WandaVision - Episode 4: "We Interrupt This Program"

WandaVision Episode 4 takes things outside the dome, and officially brings Monica Rambeau, Jimmy Woo and Darcy Lewis into the series. Geraldine, a.k.a. Monica, post-Blip, discovers that something is very wrong in WestView. Things only get weirder from there as SWORD tries to find out who is manipulating Wanda, leading to a shocking twist.

Join us as we break down all the WandaVision Easter eggs, spoilers and comic book references in “We Interrupt This Program.”

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Full Episode Transcript:

Alex:              Welcome to Marvel Vision, a podcast about the MCU, Marvel, and specifically WandaVision. We’re going to be talking about episode four of WandaVision.

Pete:                We interrupt this program.

Alex:                 Thank you, Pete.

Justin:              That’s… Wow, way to show and not tell, Pete.

Alex:                 I’m Alex.

Justin:              I’m Justin.

Pete:                I’m Pete.

Justin:              Shouty Pete.

Alex:                 And we are very excited to talk about episode four of season one, maybe the only season, we don’t know. Right now it’s a limited series, we’ll see what happens.

Justin:              Alex, stop talking about these harsh realities.

Pete:                Yeah, geez.

Alex:                 Maybe this is the final season of humanity.

Pete:                Oh, wow man.

Justin:              Jesus, Alex is going through it. This show is in your head.

Alex:                 Pretty soon, as soon as my reality bending powers, as soon as my hex powers develop, that’s it for all of you, that’s all I’m saying.

Pete:                Well, if you keep eating those sketchy ass Oreos, yeah, I’m sure it might happen for you.

Alex:                 Fair enough.

Justin:              Yup, that’s how it works.

Alex:                 So, here’s what we’re going to do, first of all, go watch WandaVision episode four, because we’re going to be talking very broad strokes, probably immediately veer off into theories and things like that, there’s so much to talk about in this episode.

Justin:              Certainly.

Alex:                 So definitely watch that first, because spoilers past this point. We probably could talk quality-wise what we thought about this episode versus the other episodes, as well as theories, speculation, and Easter eggs and things like that, but before we do, it’s time for everybody’s favorite segment, or rather, Pete’s favorite segment, which is corrections and additions. Corrections and additions.

Pete:                We interrupt this program!

Justin:              Just so we’re clear, this is when Alex walks us through things that he found, that he said incorrectly, and Pete and I don’t ever acknowledge any mistakes.

Pete:                That’s right.

Alex:                 Yup, pretty much. So the first one, right off. This is one that we called right off at the beginning of the third episode, I griped about the lack of episode titles for the show.

Justin:              Yes.

Alex:                 The little caveat here is we actually taped episode three of our podcast before they released episode titles, now they are there.

Justin:              Yes.

Alex:                 I’ll read them off, so I don’t get them wrong. The first one is Filmed Before A Live Studio Audience, second one is Don’t Touch That Dial, third one, Now In Color, and the fourth one is We Interrupt This Pro-

Pete:                We interrupt this program!

Justin:              He gets it, he gets it.

Alex:                 I feel like there’s a pattern there, I haven’t really caught on to what it is yet, but there’s definitely something going on.

Justin:              I can’t think of anything because of all the shouting from Pete.

Alex:                 Regardless, though, that’s what’s going on. Obviously, they’re calling on TVTropes throughout there, so that’s pretty cool. A couple of other things, these are little Easter eggs people have mentioned to us either on Twitter, or on our Patreon slack, Patreon.com/comicbookclub. Come join us, hang out, we’ve been speculating wildly about-

Justin:              It’s fun.

