scans_daily | NoScans: WandaVision Episode 7

From:

Okay this isn’t going to be super coherent. Just some random thoughts.

The worst part about everyone predicting the Agnes reveal is that EVERY entertainment site had their Agatha Harkness articles up before most people could watch the show.

So this is the second 2000s episode and they skipped the 90s entirely. This seems like a missed opportunity.

Early on I remember some speculation that there were multiple superhumans in Westview. What if that’s still true? What if Avengers: Standoff is another Pleasant Hill but Wanda and Agatha just happen to be the only ones who are awake? Just because we know Wanda didn’t create the whole sitcom setup doesn’t mean Agatha did. Plus Hayward had enough “hex” imagery around SWORD that I have to wonder if the down doesn’t secretly exist just to be a place to observe “sentient weapons”.

Is Agatha Harkness responsible for the twins? They and “Quicksilver” are the only people in town Wanda doesn’t have any control over and Billy describes her a “quite” (he can’t read her surface thoughts/emotions?). Also, what the heck happened to them?

Is “Pietro” Fox’s Quicksilver* or just a lookalike? Either way he seems to be a dead guy puppeted by Agatha.

*Brought here by the Nexus.

Does Ralph exist? Is he Mephisto? A witch being the literal bride of the devil is certainly on the nose.

Who is Señor Scratchy? Nicholas Scratch? Ralph? Mephisto? Jimmy’s missing person? A familiar? Just a rabbit?

Who is Jimmy’s missing person? I’ve seen some speculation that its Wonder Man. It would go a long way toward explaining the Grim Reaper easter egg in an early episode’s opening credits.

I wasn’t really expecting the missing engineer to be Reed Richards like some were guessing but I was expecting someone more significant than some rando.

I really want Monica, Jimmy, and Darcy to continue as a team.

From:

mastermahan

So this is the second 2000s episode and they skipped the 90s entirely. This seems like a missed opportunity.

I had to check to make sure Malcolm in the Middle wasn't from the 90s.

I regret we didn't get to see Wanda doing a Seinfeld monologue of "what's the deeeal with resurrection? Your brother's dead, then he's alive, but now he's a different person? Why is he a different person? I liked the previous person! You stopped being dead? Great! Stop being a different person!"

From:

zachbeacon

Jerry has the soup Nazi. Wanda has actual Nazis. It's all right there.

I was thinking more Full House*, Sabrina (Billy focused), or something.

*Vision as the neat freak dad, Quicksilver as the deadbeat uncle, and Wanda as the one who loves using puppets.

From:

deh_tommy

Mister Scratch is a folk name for the Devil, so make of that what you will. Or perhaps they’re a red herring.

From:

icon_uk

Given the 90's might have given us "Everybody Loves Raymond", "King of Queens" or "Friends" (Which would have required a few new characters to be shoved in) perhaps we were lucky?

From:

bruinsfan

I did not want to have to listen to Vision whining about them being "on a break" all episode long, so that's one bullet dodged even if Pietro got hit by a bunch.

From:

thezmage

I don't think the 90s family sitcoms really set themselves apart enough from the 80s to justify a whole episode of Home Improvement parodies.

From:

zachbeacon

But Vision is literally a Tool Man!

Yeah, I see your point. I almost mentioned Perfect Strangers before I realized that was an 80s show. As someone who was born in the early 80s, a lot of the family sitcoms of the 80s and 90s blend together.

Edit: In hindsight I can see why the lead actress would want to avoid comparisons to her older sisters' work.

Edited Date: 2021-02-24 09:16 pm (UTC)

From:

thezmage

The 90s were usually characterized by young adult sitcoms (Friends, Single Guy, etc) and family sitcoms whose focus was skewed towards the younger members (Step by Step with Cody, Family Matters with Urkel, Sabrina the Teenage Witch). More or less an even split between the Growing Pains 80s and the Malcolm in the Middle '00s

From:

mastermahan

I've been thinking about "subverted expectations". The Agnes reveal wasn't exactly a huge surprise. People were guessing Kathryn Hanh was Agatha Harkness before the show even began.

But the reveal still worked, not because of what was shown, but how it was shown. An absolutely slapping theme song with Agatha gasping in mock surprise and winking at the audience. That's style.

Kathryn Hanh's reveal in Spider-Verse, meanwhile, does subvert expectations, but A) does it fairly - they'd already established this was an alternate universe, and B) the buildup is excellent.

---

I keep thinking about Agatha biting a kid once.

From:

zachbeacon

Yeah, I like that they played fair with that particular reveal instead of changing it to some nonsense alternative because everyone figured it out ... which is what we tend to get in comic book mysteries.

I just wish I didn't have to warn people to avoid the internet for a weekend because you couldn't dodge spoilers anywhere. It doesn't exactly help that D+ was down for an extended period.

