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MarvelVision: WandaVision Episode 5 – “On A Very Special Episode…”
Podcast |
Comic Book Club
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Comic Book Club
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audio
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Comedy
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Publication Date |
Feb 05, 2021
Episode Duration |
00:36:27

Things start breaking down in Westview as we recap WandaVision Episode 5, “On A Very Special Episode…” While the sitcom world transitions to the ’80s, outside Monica Rambeau tries to figure out what happened to her while she was under Wanda’s control, leading to a showdown with Hayward. And inside the Hex, when Tommy and Billy begin to grow up too fast, Vision starts to realize things are very, very wrong leading to a series of confrontations — and a surprise that we bet you didn’t see coming. Let’s break down all the WandaVision Easter eggs (that X-Men cameo!!), comic book references (Sparky!!), MCU references (Lagos!!) and more.

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Full Episode Transcript:

Alex:                 Welcome to MarvelVision, a podcast about Marvel, the MCU, and specifically WandaVision episode five, On a Very Special Episode. I am Alex.

Justin:              I’m Justin.

Pete:                I’m Pete.

Alex:                 And man alive, guys, this was a big one. This is a potential universe changing episode of WandaVision.

Justin:              Our universe.

Alex:                 Yeah. What are you guys doing differently after this episode? I feel like just a new, fresh person, honestly.

Justin:              I got a dead dog as a pet. I was like, let me just jump to the end.

Alex:                 Nice. I electrocuted my dead dog.

Pete:                I’m going to go back to sleep.

Alex:                 Oh man, this is very early for Pete, but we’re very excited to talk about this, because again, this is a huge episode of WandaVision. Requisite spoiler warning here. We’re not going to talk about every single aspect of the episode. We’re not going to recap beat by beat, but we are going to get right into spoilers and talk through it. And there’s a lot of big things that happen. So if you haven’t watched episode five, again, episode five, On a Very Special Episode, check it out right now, and then head back here. Broad strokes, here’s what’s going on in this episode, just as a reminder. So now we’re splitting our time between the sitcom world of WandaVision and the real world of the MCU, which of course is our real-

Justin:              Our reality, yes.

Pete:                Very meta.

Alex:                 In reality, Monica Rambeau is out of the Wanda Hex. We have a name called Hex. We’ll talk about that in a second. Darcy and Jimmy are trying to help her out and figure out what’s going on with Wanda. There’s a big confrontation outside with Hayward, who attacks Wanda inside, and we find out a lot of more…. There’s a lot of Easter eggs, a lot of questions there that, again, we’ll get back to in a moment. Inside the sitcom world, we’re in the 80s, Tommy and Billy growing up real quick. Lots of weirdness going on here, both with the residents of Westview and with Wanda and with Tommy and Billy. Agnes is getting more in the mix of everything that’s going on. And Vision is definitely becoming self-aware.

Alex:                 We get a couple of notes that we’ve certainly wondered about. Some answers, more questions. And then the biggest one of all at the end, I don’t know if we want to talk about this right now, or we want to save it for a little later [crosstalk 00:02:29]-

Pete:                Probably save it.

Alex:                 But I’ll mention what it is. You all know if you’ve seen it. But Evan Peters shows up as Quicksilver, which is wild.

Justin:              It is wild.

Alex:                 Let’s let’s put it a little pin in that and come back because we have a huge discussion. First of all, as we do, let’s talk about the episode. What’d you think? I thought this was phenomenal. I was so excited that they’re bringing everything together, splitting the time between the two worlds. This is great.

Justin:              So good. And a lot of people were like, “This is moving so slowly.” There’s all this criticism of how weird it is. It’s all laying the groundwork, and that’s the confidence that you get from a Marvel show, from the MCU, where they’re like, “We understand you might not get everything right from the first one, two episodes,” but it’s all worth it when they start to weave this stuff in and it’s just so much happening and so many revelations happening in this episode.

Pete:                Guys, I want to go back to the 80s. You know, Jazzercise, you could give your kids liquor. I mean, those were the days, you know what I mean?

Justin:              If the Vision grabbed your temples, you’d be like, “Hi, I’m Pete. I like it here. Please leave me here. I want to live here in this sitcom world.”

Alex:                 Vision, get it together, right? We’re all stuck in this. Stop fighting it. Go get an Orange Julius, Julius. Things are going to be cool. Yeah, instead of calling your family and letting them know where you are, you’re going to immediately run off to a 7-Eleven

Justin:              Just have someone punch me right in the crotch before the commercial break. That’s all I’m living for right now. I’m the funny one.

Alex:                 To the point you were saying, Justin, I love how fast they’re whipping through story. I think going back to the first episode, we were like, “They’re going to be in sitcom land for eight episodes, and then we’ll see what the revelation is in episode nine.” Nope. They pretty much announced how quickly they’re going through it, I think, with episode four. We talked about this last time. This is only my suspicion here, but it really does feel like you got this first act, which is sitcom land, something’s wrong. The second act is Wanda versus Vision. And I still do think we’re going to see a twist here that this is not all Wanda, even though they’re doubling down very hard on it in this episode in particular.

Justin:              But I do think we’re seeing what the cracks there in the theory that Wanda’s bad. Hayward’s clearly an overarching villain here, and I think Agnes is-

Pete:                Agnes is in on it.

Justin:              At the core of this somehow, obviously, as well. So I do think we’re going to get… Even the mailman at the end of sort of like… He seems suspect. And I just don’t trust mailmen in general. [crosstalk 00:05:01].

Alex:                 What’s their agenda? That’s what I want to know.

Justin:              They’re always at my house.

Alex:                 Deliver mail.

Justin:              Every day they got something to give me? Suspect.

Pete:                Well, if you didn’t order all those crazy Amazon packages, maybe they wouldn’t have to be there.

Justin:              I’m on my computer and they show up in real life from this guy.

Alex:                 Let’s talk about Agnes. I think that’s a good place to start, because we get a lot of Easter eggs here about that. Certainly there’s been a lot of speculate…

Pete:                I mean…

Alex:                 Yes, Pete,

Pete:                Let’s talk about that Jazzercise outfit. That was glorious. It brings me right back.

Justin:              Brings you back? What are you talking about? It’s not like you were an adult in the 80s Jazzercising.

Pete:                No, but my mom was. It was fun to see those outfits. Like, “Hey, you know what? Kids will shut up if you give them booze.” I was like, “Oh yeah, this was the time.”

Justin:              Could you send us that picture of your mom in the Jazzercise outfit that you keep talking about?

Pete:                That’s creepy and no.

Justin:              You said it. You said it.

Pete:                No, no, no. When you say it it’s creepy.

Justin:              You said it, it’s creepier.

Pete:                The binkies bit was just fun television, you know what I mean? The dad coming in with them in both ears. I mean, that’s classic physical comedy.

Alex:                 I do want to talk about, actually, the easter eggs with Agnes in a second, but to the point that you’re making, Pete, I love getting back to the sitcom tropes here. I think something that they’ve been pushing really hard that I think a lot of viewers have been struggling with… Forgive me, I know Pete’s going to yell at me for this, but the jokes aren’t very funny most of the time, but that’s okay. They are very much 80s sitcom style jokes. They perfectly fit the era.

Pete:                Still hold up. I don’t know what the you’re talking about, not funny.

Alex:                 Nope.

Pete:                Did you see those binkies?

Justin:              Stop saying binky as such an adult man. Well let me say this. I think the jokes in the first couple of episodes when the sitcom world-

Alex:                 Hey Justin, take the binkie out of your ear.

Justin:              Those are headphones. In the first couple episodes, the jokes were strong when the sitcom reality was strong. And now that Wanda’s attention is split between so many things and there’s all these problems starting to emerge, I think this is purposeful. She doesn’t have as much time to mentally write good sitcom jokes. I really think that’s… My takeaway from this episode is the stories in the sitcom are getting dumber because Wanda’s attention is split.

Alex:                 Yeah, she’s got so much going on. The little writer’s room in her head is having a tough time keeping up with all of it.

Justin:              How’s the writers’ room in your head, Pete? They’ve been passing out booze for a couple of seasons now, let me be honest.

Alex:                 Let’s get back to the Agatha/Agnes easter eggs. We’ve certainly spent-

Justin:              Dropping Agatha [crosstalk 00:07:39].

Alex:                 A lot of people have speculated that she is Agatha Harkness from the comics who ends up taking care of the kids. I believe takes care of Wanda and Pietro’s kids. Here she straight up calls herself auntie Agnes, says she has some tricks up her sleeve. But the big thing, I think, for overarching with the show that you were mentioning, Justin, is she seems to be aware in some way. I don’t know if she’s the villain necessarily, but she certainly has known what is going on and does know what’s going on. We talked about this with the last episode… Not last episode, two episodes back as well, where people seem to have different levels of awareness of what’s happening. But Agatha… I keep calling her Agatha. Agnes is definitely at the top of that chain.