Alex:                 It is fun. About WandaVision. So one thing, this is from the first episode, a lot of folks caught on to this, but Agnes called out if she, I’m forgetting the exact line, but she mentions some beer, and she says the beer would be named June 2nd, after her anniversary with Ralph, that was the start of the Salem witch trials, a lot of people caught on to this, certainly there’s been a fair amount of speculation about what’s going on with Agnes, I’m sure we’ll have more this episode as well, but yeah, there you go. More evidence that maybe she is not just a regular resident of Westview, but perhaps the witch, Agatha Harkness from the comic books.

Justin:              Hundred percent.

Alex:                 This is one that nobody thought it was as interesting as I did, but I thought it was interesting. The name of the town they’re in is Westview, which is W V, just like Wandavision, I don’t think that’s a clue.

Pete:                Oh!

Justin:              No, that’s just letters, that’s just reading letters.

Alex:                 No, but what the show is doing really well, even through episode four, without jumping ahead, is they’re layering in things that aren’t necessarily like, this is a clue, this is a clue, but just additional things that show that they are paying attention to every detail that is going on.

Justin:              That’s right, and that’s not an Easter egg, that’s what we call an Easter basket, which is the not fun part, but a detail that did happen.

Alex:                 It’s equally tasty though.

Justin:              True, eat your whole basket, and I mean the whole thing.

Alex:                 Start with the basket, eat your basket before you get your candy, that’s what my parents always said. We’re Jewish.

Justin:              I save the basket for last.

Pete:                I want to just say though, in the beginning of the ep, when they ask the cops where they’re from, and they say Eastview, I touched my heart, because Eastview mall is where I grew up and would ride my bike to to play video games and stuff like that, so that was just like, a little personal shout out.

Alex:                 Are you an Easter egg, Pete?

Justin:              Yeah, he’s our Easter egg, and eventually he’s going to hatch into a full blown Easter monster.

Pete:                They had this creepy theme song though that always fucked with me, it was like ‘Eastview mall, just around the corner’, like it was this creepy thing that you couldn’t escape if you ever went there and I did feel like I was in this kind of like, time warp trap thing playing video games for hours on end.

Justin:              There it is.

Alex:                 I’m very excited about this, you’re going to bring the Jersey to this podcast going forward, Pete. The last two things that I wanted to mention, I’m sure there are plenty more Easter eggs that we have not mentioned in the first three episodes of the podcast, one that I thought was super neat, as the color was changing at the end of the second episode, you could see the hydro facility that Pietro and Wanda were held at, it’s even like, legitimately the shot from [crosstalk 00:05:18] that they put onto the wallpaper there.

Justin:              Very cool.

Alex:                 Certainly bringing credence to some theories, perhaps we’re going in other directions with this episode, which we’ll get to later on. Then the last one that I saw a couple people catch onto on the internet, the house number is 2800, which I believe has long been rumored to be the universe number of the MCU, if you wanted to put it in with the comics and everything, but specifically it’s a call out to the fact that the house in Vision, the series by Tom King and Gabriel Walta was 616, after Earth 616, which is the designation of the main Marvel universe in the comics. So just, again, I think it’s not pointing to anything, it’s not like suddenly they’re going to go into comic book world, so much as we’re getting more fun Easter eggs and attention paid to detail.

Justin:              And one other thing, the headpiece from what’s his name…

Alex:                 Grim Reaper.

Justin:              Grim Reaper, the vision series, is at least partially, perhaps used as a source material, here, was hidden in the credit sequence, I want to say, the title sequence.

Alex:                 Yeah, I feel like we talked about this actually.

Justin:              Did we?

Alex:                 Because we went on a whole riff about Wonder Man and whether they’re going to turn Vision into Wonder Man at the end or something like that.

Justin:              Yes.

Alex:                 But again, there’s probably many more things we didn’t catch onto, let’s move into episode four, before we talk about plot points or anything like that, because a lot of stuff is going on here. This of course, is the episode that does, as I speculated… took us outside-

Pete:                Don’t you fucking do that.

Justin:              Hold for applause, hold for applause.

