting into it now. Two episodes of WandaVision launched on Disney plus today, we’re going to talk about them individually, so check pretty soon for our second podcast talking about the second episode. But I think there’s a… I want to go to a bunch of different directions here. First of all, I want to say, for anybody who is watching this or listening to this podcast, definitely watch the episode first. We’re not going to do a complete recap or anything like that. We’re going to talk broad strokes about feelings about it. I know we have some differing opinions about- Justin:              We’ll see. There could be some different takes in here just based on our faces. Alex:                 Potentially, how traumatized some of us are, or not. Justin:              Or exuberant. Alex:                 But also, we’re going to talk about specific plot points. Obviously we’ll speculate about it. We’ll talk about potential comic book origins, though that’s going to be a tough one I think with this one. Justin:              Dicey. Alex:                 Yeah, a little bit dicey. Let’s start with you, Justin. Well, just to get broad strokes about this episode, this is like the 50 sitcom episode, it’s very Bewitched, I’d say. I’m not very versed, honestly, in old sitcoms. Justin:              I feel like it was Bewitched, Dick van Dyk. Pete:                I would say Leave It To Beaver as well, type of thing. Alex:                 Yeah. So this is something we talked about a little on the preview episode, something that they did with the show, which I think is really fascinating, is they tried to film each episode like the time period they’re in. So this was filmed in front of a studio audience, they did the effects just naturally the way that they would do them at that time period, and the thing that I would say that I was really impressed with with this episode is I feel like they wrote the jokes and they structured it exactly how they would for that time period as well. Justin:              Truly, I mean, we’ve talked over the years a lot about how the Marvel films, they take a genre and really play the genre and then lay the superhero specifics on top of it. So you get your original Captain America movie, you get your Guardians Of The Galaxy that feels like the fun space romp. All of them use the genre to its most extreme or to its utmost and helps them with the storytelling, and this is like an even harder commitment to that in the television world. This was an episode of this type of TV show, it was perfectly milk toast. And I mean that as a compliment, the jokes, those are real jokes that the writer’s room of an actual sitcom in the fifties would be trying to make the same level of jokes, same style of joke. It’s not mocking the format, it’s doing this perfect translation of it, which I thought was a wild choice. That is a wild tonal choice. Alex:                 And you’re giving us insider information because as everybody knows, you’re a line producer on many TV shows for years now, so you know when you see it, writer’s room stuff. Justin:              That is not. I do work in television, mostly on the writing and directing side, but not in the 1950s, so I don’t have a ton of experience being that [crosstalk 00:03:35]. That’s where you come in, Pete. Alex:                 Well, something that all three of us have experience with is comedy, right? And comedy writing, and definitely, the thing that I think is kind of fascinating about the structure of this particular episode is, it starts off and it started to feel like a sketch to me. I was like, okay, I get this. It’s a sit-com, but you got Wanda Maximoff. You got Vision, so what if that was in the Marvel universe? But to your point, Justin, it really just doubles down on all the sit-com trips to the point where it’s not just a sketch, it moves beyond a sketch, and then by the end we get, which is my favorite part of this episode, we get this turn into weird, creepy horror that feels right out of a Twilight Zone of that episode down to, again, the way that they’re filming it. Alex:                 So they’re almost doing two things at the same time, and that total consistency and that time consistency, even if in this early episode, we have no idea what’s going on, though we will get into speculation later, I really appreciated. Pete, I know we’re going to go to you for the contrary take. You were very bummed out about this. I also think though, you were not very excited to get into this show. Is there a reason you were hesitant in the first place? Pete:                Well, yes. Tom King, an amazing writer, but the vision comic that he did was a little depressing, and was this kind of take on suburbia, if you will. This kind of, Wanda being trapped or trapping herself or whatever it was- Alex:                 Vision being trapped. Pete:                Vision, sorry. Yes. So that, it was tough because the comic was… You didn’t really know what was going on, but it was also very sad and depressing, and this heightened that a little bit. It got scary and depressing, and I very much was on the side of that 70s show mom when I was like, “Stop, just make this stop. Stop it. This is really uncomfortable and creepy in a way that I don’t understand, nor can I get behind.” So it was a little tough. Justin:              Well, because I don’t think there’s a lot of speculation before this came out that it was going to be based on the Tom King vision comic, and I actually don’t think it is. This first episode that sort of tension and the suburban panic of that comic