Wait ... did Agatha eat the kids?

Probably not. I don't think she's that kind of witch.

From:

deh_tommy

Heck, not even comic book mysteries. Westworld did this same thing as well. For a show all about generating theories, that’s kind of mean to change course because someone actually guessed correctly.

From:

stubbleupdate

Me, in the cinema, watching the Liv reveal

From:

icon_uk

Not just a fantastic theme song in and of itself, but given we're in a sort of multi-multi-level meta-narrative here, giving her one at all indicates the level of power she has in this situation. She's not just got a spin-off, she's been the star the whole time, just on a different program to the one we've been watching

The biting a kid once bit made me think of "Babylon 5" when Vir meets Londo's slightly terrifying wife Timov;

Timov - "I won't bite, Vir!"
Vir - "With all due respect madam, that's not what I heard."
Timov - "All right, that one time..."
Vir - "It was twice..."

From:

mastermahan

"Agatha All Along is filmed before an unwilling studio audience"

I would absolutely watch that show.

From:

filthysize

There's just a lot of confirmation bias, too, because if anyone's plugged into what fan theories are saying week to week, they would know that a lot of the fan predictions were absolutely wrong. Just because they got Agatha right doesn't mean the show is predictable. It's so strange that this would be considered in any way a ding on how they told the story.

From:

thanekos

That song is catchy on every audio track.

(The best is the Japanese one, where the refrain is basically her answering the questions asked with " I, Agatha! ")

From:

werehawk

I think everyone was trying to hard to make the big bad Mephisto (not that they might not hint at Mephisto, but it seems unlikely at this point). Or that this is some big Hydra or Standoff thing.

Instead, people should take it what it is - a great Wanda & Vision story with some conflict (Agatha) and some humor/twists (I did not see X-men's Quicksilver coming and somehow watched the episode without realizing what a spoilery headline I saw meant) and a great buddy cop/buddy cop story (Woo/Monica & Woo/Darcy).

My questions -
Are the kids real?
Will Monica go full Photon?
Will Quicksilver stay in the MCU (I don't think he is dead)?
And why why why didn't they have a cool X-men-like Quicksilver scene stealing candy and pumpkins to the tune of Jane's Addiction's Been Caught Stealing?

From:

zachbeacon

I felt obligated to mention Mephisto because he's such a popular theory but I can't help but think about how everyone decided that Mephisto was the villain in Defenders despite zero evidence. At least this time it makes some sense.

I think this being a Standoff thing is considerably more likely. Heck, if all the people in town are brainwashed supers then that explains the whole "for the children" thing. They're trying to create new supers that they can mold into weapons.

From:

icon_uk

Okay, I posted this speculation on tumblr

So, I’ve been wondering, as I think have a lot of people, about a LOT of what this series has been about and I have a vague idea.

Remember that at first there were apparently no children in Westview (Only we later saw there were)?

We also had the creepy cult like chanting of “For the children” in the second episode.

What if it’s not generic children, but specifically Tommy and Billy they were chanting about?

What if the subversion of Wanda's "TV perfect" life has been about creating the two of them within the Hex.

Is Pietro Mephisto? No I don’t think so, but I think he might be someone else, someone closely linked to Mephisto AND the twins.

I wonder if he might be Master Pandemonium?

Who? Well, that’s a messy and complicated story, so I’ll try to keep it short…

Martin Preston was a successful actor who suffered fatal injuries in a car crash, losing an arm instantly, and was about to die. He begged to be saved and Mephisto showed up with a deal: His soul, in return for saving his life and restoring his arm. He agreed, but of course there was a catch.

Mephisto removed the uninjured arm too AND his legs, and replaced ALL his limbs with demonic entities who took the shape of limbs, but which he could separate himself from, to have demonic servants (whilst being without limbs until he reconnected them… Look, I never said it was a GOOD deal). Because he himself was now literally a place where demons lived, he was given the name “Master Pandemonium”.

Mephisto, seemingly in whimsical mood, challenged him to seek out and find the five pieces of his soul that Mephisto had split and scattered around the world. If he could find all five, he’s have his own soul restored and be free and clear of demonic debt. He also had an inverted pentagram shaped void in his his stomach, which the segments would fill, as a marker of his progress.

He fought the West Coast Avengers a few times whilst soul seeking, and didn’t do anything particularly much, but did eventually find one of the souls, completing one of the points of the star.

Long story short (too late, sorry) John Byrne came along in WCA and basically didn’t like a LOT of things that had been done, especially the Scarlet Witch and Vision having kids.

So he got rid of them… messily.