Pete:                Don’t you fucking do that. Don’t like, list the points that like, ‘Oh, I missed all this’, and then be like, ‘Oh, I got this one thing right!’

Justin:              I mean, you’ve got to give it to him.

Alex:                 I’m allowed to be proud of myself.

Justin:              You’ve got to call it when you see it.

Alex:                 I’ve got to get it back somehow, that cred.

Justin:              How many times did Babe Ruth point to the outfield, and then he finally hit a home run, right?

Alex:                 Hey, one out of a hundred is still one out of a hundred.

Justin:              That’s a hell of a motto.

Alex:                 This is the episode that takes us outside, we loop back to the very beginning, we go back even to the blip, which I’m sure we’ll talk about. Big deal right there. Followed Geraldine, she disappears into the dome. We get to see outside with Darcy, from the Thor movies-

Justin:              Kat!

Pete:                Kat!

Alex:                 We get to see Jimmy Woo from the Ant-Man, Ant-Man and The Wasp. I was about to say Ant-Man movies, but he’s just in the second one. They’re all teaming up together with some new folks, trying to figure out what’s going on in this dome, by the end of the episode, we loop back to where we left off with Geraldine, aka Monica Rambeau, though we kind of knew that based on casting, popping out there and saying “Wanda, it’s all Wanda, this is her fault,” and that’s where we leave off, so that’s the broad strokes of the plot. What did you guys think about this episode? Very different episode, obviously, because we’re not in sitcom land at all at this point.

Pete:                Yeah, I was like, geeking out when we saw the dust reverse from the movies where it was like people coming back. I was like, holy shit. I thought it was really cool the way we’ve been in this separate TV world, and then went into what we know and love from the movies. So I thought that was a really cool, crazy way to start.

Justin:              It was-

Alex:                 How’d you feel about this one, Justin?

Justin:              There are two things that really stood out to me. One, the way that they were able to just really drop into the Marvel cinematic universe tone here. Having the first three episodes are very much their own thing, and then instantly, it was like, oh, this is a series of scenes that could be in any marvel movie, and I love that. It’s amazing that they are able to do that so quickly, and how much I as a viewer, love the one liners, action, everything’s movie very quickly, but at the same time, we’re really getting character moments, they’re so good at that in all of the Marvel shows and movies. And the second point is just how they wrap everything up in this episode so we can move forward from here into a totally… the actual story of the show.

Alex:                 I’ve been worried about Pete yelling at me all day at this point that I’m about to say, he’s definitely going to be like, no, fuck you.

Justin:              Yes.

Pete:                Oh, this is very exciting.

Alex:                 So I’ll just pull the bandaid off here. I really like this episode, I agree with you guys, just seeing the MCU literal cinematic nature of it, getting the cold open, going to the Marvel studios logo, going into the main episode, wrapping everything up, well filmed, I loved a lot of moments that I’ll definitely be talking about, I also think this was the weakest episode of the series so far.

Pete:                What the fucking shit are you talking about?!

Justin:              That was like when your dog is waiting for food and you hold it over his nose for like a couple minutes, and then finally throw it in his big old mouth.

Pete:                We can’t keep living in crazy town, we need some reality so we can enjoy it!

Alex:                 Here’s why, I agree with you, I think this episode was necessary-

Pete:                So don’t say that-

Alex:                 I liked it, I didn’t hate this episode, I’m not saying it’s garbage.

Pete:                It sounds like that’s what you’re saying.

Alex:                 What I’m saying is something that we’ve been talking about, or at least I’ve been talking about with the first three episodes, is-

Pete:                Sounds like you’ve been talking about it.