Justin:              And we see in this episode that Wanda is comfortable enough with her to use her powers in front of her. There’s definitely some… I feel like she’s being manipulated by Agnes in some way. I think when the Vision calls out that she used her powers in front of her, that was a moment where it felt like Wanda wasn’t quite sure why she did something, which is the only instance of that. And I also thought it was telling the Agnes is like, “Do you want me to take that again?” Because I should have the kids in my care. She wants the kids, the kids are her focus. She seems like she’s operating in and around Vision and Wanda so that she can have more time have control over the kids.

Pete:                Oh, that’s interesting. But you know, as a classically trained actor, the take it from the top is something that is used in stage and television. Wouldn’t you say that?

Justin:              Thank you, yes.

Alex:                 That’s a great inside baseball tip right there, Pete.

Pete:                But this show does love sitting in these awkward moments, these kind of painful moments of like, “Let’s take it from the top.” “What are you talking about?” [crosstalk 00:09:25]. Oh God, yeah.

Justin:              When the reality breaks. It’s almost like they were going to go back to one.

Pete:                Look at this guy.

Alex:                 Like you’re saying, Pete, I think this episode did this really well in particular. We got, in the first episode, just that, “No stop it, stop it” moment that broke the reality. Here we’re going back and forth from the camera angles to what’s going on in the scenes. It comes in close and has a more modern style whenever the reality starts breaking down. And it’s pretty much constant. It’s non-stop here. To the point that it’s alarming to watch, and I think purposely so, because it’s breaking cinema convention. You’re getting all of these things all at the same time.

Justin:              But what also, I think, is so cool about this is cinema convention caught up with reality over the course of these decades of television they’re dealing with it, so that modern TV is meant to feel as much like everyday life in a lot of ways. You get hand held camera work and all that now. So as reality is creeping in on the sitcoms world of the show, the same pace that reality crept in reality looking television crept in on TV. It’s a little bit of a mindfuck, And I think that I’m in a Hex of some sort.

Alex:                 It’s catching on.

Justin:              But it makes everything really works so well, I think.

Alex:                 Yeah, the other thing… I know I’ve been doubling down on this pretty much every episode, but one thing that I really liked about this one in particular, given everything that was going on, it really had a very strong theme about grief and how you deal with grief and it hit it on every level. I know a couple of people commented and pushed back on me, both in our Patreon Slack and on Twitter about-

Pete:                It’s my favorite thing to do.

Alex:                 [Crosstalk 00:11:10] love… Oh, was it all you, Pete, with different alts accounts?

Pete:                Burners? I love pushing back on you, regardless of what’s happening.

Alex:                 I didn’t love last episode because I liked what they did, and I thought there were some really smart choices, but particularly when it came to Monica Rambeau, I liked what they set up, but it didn’t feel like it panned out over the whole entire episode. The theme with her and her grief over her mother’s death and missing that really played out in this episode. It played out with Wanda, of course, in the quote unquote real world. But it also played out in the sitcom world, which is what I think the last episode was missing a little bit, because we get this whole storyline with Sparky that ties in with the kids, with Wanda, with Vision, with everything. Very smartly written across the board, and I liked that quite a bit.

Pete:                Well, you guys had to be nervous when you saw that dog because you know the rule in television, that dog’s got to die so those kids learn about responsibility. That was a scary moment when they’re teaching this dog tricks. I was like, “This is going too well.” [crosstalk 00:12:09].

Alex:                 Is that a thing that regularly happens, they kill dogs on television?

Pete:                That’s how I learned about responsibility.

Justin:              Yeah. That’s how Pete learned how to kill a dog.

Alex:                 I do remember there was an episode of full house where they got a dog and then by the end it was just a bloody smear on the pavement.

Pete:                You got it, dude.

Justin:              To your point, Alex, I do think Monica dealing with her mom’s death makes her the only character that really, I think, sympathizes and understands what Wanda’s actually going through. And we see that in the scene, the confrontation scene at the end of the episode, and that’s why Monica is so important, and she’s really the leader of the Jimmy and Darcy triumvirate that are going to be sort of our outside heroes here.

Alex:                 Do you want to talk about outside the Hex a little bit, because I think there were so many different things going on there that we possibly could plumb through. Certainly, like you mentioned, there’s the grief thing. I do love the three of them working together. I think that’s super fun.

Justin:              Great trio.

Pete:                Oh, for sure.

Alex:                 The Hex, I’m sure comic book fans caught onto this, but just in case, there are people who are not diehard comic book fans listening to this podcast. Wanda’s powers in the comics are called hex powers. They riff on this a little bit when Hayward and Jimmy Woo talk about does she have a cute nickname or anything like that? No, she doesn’t. She’s not really called Scarlet Witch in the MCU, though I expect we’ll be calling her that by the end of the series. So that was all fun. But there’s a bunch of questions that get brought up as well. Little things that are teases. One, Monica goes through these scans after she comes out of the Hex, and it seems like maybe she is empty from the scan, they need to do blood tests again. We know from the comics, she becomes Captain Marvel, Photon, bunch of different names, Monica Rambeau sometimes. So this certainly seems to be the first hint of her powers. But what do you think’s going on here? Are we actually going to see her power up in this series?

Justin:              I think so. That’s what the test results really told me. And I think she’s going to be called Photon, which is what her mom’s nickname was, and I think she’ll take on that moniker. It seems like tests weren’t working on her because she is perhaps made of light or something like that.

Pete:                Oh, I thought she was dead and a ghost, because usually when you can’t see organs and stuff like that, that’s what that means.

Justin:              Usually when you can’t see organs. How is your ghost hunting going, Pete?

Pete:                That’s great. Shh. Oh, I thought I heard something.

Alex:                 I love the idea that when you look at people, Pete, you’re like, “I don’t see skin color, I just see a big bag of organs.”

Justin:              Or you’re like, every person you see, you’re like, “Yep. Organs. Not dead. So far so good. No ghost.”

Pete:                Not dead. Not a ghost. Don’t fuck with me, man.

Alex:                 In the comics I believe she’s able to turn herself into different wavelengths of light, is that right, or is it different wavelengths of energy?

Justin:              I don’t know. I mean, Photon, I think it’s light focused [crosstalk 00:15:07]. Harsh question from Alex.

Pete:                It’s too early for that kind of shit.

Justin:              Yeah, the sun hasn’t come up yet.

Alex:                 So that’s one thing. Another thing that is going on with her is she comes up with a method of getting inside the Hex. We’ve actually seen some of this in teasers. So it is something that they potentially try out. But she figures out if she has basically a huge lab on wheels, she might be able to get in there and says, “I know somebody who can help me with this,” and texts, I believe an aerospace engineer. Who she texted? This is my favorite part of the show.

Justin:              Who she texted.

Pete:                Who she texted. Who she texted.

Alex:                 I liked the pause there, where we’re like, “Oh, now we need to follow this up with information.”

Justin:              But we were letting theme song end, for who you’re texting. I mean, my first thought was Captain Marvel.

Alex:                 Well probably not. She has a weird reaction when somebody mentions Captain Marvel and I do wonder… They haven’t explicitly stated this, but I do wonder if there’s some sort of her relating Captain Marvel to letting her mom die. That maybe Captain Marvel’s space radiation gave her cancer or something like that. I wonder if we’re going to find that out, because again, I think it was Darcy mentioned Captain Marvel and she just brushed over that and moved past it.

Justin:              What I thought that was, was she was like, “I’ll text my aerospace engineer friend,” and then a second later she like, “Captain Marvel,” I thought she was like, “How’d you know who I was texting?” That was my take on it, but I don’t know.

Pete:                She was like, “I’m going to text Samuel L. Jackson,” and then look right at the camera.

Alex:                 Find out what’s in his wallet?

Justin:              Who did you think?

Pete:                Oh, I thought it was originally, when they were kind of describing things, I was like, “Oh man, I want it to be a van time machine so bad because I think Paul Rudd would be hilarious in this little trio of people,” but I don’t know.

Alex:                 Okay, so you thought maybe Ant-Man?

Pete:                Yep.

Alex:                 All right. I wrote down a couple of possibilities. The first one that I thought it was Bruce Banner. That made sense to me. I know he’s not an aerospace engineer, but you know, Marvel universe.

Pete:                Why would that makes sense, then?

Alex:                 Marvel universe scientists, it doesn’t matter, they can do anything. The other one that came to mind was Talos from Captain Marvel, Ben Mendelsohn’s character. I don’t know if he’s an aerospace engineer necessarily, but I think kid Monica in Captain Marvel, if I remember correctly, was friendly with Talos. They hung out together, right?

