By The Salem witch trials might have been necessary after all. Oh no, not those Salem witch trials – the other Salem witch trials, the ones where the witches trialled another witch.
Wandavision opens this time with Agatha Harkness being raked over the coals by her coven. "You have betrayed your coven," says one. "You practiced the darkest of magic."
"I did not break your rules," Agatha insists. "They simply bent to my power."
In fairly short order, though, it's clear that Agatha's not particularly bothered about these rules, as she pulls an Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on her coven to leave them all ancient husks.
This week is all about explanations. Back in the basement, Agatha explains all her attempts to yank Wanda out of her fantasy with reminders of the reality outside ("I got close with fake Pietro – Fietro, if you will") and spells out the fact that real Pietro is still very much dead.
No dice, though. Wanda wouldn't let her in, so she's kidnapped Tommy and Billy and is forcing Wanda to walk through her own memories. We've run out of sitcoms after last week's Modern Family-The Office hybrid, though this is still a bit of a mash-up. The Harry Potter films are a big presence this time around, and we step through a Pensieve and into war-torn Sokovia.
It turns out Wanda's dad used to flog hooky DVDs of American sitcoms for a bit of extra cash, and the family sit down to some vintage Dick Van Dyke Show as gunfire sounds outside. Out of nowhere, a bomb destroys their flat. Wanda and Pietro are trapped with a Stark Industries missile – you know the drill.
"So what I see here is a baby witch obsessed with sitcoms and years of therapy ahead of her," says Agatha. "Doesn’t explain your recent hijinks."
They jump forward to Wanda: The Neo-Nazi Years and her sojourn at Hydra. Wanda manages to break the Mind Stone out of Loki's sceptre before repairing to her cell for a few eps of Bewitched. That still isn't enough for Agatha though.
They spin forwards again to Wanda's extremely Ikea bedroom Avengers compound some time after Age of Ultron. She and Vision watch Hal accidentally destroy his own house on Malcolm in the Middle:"It is funny because of the grievous injury the man just suffered?"
Yes, Vision gets it! He also manages to console Wanda: "What is grief, if not love persevering?"
There it is. Agatha's got her smoking gun. "What happened when he wasn’t there to pull you back from the precipice, Wanda?" she asks as they head to SWORD HQ some time after Endgame.
Far from the violent one-woman invasion Hayward painted Wanda's arrival as, she turned up looking to say goodbye and bury Vision's body. Vision, unfortunately, is in several hundred bits, his entrails and arteries splayed across operating tables as assorted eggheads try to work him out. Hayward isn't keen to put a few billion quid's worth of kit into a hole in the ground. He's mine, she says. "“That’s just it Wanda," counters Hayward, "he isn’t yours."
Furious, Wanda heads to the plot of land Vision had got hold of for them "to grow old in" in Westview, New Jersey. Her grief explodes out of her, building her dream home and sending the town and its residents back to the Fifties and The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Finally, she makes Vision. He wasn't stolen from the lab after all; he's made out of Wanda. He's a ghost. There's still time for one more big reveal back in realtime Westview too.
"You have no idea how dangerous you are," Agatha tells Wanda while throttling her kids. Wanda is, she says... THE SCARLET WITCH!! Oh come on, try and look surprised.
One last thing: there's a mid-credits sequence back at SWORD. They've managed to rebuild Vision and – boy oh boy – he does not look well. In fact he looks like a bald version of Michael Sheen in Tron. There's a showdown a-brewing.
Some more thoughts:
- So there's two Visions now. One is a reanimated corpse, and one is a sort of vaporous sitcom dad. Right.
- Nice little touch in the bit where The Hex sweeps up Westview: the cinema suddenly starts showing Big Red and Kidnapped.
- Is there a hint in Agatha's pleas at her trial – "Please! I can be good!" – that she might have a heart of gold somewhere in there. Or she might be lying.
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