Alex:                 I’ve been trying to look at them as like, an episodic nature, like how do they work as an episode of television. Because even though they produced Falcon and The Winter Soldier first, this is the first chance we’ve seen Marvel studios do a TV show. So are they trying to do the classic, ‘Oh it’s more of a six hour movie’, or are they actually trying to do TV shows. So far they’ve been really successful on multiple levels in each individual episode of layering in little tiny bits of the plot, making it work as a classic sitcom, but also tying it to something emotionally with Wanda and Vision. Here, I do think there was something thematic, definitely, which we can talk about in a second, but on an emotional level, it felt like more it was filling in gaps in the plot, versus having that strong emotional theme weaving throughout.

Pete:                No, no. It was going back and being like, all these weird things we’re going to explain so you don’t seem like a crazy person who’s hanging on to this stuff being like, ‘what does this mean, what does this mean?” We’re going to kind of go back, show you from a different vantage point of what’s going on, so then when we get to the end of the episode and we’re right back in the motion of after she gets thrown out, now we’re really feeling things.

Alex:                 So you feel like it’s the sort of thing where somebody explains something, and then they explain the same thing back to you, but in a different way.

Pete:                No, what I’m saying is, you can’t say garbage statements like ‘This is the weakest episode’ when this episode explained things so you could enjoy it moving forward!

Alex:                 To be very clear, I’m talking about you, Pete. You were explaining the thing back to me, what I just said.

Justin:              Yeah, that’s what just happened.

Alex:                 We’re in agreement, you’re just ignoring the last point that I made, Pete.

Justin:              I feel like I’ve been trapped in a scarlet witch bubble, with this especially shouty episode of crossfire.

Alex:                 Here’s what I think is going on, I mean I’ll just throw it out there[crosstalk 00:12:21].

Justin:              Here, let me say it. I think you’re both actually right. This, dramatically, was the weakest episode, because they had to do all the work that Pete’s talking about that he was looking forward to. This is like, a classic middling episode, where you have your fun, you eat your steak, then you’ve got to eat your vegetables before you get your candy. And this is the vegetables, and here comes candy when we get to see all the ways they’re going to confront scarlet witch. And I think they gave us tastes of that when we get to see her hex powers activated, we get to see the stuff that we’re like, yes, we’ve wanted this, but we’re still not getting it. So it’s an explanation episode tied in with what we’re going to get next.

Pete:                Yeah, but here’s the thing. As you get older, the vegetables become something that you look forward to as well, okay?

Justin:              That’s not true about you, for instance.

Pete:                Okay, well, fine. Me aside, but normal people would agree-

Alex:                 Pete, like me, is a basket first kind of guy.

Pete:                I just think that, regardless of how… I just can’t believe that you guys want to say that this is a shitty episode when there were so many great moments.

Alex:                 Nobody is saying that.

Justin:              We both liked it.

Pete:                Literally both of you people- You called it a middling episode, you said it was the weakest one of the thing. I was saying Justin, pay attention. The thing is, it had those great Marvel moments, which is why we’re all here. So saying that this is a bad episode is insane to me.

Alex:                 Nobody said it was a bad episode.

Pete:                Oh my god.

Justin:              I think what it is though is the first three episodes had these great, especially the first two, for me, had these great breathtaking moments where you’re like ‘Oh! I can’t believe they’re doing that, that’s such an interesting way of doing that, it’s so meticulously done.” While this dropped back to a form of storytelling that we’ve seen before, that we’ve seen in the movies, and I’m welcoming seeing that, but it doesn’t have those big swing moments that I think really made it stand out in the first two.

Pete:                Oh, really? When you got to see what Vision really looks like, that wasn’t a big swing?

Justin:              That was cool, but that wasn’t a big swing?

Pete:                What are you talking about?!

Alex:                 Can we get away from this? Because I feel like we’re going to get stuck in a Pete yelling at us episode.

Pete:                Well don’t set me up for madness and then get mad at me when I fucking react the how you wound me up to react.

Justin:              You’ve set me up for madness!

Alex:                 That’s my favorite part of King Lear when he shouts that. ‘Your fault Cordelia!’

Justin:              You daughters of mine, you’ve set me up for madness.