Justin:              Yeah. But of the ones we’ve just said, between Samuel L. Jackson from the Capital One commercial campaign, Captain Marvel, and Talos, I think Captain Marvel is the more likely get.

Alex:                 Hold on. Hold on. I have two more possibilities. I have two more. Are you ready?

Pete:                The dog.

Alex:                 The dog. She was texting the dog. As we know, his name’s Sparky.

Justin:              His name’s Sparky, Pete. It’s Dr. Sparky, aerospace engineer.

Alex:                 Riri Williams. What about Riri Williams? We do know there’s an Ironheart show coming down the road. She certainly knows a lot about tech. We haven’t met her yet, so that might be kind of a fun introduction there.

Justin:              That’d be very cool. I would be surprised if she was introduced in this fashion, but that would be awesome.

Alex:                 I have another one. This is a crazy theory.

Pete:                Wow, this is fun. You’re just spit balling ideas.

Alex:                 This is the last one. This is the last one.

Justin:              Who she texted?

Pete:                Who she texted?

Alex:                 This is what our podcast is about, just brainstorming.

Justin:              This is a game show within the podcast called Who She Texted?

Pete:                Who she texted?

Alex:                 What do you think, is there a possibility that it’s Mr. Fantastic?

Pete:                What?

Justin:              Yeah. Do you think they’re going to… Because there was some speculation in some of the earlier episodes, I guess last episode when she’s walking into the lab, but you see them working on a spaceship of some sort. If they just drop Reed Richards as like, “Hey, this is a young doctor, aerospace engineer named Reed Richards,” and then we don’t say anything about it. That feels crazy for a mid season drop, but…

Pete:                I was rewatching it, and if you look really close, while she’s texting, she’s mumbling, “This fucking stretchy piece of shit better answer.” So maybe it is.

Alex:                 Well, just to talk about that theory, Pete, a little further, and then we’ll move on from here. But what Justin was saying about the Fantastic Four thing. Last episode we saw Monica goes into S.W.O.R.D. There’s a rocket they’re building in the background. Hayward talks about how everybody has failed out of the space flight program, and certainly the S.W.O.R.D uniforms are blue and white, which is the classic Fantastic Four colors. So there’s a way of drawing a line that they don’t have to follow this. Like a lot of the MCU things, sometimes they drop things and then they go in an entirely different direction.

Pete:                Do they?

Alex:                 Well they do sometimes. Like they mentioned Dr. Strange, but it didn’t necessarily follow up. There’s other things like that.

Pete:                That’s who I thought it was at the door.

Alex:                 We’ll get to that in a moment. But it’s possible that this could be setting up a thing where they failed out, they get these astronauts, the Fantastic Four, who steal this rocket, take it into space. We get a riff on their classic origin story. And introducing-

Pete:                Nothing like a riff.

Alex:                 Whoever is Reed Richards this way would be huge, and I think make a lot of sense.

Justin:              Yes, that would be such a strong… Don’t you think that would overtake some of the story here?

Alex:                 I do think so. I agree with you, except for what happens at the end of the episode, which already established that sort of thing of taking things over. All right, a couple of other things we should… I mean, there’s a lot else we should be talking about, but let’s go back inside of the dome.

Pete:                We should be talking about postcards. Do you remember postcards? That was a nice ad for postcards right there at the start in the opening credits. Man, those are fun.

Justin:              We get the opening credits to Family Ties obviously here. My daughter has entered the chat, so she’ll be speaking briefly over the course of this. But we get the Family Ties opening sequence, which we’re all a fan of.

Alex:                 I did love, and this reminded me, how nonsensical 80s theme songs are. This always bothers me. The entire theme song, which they nailed perfectly in this, is we’re doing the best we can over and over. So you’re like, “Oh, the name of the show is Doing the Best We Can,” but nope it’s WandaVision.

Justin:              That’s very true. And what was the other line in there? We’re making it up as we go along, which I thought was very cool.

Alex:                 The theme song was great. Love seeing Vision as a baby, Vision growing up in the credits. That was also very funny.

Pete:                Very interesting to see the kids rocking the Vision stuff as well for a little while. So that was kind of cool.

Alex:                 Lots more to talk about, though. We haven’t really even talked about the meat of the episode, which is Vision versus Scarlet Witch as he becomes more and more aware over the course of this episode, pushes back on Wanda, by the end they’re in the air yelling at each other. He doesn’t know his life before Westview. What’d you think about this whole arc?

Pete:                I’m glad he’s finally putting things together because for a machine he was kind of acting dumb. And then finally when he calls out her entrance. She was like, “Oh, why do you look so formal?” He was like, “Probably someone’s going to pop by right in time with the thing we need.” Yeah, I thought that was great the way he called that. And he’s putting things together and it’s not adding up. And the part at his job made a lot of a sense, and I’m so glad that he did that. I’ve been impressed with the Vision in this episode…

Alex:                 I know we’re releasing this as an audio podcast, but I love the fact on video just more and more things are coming in Justin’s view.

Justin:              Reality is being invaded right now. I got daughter who woke up way before she usually does, and my dog is going to be hearing all this dead dog talk, and it’s like, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Pete:                Pip don’t slip, so Pip’s not going to stand for any bad talking Sparky.

Alex:                 This conflict is so hard to watch. And I loved the job that Paul Bettany does in this episode in particular, just how broken he is by the end. He doesn’t remember his life. He doesn’t know what’s going on. We know that he died. We talked about it, I think, the last episode. What did Wanda do? Pick up his corpse and walk across several states? Turns out she did.

Justin:              She did. And I think we see that Hayward has been experimenting on the Vision corpse, which Jimmy Woo is like, “Hey, that’s not cool.” And he totally just glosses over it. So I thought all that stuff was cool. It is weird to me that Hayward is just being a straight up villain.

Alex:                 I don’t think he’s an overarching villain so much as corporate dick. We’ve seen this time-

Pete:                Douchy kind of agent dude. Yeah, that’s classic.

Justin:              But he’s just outwardly… I thought he would be a little more secretly evil.

Alex:                 No, but he’s shooting Wanda with a rocket. He does the classic, “No, it’s a drone. It’s fine. Just kidding. Shoot her down with a missile,” which leads to that moment that made me say, “Oh shit,” at home alone, watching this, when Wanda [crosstalk 00:24:26] comes out of the dome… When Wanda comes out of the dome wearing her costume the last time we saw her, and that was Endgame. She is talking with a very deep Sokovian accent, which has been a big question people have had throughout the series. This moment was great.

Justin:              This episode, we haven’t really talked about it yet, is about Wanda’s powers. She is powered up in the Marvel universe in this episode in a way that we knew from the comics, but it was a big move for the show.

Alex:                 Well, I think this is a big question that, to my mind, and maybe I’m thinking about it too much, points to the fact that she is not the villain here, because… And Jimmy and Darcy bring this up. We know that she had telepathy. We know that she had… What’s the other one? Telekinesis. And she’s super strong. But manipulating and changing matter is not something that we’ve necessarily seen in her power set. So there’s steps missing there. The mind stone is not in Vision anymore. It is destroyed. She has Vision’s body, but just because she has Vision’s body doesn’t mean that she can do all of these other things. Maybe it does, but there’s certainly like… Right now, we’re A to C and we don’t have the B.

Pete:                Also, speaking of her powers, it was kind of crazy how her powers didn’t really work on her kids at all. That was very interesting when she was trying to get the babies to shut up. And I was really worried what she was going to do to those kids. But it seems like the kids are controlling themselves and aren’t succumbed to her power at all.

Alex:                 Yeah, what’s your take on Tommy and Billy right now?

Justin:              I think because they were created in this reality, they aren’t beholden to it. And I think they are going to… We’re going to walk out of this show with them being real people that have a power set and that know everything about what happened in there. Wanda sees it, and I think it works great in two ways. As a superhero story, the fact that these kids were created out of nothing and now are going to be characters is really cool.

Pete:                You don’t know that, though.

Justin:              I don’t know that, but that’s what…

Pete:                When the sitcom ends, maybe they end. Sitcoms are sad like that.

Justin:              Wow. Interesting. They don’t kill the actors at the end of a sitcom, Pete. I hate to tell you. Not like the dogs. My daughter just grew up too. Now she’s 10.

Pete:                Oh wow. Congrats. Happened fast.

Alex:                 That’s great. Let’s talk about the end of the episode. I think we need to jump and talk about that because that’s obviously the huge thing that’s breaking the internet right now. We’ve gotten mentions of Pietro before, which was very emotional, a couple of episodes back. But here we get the thing that we kind of speculated about and turns out to be exactly what happens. We get a classic 80s recasting, as Darcy points out, but it’s not just any recasting. It’s Quicksilver at the door, but it’s played by Evan Peters from the X-Men franchise. This is huge. People are freaking out. They’re like, “This is it. This is the multiverse. It’s coming.” We know this show is setting up Doctor Strange 2: Multiverse of Madness. We know it’s setting up in some way, Spider-Man 3, which also deals with the multiverse. Here’s what I’ll throw out to you guys.

