Tuesday, June 15, 2021

WandaVision 1x09 Review: “The Series Finale” (Goodbye) [Guest Poster: Hannah E.]


"The Series Finale"
Original Airdate: March 5, 2021

Everything and more happens in the super-sized finale of WandaVision. This episode is definitely a bit of a hot mess express, but I actually kind of love it. A lot of the plot machinations the show had been dragging its feet on have to be dealt with here, and some of the stuff with Hayward and Monica doesn’t really work for me. But overall the stuff this episode gets wrong pales in comparison to how much it gets right. 

Watching the first and last episodes back-to-back would feel like a jarring tonal shift, but the show finds a clever way to work that into Wanda’s character. It started off as a mystery box, but only insofar as Westview was a mystery box for Wanda; all of the discoveries we made as the audience were through her eyes, and we weren’t allowed any insights that she didn’t have. We realized she was running Westview at the same time she did, discovered Geraldine was Monica who worked for SWORD when she did, and discovered how Westview was created when she did. It was a nice side effect that hiding things from the audience gave them a reason to tune in every week, but the show was only structured that way because of what it meant for Wanda’s character; because WandaVision is a world she created, the show was in denial just as much as she was. Once she worked through all five stages of grief, finally reaching acceptance, there was no reason for the show to be hiding anything because Wanda no longer was, which is why the finale isn’t focused on any mysteries. 

In general, I think WandaVision ran into a problem of the audience having completely different goals than the show. Fans wanted more Marvel or comic book elements, like Ralph really being Quicksilver from Fox’s X-Men or for Wanda to break open the Multiverse, but those were always secondary in WandaVision. The primary goal of the show was a character study of Wanda. I understand why people who came into it expecting one thing were disappointed — because the actual comic book elements are the weak point of the series — but the character work done with Wanda and Vision is, in my opinion, so much better. I wouldn’t trade a single character beat in the series.

THE SCARLET WITCH

The pacing of Wanda’s fight with Agatha is a little too rushed, but the character work is incredibly solid. Structuring the sequence around Wanda’s most central character trait of denial — refusing to accept her mantle as the Scarlet Witch — takes the inherently fantastical nature of a fight between two witches and grounds it within the main themes of the show. Having Wanda win by using runes and finally accepting her new mantle shows how much she’s grown over the series with handling her denial. It places the emphasis on character growth instead of whose power is strongest, making the victory feel much more meaningful than if Wanda had simply overpowered Agatha. 

There’s a moment where Agatha offers Wanda everything she’s ever wanted: if Wanda gives up her power, Agatha will let her keep Vision, the kids, and her idealized Westview while also freeing the people and letting them live in peace. Agatha most definitely would’ve used her newly-acquired chaos magic for nefarious purposes, but if Wanda were offered this deal in the first episode there’s no doubt she would’ve said yes; the wellbeing of the world was less important to her than her family. The fact that Wanda doesn’t fall for Agatha’s trap in the finale and chooses to sacrifice her family shows how far she’s come. Choosing to lose Vision and the kids instead of putting Westview at risk is proof that Wanda takes the harm she caused seriously, intent on righting her wrong instead of getting what she wants. It’s a really significant moment of character growth for her, and helps to make the ending sit easier with audiences. 

The moment Wanda powers up into her full Scarlet Witch persona is so clever in the way it subtly subverts tropes. Comic books, largely written by men, have always been fascinated with the trope of Mad Women. Many of the most famous runs are slight variations on “a woman gets powers, has emotions that turn her evil, and must be subdued by her male counterpart,” and Wanda’s House of M story in the comics is no exception. WandaVision follows a lot of the same beats but flips them around to empower her instead: Wanda runs from her emotions, creates Westview, and denies her powers. And she finally succeeds by accepting her emotions and her power. Instead of power making her turn bad, it’s the acceptance of her power that allows Wanda to start undoing her mistakes. Moments like that make me so happy Marvel let a woman be in charge of Wanda’s narrative for once. 

DOUBLE VISION

I don’t think the writers get enough credit for how well-formed a character Vision is. Considering he’s a robot, it would be very easy for writers to go too far in one direction and give him no personality, or go too far in the other direction and make him feel too human and divorced from his origins. The team behind WandaVision struck a perfect balance, and the introduction of White Vision really highlights that. 