series, but this is something, a totally different animal I think. And it feels like this is a dense show. I mean, we can talk about sort of the big swing nature of this show and the fact that because of COVID, it’s coming out first as opposed to Falcon and Winter Soldier, which would have been a way more across the plate type show as we… What we think we know of it anyway. That this truly does feel like… I’m just going to be very interested to see the reaction because I feel like a lot of people might have a very similar reaction to Pete, which is like, “Wait, what is this?” This has none of the things that I expect from an Avengers. Alex:                 100%. I think anything Marvel at this point is a safe bet, right? Like we’ve talked about this incessantly on all the podcasts we’ve done, but even with their bad stuff, it’s really, you could argue, you can quibble a little bit, but it’s like C plus or better, right? Like, “This is fine. I’ll watch it. It’s good.” With something like this, it’s definitely going to be confusing for people. If you’re a sit-com fan and you don’t know anything about it, you’re going to be like, “Who are these people and what is going on here, and what are these jokes?” If you’re a Marvel fan, you might be like, “Why is nobody hitting each other? What’s going on? This doesn’t feel like anything in the Marvel universe.” Alex:                 So it is a big risk, but at the same time, you do have those little notes, and this is very much jumping to the middle of the episode, but you have that fake commercial in the middle of the episode. Pete:                Yeah, what was that? Alex:                 Well, we don’t know. We don’t know what that is yet, but that gives you that tease of Stark Industries, they probably were making weird toasters at the time, and I feel like that gives you that MCU thing to hang on to, not just Wanda and Vision, but mentioning Stark, throwing other little things in there- Pete:                Yeah, but mentioning Stark in a bad way, in a creepy commercial where that woman doesn’t look right. I don’t think she’s okay. She was shiny. I was like, “Somebody helped that lady. I don’t know if she’s there on her own free will” That’s the thing, I wanted to understand what was happening, and it was tough because when it starts, it’s like, “Oh, hey, ’50s, fun.” Like you said, an SNL sketch, but sometimes, an SNL sketch goes too long and you’re like, “Okay, what’s happening?” And I felt like that, where it was like, “Okay, this SNL sketch is getting dark. I don’t know what the payoff is.” Alex:                 Where’s Kate McKinnon? Pete:                Yeah, there was- Justin:              Don Pardo. Pete:                Yeah, the neighbor was SNL for sure, but I wanted to enjoy this, and it kept me at a distance and kept me confused in ways that I couldn’t latch on. Even the Stark stuff, I was like, why is Stark bad? What is happening? Justin:              Well, I do think there’s a reason they released two episodes up tap, so we haven’t seen the second episode yet. Pete:                And that’s what I was worried about. I was like, why are you doing that? I was like, does your first episode suck? That’s why you’re releasing two? Oh, okay. Thank you, Alex:                 Pete. I think the way you were feeling is the way the episode is supposed to make you feel. All of the things they’re trying to get across to you, and to Justin’s point, we’ll watch and talk about the second episode in a second, but my impression is that that is going to walk you further along the path to hopefully understanding a little bit of what’s going on, or at least understanding the show. Something that I was thinking about while I was watching this was, this isn’t strictly a pilot for a TV series in the way that you think of a pilot of a TV series, right? It’s setting up more a tone. It is introducing or re-introducing the characters of Wanda and Vision, but even if you’re a hardcore MC fan and you’ve read everything about the show, I think you understand what’s going on. Alex:                 But if you’re a casual fan who watched the movies, you might have this reaction of, “Wait, hold on. I thought… Isn’t Vision dead? Did I remember that wrong? Hold on. What’s going on with Wanda? Where does this take place? Is this before the Avengers movies? Wait, I didn’t think they were married.” So there’s all these questions they’re throwing out at you depending on your level of knowledge there, if you haven’t read every Entertainment Weekly article. And again, like you were saying, Justin, I think that’s a tough place to put the audience in, but I do think it’s valuing them at the tight of their intelligence. Justin:              And I feel like I love it. I think it’s great. To be able to play so hard and hit the genre so hard, I think is… No other place would have the confidence to start a show like this this way, so I appreciate it. And to walk through it a little bit maybe, the actual plot of the sit-com plot is the classic misunderstanding. Wanda thinks Vision’s coming home for a romantic night in, he’s actually bringing the boss over. They have a bunch of misunderstandings and try to cook dinner, so that feels like they’re just using a very standard boiler plate, 1950 sitcom on plot. But the stuff that was interesting, if we want to get into that, they- Pete:                There was one really interesting thing that stood out to me, and I think this is going to catch on like wildfire. Alex:                 What is this? What is happening? What is about to happen? Pete:                