Pete:                Wait wait wait.

Alex:                 Yes.

Pete:                When you saw the back of the head of the person at the door, what were your guys’ first thoughts?

Justin:              I was like, “Old person.” Gray hair. I was like-

Pete:                Captain America.

Justin:              Oh, interesting.

Pete:                I thought Captain America was going to ring the doorbell and be like, “Yo, I need that stone. I got to go back and fall in love and have some real fun. So I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I need the stone.” Because it did look like an old person. And then I thought maybe Mr. Fantastic because of the gray. But then I was completely shocked by Quicksilver.

Alex:                 I mean, I think what you’re supposed to think is that it’s Quicksilver, it’s Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and then the camera comes around and it’s actually Evan Peters being classic 80s brother coming into town douchebag, which is great.

Pete:                Don’t call him a douchebag. You don’t know that yet.

Alex:                 No, but that’s what the character is in the 80s sitcom. But the question in my mind, is this Evan Peters as Quicksilver from the X-Men franchise or is it a town member of Westview who has been recast as Quicksilver? Or is it something else entirely?

Justin:              And don’t know how they’d justify any of that? Where is that going to come in? Who’s manipulating this? Is this someone from the Agnes/Agatha side of it, who’s pushed this out there to help the manipulation of Wanda? Because this isn’t a plan coming from the S.W.O.R.D. people.

Pete:                It’s not planned from Wanda, because she doesn’t know who’s at the door.

Alex:                 Right. There’s certainly something else going on here. Regardless of what’s happening, it’s very exciting to see Evan Peters as Quicksilver. He was one of the highlights of, not the best [crosstalk 00:29:31] one might say, X-Men movies, but he’s awesome and he’s an awesome actor. I’m very excited to see what he does.

Pete:                His parts in the X-Men movie were my favorite parts, the reason that I would watch it.

Alex:                 Absolutely

Justin:              The sequence where he puts on Time in a Bottle. That’s just epic.

Alex:                 And also it’s going to be… I’m curious to see how they execute this. I’m curious to see how it happens, whether they do reference X-Men at all. I’m doubtful they will. I think it’s more going to be about Quicksilver and we may see Aaron Taylor-Johnson down the road as well.

Pete:                Because I thought maybe this was the twins’ doing, because one of the kids was like, “Mom, where’s your brother. Do you have a brother?” And she’s like, “Yeah, but he’s not here.” And when she was like, “Oh, I don’t know who’s at the door.” I was like, “Could be the twins making some magic happening.”

Alex:                 That’s interesting. I wonder about that theory because we don’t know a lot about them yet, but I do like the idea of-

Pete:                They’re 10 now, so…

Alex:                 Well they’re 10 now-

Pete:                Good to know.

Alex:                 Which is a bad age.

Pete:                Shots fired.

Justin:              Wow, slammed.

Alex:                 It’s fine, [crosstalk 00:30:38]-

Pete:                Isn’t one of your kids 10?

Alex:                 Yeah. Before we wrap up here, I’m sure there’s a couple of other things we need to call out. We didn’t mention this earlier, but Sparky is from the Vision comics by Tom King and Gabriel Walta. He is a-

Pete:                Died in that comic too.

Alex:                 Died in that comic too. Very sad. But nice to see him here, albeit briefly. What else? There were a couple of other things.

Justin:              The commercial. We want to talk about the commercial? For Lagos brand paper towels. And that’s obviously a reference to Captain America: Civil War, the fight in Lagos. And I think this cements our theory we had that maybe these commercials are just all the trauma moments in Wanda’s life.

Pete:                Because that paper towel didn’t look like it was doing that good of a job. I mean, that commercial wasn’t…

Justin:              You nailed it, Pete. You’re right.

Alex:                 Well that’s the point. The narration says, “For when you make a mess you didn’t mean to.” And if you don’t remember Civil War, Wanda accidentally took Crossbones, threw him into a building and a bunch of people died, which caused the Sokovia Accords, which we also get a little mention of here. Last thing I had a question about, this bothered me a little bit, and they’ve been doing this throughout the series. I think Monica says she could have taken out Thanos on her own if he hadn’t initiated a blitz. Did everybody see Avengers Endgame? Did they watch the movie? What’s going on? How do they know all of this stuff?

Justin:              A blitz that she said, right?

Alex:                 Yeah.

Justin:              I don’t know. Maybe that just means the attack.

Pete:                Didn’t she say a blintz? Those are delicious.

Alex:                 Yeah, [crosstalk 00:32:10] a cheese blintz. I’m sure they read the reports, but there’s something about it where they’re like, they’re all fans of Avengers Endgame, they saw it four times in the theaters.

Pete:                I was hoping they would all quiz each other.

Alex:                 Cheered at the portal scene like everybody else.

Pete:                Be like, “Did you stay after the credits.”

Alex:                 “There was nothing, but it was still really nice, like there was a little bit. It was just really nice to pay tribute to the whole cast. Hey, did you know we have like 10 minutes of credits on this show.” Last little thing that I’ll mention that I thought was interesting.

Pete:                Don’t say that. Anytime you say last thing-

Alex:                 I know, there’s several more things, you’re right.

Pete:                It’s never the last thing and it drives me fucking crazy.

Alex:                 I’m really sorry. This really is the last thing that I have to say.

Pete:                Not it’s not.

Alex:                 We talked about this previously when they were putting up Jimmy Woo’s theory wall, Agnes didn’t have an ID and Dottie wasn’t on the wall. We see the wall again. Same thing, even though time’s past, Agnes still doesn’t have an ID, Dottie still isn’t on the wall, which definitely raises some questions about that, I think.

Pete:                Great. Well you can’t say another thing on this whole podcast because you said last thing. So Justin, let’s have some fun.

Alex:                 Before we wrap up here then, what is on your vision board for the next episode, Pete?

Pete:                You said another thing.

Alex:                 What are you talking?

Justin:              I think we’re going to get the big confrontation between Vision, a larger version of the confrontation between Vision and Scarlet witch.

Alex:                 Pete, what about you? What’s on your vision board?

Pete:                I just wanted to say that what’s nice is they had a great moment in the show where they showed her outfit from when she was on the sitcom, and something in the 80s that is great can be bulletproof in today’s world. So just think about bringing back some great outfits from the 80s, because they’re really [crosstalk 00:33:45].

Alex:                 For next episode?

Justin:              Quite a takeaway from this episode, Pete.

Pete:                Things in the 80s are bulletproof now, is what I’m saying.

Justin:              80s fashion is bulletproof is what you’re saying.

Pete:                That’s right.

Alex:                 Two things I want to see on my vision board for the next episode. I want to of course, find out more of what’s going on with Evan Peters’ Quicksilver. That’s very exciting. We need to get some sort of potential answers there. But also the overarching thing, bouncing off of what you mentioned, Justin, is I still think we’re going to see the Vision Scarlet Witch confrontation conclude, not next episode probably, but yeah, I guess next episode, potentially propelling us into the final act, revealing whoever the real villain behind this whole thing is. And that’s what we’re going to see in the last three episodes is them teaming up together to figure out this issue and get past it. That’s what I want to see. We’ll see if that actually happens or maybe they’ll double down on Wanda’s trauma and she really is the real villain after all.

Justin:              What sitcom do you think we’re going to jump into next? Obviously we had Family Ties here and a lot of Mr. Belvedere as I predicted. What do you think-

Pete:                Definitely Mr. Belvedere? I’m done with that.

Justin:              Really happy with a lot of Belvedere stuff.

Alex:                 I don’t know, are we going to jump ahead all the way to the 2000s and get The Office style sitcom, or is it going to be… What is a 90s sitcom?

Justin:              I think any of the TGIFs [crosstalk 00:35:00]-

Pete:                We’ve got a lot of rad dudes. What are you talking about?

Justin:              The fact that they introduced Quicksilver as the brother feels very Full Housey to me, where they can be like, “What are we all doing in here? Cool uncle Quicksilver’s here.”

Pete:                Uncle Jesse.

Alex:                 Wait, what about Seinfeld? Could they do Seinfeld?

Justin:              Feels like a strong tonal shift.

Alex:                 I guess we’ll see what happens. And thank you all for tuning in for this episode. If you’d like to support this podcast, patreon.com/comicbookclub. Also we do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM to Crowdcast and YouTube. Come hang out. We would love to theorize about WandaVision with you. iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice to subscribe and listen to the show, @MarvelVisionPod on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Comicbookclublive.com for this podcast and many more. Until next time, Marvel you later.

Pete:                Give your kids booze.

Justin:              Give your kids booze. Is that what you said? Wow. Okay. Maybe that’ll get her to go back to sleep.