Alex:                 Classic, classic scam. Here’s what I did like about the episode that I thought was really smartly done. It was more an intellectual theme than an emotional one, and what they were playing with here, I think, is the idea of people viewing and analyzing and breaking down TV. Like, it’s kind of an obvious thing, but I like the fact that they got to the point where in the middle chunk of the episode, love the stuff with Monica, but she disappears for most of the episode, so it’s hard to hang in emotionally on her. The stuff with Darcy and Jimmy Woo, they’re reacting like us, the TV viewer. So I think the theme that they were playing with here, was spoiler culture, Easter egg culture, analyzing these things, you need to look no further than Jimmy Woo at his whiteboard, jotting down the very things the viewers have been talking about, which is a smart, cheeky meta thing to do, but also something that, potentially, they could have taken and pushed a little further, but I liked that it was there. It made the episode feel richer throughout.

Pete:                Also-

Alex:                 I’m going to hold back from saying anything else there because I don’t want to poke the bear one more time.

Pete:                Thank you.

Justin:              Poke that bear.

Pete:                Also the fact that like, you had Jimmy Woo white boarding it, and then Kat commenting on it being like, ‘Oh, I’m so into this.’ It was really just a fun kind of both worlds type of thing.

Alex:                 Yeah, I mean, the implication there, this is very much jumping into the episode properly, which I feel like after seventeen minutes of a podcast we probably should do. No, it’s not your fault Pete, don’t give me the finger. It’s all of us, we’re all at fault here. There seemed to be an implication that there are more episodes than we’ve seen.

Justin:              Yes, I thought that was cool.

Alex:                 Like that she’s been binge watching this, she was the binge watcher, Jimmy Woo is the guy that’s analyzing it, he’s looking for the Easter eggs, trying to figure out the mystery, which I thought was great. Like playing on those two levels of how we view TV shows I thought was pretty neat.

Pete:                Yeah, who watches the binge watcher. I agree, that felt like definitely a sort of slight hum underneath the whole episode. A lot of TV now is just sort of, hang out TV, like watching people hang out. And this was like watching us watching this TV show in an interesting way, which I’m always here for. But I also think it added some nice little small turns into the mystery, like you’re saying, the fact that there are other episodes. What actually makes them transition between different eras of television? They asked that question and we don’t know the answer. I think it might be the outside influence from S.W.O.R.D. or from whatever. Wanda gets unsettled in the era of television, so she has to reset. It’s all about her resetting once a mistake enters this reality that she’s created. So I thought that was fun, they do a good job of really laying in the mystery in little clues throughout the series.

Alex:                 Let’s jump back, because we kind of skipped past this moment, and I know that Pete mentioned that he really like it, but I definitely, right at the top of the episode when they started with the great shot of the dust floating in air and I was like okay, is this scarlet witch, what’s going on? Immediately when it started to reform, I said oh shit out loud when I saw it. It’s one of those things that I think is such a great touchstone for bringing you back into the MCU nature here. I don’t think we’ve ever seen an unblip, right?

Justin:              At first I didn’t know what it was. I was like, oh, this is a weird thing, I don’t know… and then I was like, oh, of course, it’s a reverse of the blip, that was very cool.

Pete:                Very cool, because it was like this thing that the movies would pass by, but because we’re doing this TV show, the fact that we can kind of live in this moment at a hospital where people are just running around like ‘They’re all coming back!’ And just seeing these people appear five years later was just so intense, and then watching somebody come to the realization of that was just unbelievable.

Alex:                 Well, and I loved… this is definitely, we were talking about this also, not to keep plugging our Patreon slack, but we were talking about what movies you need to watch beforehand. It’s super necessary not just to watch Endgame, but also Captain Marvel before this, because you hear Captain Marvel over Monica Rambeau reforming.

Pete:                Yeah, you do!

Alex:                 Clearly, we find out that her mom has died, which is super sad.

Justin:              Sad.