There are two lines of dialogue, one from real Vision and one from White Vision, that serve as a masterclass in character writing. The first, from White Vision, is when he tries to kill Wanda and says: “And they told me you were powerful.” The line is merely a statement of fact, but the context the writers have placed it in tells you so much more. First, it says that this version of Vision is cold and feels no love for Wanda, but also that he — extremely unlike the real Vision — takes pride in his status as a weapon, almost braggadocious in his ability to so easily defeat Wanda. And because he doesn’t have human emotions, he doesn’t realize that he was only able to best Wanda because she walked up to him completely vulnerable and was under the belief that he loved her. 

Then in contrast, there’s a line from the real Vision during his fight with White Vision where he asks, “Might we resolve this peacefully?” Again, the line is merely a statement of fact because Vision is still a robot, but the writers do an incredible job of imbuing it with his personality. It shows that not only has he transcended his intended purpose as a weapon, trying to resolve things peacefully, but he also has a sense of humor. He sarcastically adds, “A no, then” after his peace attempt fails. 

Both Vision and White Vision’s lines could’ve lacked all personality, but instead the writers found a way to make them showcase both synthezoids’ character. The addition of White Vision, as cold and unfeeling as he is, works especially well in light of what we’ve seen from Vision through the first eight episodes. We’ve seen him married and raising a family, but more importantly we’ve seen the way he uses his robot otherness as a way to connect with Wanda. As the only other being with a connection to the Mind Stone, he’s the only one she can relate to and his unusual perspective on humanity is the one thing that keeps her grounded. To see White Vision have all of the same robotic qualities as Vision but weaponize them to hurt Wanda is almost as painful a gut punch to the audience as it is to her. 

SHADES OF GREY

The most controversial aspect of the finale is the show’s handling of Wanda’s actions in Westview. A lot of people think the show let her off the hook, but I really don’t think that’s the case. 

Unlike other Marvel heroes, Wanda won’t always do the right thing. She can be at turns selfish and selfless, depending on the situation she’s in. The finale actually does a really good job exploring the bounds of her grey morality. Trying to protect her family pushed Wanda into her biggest moral transgression, taking over a town and making people play roles in her dream sitcom life. But it also pushes her to be selfless; she throws herself in front of Vision and the twins to protect them from Agatha, knowing Agatha will use the opportunity to drain her magic. Wanda’s love for her family is her primary motivation, and it isn’t inherently good or bad. She can become a villain because her motivation isn’t to be a hero; it’s just to protect her loved ones.

And even in her selfishness, Wanda does try to minimize harm as much as possible. She doesn’t let Agatha kill the SWORD agents, catching them before they hit the ground, even though they were trying to hurt her kids. Throughout many episodes we’ve seen Wanda try her best to avoid people getting hurt — protecting Monica, not hurting the SWORD agents stationed outside the Hex, and sparing Fake Pietro. She never wants to hurt anyone: she just wants to keep her family and is willing to ignore the side effects.

Wanda’s denial is central to her morality. The reason she keeps the town running for so long is because she believes the people are happy, ignoring any evidence to the contrary. Vision tells her in the fifth episode that Norm is in pain and as a telepath, Wanda’s subconscious must make the choice not to feel the townspeople’s emotions. The force of Wanda’s denial lets her believe no one is getting hurt, which is the only reason she keeps the Hex going. 

It doesn’t excuse Wanda’s actions that she wasn’t intentionally hurting people, but it does complicate them. So many of the debates that have been had over the morality of Wanda’s actions are just so boring because they fail to consider the way denial affects everyone’s choices. Every time you speed on the freeway, you’re increasing the chance that someone will die in a traffic accident. Yet you do it anyway because you tell yourself that you’re not going to get in an accident, even though statistically someone will be getting in a traffic accident on the freeway. We collectively as a society have decided it’s morally acceptable to risk someone’s life over something as small as getting to work on time because the consequence of that action is so far removed from the action itself. There’s just enough space to deny that you could hurt someone.

If we’re all willing to potentially risk someone’s life over something as small as getting to work on time, imagine the choice you would make if your husband and kids’ lives were at stake. Wanda had no choice in making the Hex and didn’t realize she controlled it until after Billy and Tommy were born. Taking it down would not only mean losing them, but it would also mean she would be personally responsible for their deaths. And Vision and the twins were real and alive; their deaths matter just as much as anyone else’s.