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Things start breaking down in Westview as we recap WandaVision Episode 5, “On A Very Special Episode…” While the sitcom world transitions to the ’80s, outside Monica Rambeau tries to figure out what happened to her while she was under Wanda’s control, Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Things start breaking down in Westview as we recap WandaVision Episode 5, “On A Very Special Episode…” While the sitcom world transitions to the ’80s, outside Monica Rambeau tries to figure out what happened to her while she was under Wanda’s control, leading to a showdown with Hayward. And inside the Hex, when Tommy and Billy begin to grow up too fast, Vision starts to realize things are very, very wrong leading to a series of confrontations — and a surprise that we bet you didn’t see coming. Let’s break down all the WandaVision Easter eggs (that X-Men cameo!!), comic book references (Sparky!!), MCU references (Lagos!!) and more.

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Full Episode Transcript:

Alex:                 Welcome to MarvelVision, a podcast about Marvel, the MCU, and specifically WandaVision episode five, On a Very Special Episode. I am Alex.

Justin:              I’m Justin.

Pete:                I’m Pete.

Alex:                 And man alive, guys, this was a big one. This is a potential universe changing episode of WandaVision.

Justin:              Our universe.

Alex:                 Yeah. What are you guys doing differently after this episode? I feel like just a new, fresh person, honestly.

Justin:              I got a dead dog as a pet. I was like, let me just jump to the end.

Alex:                 Nice. I electrocuted my dead dog.

Pete:                I’m going to go back to sleep.

Alex:                 Oh man, this is very early for Pete, but we’re very excited to talk about this, because again, this is a huge episode of WandaVision. Requisite spoiler warning here. We’re not going to talk about every single aspect of the episode. We’re not going to recap beat by beat, but we are going to get right into spoilers and talk through it. And there’s a lot of big things that happen. So if you haven’t watched episode five, again, episode five, On a Very Special Episode, check it out right now, and then head back here. Broad strokes, here’s what’s going on in this episode, just as a reminder. So now we’re splitting our time between the sitcom world of WandaVision and the real world of the MCU, which of course is our real-

Justin:              Our reality, yes.

Pete:                Very meta.

Alex:                 In reality, Monica Rambeau is out of the Wanda Hex. We have a name called Hex. We’ll talk about that in a second. Darcy and Jimmy are trying to help her out and figure out what’s going on with Wanda. There’s a big confrontation outside with Hayward, who attacks Wanda inside, and we find out a lot of more…. There’s a lot of Easter eggs, a lot of questions there that, again, we’ll get back to in a moment. Inside the sitcom world, we’re in the 80s, Tommy and Billy growing up real quick. Lots of weirdness going on here, both with the residents of Westview and with Wanda and with Tommy and Billy. Agnes is getting more in the mix of everything that’s going on. And Vision is definitely becoming self-aware.

Alex:                 We get a couple of notes that we’ve certainly wondered about. Some answers, more questions. And then the biggest one of all at the end, I don’t know if we want to talk about this right now, or we want to save it for a little later [crosstalk 00:02:29]-

Pete:                Probably save it.

Alex:                 But I’ll mention what it is. You all know if you’ve seen it. But Evan Peters shows up as Quicksilver, which is wild.

Justin:              It is wild.

Alex:                 Let’s let’s put it a little pin in that and come back because we have a huge discussion. First of all, as we do, let’s talk about the episode. What’d you think? I thought this was phenomenal. I was so excited that they’re bringing everything together, splitting the time between the two worlds. This is great.

Justin:              So good. And a lot of people were like, “This is moving so slowly.” There’s all this criticism of how weird it is. It’s all laying the groundwork, and that’s the confidence that you get from a Marvel show, from the MCU, where they’re like, “We understand you might not get everything right from the first one, two episodes,” but it’s all worth it when they start to weave this stuff in and it’s just so much happening and so many revelations happening in this episode.

Pete:                Guys, I want to go back to the 80s. You know, Jazzercise, you could give your kids liquor. I mean, those were the days, you know what I mean?

Justin:              If the Vision grabbed your temples, you’d be like, “Hi, I’m Pete. I like it here. Please leave me here. I want to live here in this sitcom world.”

Alex:                 Vision, get it together, right? We’re all stuck in this. Stop fighting it. Go get an Orange Julius, Julius. Things are going to be cool. Yeah, instead of calling your family and letting them know where you are, you’re going to immediately run off to a 7-Eleven

Justin:              Just have someone punch me right in the crotch before the commercial break. That’s all I’m living for right now. I’m the funny one.

Alex:                 To the point you were saying, Justin, I love how fast they’re whipping through story. I think going back to the first episode, we were like, “They’re going to be in sitcom land for eight episodes, and then we’ll see what the revelation is in episode nine.” Nope. They pretty much announced how quickly they’re going through it, I think, with episode four. We talked about this last time. This is only my suspicion here, but it really does feel like you got this first act, which is sitcom land, something’s wrong. The second act is Wanda versus Vision. And I still do think we’re going to see a twist here that this is not all Wanda, even though they’re doubling down very hard on it in this episode in particular.

Justin:              But I do think we’re seeing what the cracks there in the theory that Wanda’s bad. Hayward’s clearly an overarching villain here, and I think Agnes is-

Pete:                Agnes is in on it.

Justin:              At the core of this somehow, obviously, as well. So I do think we’re going to get… Even the mailman at the end of sort of like… He seems suspect. And I just don’t trust mailmen in general. [crosstalk 00:05:01].

Alex:                 What’s their agenda? That’s what I want to know.

Justin:              They’re always at my house.

Alex:                 Deliver mail.

Justin:              Every day they got something to give me? Suspect.

Pete:                Well, if you didn’t order all those crazy Amazon packages, maybe they wouldn’t have to be there.

Justin:              I’m on my computer and they show up in real life from this guy.

Alex:                 Let’s talk about Agnes. I think that’s a good place to start, because we get a lot of Easter eggs here about that. Certainly there’s been a lot of speculate…

Pete:                I mean…

Alex:                 Yes, Pete,

Pete:                Let’s talk about that Jazzercise outfit. That was glorious. It brings me right back.

Justin:              Brings you back? What are you talking about? It’s not like you were an adult in the 80s Jazzercising.

Pete:                No, but my mom was. It was fun to see those outfits. Like, “Hey, you know what? Kids will shut up if you give them booze.” I was like, “Oh yeah, this was the time.”

Justin:              Could you send us that picture of your mom in the Jazzercise outfit that you keep talking about?

Pete:                That’s creepy and no.

Justin:              You said it. You said it.

Pete:                No, no, no. When you say it it’s creepy.

Justin:              You said it, it’s creepier.

Pete:                The binkies bit was just fun television, you know what I mean? The dad coming in with them in both ears. I mean, that’s classic physical comedy.

Alex:                 I do want to talk about, actually, the easter eggs with Agnes in a second, but to the point that you’re making, Pete, I love getting back to the sitcom tropes here. I think something that they’ve been pushing really hard that I think a lot of viewers have been struggling with… Forgive me, I know Pete’s going to yell at me for this, but the jokes aren’t very funny most of the time, but that’s okay. They are very much 80s sitcom style jokes. They perfectly fit the era.

Pete:                Still hold up. I don’t know what the you’re talking about, not funny.

Alex:                 Nope.

Pete:                Did you see those binkies?

Justin:              Stop saying binky as such an adult man. Well let me say this. I think the jokes in the first couple of episodes when the sitcom world-

Alex:                 Hey Justin, take the binkie out of your ear.

Justin:              Those are headphones. In the first couple episodes, the jokes were strong when the sitcom reality was strong. And now that Wanda’s attention is split between so many things and there’s all these problems starting to emerge, I think this is purposeful. She doesn’t have as much time to mentally write good sitcom jokes. I really think that’s… My takeaway from this episode is the stories in the sitcom are getting dumber because Wanda’s attention is split.

Alex:                 Yeah, she’s got so much going on. The little writer’s room in her head is having a tough time keeping up with all of it.

Justin:              How’s the writers’ room in your head, Pete? They’ve been passing out booze for a couple of seasons now, let me be honest.

Alex:                 Let’s get back to the Agatha/Agnes easter eggs. We’ve certainly spent-

Justin:              Dropping Agatha [crosstalk 00:07:39].

Alex:                 A lot of people have speculated that she is Agatha Harkness from the comics who ends up taking care of the kids. I believe takes care of Wanda and Pietro’s kids. Here she straight up calls herself auntie Agnes, says she has some tricks up her sleeve. But the big thing, I think, for overarching with the show that you were mentioning, Justin, is she seems to be aware in some way. I don’t know if she’s the villain necessarily, but she certainly has known what is going on and does know what’s going on. We talked about this with the last episode… Not last episode, two episodes back as well, where people seem to have different levels of awareness of what’s happening. But Agatha… I keep calling her Agatha. Agnes is definitely at the top of that chain.

