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Wandavision


Tank
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I think the credits was just part of recreating the vibe. But if ever there was a show to use continuity errors in TV as part of their narrative, it would be this show.

It’s things like that, and Monica’s necklace, that make me think maybe this reality is two-fold.

It was either made by Wanda and somebody is trying to contain and infiltrate it, or it was made by somebody and she is subconsciously subverting it and catching on.

I am leaning towards the later. Her powers in the movies are limited to telekinesis. 

I’m also thinking of how the neighbors seem aware of what is going on, but were anti Monica.

But at the same time, Wanda ejecting her outside makes it seem like Wanda’s world.

My guess is Wanda had a breakdown, and that unlocked extra powers. She was caught and locked up by Hydra. Maybe she was watching a lot of old TV and she unintentionally made this reality. Hydra, losing control, contains it all somehow and inserts agents into the reality.

SWORD is infiltrating, trying to rescue Wanda. The kids aren’t real though, and Vision is dead, so when she does come out, she may snap. That’s exactly what lead to House of M in the comics... and there’s a rumor that Evan Peters, the Pietro from the X-Men movies, may appear and not Aaron Rodgers.

The other thing I’m stuck on is SWORD classically was the agency that dealt with threats from space. Post Thanos it makes sense such an agency would exist. I think it’s also a partial set up for the Secret War show. But what do aliens have to do with what is happening to Wanda?

 

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Saw the third episode. Liked the third episode!

  • So, I assume this is kind of obvious but the man & woman in the commercials have to be Wanda's parents, right? I don't mean Magneto & Magda, I don't mean the cow woman made by the High Evolutionary that lived at the foot of Mt.Wundagore who adopted her & Quicksilver, I mean Mr. and Mrs. Maximoff. Her and Aaron Taylor-Johnston's parents. The products they're shilling are all references to formative experiences in her and her brother's life (Stark who dropped the missile on their home, Strucker giving 'em superpowers, Hydra) that made them what they are.

 

  •  I have no idea if this is what they're going for but there was a crossover a few years ago called Pleasant Hill or Pleasant Valley or, ok, I'll ask Mr. Google : it was Avengers: Standoff!. And in it there was this thing where S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secret plan to deal with all the superheroes and villains if they ever got out of control was to brainwash them into thinking they were living an idyllic suburban life in a perfect little town called Pleasant Hill. Just thought I'd mention it because I caught half an interview on some nerd news site establishing that Geraldine (Teyonah Parris! Dawn from Mad Men!) is supposed to be Monica Rambeau!??? She's not just some undercover S.W.O.R.D. agent or whatever. So maybe everyone's got a secret identity? Is Emma Caulfield supposed to be the love interest from the Allred Silver Surfer? (Nope! Mr. Google tells me her name was 'Dawn Greenwood' and not Dottie Greenwood like I was misremembering.) Is that what Kathryn Hahn and ... Herb? (I just went to ImdB to check to see the name of the actor who played their neighbour. I don't recommend doing that! Spoilers! Spoilers in the cast list on the ImdB page!) are supposed to be? Also superheroes/villains? Magic users?

 

  • I think the bit with the laugh track being established, then disappearing, and then returning as the cries of the newly born infants was a good bit!
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104 has explanations! Sort of!

Supporting characters from Thor and Ant-Man mesh well! (Hard to miss when Kat Dennings and Randal Park who have maxed out Charisma scores). 

So it seems as though Wanda is aware and behind it-- but why American sitcoms and not Sokovian folk tales?

Also, it seems as if this only a few weeks after the Blip/Snap was undone. Wanda was Blip-snapped, so she's only been back a few weeks as well. Right? With the time travel in Endgame the order of events was a little fuzzy-- but IIRC... After they travelled to the alternate timelines to get versions of the stones, Banner did a snap that brought everyone back.. right? Then an alt-timeline Thanos came in, and started up a big ol fight, which ended with Tony doing a second snap to unmake Thanos.

So Wanda was brought back with Banner's snap the same time that Rambeau was. So I'm guessing she was brought back, and Vision was not restored because the Mind Stone was taken and destroyed in this timeline, and in the alt one they recovered it from (during the events of the first Avengers movie) would have resulted in Vision never being made. So she's super sad there's no way for vision to exist...

...so she snaps and goes to a town in Jersey and makes her own reality?

Still a piece or three missing I think.

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Wanda seemed ok mentally when she was talking to Clint about Vision and Nat (which I believe was after Tony's funeral), so I'm guessing something must have happened pretty soon afterwards that we're as of yet unaware. 

I do have to say, I didn't put a whole lot of thought into the unsnapping/blipping. It was kinda neat to see it on screen now and how it affected certain sectors. Now I'm curious what happened to people who were in airplanes when originally dusted. Did they materialize into the air where the plabe had been or the plane now (assuming that the pilot wasn't also dusted)? I just have so many questions.