Most problems people had with the finale center around the last scene between Wanda and Monica; they think it’s the show using Monica to let Wanda completely off the hook, but that’s not how the scene is meant to be interpreted. Head writer Jac Schaeffer said the scene was re-written after they realized it was the only time in the finale that Monica and Wanda would get to talk. It needed to very quickly make all the reasons Monica felt such a strong connection to Wanda clear; because the scene had so much to do, it’s definitely over-written which creates the room for people to misinterpret it. But the scene was not meant in any way to excuse Wanda’s actions. This quote from Jac Schaeffer makes that pretty clear:

When you bring up what I said about black and white villains, I mean what it makes me think of is Wanda. I’m interested in all the sides of Wanda. You know, seeing her flaws and her selfishness and how reactionary she is and how big her anger can be.

I think analyzing where this scene went wrong — how what the writers intended to convey became so divorced from the meaning people took from it — is pretty fascinating. 

The first disconnect is how people reacted to the framing of Wanda’s Walk of Shame through a street of very angry townspeople. People reacted to this as if the show was trying to paint the townspeople in a bad light, as if we were supposed to feel sympathy for Wanda, but that wasn’t the intention. They were actually trying to show the audience that Wanda was not forgiven — that she had wronged people here in a way that had no real fix. But because audiences are so used (especially in Marvel products) to being wholly on the side of the protagonist, people interpreted it the wrong way.

Then there’s Monica’s line: “They’ll never know what you sacrificed for them.” I don’t think the writers did themselves any favors here, because understandably what the audience took this to mean was that Monica believed Wanda was an unsung hero wrongfully accepting the scorn of the townspeople. And if that was what the show was trying to communicate, I would agree it’s a dicey moral message. But I don’t think it was. Monica’s line is meant to be interpreted much more as a simple statement of fact — unlike her, no one else in Westview will ever understand the why of Wanda’s actions. Wanda’s response makes this pretty clear: “It wouldn’t change how they see me.” Wanda knows she doesn’t deserve the town’s forgiveness, which is why she doesn’t try and ask for it. She, and the show, understands that her actions at the end don’t justify her actions in the middle.

Wanda asks Monica: “And you, you don’t hate me?” which highlights another problem this scene ran into. The show a little bit takes for granted the perspective of the townspeople, only highlighting the perspective a few times throughout the season. Outside of Wanda, most of the perspectives we get comes from either Hayward — who hates Wanda to a cartoonish, unsympathetic degree, or Monica — who is incredibly sympathetic to her. The average townsperson’s perspective gets lost in the shuffle. This scene is supposed to feel like Monica is the only safe harbor Wanda has in town; it is a moment of Wanda saying Everybody else rightfully hates me and I’m really glad you’ve somehow managed to forgive me. But because the only time the audience sees the whole town actively hating Wanda is the scene from earlier in this episode, that perspective is lost; it ends up feeling like the only perspective the show gives on Wanda is sympathetic. I personally think the show did a good enough job on this front, but I understand why others don’t. 

The reflective dislike of Wanda definitely gets at some larger social biases though: Thor, Loki, and Tony Stark are each to varying degrees responsible for an attempted genocide. Compared to that, Wanda’s actions are tame. Yet audiences clamor for Loki to be redeemed and never once questioned Thor and Tony’s place as heroes. Huh, I wonder if that might possibly have something to do with their gender? 

People also took issue with Monica’s line, “Given the chance and given your power, I’d bring my mom back. I know I would” because they felt it was meant to excuse Wanda’s actions, but again, I disagree. It’s definitely worth it to do the mental exercise of putting yourself in Wanda’s shoes: in the middle of your normal life with your perfect family, you’re hit with the realization that your husband actually died two weeks ago and you’ve taken a town hostage, and now in order to save a bunch of people from evil, you have to kill this version of your husband and kids. Even the best person would have a hard time doing that. I think it is an undeniable fact that given these circumstances and Wanda’s power, literally anyone would have acted the same as Wanda. I’m sure there are some perfectly good people who would’ve struggled for much longer than two days with the decision too. So, when Monica says she knows she would have done it, she’s not saying “It’s okay that you did this” but she is saying, “I understand how you could do this.” 

I also think all the handwringing over the very specific ins and outs of Wanda’s behavior throughout the series is such an uninteresting way to analyze media. I get critiquing media that way when it could affect the real world. For instance, I understand why people critique earlier MCU movies that glorified Tony Stark’s misdeeds — because a rich white guy getting away with hurting people in developing countries accurately describes roughly 99% of all human rights violations. Glorifying Tony’s behavior contributes to a real-life culture that enables abusers. Let’s just say I’m less convinced WandaVision will contribute to a culture that enables witches to take over small towns in New Jersey, and that widows and the grieving are definitely not an overprivileged class in our society. One TV show that arguably treats a widow too kindly is not going to hurt anyone — especially because the moral of the story was absolutely that taking over a town is not an affective way to handle your trauma! No one will ever watch this show and come away with the impression that they should do what Wanda did, because the whole point of the story was Wanda learning to not do it. The entire show is a journey through the stages of grief, after all.