He revealed that the soul fragments which had been given to Billy and Tommy when Wanda became pregnant (longer story, not going tehre) were actually two of the soul pieces Pandemonium needed, and they basically ceased to exist except as gruesome extensions of Pandemonioum’s arms (there are images you can go and look at if you like, but I find them deeply disturbing and I ain’t going there).

Then, for plot reasons, who should appear of all people but Agatha Harkness, who (along with the original Human Torch, who has a sort of familial link to the Vision) had found the last two pieces of his soul, and completed the set.

The final twist of the knife was that, of course, Mephisto had lied about the whole deal, he hadn’t sent Pandemonium to look for his own soul, he’d sent him to find bits of Mephisto’s power, which had been split up and scatttered during a conflict with Franklin Richards years before (When Byrne was writing FF of course).

So when the set was completed, FINALLY Pandemonium noticed that only the triangular arms of the pentagram had been being filled in, the remaining pentagonal void at the centre was still there, and from there, Mephisto emerged, now back to full strength, and turning Master Pandemonium inside out, rather fatally (He came back years later, sort of, but that’s another story).

So, given the hints that Mephisto is set to be the big bad for Phase 4 of the MCU, but we’ve probably not reached a stage where introducing him is viable yet (except perhaps as a vague reference, or a silhouette), we have two “stepping stone” characters, who are linked to the Scarlet Witch AND Mephisto specifically THROUGH Billy, Tommy and magic; Agatha Harkness and Master Pandemonium (and as an actor, recasting himself as Pietro might be something that appeals to Pandemonium’s ego a little)

And that might explain why Agnes took the kids, and they’re not present at the end of episode 7, presumably because Agatha has done something to them, maybe as part of a plan to bring Mephisto to power using the powers the kids have.

From:

deh_tommy

If Master Pandemonium is an antagonist and the show doesn’t involve his iconic literal baby hands, then I will be very disappointed.

From:

zachbeacon

That's one of those things that looks goofy on the page and would look horrifying in live action. Hard pass.

From:

icon_uk

It really creeps me out when I see it on the page, if I'm honest.

From:

bruinsfan

Yeah, the basic toddler arms were disturbing enough, but then when they went all demonic-visage spewing hellfire and trying to eat Wonder Man's face... brrrrr.

From:

deh_tommy

All the more reason to do that, then! The show’s meant to be kind of creepy and uncanny, no?

From:

tcampbell1000

I don't really understand how websites mentioning the Agatha Harkness connection "spoils" this development, because this Agatha seems to be about as different from her comic-book incarnation as the Skrulls were. Same power set, very different moral alignment. Agatha in the comics was a little creepy and made a questionable call or two, but she was generally on the side of the angels. This Agatha, best we can tell, not so much.

My personal speculation betting pool:

1) This is just what it looks like it is. Agatha planted herself right in the shadow of Wanda's flashier powers and has been using her to further her own wicked goals. Extra twists can be fun, but you have to let the audience in on the game at some point. And one production detail worth remembering is that this was originally meant for an all-at-once release a la Netflix, not this every-Friday schedule like The Mandalorian. Creating weeks of speculation therefore wouldn't have been a priority for the producers. Odds: 52%.

2) Looping back around. Wanda's unconscious is in more control than it appears here, and we were closer to being right in earlier episodes than we are now. Unable to accept her own responsibility for depriving a town of their very minds, she essentially created a bad guy to claim that deed and absolve her of blame. In the real world, sorting through the pain of loved ones' deaths doesn't always offer up a face to cathartically punch. There'd be a powerful message in there about grief and loss: it only feels like it's an outside force keeping you from getting out of bed in the morning. Ultimately, you have to save yourself... from yourself.

As for other mysteries like why Wanda doesn't remember how this all started and how different her powers have gotten, grief can do a number on short-term memory, and this wouldn't be the first time on the show that powers have manifested due to random-ass circumstance. But Agatha does explain those wrinkles more easily. And there's a limit to how artsy Marvel wants to get: it generally likes offering up faces to cathartically punch. Odds: 19%.

3) Sometimes good isn't nice. It's just possible that Agatha hasn't changed as much from the comics incarnation as it appears and she really is there to help Wanda, "playing" the villain because that's what Wanda needs in her life right now. She certainly seems to be hamming it up in "Agatha All Along." And this little exercise does seem to have gotten Wanda to work through some shit, as when she refuses to bring Sparky back to life and cuts ties with Fake Pietro. This theory feels like one twist too many, and the way Agatha magicks Wanda in the last couple of minutes seems more like domination than therapy. But I wouldn't entirely rule it out. Odds: 15%.