Justin:              And we see in this episode that Wanda is comfortable enough with her to use her powers in front of her. There’s definitely some… I feel like she’s being manipulated by Agnes in some way. I think when the Vision calls out that she used her powers in front of her, that was a moment where it felt like Wanda wasn’t quite sure why she did something, which is the only instance of that. And I also thought it was telling the Agnes is like, “Do you want me to take that again?” Because I should have the kids in my care. She wants the kids, the kids are her focus. She seems like she’s operating in and around Vision and Wanda so that she can have more time have control over the kids.

Pete:                Oh, that’s interesting. But you know, as a classically trained actor, the take it from the top is something that is used in stage and television. Wouldn’t you say that?

Justin:              Thank you, yes.

Alex:                 That’s a great inside baseball tip right there, Pete.

Pete:                But this show does love sitting in these awkward moments, these kind of painful moments of like, “Let’s take it from the top.” “What are you talking about?” [crosstalk 00:09:25]. Oh God, yeah.

Justin:              When the reality breaks. It’s almost like they were going to go back to one.

Pete:                Look at this guy.

Alex:                 Like you’re saying, Pete, I think this episode did this really well in particular. We got, in the first episode, just that, “No stop it, stop it” moment that broke the reality. Here we’re going back and forth from the camera angles to what’s going on in the scenes. It comes in close and has a more modern style whenever the reality starts breaking down. And it’s pretty much constant. It’s non-stop here. To the point that it’s alarming to watch, and I think purposely so, because it’s breaking cinema convention. You’re getting all of these things all at the same time.

Justin:              But what also, I think, is so cool about this is cinema convention caught up with reality over the course of these decades of television they’re dealing with it, so that modern TV is meant to feel as much like everyday life in a lot of ways. You get hand held camera work and all that now. So as reality is creeping in on the sitcoms world of the show, the same pace that reality crept in reality looking television crept in on TV. It’s a little bit of a mindfuck, And I think that I’m in a Hex of some sort.

Alex:                 It’s catching on.

Justin:              But it makes everything really works so well, I think.

Alex:                 Yeah, the other thing… I know I’ve been doubling down on this pretty much every episode, but one thing that I really liked about this one in particular, given everything that was going on, it really had a very strong theme about grief and how you deal with grief and it hit it on every level. I know a couple of people commented and pushed back on me, both in our Patreon Slack and on Twitter about-

Pete:                It’s my favorite thing to do.

Alex:                 [Crosstalk 00:11:10] love… Oh, was it all you, Pete, with different alts accounts?

Pete:                Burners? I love pushing back on you, regardless of what’s happening.

Alex:                 I didn’t love last episode because I liked what they did, and I thought there were some really smart choices, but particularly when it came to Monica Rambeau, I liked what they set up, but it didn’t feel like it panned out over the whole entire episode. The theme with her and her grief over her mother’s death and missing that really played out in this episode. It played out with Wanda, of course, in the quote unquote real world. But it also played out in the sitcom world, which is what I think the last episode was missing a little bit, because we get this whole storyline with Sparky that ties in with the kids, with Wanda, with Vision, with everything. Very smartly written across the board, and I liked that quite a bit.

Pete:                Well, you guys had to be nervous when you saw that dog because you know the rule in television, that dog’s got to die so those kids learn about responsibility. That was a scary moment when they’re teaching this dog tricks. I was like, “This is going too well.” [crosstalk 00:12:09].

Alex:                 Is that a thing that regularly happens, they kill dogs on television?

Pete:                That’s how I learned about responsibility.

Justin:              Yeah. That’s how Pete learned how to kill a dog.

Alex:                 I do remember there was an episode of full house where they got a dog and then by the end it was just a bloody smear on the pavement.

Pete:                You got it, dude.

Justin:              To your point, Alex, I do think Monica dealing with her mom’s death makes her the only character that really, I think, sympathizes and understands what Wanda’s actually going through. And we see that in the scene, the confrontation scene at the end of the episode, and that’s why Monica is so important, and she’s really the leader of the Jimmy and Darcy triumvirate that are going to be sort of our outside heroes here.

Alex:                 Do you want to talk about outside the Hex a little bit, because I think there were so many different things going on there that we possibly could plumb through. Certainly, like you mentioned, there’s the grief thing. I do love the three of them working together. I think that’s super fun.

Justin:              Great trio.

Pete:                Oh, for sure.

Alex:                 The Hex, I’m sure comic book fans caught onto this, but just in case, there are people who are not diehard comic book fans listening to this podcast. Wanda’s powers in the comics are called hex powers. They riff on this a little bit when Hayward and Jimmy Woo talk about does she have a cute nickname or anything like that? No, she doesn’t. She’s not really called Scarlet Witch in the MCU, though I expect we’ll be calling her that by the end of the series. So that was all fun. But there’s a bunch of questions that get brought up as well. Little things that are teases. One, Monica goes through these scans after she comes out of the Hex, and it seems like maybe she is empty from the scan, they need to do blood tests again. We know from the comics, she becomes Captain Marvel, Photon, bunch of different names, Monica Rambeau sometimes. So this certainly seems to be the first hint of her powers. But what do you think’s going on here? Are we actually going to see her power up in this series?

Justin:              I think so. That’s what the test results really told me. And I think she’s going to be called Photon, which is what her mom’s nickname was, and I think she’ll take on that moniker. It seems like tests weren’t working on her because she is perhaps made of light or something like that.

Pete:                Oh, I thought she was dead and a ghost, because usually when you can’t see organs and stuff like that, that’s what that means.

Justin:              Usually when you can’t see organs. How is your ghost hunting going, Pete?

Pete:                That’s great. Shh. Oh, I thought I heard something.

Alex:                 I love the idea that when you look at people, Pete, you’re like, “I don’t see skin color, I just see a big bag of organs.”

Justin:              Or you’re like, every person you see, you’re like, “Yep. Organs. Not dead. So far so good. No ghost.”

Pete:                Not dead. Not a ghost. Don’t fuck with me, man.

Alex:                 In the comics I believe she’s able to turn herself into different wavelengths of light, is that right, or is it different wavelengths of energy?

Justin:              I don’t know. I mean, Photon, I think it’s light focused [crosstalk 00:15:07]. Harsh question from Alex.

Pete:                It’s too early for that kind of shit.

Justin:              Yeah, the sun hasn’t come up yet.

Alex:                 So that’s one thing. Another thing that is going on with her is she comes up with a method of getting inside the Hex. We’ve actually seen some of this in teasers. So it is something that they potentially try out. But she figures out if she has basically a huge lab on wheels, she might be able to get in there and says, “I know somebody who can help me with this,” and texts, I believe an aerospace engineer. Who she texted? This is my favorite part of the show.

Justin:              Who she texted.

Pete:                Who she texted. Who she texted.

Alex:                 I liked the pause there, where we’re like, “Oh, now we need to follow this up with information.”

Justin:              But we were letting theme song end, for who you’re texting. I mean, my first thought was Captain Marvel.

Alex:                 Well probably not. She has a weird reaction when somebody mentions Captain Marvel and I do wonder… They haven’t explicitly stated this, but I do wonder if there’s some sort of her relating Captain Marvel to letting her mom die. That maybe Captain Marvel’s space radiation gave her cancer or something like that. I wonder if we’re going to find that out, because again, I think it was Darcy mentioned Captain Marvel and she just brushed over that and moved past it.

Justin:              What I thought that was, was she was like, “I’ll text my aerospace engineer friend,” and then a second later she like, “Captain Marvel,” I thought she was like, “How’d you know who I was texting?” That was my take on it, but I don’t know.

Pete:                She was like, “I’m going to text Samuel L. Jackson,” and then look right at the camera.

Alex:                 Find out what’s in his wallet?

Justin:              Who did you think?

Pete:                Oh, I thought it was originally, when they were kind of describing things, I was like, “Oh man, I want it to be a van time machine so bad because I think Paul Rudd would be hilarious in this little trio of people,” but I don’t know.

Alex:                 Okay, so you thought maybe Ant-Man?

Pete:                Yep.

Alex:                 All right. I wrote down a couple of possibilities. The first one that I thought it was Bruce Banner. That made sense to me. I know he’s not an aerospace engineer, but you know, Marvel universe.

Pete:                Why would that makes sense, then?

Alex:                 Marvel universe scientists, it doesn’t matter, they can do anything. The other one that came to mind was Talos from Captain Marvel, Ben Mendelsohn’s character. I don’t know if he’s an aerospace engineer necessarily, but I think kid Monica in Captain Marvel, if I remember correctly, was friendly with Talos. They hung out together, right?

Justin:              Yeah. But of the ones we’ve just said, between Samuel L. Jackson from the Capital One commercial campaign, Captain Marvel, and Talos, I think Captain Marvel is the more likely get.