Some people were also upset that Wanda gets to leave at the end instead of going to jail or something. Because WandaVision has to connect with the ever-ongoing narrative of the MCU, the writers were in a really tricky place as far as her ending. From a Doylist perspective, it’s obvious that Wanda doesn’t go to jail at the end because she has to appear in the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, where her search for her kids will cause some seismic damage to the fabric of reality. If she faced some sort of “punishment” at the end of this series to learn her lesson, they’d have to narratively backtrack in the next movie, undoing all the character development. Unlike in most TV shows, Wanda’s story isn’t allowed to end here and has to serve as both an ending and as a branching off point for the next phase of her story/the MCU. She has to leave at the end because anything else would step on the toes of Doctor Strange, written by an entirely different team.

And if you think about it from a Watsonian perspective, Wanda had no other choice but to leave town. If she turned herself over to the authorities, she’d never be allowed to go through the regular justice system, instead going to SWORD or a sister agency. You know, the same people who spent years studying Vision’s powers to turn him into a weapon. Through the Hex, Wanda has seen the amount of damage that can be done if her powers are used by someone who doesn’t understand them. Why would she have any faith that a government agency wouldn’t try and mess with her powers, accidentally hurting people? Especially considering her experience being wrongfully and inhumanely imprisoned during the events of Civil War?

Going out to the middle of nowhere shows that Wanda is starting to take her powers more seriously. She still doesn’t understand them, so the safest thing she can do is get as far away from other people as possible and study her abilities. She’s taking active steps to try not to hurt anyone again, which is really the only thing she can do. There’s nothing she can do to change what happened in Westview, and turning herself in to the authorities would just increase the odds that her powers would fall into the wrong hands. 

THE SHIP OF THESEUS

Resolving the fight between the Visions with the Ship of Theseus debate was a stroke of genius. Considering they’re both made of the same parts and powers, a physical fight between the two would inevitably end in a stalemate. Having the real Vision come out victorious needed to showcase what about him was different, and having him raise the question of the Ship of Theseus highlights one of the biggest things that sets him apart from White Vision — he’s moved beyond his programming as a weapon. White Vision can only think to win a fight physically because that’s all his programming allows; but the real Vision, in his attempt to be peaceful, manages to gain the upper hand. I also really like the subtle nod to the idea of the pen being mightier than the sword; real Vision proves to be the better weapon because he is in fact not a weapon, beating White Vision in a battle of wits rather than physical force. It provides a bit of connective tissue between this and Wanda’s victory over Agatha — neither win because they’re more powerful, but because they manage to outthink their opponent. 

From a storytelling perspective, the set-up and payoff in this scene is perfectly executed. All the way back in the fifth episode, it’s revealed that Vision has the ability to wake the townspeople up from Wanda’s mind control. And then we see him do it in both the sixth and seventh episodes, constantly keeping it in our minds. It’s been so seamlessly woven into the narrative, it feels like a puzzle piece snapping into place when he finally uses that ability on White Vision, freeing him from Hayward’s control by restoring all of his memories. 

It also does a great job highlighting the inherent humanity within the real Vision. As far as mankind is currently aware, we are the only species that question what it means to be what we are. Burdened by self-consciousness, humans are constantly pondering questions of free will and souls and what makes every person unique. Vision not only having his own sense of self-identity, but also questioning what about that identity truly defines him, is perhaps the most recognizably human trait he has. His arc throughout WandaVision is about slowly learning to question what’s around him: first with his job, then his marriage and family, then his relationship to the outside world. Having that culminate in him questioning his own sense of self is the logical endpoint, and the Ship of Theseus is the perfect way for him to do that in a grounded, human way. 

SO LONG, DARLING

It says all you need to know about WandaVision that Wanda vs. Agatha, Vision vs. Vision, Monica’s fight and escape from Ralph, the fight with SWORD, and Hayward’s fall is all crammed into less than 30 minutes, while Wanda’s final goodbye with her family is given a full ten minutes of its own. It played around with a lot of MCU stuff, but at its heart this show was always a character study of Wanda and her love story with Vision, and everything related to that is done so well. 

