The urge to run from this feeling is powerful. I know.
With the fifth episode of this show, all the groundwork laid in the previous four episodes comes to a huge culmination and this episode, which I’ll be going into spoilers immediately about, is by far the best in the series so far, a truly masterful episode of television.
There’s a lot to like about this episode, so let me just run through a few of those things quickly before I get into the meat of the episode. This is probably the best theme song so far and I particularly love just how on the nose the refrain of “Making It Up as We Go Along” is. Agnes was a bit sidelined in, well, in episode 4 especially, but also somewhat in episode 3; I’m glad to see her back in top form. All the investigative stuff on the outside is fun and I like that the series has now settled into this two-stranded structure as it does liven things up a bit. And can I just say that Darcy calling the bubble the Hex because it's hexagonal in shape is just one of the smartest blending of the “magic and science” things the MCU has done so far? It’s just so clever and obviously goes back to Wanda in the comics as well, where I seem to recall her vaguely defined powers typically being referred to as “hexes.” It’s such a perfect term for so many different reasons, really. So great. If I had to pick one thing that isn’t super-good here, and I don’t suppose I really need to, but I should say something to keep this from just being super-fawning. I’m not a big fan of Director Hayward and the performance Josh Stamberg is giving; it’s partly the writing and partly the performance, I think. He’s just a bit too boo-hiss mustache twirly for me. But that’s a small complaint.
Anyway, on to the bigger thematic stuff, which is where this episode really shines. You know, there’s been no real secret to me from the very beginning that this show is obviously about grief, Wanda’s grief over Vision’s death in Infinity War, and that’s now expanded, quite smartly, to take in Monica’s grief over both her mother’s death and the fact that she missed the last three years of her mother’s life. There’s something double, if not triple, meta about this episode finally really getting that emotional core out there and talking about it explicitly; that kind of thing is a hallmark of the very special episodes that this episode is riffing on. As the prior episodes have been, this is a pastiche on sitcom tropes, but it’s also just a fully realized execution of that trope itself; it truly is a very special episode in a way that the kinds of episodes its riffing on often, unfortunately, weren’t. The human emotions on display here are very real and dramatically effecting.
This episode had the most “oh ****” moments and the thing was that they were almost all very emotionally driven. Vision freeing “Norm” was a pretty terrible moment and I mean that as a compliment. Likewise, the final moment of Evan Peters entering as a heavily accented Pietro was really great. And the scene where Wanda walked out of the bubble . . . holy ****. Dragging that drone, just like, “This yours?” I mean, Wanda is scary and I’m digging it. Okay, let’s delay the serious thematic stuff again real briefly so I can talk about how this all plays into my theories about the show. I still think this is, at least partially, something being done to Wanda, not something Wanda’s doing. It really jumped out at me that “Norm” never said Wanda’s name as he was begging Vision to release him from his torment. He only says “she” and “her,” and that feels like the show trying to pull a trick. They know we’ll assume it’s Wanda he’s talking about when, yes, I do indeed think the “she” is Kathryn Hahn’s Agnes. Peters’ appearance here is more direct evidence for my theory that Wanda isn’t controlling this entire town, not even subconsciously. I mean, I could talk about the wit behind casting Peters, who is a Quicksilver from another universe, as the “knock-off” Quicksilver here, but that’s all meta, of course. The main point, I think, is that it is a recasting, as Darcy says. If Wanda was just creating this reality with her mind, why would it be a recasting? Couldn’t she just create a fake Aaron Taylor-Johnson the same way she’s created her sons and even, I suspect, Vision? This is, I think, doubly true if its her subconscious; if her subconscious is creating the perfect family for her within this Hex, why couldn’t it just create an Aaron Taylor-Johnson Quicksilver, right? Vision looks like Vision. Wouldn’t Quicksilver look like Quicksilver if he’s a projection of Wanda’s mind? So, I suspect this Quicksilver is being created by someone who never knew the real Quicksilver. By which I mean Agnes. Oh, man, this review is so long; I have a solid paragraph of theory about why Monica seems pissed at Captain Marvel, but let’s skip it. God, see, this episode is great. Phenomenal.
But let’s get to the real emotional strengths of the episode. Both Bettany and Olsen really knock it out of the park again here. The scene where Sparky dies is really powerful to me and, for once, it feels like the dog died in something because of a deeper thematic resonance, not just for cheap tear-jerking. It is tear-jerking, don’t get me wrong, but it’s honest and that scene just brims with double meanings as Wanda tries to get her boys to understand death as a part of life and something that we have to deal with and not run away from. Then later the confrontation between Wanda & Vision at the episode climax is genuinely shocking and it gives Bettany a chance to show us a side of Vision we’ve never seen before, an angry and confrontational Vision, and it also gives us finally a little insight into Vision in this series as he admits that he doesn’t remember anything except Westview. And I love that he closes that little speech with just the simple statement, “I’m scared.” From what I see online, it seems that line was an addition by Bettany and it’s really so crucial to helping us see Vision as a victim here; and while our two titular characters are literally squared off against each other, it must have been very tempting to emphasize Vision’s strength and resolve in that moment, but instead Bettany and the show let us in to see that the source of his anger really is fear. Vision has been such a placid character in all of his prior appearances that it’s downright heartbreaking to see him in a state of such emotional turmoil and it was, for me, the most devastating moment in an episode full of devastating moments. Five episodes in, WandaVision, which was already great, went hardcore and this episode is an absolute stunner on every level. 4 stars.
tl;dr – WandaVision’s fifth episode is the best yet, emotionally powerful, thematically rich, packed with plot twists and featuring the best performances yet from the two leads. 4 stars.