A beer that’s the name of your anniversary? I mean, think about that. If you could buy a beer that has your anniversary on it, you don’t have to worry about anything. You can just enjoy your- Justin:              You’re talking about the throwaway joke that Kathryn Hahn makes about Ralph, her husband, not remembering their anniversary, unless it was the name of a beer. Pete:                Yeah. June 2nd was the name of the beer, and I was like, “This is cash money.” There’s like 80 million breweries out there, somebody get on this and you’re just going to be rolling around in dough. Alex:                 I’ll tell you what, this is a little bit of a side note and we can get back to what you were saying, Justin, but Kathryn Hahn is so good at this and she’s so perfect for a sitcom, it is out of control. Her lines are easily the actual laugh out loud lines. A lot of the lines, like you were saying, I think milk toast is a good word for it, but she actually nails the jokes really, really well. All of her off-hand stuff about her husband, Ralph, it’s so stupid, but she hits it in the perfect way. Somebody mentioned that line, I don’t know if you guys saw, but they’re doing this Lucy Ricardo movie with Nicole Kidman, and I saw some random tweet where somebody was like, “Hey, I’m just saying,” and it had a picture of Lucy and a picture of Kathryn Hahn, and I was like, well I love Kathryn Hahn, I don’t know. But then watching this, it felt like, yeah, 100%, absolutely. Justin:              It’s like weird serendipity, that that fight’s going on online, and we see the show where she literally is playing, she’s technically playing Ethel, but she is really a shoe in for Lucy. But I do think, to jump right on there, she stands out as something weird. She is, and obviously she’s [crosstalk 00:12:59]. Alex:                 Oh, that’s what you thought was weird? Justin:              But I just mean, in the world, she is a deviation from the sitcom world. It feels like she is trying to get information out of them. She is keeping them in the plot, the sitcom plot, as the episode goes on, so she feels like she’s a presence there that wants something from them and is containing them in this, whatever it is, this fantasy world, however we learn about it. Alex:                 How much… I only ask, because this is our first official episode here so I’m not sure how much we want to get into speculation, and certainly if you’re listening to this and you feel like you want to just talk about recap or something, we can leave the speculation stuff for the end, so just hit us up at MarvelVisionPod. We’re happy to chat about it, we’re happy to do whatever you guys like, but I- Justin:              We’ll do anything, [crosstalk 00:13:44] I’m trapped in this child’s room. I’m trapped in my own version of suburbia. Alex:                 Yeah. I’m also trapped in… This is child stuff over here, and not mine. Justin:              We’re all clearly trapped in children’s rooms, because you guys have comic books and stuff like that around you. I have dresses. Alex:                 A lot of the speculation pre-show focused on Kathryn Hahn and specifically her character, Agnes, and whether she was the character Agatha Harkness from the comic books who… There’s been different takes at Agatha Harkness, but she usually is the one who I think raised Pietro and Wanda also. She ends up, I think, raising the twins that Vision and Scarlet Witch have later on. She’s kind of an antagonist, kind of an ally, sort of straddles the line there. But certainly to your point, Justin, that’s what it feels like in this first episode, right? She knows more about what’s going on than she’s letting on. Justin:              And don’t we get the name Harkness at one point? Alex:                 Heart. Justin:              Is that what it was? I heard Harkness. Alex:                 Yeah, the boss’s name is Heart. It’s close. It’s close. Heart and Hark are different. Justin:              Yeah, true. They are different, just the letters, the consonants. Alex:                 Yeah. Catherine Hahn is great. While we’re talking about performances, let’s talk about Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany I think. Pete, you look so bummed out right now. Pete:                I wanted to talk about the 70s Show mom. I thought she killed it, I thought- Alex:                 Go for it. I want to throw that to you. Justin:              Throw the bone, That 70s Show. Pete:                I mean, she was hysterical the way she got behind the goodbye with the hands behind the face, it was really great. Justin:              Perfect callback. Pete:                Yeah, it was- Alex:                 There’s no better sitcom mom. I’m just looking up her actual name because I’ve forgotten. Isn’t she- Justin:              Debra Jo Rupp. It’s Debra Jo Rupp. Alex:                 Debra Jo Rup there we go. And it’s [Saul Rubinek 00:15:32] is Mr. Hart, right? Justin:              Mm-hmm (affirmative). Alex:                 Great actor as well. Justin:              Yeah. Alex:                 Great, Pete. That’s all you wanted to say? Just that you liked her? Pete:                Yeah, I thought she was really great and she was calming me down because I was freaking the fuck out. And then she started to freak me out with the stop it, and I almost walked away. Alex:                 What you’ve got to do, Pete, is smoke some pot and do one of those spinney table things where it checks in with all the characters. Justin:              That’d be fun. We should do