I can think of very few shows that utilize parallels to as great an effect as WandaVision, and I think my favorite of them all comes at the start of this sequence. Vision says he knows Wanda can set everything right, just not for them, to which Wanda replies, “No. Not for us.” Her “no” parallels the scene from the second episode when she sees the beekeeper emerge from the storm drain and rewinds time to rewrite her show. That was the first moment the audience was clued in to Wanda’s control of Westview, and it symbolized her complete denial of reality that she would go so far as to rewind time to escape it. In this episode, her “no” symbolizes the complete opposite; it’s the first time we hear Wanda accept the fate of her family, finally able to let them go and start to move on. Having those two moments be in explicit conversation with each other is a deft choice on the writer’s part to subtly highlight Wanda’s arc from the beginning to the end of the series. 

Having Vision and Wanda switch from their superhero uniforms to normal clothes before entering their house is such a perfect little detail. Wanda makes great strides in this episode accepting the part of herself that’s the Scarlet Witch, but the truest expression of her character is still the mom in jeans and a sweater. That’s especially true of her life with Vision, and it feels right that the two of them would leave their costumes at the door; their house was meant to represent a small quiet life, and that’s how they choose to enter it for the last time. 

The scene tucking the children into bed is heartbreaking, and I think it’s Paul Bettany’s strongest performance of his entire run as Vision. He’s so close to breaking into tears at every line, but manages to just barely keep it together as Vision tries to wear a brave face in front of his kids. Again, the show uses parallels to devastating effect, having Wanda repeat the line “family is forever” to Billy and Tommy. When she first said it in the fifth episode, it spoke to Wanda’s stunted ability to cope with loss; she felt the only way she could hold on to Vision was to keep a version of him going even after death, no matter the harm it caused to others. Here, it speaks to her newfound acceptance — she knows that family truly is forever, that it can live on even after death through her love and memory, which allows her to let go. Elizabeth Olsen’s instincts as an actor are so sharp and the way she plays Wanda tucking Tommy into bed, giving him a playful nose scrunch to hide her own tears, is devastating. 

As Vision and Wanda go to shut the door, Wanda’s last words to her kids are: “Boys, thanks for choosing me to be your mom.” It is already such a tragically beautiful line, but this quote from writer Jac Schaeffer makes me love it even more:

There’s something really beautiful about that sentiment. I do feel that way about my children. In this world for Wanda, Vision, and the children are the only entities that she cannot control, and it’s because they were created whole cloth by her. There’s something mystical about that, and that’s how I feel about my own kids. Like, where did they come from? I don’t know. Yes, I’m responsible for bringing them into this world, but at some point that responsibility, that ownership, has a limit and then there’s this huge chasm of mystery. There’s a notion they had some agency in it.

Wanda’s magical family disappearing as the borders of her fake town overtake them could feel too fantastical, but lines like this do such a good job at grounding it. It’s also so true to the heart of the series that Wanda’s last line to her children be that, centering her gratefulness at meeting them over the grief of saying goodbye. Her arc was to come to terms with loss, and that line highlights how far she’s come. It recalls Vision’s line from the previous episode, of grief being the perseverance of love rather than something to drown under. 

In a small act of kindness, the show spares both Wanda and us from seeing Billy and Tommy disappear. Instead, the camera follows the collapsing border of Westview as it sweeps through the circus, turning back into SWORD. The tents and clown cars reverting back into highly militarized vehicles is a stark visual. As Billy and Tommy disappear, so too does the innocent world their mother built for them. It’s the right thing for Wanda to let go of Westview, but it’s worth mourning that the real world isn’t as kind as the false one she created. 

As the sequence transitions from Wanda’s goodbye with her kids to her goodbye with Vision, the town’s theatre marquee advertises “Tannhauser Gate” which is a reference to the final scene from Blade Runner and its very famous “Tears in Rain” speech. The monologue loses a lot of its beauty out of context, so if you haven’t seen the film I highly recommend giving it a watch. The idea of something beautiful and magical being lost, and accepting that fate, is what ties the speech to WandaVision and particularly Vision’s final moments.

Wanda leaving the lamp on for Vision is a tiny microcosm of why their love story is so beautiful. She wants to let him go in the dark, to close her eyes and open them again when he’s already gone so she doesn’t have to see the love of her life leave her one more time. But Vision wants to see her for the last time. So she lets him, putting aside her own sadness to make space for his. Like I said before, Wanda is selfish throughout the show but it’s counterbalanced by how selfless she is in protecting and comforting her family. 