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I think that Wanda has some degree of awareness and control, but it isn’t all her. Obviously something happened between Endgame and this, so maybe she made a deal with someone? 

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The more I reflect on it, the more it definitely isn’t just Wanda. There’s more to it. 
 

Questions that might help:

-Who is the person in witness protection?

-Why the sitcom motif?

-Why the hexagons?

- Why is it cycling through decades so quickly? It’s good storytelling and keeps things fresh, but if this is designed to be a permanent place for Wanda and Vision, an idyllic community she’s created, it does not make sense to cycle through so quickly. She’s gonna run out of decades

 

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It's also interesting that things that go in are adapted to the world. The modern drone turns into a toy helicopter, the scout in a hazmat suit is turned into an era appropriate bee-keeper. Rambeau obviously got her wardrobe and make over. Wanda was not aware of any of these things, which means she can't be in control of every little aspect.

I was feeling a little Marvel-y this weekend so I went back and watched Age of Ultron and Civil War for a refresher. Wanda was pretty different the first time out. On top of the super thick accent, she actually used her mind-powers much more frequently than the telekinesis. She made the Avengers hallucinate, see their fears, and ultimately switched sides after reading Ultron's mind vis a vis Vision.

Telekinetic and telepathic powers certainly don't seem only paired-- in fact in a lot of comics they go hand in hand. It is interesting though that they pretty much dropped the telepathic power set for her other appearances. The accent too-- though it was lessened with each appearance. 

One thing that was cool to note, is that even from the start they were building in a connection between her ands Vision. Obviously, the comics sort of dictated they do-- but since she could not be a mutant with her first appearance it's a good fit that the mind stone gave her the powers she has and also gives her and Vision a connection. (Though not sure how the MIND stone makes Pietro fast). She actually even calls him "Vis" in Civil War.

At any rate-- mind control IS part of her jam even if they haven't used it in awhile. So that is obviously a factor in Wandavision-- but that wouldn't account for reality actually being altered.

In the comics, her powers were constantly being changed, retconned, and scaled up and down and called everything from magic to reality-altering which is annoyingly catch-all.

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Well, it's the first episode that I didn't like! I guess deviation from the formula accounts for that. Unless this week was supposed to be riffing on, like, NCIS ('03-'298) and shows of that ilk.

 

  • Lost ('04-'10) did an episode kind of like this. But it wasn't the fourth episode of their show! It was, like, Season 3 or whatever.

  • It's inherently uncompelling to just have a bunch of people hanging around watching stuff we've already seen for half an hour so their solution to that dilemma was to ensure the people doing that were familiar minor characters from the larger franchise. Did it work? Not for me!

  • Last night I was rewatching J. Edgar (2011) and it's just HITG after HITG in that film. Josh Stamberg shows up with an absolutely ridiculous 'stache. It's genuinely a plot point in the movie how ridiculous his moustache is; objection to it is a way of establishing the control freak weirdo nature of Leo DiCaprio's portrayal of J. Edgar Hoover and that character's (and our worlds' at large) descent into tyranny. And here he is now, 'stacheless! My point is this : I would like all future appearances of Acting Director Tyler Hayward of the Sentient Weapon Observation Response Division to feature him wearing a moustache. Moustache him up!

  • Those opening scenes w/Teyonah Parris, the stuff in the hospital, but especially the stuff with him felt like they were written and rewritten again and again, over and over, in order to clumsily convey what they needed to about her character. Except the whole rest of the episode doesn't really feature her, like, at all. So is the next episode going to reveal the exciting adventures of Geraldine undercover in Westview? What else was all that for? Is every episode of the show from now on going to be Here's What Really Happened Before?

  • Someone once pointed out that the meaning behind the two major comics crossovers of 2004, Identity Crisis and Avengers Disassembled, could basically be summed up in four words : "The bitch be crazy!". Jean Loring is crazy so she manipulates and kills a bunch of people, Wanda Maximoff is crazy so she manipulates and kills a bunch of people. I'm not sure it's a supergreat idea to do a television show all about how a traumatized woman is, like, kidnapping folks and brainwashing them!? WandaVision, the bitch be crazy! *Voodoo Child by Jimi Hendrix plays*

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On 1/30/2021 at 9:19 PM, Fozzie said:

Questions that might help:

-Who is the person in witness protection?

 

I really hated that bit. Either :

 

- we as the audience should be clued into who this person is

- or they should provide some explanation as to why they can't talk about who the person is (it would literally take two lines of dialogue)

- or, and I think this is the least likely possibility, this person is an irrelevancy and shouldn't have been a part of the story in the first place.

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Well, Agent Wu has previously handled an Avenger on house-arrest. I wonder if the missing person in witness protection isn't another hero/villain we know. At first I thought maybe it was actually Wanda, but he's surprised to see her.

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I assume it's gotta be, yeah, as well as someone we've already seen on the show but something like the following —

 

 

TEYONAH PARRIS: What's the witness' name?