that. Pete, have you ever tried weed? You might want to give it a try. Pete:                I’m just laughing at Alex. Go and smoke some pot, and then jut do the- Alex:                 Yeah, woop. You know, the table thing. And have you’ve ever been a hanging out down the street, the same old gang, saw last week? Justin:              Hello, Wisconsin. Alex:                 Yes. Justin:              Yeah. I think everyone in the cast I thought was great. Even the smaller parts felt like walk-ons in a studio system sitcom, where they were just like, “I’m a day player. This is the only acting job I’ve ever had.” And it was great. Alex:                 Well, like mustache guy, he was like, “I tried out for Ross on Friends and I didn’t get it. Justin:              Yeah, exactly. Exactly. This is my big break. No, it’s not. Alex:                 But I do want to talk about Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany, specifically because they’ve done a lot of different things as actors, but the way most fans are going to know them coming in here is as Vision, as Scarlet Witch, who’ve gone through a lot of different iterations throughout the MCU, but this is very, very different. How did you feel about their performance this year? Justin:              Great. It’s interesting there, Elizabeth Olsen really pops I think more than Paul Bettany. Paul Bettany is in the role of this stodgy dad or stodgy husband, and he feels a little robotic in a way, and maybe that’s a purposeful choice, but it really works. That’s not a super criticism. I think the whole thing really… It’s also a little hard because the characters are confused, so it’s really hard to figure out exactly what they know, what they’re doing, and the Vision especially spends a lot of the episode like, “What are these forms? Why are we doing these things?” And clearly there’s no answer, so he’s frustrated for a lot of the time. Alex:                 One of the things that I really liked about that joke and that I want to get back to the performances is I felt like it serves such a great dual purpose to have, like you’re saying, to have Vision be confused, not understand. He’s sort of in this prisoner type place where he can’t get out of there and nothing makes any sense, but at the same time, it actually felt very consistent with sitcoms of that era, where they would just go to an office and do office work, but they’re not actually producing anything. So I liked that quite a bit. I had an opposite reaction to you. I thought Elizabeth Olson was really solid and got to a play some very big, bold choices, but I really liked Paul Bettany a lot. I thought he nailed his jokes, he nailed the sense of that sort of character, the stodgy dad character, I was really impressed with him in particular. Justin:              Pete? Alex:                 Pete? Pete:                Yeah, that guy can take a plate to the head, I’ll tell you what. Yeah. I think that the, “I am too a human, all organic material.” That was fun. Her being like, “I’m definitely married to a human man.” That was fun. I just am worried about what’s going on, where they are. It seems like maybe they’re trapped somewhere from the kind of ending that we got, and I’m worried and confused about these characters that I care about. Justin:              Well, let’s talk about that. I think we talked a little bit about the scene where the boss asked them too many questions, they start to question the world around them, he chokes, he’s dying, and then we break out of the sitcom, the three camera format and get into these super creepy, slow, David Lynchian push-ins on each of their heads. Pete:                So creepy, stop that. Justin:              I thought it worked so well. Pete:                I don’t need tension right now. The world is on fucking fire. I don’t need this right now. What are you doing? Justin:              I can’t believe I’m saying this to a human, but I don’t think you’re in a good place to watch TV right now, just any TV. Pete:                That’s all I got. What are you fucking saying? Justin:              I think you need to take it back to just, not moving pictures, just regular pictures. You need to just look at a painting or something. Alex:                 Yeah, look at some Thomas Kincaid or something like that and just bliss out. Pete:                I don’t need to be stressed. Alex:                 Have you ever tried smoking pot, Pete? You should try that. Justin:              Maybe the woman who photographs those dogs with roller skates on their feet, I think that’s a good place to start for you. Or the babies that are in flowers, that’s a good… Start there and then we can work up the moving pictures. Alex:                 I love the tension moment of that moment as well. I thought that whole sequence was great, and just to get into some speculation about potentially what’s happening here, because I really think you could only analyze the very tiny clues we have. We know that Wanda and Vision don’t know how they got there, they don’t know how they got married, they don’t know anything about the relationship, and where we left them off as mentioned, Vision was dead, they were not married, they really couldn’t be together, so something happened between there obviously. Alex:                 The big telling thing for me is that ’70s Show lady saying, “Stop it, stop it, stop it.” Which to me, makes it feel like they’re causing this. This is not an outside villain, this is maybe, to completely throw out a wild theory or maybe not that wild theory, based on the comic