From his perspective, Vision wants Wanda to be the last thing he sees before he dies. The two of them have always been intertwined, not only through the Mind Stone but because Vision only exists as his own entity, separate from Ultron, because Wanda decided to switch sides to the Avengers. In birth and death, Wanda is Vision’s raison d'être, his reason for being. In each life she’s been the first thing he sees, and here he makes sure she is again the last. This scene creates another parallel to the second episode, from the scene when the two are going to bed and Vision asks Wanda to get the light; it was a slice of life scene, from a time when Vision thought they’d have countless nights to share together. The contrast of him now turning the light back on emphasizes the finality of this moment, as Vision clings to the last experience they’ll ever have together. 

Vision asking Wanda, “What am I?” is such an emotionally intimate exchange. He’s a synthezoid, supposed to know every single thing in the universe, but with Wanda he reveals how unsure of himself he is in the most literal sense. He asks the question of Wanda not only because she created this version of him, but because she has known him better than anyone else. In his insecurity he turns to the person he trusts the most to comfort him. And Wanda’s answer shows how much she loves him; creating Vision and Westview was her most painful memory, so much so that she had locked it away from even herself. But to ease Vision’s doubt she relives it, sharing for one last time how much she loves him. Vision sheds a tear and Wanda wipes it away, clinging to the tangible proof that her love made him real again, if only for a few fleeting days. 

“We’ve said goodbye before, so it stands to reason we’ll say hello again” is the perfect encapsulation of the sad and hopeful tone of WandaVision. The show does such a good job highlighting the unique nature of Wanda and Vision’s relationship, seemingly destined to repeat itself over and over through time and space. Vision’s promise to Wanda is such a beautiful way of incorporating his synthezoid nature into the character; he knows he’ll be reunited with Wanda in some way because he always is, it just makes mathematical sense. This moment could feel oppressively said, so I love that the show manages to smuggle a tiny bit of hope into their good goodbye. The way Elizabeth Olsen plays Wanda’s hope as she realizes they will say hello again is just phenomenal. 

As we saw in the previous episode, Vision was the first person to get through to Wanda and give her a way to move forward from the death of her brother. What is grief, if not love persevering is the cornerstone that Wanda’s character arc in WandaVision is built upon. Vision giving her the tools to eventually let him go creates a clever thematic connection to Wanda’s victory over Agatha. She gave Wanda the lesson in runes, becoming her own undoing. Agatha was a villain of the show, but she was not the main one. Having Vision’s fate occur in the same way as Agatha’s goes to show that the main villain of the series was always Wanda’s grief. That’s why Wanda’s goodbye with Vision is saved for last, the true resolution of her arc.

There are a few more scenes to the episode, most notably Wanda’s final moments secluded in her cabin, but the true end of the story is this goodbye. Vision’s “So long, darling,” leaving Wanda alone again is the perfect final note. She flips up her hood and walks away, leaving the past behind her.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON WANDAVISION

I really do love this show, and the more I think on it the more reasons I find. It definitely got a little messy at points, and some of the plot-heavy elements didn’t quite work; like most creators with a unique voice and vision, I think Jac Schaeffer chaffed a bit against the limits of Marvel’s vast cinematic universe. But there’s something very real at the heart of WandaVision, a kind of unshod genius. Where the plot may lag, the character writing is impeccable, quickly making Wanda Maximoff one of fictional characters I’m most invested in. It scares me that a new writer will be handed the reins for Wanda going forward, but I’ll show up in theaters opening night to see her next appearance in the MCU. 

Odds and Ends:

  • It’s an incredibly minor moment in the finale, but I absolutely love that one of the only character traits given to Tyler Hayward is an affinity for puns. 
  • “Boys, handle the military.”
  • This episode is a bit hard to rank because some of it isn’t my favorite, but the highs are so incredibly high. I think my ranking of the entire season has to go 7>3>1>2>9>4>6>5>8.
  • WandaVision deserves all the Emmy nominations for set design, costume design, makeup, and direction. What the crew was able to pull off through so many different eras of filmmaking is nothing short of incredible.
  • Elizabeth Olsen has the bad luck of vying for a win in the most competitive Best Actress in a Limited Series race the Emmys has ever had. I wish she, Michaela Coel, and Kate Winslet could all win somehow. Even if she doesn’t, it’s nice to finally see her generating the kind of awards season buzz she deserved after Martha Marcy May Marlene and Sorry for Your Loss.

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