Alex:                 Hold on. Hold on. I have two more possibilities. I have two more. Are you ready?

Pete:                The dog.

Alex:                 The dog. She was texting the dog. As we know, his name’s Sparky.

Justin:              His name’s Sparky, Pete. It’s Dr. Sparky, aerospace engineer.

Alex:                 Riri Williams. What about Riri Williams? We do know there’s an Ironheart show coming down the road. She certainly knows a lot about tech. We haven’t met her yet, so that might be kind of a fun introduction there.

Justin:              That’d be very cool. I would be surprised if she was introduced in this fashion, but that would be awesome.

Alex:                 I have another one. This is a crazy theory.

Pete:                Wow, this is fun. You’re just spit balling ideas.

Alex:                 This is the last one. This is the last one.

Justin:              Who she texted?

Pete:                Who she texted?

Alex:                 This is what our podcast is about, just brainstorming.

Justin:              This is a game show within the podcast called Who She Texted?

Pete:                Who she texted?

Alex:                 What do you think, is there a possibility that it’s Mr. Fantastic?

Pete:                What?

Justin:              Yeah. Do you think they’re going to… Because there was some speculation in some of the earlier episodes, I guess last episode when she’s walking into the lab, but you see them working on a spaceship of some sort. If they just drop Reed Richards as like, “Hey, this is a young doctor, aerospace engineer named Reed Richards,” and then we don’t say anything about it. That feels crazy for a mid season drop, but…

Pete:                I was rewatching it, and if you look really close, while she’s texting, she’s mumbling, “This fucking stretchy piece of shit better answer.” So maybe it is.

Alex:                 Well, just to talk about that theory, Pete, a little further, and then we’ll move on from here. But what Justin was saying about the Fantastic Four thing. Last episode we saw Monica goes into S.W.O.R.D. There’s a rocket they’re building in the background. Hayward talks about how everybody has failed out of the space flight program, and certainly the S.W.O.R.D uniforms are blue and white, which is the classic Fantastic Four colors. So there’s a way of drawing a line that they don’t have to follow this. Like a lot of the MCU things, sometimes they drop things and then they go in an entirely different direction.

Pete:                Do they?

Alex:                 Well they do sometimes. Like they mentioned Dr. Strange, but it didn’t necessarily follow up. There’s other things like that.

Pete:                That’s who I thought it was at the door.

Alex:                 We’ll get to that in a moment. But it’s possible that this could be setting up a thing where they failed out, they get these astronauts, the Fantastic Four, who steal this rocket, take it into space. We get a riff on their classic origin story. And introducing-

Pete:                Nothing like a riff.

Alex:                 Whoever is Reed Richards this way would be huge, and I think make a lot of sense.

Justin:              Yes, that would be such a strong… Don’t you think that would overtake some of the story here?

Alex:                 I do think so. I agree with you, except for what happens at the end of the episode, which already established that sort of thing of taking things over. All right, a couple of other things we should… I mean, there’s a lot else we should be talking about, but let’s go back inside of the dome.

Pete:                We should be talking about postcards. Do you remember postcards? That was a nice ad for postcards right there at the start in the opening credits. Man, those are fun.

Justin:              We get the opening credits to Family Ties obviously here. My daughter has entered the chat, so she’ll be speaking briefly over the course of this. But we get the Family Ties opening sequence, which we’re all a fan of.

Alex:                 I did love, and this reminded me, how nonsensical 80s theme songs are. This always bothers me. The entire theme song, which they nailed perfectly in this, is we’re doing the best we can over and over. So you’re like, “Oh, the name of the show is Doing the Best We Can,” but nope it’s WandaVision.

Justin:              That’s very true. And what was the other line in there? We’re making it up as we go along, which I thought was very cool.

Alex:                 The theme song was great. Love seeing Vision as a baby, Vision growing up in the credits. That was also very funny.

Pete:                Very interesting to see the kids rocking the Vision stuff as well for a little while. So that was kind of cool.

Alex:                 Lots more to talk about, though. We haven’t really even talked about the meat of the episode, which is Vision versus Scarlet Witch as he becomes more and more aware over the course of this episode, pushes back on Wanda, by the end they’re in the air yelling at each other. He doesn’t know his life before Westview. What’d you think about this whole arc?

Pete:                I’m glad he’s finally putting things together because for a machine he was kind of acting dumb. And then finally when he calls out her entrance. She was like, “Oh, why do you look so formal?” He was like, “Probably someone’s going to pop by right in time with the thing we need.” Yeah, I thought that was great the way he called that. And he’s putting things together and it’s not adding up. And the part at his job made a lot of a sense, and I’m so glad that he did that. I’ve been impressed with the Vision in this episode…

Alex:                 I know we’re releasing this as an audio podcast, but I love the fact on video just more and more things are coming in Justin’s view.

Justin:              Reality is being invaded right now. I got daughter who woke up way before she usually does, and my dog is going to be hearing all this dead dog talk, and it’s like, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Pete:                Pip don’t slip, so Pip’s not going to stand for any bad talking Sparky.

Alex:                 This conflict is so hard to watch. And I loved the job that Paul Bettany does in this episode in particular, just how broken he is by the end. He doesn’t remember his life. He doesn’t know what’s going on. We know that he died. We talked about it, I think, the last episode. What did Wanda do? Pick up his corpse and walk across several states? Turns out she did.

Justin:              She did. And I think we see that Hayward has been experimenting on the Vision corpse, which Jimmy Woo is like, “Hey, that’s not cool.” And he totally just glosses over it. So I thought all that stuff was cool. It is weird to me that Hayward is just being a straight up villain.

Alex:                 I don’t think he’s an overarching villain so much as corporate dick. We’ve seen this time-

Pete:                Douchy kind of agent dude. Yeah, that’s classic.

Justin:              But he’s just outwardly… I thought he would be a little more secretly evil.

Alex:                 No, but he’s shooting Wanda with a rocket. He does the classic, “No, it’s a drone. It’s fine. Just kidding. Shoot her down with a missile,” which leads to that moment that made me say, “Oh shit,” at home alone, watching this, when Wanda [crosstalk 00:24:26] comes out of the dome… When Wanda comes out of the dome wearing her costume the last time we saw her, and that was Endgame. She is talking with a very deep Sokovian accent, which has been a big question people have had throughout the series. This moment was great.

Justin:              This episode, we haven’t really talked about it yet, is about Wanda’s powers. She is powered up in the Marvel universe in this episode in a way that we knew from the comics, but it was a big move for the show.

Alex:                 Well, I think this is a big question that, to my mind, and maybe I’m thinking about it too much, points to the fact that she is not the villain here, because… And Jimmy and Darcy bring this up. We know that she had telepathy. We know that she had… What’s the other one? Telekinesis. And she’s super strong. But manipulating and changing matter is not something that we’ve necessarily seen in her power set. So there’s steps missing there. The mind stone is not in Vision anymore. It is destroyed. She has Vision’s body, but just because she has Vision’s body doesn’t mean that she can do all of these other things. Maybe it does, but there’s certainly like… Right now, we’re A to C and we don’t have the B.

Pete:                Also, speaking of her powers, it was kind of crazy how her powers didn’t really work on her kids at all. That was very interesting when she was trying to get the babies to shut up. And I was really worried what she was going to do to those kids. But it seems like the kids are controlling themselves and aren’t succumbed to her power at all.

Alex:                 Yeah, what’s your take on Tommy and Billy right now?

Justin:              I think because they were created in this reality, they aren’t beholden to it. And I think they are going to… We’re going to walk out of this show with them being real people that have a power set and that know everything about what happened in there. Wanda sees it, and I think it works great in two ways. As a superhero story, the fact that these kids were created out of nothing and now are going to be characters is really cool.

Pete:                You don’t know that, though.

Justin:              I don’t know that, but that’s what…

Pete:                When the sitcom ends, maybe they end. Sitcoms are sad like that.

Justin:              Wow. Interesting. They don’t kill the actors at the end of a sitcom, Pete. I hate to tell you. Not like the dogs. My daughter just grew up too. Now she’s 10.

Pete:                Oh wow. Congrats. Happened fast.

Alex:                 That’s great. Let’s talk about the end of the episode. I think we need to jump and talk about that because that’s obviously the huge thing that’s breaking the internet right now. We’ve gotten mentions of Pietro before, which was very emotional, a couple of episodes back. But here we get the thing that we kind of speculated about and turns out to be exactly what happens. We get a classic 80s recasting, as Darcy points out, but it’s not just any recasting. It’s Quicksilver at the door, but it’s played by Evan Peters from the X-Men franchise. This is huge. People are freaking out. They’re like, “This is it. This is the multiverse. It’s coming.” We know this show is setting up Doctor Strange 2: Multiverse of Madness. We know it’s setting up in some way, Spider-Man 3, which also deals with the multiverse. Here’s what I’ll throw out to you guys.