Scarlet Witch is constantly going crazy and creating these alternate scenarios, it’s entirely possible that Vision’s death drove her to the brain because she created this scenario where she traps a town, locks them in there and makes them live out this sitcom fantasy where Vision is still alive. Pete:                So she’s choking the boss then? Is that what you’re saying? She was- Justin:              That’s what I’ve been thinking as well. Pete:                Because when she was like, “Vision, go help him.” It was like he was released, like he was being held there and then all of a sudden, he was released and able to help. Justin:              To keep them back. I think she’s subconsciously, it may be like the moment of Vision’s death in the movie, and- Pete:                Like all of this is taking place in that, as he’s dying, [crosstalk 00:22:03] Justin:              That’s what I think, it’s sort of an occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge style thing where- Pete:                Then who’s watching the videos of this though? Who’s in that- Justin:              So here’s my wild speculation. Rather than them taking over a town or forcing people to do it, I think they’re inside the vision. I feel like the credit sequence was first, oddly cinematic, and it’s all about being inside Vision. It’s like [nia nights 00:00:22:29], it all feels very like we’re inside this robot man. So that’s where I was thinking that, and the fact that the commercial I feel like is the other big clue. It’s one of the few moments where we see color in the episode, the red light on the toaster feels like that sort of ticking, like a bomb or like something that’s pressing and maybe you’re going to shatter their illusion as well. Alex:                 I liked the idea of, and I think it makes a lot of sense, it doesn’t just have to be Scarlet which has powers. You also have Vision has the mind sewed, so if they are… That was destroyed by Thanos, right? But then a second version that they brought back at the end of Avengers End Game, so it’s possible that there’s some shenanigans going on in there where they got trapped in it in some way. But to Pete’s point, I do think the person watching the TV show throws a weird wrinkle in any of those theories. Pete:                Yeah. To me, it felt like a little nod to Mojo type of thing, where they’re trapped in some kind of like TV show type of thing. Justin:              But I think Alex, that points to what you were saying earlier with Agatha Harkness, it feels like the Scarlet Witch, because of her horrible loss, she maybe shatters a bit her consciousness and goes into Vision, and there are people trying to help her, trying to pull her out. And that’s what the people watching in the TV are, that’s what Kathryn Hahn is trying to do, or maybe she’s a malevolent presence like we were talking about earlier. Alex:                 Well, let me ask you guys something, how many episodes could you take of this before they got to gave us more information about what’s actually going on? Could you do three more episodes like this? Justin:              If there are more clues, bring them on, yeah. I think we are going to get some slow play of this. There’s nine episodes. Pete:                I can’t take the slow play is what I’m saying. I need next episode, some kind of relief here. Alex:                 I don’t think they’re going to do it that quickly, but I do think if they, and I know this is a controversial thing to call out, but if they do it like Lost pacing, where it’s slowly eeking things out, but- Pete:                How dare you? Alex:                 Hold on. But they actually give some answers as they’re going. I don’t need them to be like, episode two and this is Mojo, and this is- Pete:                I don’t need it all revealed, I just need something because right now, you didn’t leave a good feeling with us. Justin:              Sp Alex, are you saying you hope that they have just as much understanding of where the story was going on this show as they did on Lost? Pete:                Smoke monsters? You want like two or three smoke monsters? Alex:                 Yeah. Smoke monsters, polar bears, dog kind of wandering around. Justin:              And then in the script, instead of it saying, oh, a tiny light blinks on a toaster, it’s like, the tiniest fucking light you’ve ever seen is blinking like crazy on the toaster. This is the Lost script. This is probably [inaudible 00:25:29] lost. Alex:                 And if they could bring it an Outrigger at some point and never follow up on that, I think that’d be really great. Justin:              Yes, yeah. All we got to do is get to the end of the season. We’ll explain the hatch later. Alex:                 Yes. I think we probably need a couple more answers to that, but to your point, Pete, I would say, yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know in terms of pacing how you do it because there are nine episodes, but I feel like you got another two to three episodes before it really needs to start pulling things back for me. Justin:              But what we said at the top of this, we haven’t watched the second episode yet. They released those two for a reason. I feel like you’re going to get something. You’re going to get a little bone, you’re going to get a little precious little Debra Jo Rupp style bone that’s going to carry you through. Alex:                 There’s one other thing that I’ll throw out, and I only mentioned this because we did talk about this in the preview episode, but