RANDALL PARK: The FBI can't share that information with any other federal agency on or outside this planet, Agent Rambeau. They're in witness protection.

 

 

— would really help smooth it along. I mean, why isn't the witness' name & picture up on the big board w/everyone else? Why isn't Jimmy concerned about them at all after the initial pow-wow over it?

 

 

It's just dumb dumb mystery box style plotting. It's hiding information from the audience that'd make sense for the characters to be talking about. This, in an episode that's NOTHING but characters chewing over and expanding stuff we already know, that's a real explainasaurus, that's kind of like The Magician's Nephew. Just explaining away every point of ambiguity so far for half an hour. I don't get it. It confounds me.

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Hah! I'm revising my previous concrete assumption that Kathryn Hahn is Agatha Harkness and I'm allowing for the possibility she's one of the Agents of Atlas. Venus or Namora, probably, but she could be any of 'em! M-11 The Human Robot, 3-D Man, Gorilla-Man, the Uranian, it's all up for grabs.

 

Although, for real, if Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) does well I do expect them to start up an Agents of Atlas movie/franchise/series/whatever. Those dumb Guardians movies proved you can basically do an Avengers without having any of the characters be big names or a part of previously established blockbusters, you can just start from go and general audiences will hop on for the ride.

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1 hour ago, R.CAllen said:

I assume it's gotta be, yeah, as well as someone we've already seen on the show but something like the following —

 

 

TEYONAH PARRIS: What's the witness' name?

RANDALL PARK: The FBI can't share that information with any other federal agency on or outside this planet, Agent Rambeau. They're in witness protection.

 

 

— would really help smooth it along. I mean, why isn't the witness' name & picture up on the big board w/everyone else? Why isn't Jimmy concerned about them at all after the initial pow-wow over it?

 

 

It's just dumb dumb mystery box style plotting. It's hiding information from the audience that'd make sense for the characters to be talking about. This, in an episode that's NOTHING but characters chewing over and expanding stuff we already know, that's a real explainasaurus, that's kind of like The Magician's Nephew. Just explaining away every point of ambiguity so far for half an hour. I don't get it. It confounds me.

I disagree entirely. There isn't a single point where it would make sense to discuss the person's name.  In no normal conversation would it go from "Oh, hey, there's a magic bubble that's erased this place from everyone's mind and nobody can get close. Say, what's the name of the person in witness protection?" 

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I get where both of you are coming from and I would say both are a victim of pacing. On my end of the business shows really need to know from the start if they are a weekly release or dump and binge show. A lot of the complaints I see for Wandavision (both legit and not) would be nixed if the whole series were dumped at once.

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46 minutes ago, Tank said:

I get where both of you are coming from and I would say both are a victim of pacing. On my end of the business shows really need to know from the start if they are a weekly release or dump and binge show. A lot of the complaints I see for Wandavision (both legit and not) would be nixed if the whole series were dumped at once.

 Bingeing has changed things a lot. I think that people wouldn’t be complaining about a lot of these things if we weren’t used to getting an entire series in a single day. If this was 10 years ago nobody would be complaining, we’d just accept that this is how TV shows work.

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Exactly-- and I'd say there's a flip side to it as well. A lot of shows that know they are dropping at once (like mine, toot-toot) spends close to a year working up to that day, and within 24 hours people are screaming for more episodes.

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14 minutes ago, Tank said:

Exactly-- and I'd say there's a flip side to it as well. A lot of shows that know they are dropping at once (like mine, toot-toot) spends close to a year working up to that day, and within 24 hours people are screaming for more episodes.

As someone who doesn’t have a lot of free media time, I’m really glad that Disney+ is going this route. It allows me to be part of the conversation and I enjoy trying to puzzle things out instead of being instantly spoon-fed everything.

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They are constantly having abnormal conversations over the entire episode. It's a work of fiction about government superagents spying on a witch in love with a robot. I just want someone somewhere in this episode to have one little piece of abnormal conversation so it's clear to me what's the deal w/this particular aspect of the show.

 

 

If the idea of a conversation seems so abnormal, well, this could literally have been solved for me with just a prop during all the scenes where they're inside the base camp doing their little detective work.  Just a little blurred out picture with 'NAME REDACTED' underneath it.

 

 

I have no way to prove it one way or the other but my complaint over this would not be alleviated if every single episode of the show was available to me at once. These things bug me about television shows that are long since finished and I'm going through the episodes one by one, they bug me about television shows that I'm bingeing, they bug me about television shows that are coming out weekly. They bugged me ten years ago and they bug me today! (Yes, I know what the obvious comeback is here. It's true. It's me! The problem is me.)

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That's cool. You just don't enjoy that type of storytelling, but it is a valid style. 

Personally, I think it would be great if it wasn't important at all and at the end you just see Woo talking to someone.

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Well damn, looks like I was wrong about a lot. But I’m going with Agnes being the force behind it all, not Wanda. 
 

Edit: SWORD was also definitely experimenting with Vision’s body.

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