Pete:                Wait wait wait.

Alex:                 Yes.

Pete:                When you saw the back of the head of the person at the door, what were your guys’ first thoughts?

Justin:              I was like, “Old person.” Gray hair. I was like-

Pete:                Captain America.

Justin:              Oh, interesting.

Pete:                I thought Captain America was going to ring the doorbell and be like, “Yo, I need that stone. I got to go back and fall in love and have some real fun. So I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I need the stone.” Because it did look like an old person. And then I thought maybe Mr. Fantastic because of the gray. But then I was completely shocked by Quicksilver.

Alex:                 I mean, I think what you’re supposed to think is that it’s Quicksilver, it’s Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and then the camera comes around and it’s actually Evan Peters being classic 80s brother coming into town douchebag, which is great.

Pete:                Don’t call him a douchebag. You don’t know that yet.

Alex:                 No, but that’s what the character is in the 80s sitcom. But the question in my mind, is this Evan Peters as Quicksilver from the X-Men franchise or is it a town member of Westview who has been recast as Quicksilver? Or is it something else entirely?

Justin:              And don’t know how they’d justify any of that? Where is that going to come in? Who’s manipulating this? Is this someone from the Agnes/Agatha side of it, who’s pushed this out there to help the manipulation of Wanda? Because this isn’t a plan coming from the S.W.O.R.D. people.

Pete:                It’s not planned from Wanda, because she doesn’t know who’s at the door.

Alex:                 Right. There’s certainly something else going on here. Regardless of what’s happening, it’s very exciting to see Evan Peters as Quicksilver. He was one of the highlights of, not the best [crosstalk 00:29:31] one might say, X-Men movies, but he’s awesome and he’s an awesome actor. I’m very excited to see what he does.

Pete:                His parts in the X-Men movie were my favorite parts, the reason that I would watch it.

Alex:                 Absolutely

Justin:              The sequence where he puts on Time in a Bottle. That’s just epic.

Alex:                 And also it’s going to be… I’m curious to see how they execute this. I’m curious to see how it happens, whether they do reference X-Men at all. I’m doubtful they will. I think it’s more going to be about Quicksilver and we may see Aaron Taylor-Johnson down the road as well.

Pete:                Because I thought maybe this was the twins’ doing, because one of the kids was like, “Mom, where’s your brother. Do you have a brother?” And she’s like, “Yeah, but he’s not here.” And when she was like, “Oh, I don’t know who’s at the door.” I was like, “Could be the twins making some magic happening.”

Alex:                 That’s interesting. I wonder about that theory because we don’t know a lot about them yet, but I do like the idea of-

Pete:                They’re 10 now, so…

Alex:                 Well they’re 10 now-

Pete:                Good to know.

Alex:                 Which is a bad age.

Pete:                Shots fired.

Justin:              Wow, slammed.

Alex:                 It’s fine, [crosstalk 00:30:38]-

Pete:                Isn’t one of your kids 10?

Alex:                 Yeah. Before we wrap up here, I’m sure there’s a couple of other things we need to call out. We didn’t mention this earlier, but Sparky is from the Vision comics by Tom King and Gabriel Walta. He is a-

Pete:                Died in that comic too.

Alex:                 Died in that comic too. Very sad. But nice to see him here, albeit briefly. What else? There were a couple of other things.

Justin:              The commercial. We want to talk about the commercial? For Lagos brand paper towels. And that’s obviously a reference to Captain America: Civil War, the fight in Lagos. And I think this cements our theory we had that maybe these commercials are just all the trauma moments in Wanda’s life.

Pete:                Because that paper towel didn’t look like it was doing that good of a job. I mean, that commercial wasn’t…

Justin:              You nailed it, Pete. You’re right.

Alex:                 Well that’s the point. The narration says, “For when you make a mess you didn’t mean to.” And if you don’t remember Civil War, Wanda accidentally took Crossbones, threw him into a building and a bunch of people died, which caused the Sokovia Accords, which we also get a little mention of here. Last thing I had a question about, this bothered me a little bit, and they’ve been doing this throughout the series. I think Monica says she could have taken out Thanos on her own if he hadn’t initiated a blitz. Did everybody see Avengers Endgame? Did they watch the movie? What’s going on? How do they know all of this stuff?

Justin:              A blitz that she said, right?

Alex:                 Yeah.

Justin:              I don’t know. Maybe that just means the attack.

Pete:                Didn’t she say a blintz? Those are delicious.

Alex:                 Yeah, [crosstalk 00:32:10] a cheese blintz. I’m sure they read the reports, but there’s something about it where they’re like, they’re all fans of Avengers Endgame, they saw it four times in the theaters.

Pete:                I was hoping they would all quiz each other.

Alex:                 Cheered at the portal scene like everybody else.

Pete:                Be like, “Did you stay after the credits.”

Alex:                 “There was nothing, but it was still really nice, like there was a little bit. It was just really nice to pay tribute to the whole cast. Hey, did you know we have like 10 minutes of credits on this show.” Last little thing that I’ll mention that I thought was interesting.

Pete:                Don’t say that. Anytime you say last thing-

Alex:                 I know, there’s several more things, you’re right.

Pete:                It’s never the last thing and it drives me fucking crazy.

Alex:                 I’m really sorry. This really is the last thing that I have to say.

Pete:                Not it’s not.

Alex:                 We talked about this previously when they were putting up Jimmy Woo’s theory wall, Agnes didn’t have an ID and Dottie wasn’t on the wall. We see the wall again. Same thing, even though time’s past, Agnes still doesn’t have an ID, Dottie still isn’t on the wall, which definitely raises some questions about that, I think.

Pete:                Great. Well you can’t say another thing on this whole podcast because you said last thing. So Justin, let’s have some fun.

Alex:                 Before we wrap up here then, what is on your vision board for the next episode, Pete?

Pete:                You said another thing.

Alex:                 What are you talking?

Justin:              I think we’re going to get the big confrontation between Vision, a larger version of the confrontation between Vision and Scarlet witch.

Alex:                 Pete, what about you? What’s on your vision board?

Pete:                I just wanted to say that what’s nice is they had a great moment in the show where they showed her outfit from when she was on the sitcom, and something in the 80s that is great can be bulletproof in today’s world. So just think about bringing back some great outfits from the 80s, because they’re really [crosstalk 00:33:45].

Alex:                 For next episode?

Justin:              Quite a takeaway from this episode, Pete.

Pete:                Things in the 80s are bulletproof now, is what I’m saying.

Justin:              80s fashion is bulletproof is what you’re saying.

Pete:                That’s right.

Alex:                 Two things I want to see on my vision board for the next episode. I want to of course, find out more of what’s going on with Evan Peters’ Quicksilver. That’s very exciting. We need to get some sort of potential answers there. But also the overarching thing, bouncing off of what you mentioned, Justin, is I still think we’re going to see the Vision Scarlet Witch confrontation conclude, not next episode probably, but yeah, I guess next episode, potentially propelling us into the final act, revealing whoever the real villain behind this whole thing is. And that’s what we’re going to see in the last three episodes is them teaming up together to figure out this issue and get past it. That’s what I want to see. We’ll see if that actually happens or maybe they’ll double down on Wanda’s trauma and she really is the real villain after all.

Justin:              What sitcom do you think we’re going to jump into next? Obviously we had Family Ties here and a lot of Mr. Belvedere as I predicted. What do you think-

Pete:                Definitely Mr. Belvedere? I’m done with that.

Justin:              Really happy with a lot of Belvedere stuff.

Alex:                 I don’t know, are we going to jump ahead all the way to the 2000s and get The Office style sitcom, or is it going to be… What is a 90s sitcom?

Justin:              I think any of the TGIFs [crosstalk 00:35:00]-

Pete:                We’ve got a lot of rad dudes. What are you talking about?

Justin:              The fact that they introduced Quicksilver as the brother feels very Full Housey to me, where they can be like, “What are we all doing in here? Cool uncle Quicksilver’s here.”

Pete:                Uncle Jesse.

Alex:                 Wait, what about Seinfeld? Could they do Seinfeld?

Justin:              Feels like a strong tonal shift.

Alex:                 I guess we’ll see what happens. And thank you all for tuning in for this episode. If you’d like to support this podcast, patreon.com/comicbookclub. Also we do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM to Crowdcast and YouTube. Come hang out. We would love to theorize about WandaVision with you. iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice to subscribe and listen to the show, @MarvelVisionPod on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Comicbookclublive.com for this podcast and many more. Until next time, Marvel you later.

Pete:                Give your kids booze.

Justin:              Give your kids booze. Is that what you said? Wow. Okay. Maybe that’ll get her to go back to sleep.

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