if you look at that final screen of the guy looking at the screen of watching Wanda and Vision, in the bottom left hand corner, there’s a little symbol with a sword in it which Marvel Comics fans will know that there is an organization called S.W.O.R.D. It’s usually involved with extra terrestrial life and Abigail Brand is this character who runs it, it comes out of the X-men and everything. I don’t think they’re going to do anything like that, but certainly, all three of us, everybody who is watching this stuff is trained to parse through every frame. I saw some article that was looking at the dial on the radio and was like, “Oh, this is the time it is, and that points to the issue of West Coast Avengers.” And I was like, “That’s crazy. But maybe.” Justin:              Yeah. Well I quickly typed the names and the credits of the internal sitcom show into an anagram generator. Didn’t get a lot of hits though. Barely, Babs Digby doesn’t really mean a lot of other things. Alex:                 I will say, I love the idea that they’re giving us such tiny little hints about everything that it’s going to drive people insane. Justin:              It drove Pete crazy and he doesn’t even know what’s happening. Pete:                Yeah. Justin:              The only other clue that I would throw out there is I thought it was strange that Vision has the remote in his hand at the end. They talk about being married, they get married, which I thought was very much wish fulfillment for probably both of the characters, the characters as if Vision’s dying, it’s wish fulfillment for both of them to be married if they both know that he’s dying, but him having the remote made me feel it was odd how he had his arm around her. It stuck out to me, it feels like maybe he has a little bit of a hand on the wheel of what’s happening to them. Pete:                But it also felt very like Married With Children moment, where it was just like, “All right, now I always got the remote. Gonna put one hand down the pants and another on the remote.” Alex:                 [crosstalk 00:28:20], Pete? The 90s sitcom, when Paul Bettany is like, “Eh, one day, one day.” That’s going to be great. Before we wrap up here. Any other moments that you guys want to call out? And we’ve certainly done a fair amount of speculation about this episode, but any other tiny moments or anything that you thought were particularly interesting? Pete:                The set designs are really fun? They definitely felt like a 50s TV show type of thing. The way the plates were set up and all that kind of fun stuff. Yeah, it definitely… The suits were made different. It really felt like the time period, so that was- Justin:              Great attention to detail. Pete:                Yeah, and even the coloring and all that kind of stuff, it was really well done. Justin:              Pete, you must have at least loved that they chose your karaoke song, Yakety Yak, to be a centerpiece of the episode. Pete:                Nope. Nope. Justin:              I’ve heard you sing that just countless times. Pete:                But if somebody awkwardly just yelled that out, that would pull people’s attention. I did appreciate the fact that sometimes when they do stuff, it’s like, “Look over here,” you know? It’s almost not believable, but the way he just belted into that song was pretty funny. Alex:                 Good stuff. Justin, any other little things you want to call out, or have we covered everything? Justin:              No, I think we covered it, but just in general, I loved it. Alex:                 Yeah. I was impressed as well. Like we talked about, I think just the fact that they went for it here is really fascinating. I’m excited to talk to you guys about the rest of the episodes. I hope for Pete’s sake they pull the veil back a little bit. For Pete’s sake, I didn’t mean to say that. But for all of your sake, thank you for tuning in. We are going to be talking about episode two. If you’re awake, it’s probably in the feed already, hopefully, so check that out. And then we’re going to be talking about the episodes weekly from there. Alex:                 If you want to support us, patreon.com/comicbookclub. Also do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM to Crowdcast and YouTube. Come hang out, we’d love to chat with you about WandaVision or anything in the MCU. Socially, you can check us out at MarvelVisionPod on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. We are actually live in all the feeds pretty much everywhere at this point, so iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice. I believe they should be everywhere live right now where you can subscribe specifically to this podcast. Comicbookclublive.com for this podcast and many more, until next time, stay marvelous. Justin:              Good. Forget the past. This is your future. yakety yak. The post MarvelVision: WandaVision Episode 1 – “Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience” appeared first on Comic Book Club.
16 minutes | 2 months ago
MarvelVision: Preview
On the preview episode of our brand new MCU podcast MarvelVision, we’re getting prepped for the debut of WandaVision! Find out what’s in store for the series, why it’s different from every other Marvel TV series that’s premiered before, and we chat a bit about the comic book inspo behind the show. SUBSCRIBE TO MARVELVISION ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. The post MarvelVision: Preview appeared first on Comic Book Club.
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