'WandaVision' Episode 7 Recap: "You're Quiet, Agnes"

Well, well, well. It was, as the song said, Agnes All Along. But let's start at the beginning. We're in the noughties and this time everything's gone all Modern Family, with a little of The Office and Parks and Rec thrown in. Wanda's sleeping off the kind of hangover that comes with expanding the boundaries of her sitcom Westview.

Vision's somewhere out in the sticks, as the Wanda-centric opening titles remind us – she even gets a "created by Wanda Maximoff" this time too – and the house is phasing between time periods. The twins' Wii turns into an N64, then an Atari 2600, then Uno cards. Even the almond milk can't make its mind up. Billy's head hurts, and Wanda's feeling lost: "I’m starting to believe that everything is meaningless." Fortunately, here's auntie Agnes to take the boys away and give Wanda some alone time.

In fact Wanda's at such a low ebb that the off-screen interviewer starts chatting back to her during her talking head inserts. "I don’t understand what’s happening," she says. "Why it’s all falling apart, and why I can’t fix it."

Meanwhile, Monica Rambeau and Jimmy Woo have got their own non-evil SWORD team going with a moon rover that's going to launch Monica back into The Hex, and Billy's realising Agnes is a bit sus. "You’re quiet, Agnes," says Billy. "On the inside."

Disney+/Marvel

Darcy and Vision have buddied up to break out of the SWORD circus and get back to Westview in an ice cream van. Wanda's subconscious isn't having any of it though, sending red lights, workmen and road-crossing children to slow them down. This does, at least, give Vision a chance to learn where he came from and how he's already died twice. It's a bad vibe for a sentient android. "What am I now?" he asks Darcy, who's now a WandaVision stan herself.

The standout sequence of episode seven, though, is Monica's journey into The Hex. She stretches and warps as she forces herself through a space that's somewhere between the Stargate in 2001: A Space Odyssey and the wheezing, devouring telly in David Cronenburg's Videodrome. When she gets through it, she's got that tell-tale sign of Marvel superpowers: glowing eyes. Hello, Photon.

Wanda's chinning the antidepressants which popped up in this week's ad break (Nexus, which will let you face reality – "or the reality of your choice!") when Monica tries unsuccessfully to talk her round. Agnes arrives in the nick of time to brush her off and take Wanda back into the house. Where are Tommy and Billy though?

Maybe have a look in my basement, Agnes suggests. This basement is the kind of basement you'd trap Michael Myers in. It's covered in vines and there's a spooky glowing book. And, more to the point, Agnes reveals herself to be Agatha Harkness, who in the comics is an extremely old survivor of the Salem witch trials and a genuine witch.

So it was Agatha All Along: she sent Pietro, she fiddled about with the magic show, she made Herb slice into his own garden wall, she was asking Wanda the questions from off-camera. "And I killed Sparky too!" she trills. She killed Sparky the dog too!! Truly, a villain!!

Finally, then, the most 2000s move possible: a mid-credits scene. Monica discovers the basement, but is then discovered herself by Pietro: "Snoopers gonna snoop, huh?"

Some more thoughts:

I really miss Paul Bettany's hair. He did pull out a few Jim Halpert-style camera glances though, which is something.
Alt-Pietro's not dead after all then. It was a suspiciously Pietro-light episode, though perhaps that's because Wanda's written him out after the dig about her husband dying twice. Fair!
Wanda seems to be onto the off-brand Pietro too though: "Don't believe anything that man says. He's not your uncle."
That antidepressant brand, Nexus, might be a large pointer as to where we're going. In the comics, a Nexus is a being who is the one who's the lynchpin of their own reality. Then again, that's pretty much what Wanda is already in Westview.