4) It's all the white dude's fault. Variation on theory #2. Hayward is clearly a villain at this point and focused on the Vision, who was no more than a broken life-size action figure when this all started. Could he have engineered Wanda's breakdown and her restoration of the Vision? It would've given him what he wanted, a functional synthezoid he could presumably try to mass-produce, and then placed it frustratingly out of reach. Here as in possibility #2, this makes Agatha more of a distracting side effect than the main antagonist. But frankly, Hayward's not a lot of fun even when he's losing, so it's hard to see him as someone Marvel would want to build a climax around. Even Malekith was a more charismatic main villain. Odds: 12%.

5) It's still about the X-Men, dammit. Come on, that "Cheer up, sleepy Jean" lyric in the promos' "Daydream Believer" explains everything! This is all about Jean Grey and her grief and her desire to live among humanity while having to hide who she really is, and that's why we got the other Pietro, and this is a lead-in to Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, and... yeah, I know, this one's a pretty long shot at this point. Odds: 2%, and that's being generous.

Edited Date: 2021-02-24 01:20 pm (UTC)

From:

scorntx

-"About as different from her comic-book incarnation"-
Unless we're counting Ultimate Agatha.
Who was evil. And a hydra monster for some reason because twas how Ultimate Marvel rolled.

Not sure Hayward actually is meant to be the villain of the piece, or at least not The Villain.
He's more like Gyrich, or General Ross or that Senator in Iron Man 2. He's some asshole the heroes just have to deal with.

From:

icon_uk

Agatha Harkness has played both sides of the moral equation throughout her many years.

Normally on the heroes side true, but bear in mind she DID approve of the Salem Witch Trials because she felt it culled the weaker magic users who didn't deserve to survive. She also turned sorcerors and magic users over to the authorities to be put to death if she felt it suited her aims.

From:

bruinsfan

And didn't she return to being Franklin Richards' governess at one point in the hopes of protecting herself from the witches of New Salem? Her hands weren't always that clean even in the main 616 continuity.

I think here they're giving Agatha some of the storyline that Morgan le Fay had in the Busiek/Perez Avengers run. Using Wanda to channel power into making a bubble of altered reality that would have been either beyond her own powers or too much of a strain. Whatever she wants to use the twins for is probably not world domination like Morgan wanted in that story. But Morgan was also the sorceress who gathered the Darkhold into book form and used it to try and summon up Chthon—who has a prominent role in Wanda's comic book backstory.

From:

tcampbell1000

I'll concede I've been outdone on Agatha lore here! Still, we're all in agreement that if we expected pure comics fidelity, we'd expect Agatha to be an ally. I'm still not sure she isn't...

From:

deh_tommy

If you want to put something in cut text, type in [lj-cut text="Insert Text Here"] (replace the [ ] with < >) and then write what you don’t want people to see below the cut underneath (or beside) the tag. You can type something down between the quotation marks if you so desire, but you can leave them empty and the link text will default to “Read more...”. The quotation marks have to be ", not “ or ”.

Edited Date: 2021-02-24 02:13 pm (UTC)

From:

scorntx

Reactions:
Well, Monica finally got her powers. 'bout damn time. Guessing episode 8 is going to have a high-speed showdown between her and 'Peter'.
Yeah, figured 'Agnes' had something to do with Sparky's death, because she was being super suspicious at the time.

Crazy idle speculation:
... wondering if this is going to wind up with Ultron getting a rez somehow. SWORD were a'tinkering with Vision's corpse, seems like an easy excuse.

"Peter" is not actually from another universe, he's just some rando from Westview who Agatha has magicked up.

Agatha is actually also under someone's control, either Wanda or someone evil. Maybe. Dunno. We've got two episodes left, there's still time for more twists. There's always time for more twists.

Random Zemo appearance somewhere in episode 9? Why not?

From:

deh_tommy

Aw man, I’d love to see James Spader’s Ultron again.

From:

stubbleupdate

It shouldn't have surprised me, but had never considered that Spader would have been wearing the mo-cap pyjamas for his part in AoU.

From:

bruinsfan

I'd speculated that he and Tony Stark might appear as Wanda's bickering in-laws in an episode.

From:

scorntx

So long as he's not making any quips, maybe...

From:

zachbeacon

Also ... Isn't America supposed to show up at some point?

From:

thezmage

In Doctor Strange 2, I believe, not Wandavision

From:

thezmage

I still think that this is directly related to the Blip in some way. My original theory was that all the adults in Westview were blipped out and that all the children remained, resulting in a number of grieving parents either because their children died from the sudden lack of adult caregivers (as in the Yo' Magic commercial) or just because they lost five years of time with their children (as when the twins aged to 5 and then again to 10)

Somebody else online pointed out that Agatha has purple flowers and magic, Wanda has red flowers and magic, and Dottie Jones (who has yet to have a real name identified) has yellow flowers, much like Arcanna Jones of the Squadron Supreme (who is also married to a Phil)