Alex:                 And then we get a little hint of her with the Captain, was she Maria Rambeau? Was that what it was?

Justin:              Maria, yup. Photon.

Pete:                Photon.

Alex:                 Maria Photon Rambeau, when she got in the movie as well. Super fun.

Pete:                I was happy we got the picture because I was like wait, where is the Rambeau that I know, and then we saw it, that’s when it really clicked for me, seeing here picture.

Justin:              Rambeau?

Alex:                 The Rambeau you know. Better the Rambeau you know…

Justin:              Than the Rambeau you don’t know. Than the Rambeau you don’t Rambeau. I was also going to say the fact that the snap was such a big part of the Infinity War, Endgame movies, I feel like another franchise might be like, all right, we did that, let’s move on. But Marvel does such a good of owning every piece of the mythology here, and to use that as, like you said, a touchstone, I think is just so smart and keeps us always invested in everything that’s come before.

Pete:                I mean, I would love it if movies do things, and then TV dives into the minutia about all the little things…

Alex:                 Yeah, that’s great.

Pete:                Very nerdy, very cool. I was losing it.

Alex:                 So as we’re starting to walk through here, I think two other things that we could potentially talk about. One, sentient weapon observation and response department, that’s what we encounter pretty quickly that was established by Maria Rambeau, up until she died, she passed it off to this guy, Tyler Hayward, who doesn’t seem suspicious at all, but in the comics, it’s a sentient world observation and response department. There’s definitely hints that there’s something more going on there, they’re starting to build weapons.

Pete:                Oh yeah, just walking through-

Alex:                 What are your theories, what do you think is going on here? Does this tie into WandaVision, are they setting up other things for down the road, what’s your take?

Justin:              Feels like they’re setting up other things for down the road, I think. The difference between weapon and world is huge. Sentient weapon are like humans. They’re like super heroes, essentially, so the fact that they’re trying to control them kind of reminds me of the comic book civil war, the iron man side, the hero registration act, like a lot of things in the comics that end up being villainous, or something that the heroes have to rally together to defeat. The other side is S.W.O.R.D. was a big part of Skrull, of defeating the Skrulls. One, in disguise, shape shifted into S.W.O.R.D. to try to take control of it over a ton of different comic book stories, maybe that’s another direction we’re going to get here.

Alex:                 Yeah, I mean, no go ahead Pete.

Pete:                The fact that when they’re walking through and it looks like they’re building giant evil robots, I was just like…

Alex:                 I think that was a space shuttle.

Pete:                Was it?

Justin:              Maybe a sentinel.

Alex:                 Oh, there we go. There it is. This is a crazy connection. I did want to talk about this, just because we’re talking about this suspicious guy Tyler Hayward.

Pete:                Tyler, don’t trust anybody with that name.

Alex:                 100 percent. There’s no Tyler Hayward from the comics, but there was a character named Bryan Hayward who was on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., he was working for Hydra, he was part of project Centipede, which was the super power spine thing that they did for a while. People… we talked about this before on the podcast, but people have picked up a lot of potential connections to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., what are the chances they’re actually going to tie into Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. versus just kind of like, skim the surface there, or ignore it entirely and it’s just coincidence.

Justin:              I think, at most, skimming. Just like most people, skimming the surface of S.H.I.E.L.D. is sort of the way that it happened.

Alex:                 Pete, you think full on, the cavalry’s coming?

Pete:                Yeah, it would be interesting if it was a sort of S.H.I.E.L.D versus S.W.O.R.D. type of thing that could happen, I don’t know, I’m very excited for more S.H.I.E.L.D. references just because I want to get Coleson in there. And the cavalry.

Alex:                 This is interesting, Coleson actually was in there. He was in avengers.

Pete:                Yeah, no shit dickhead, I’m talking about…[crosstalk 00:23:15]

Justin:              I think Jimmy Woo is our Coleson for perhaps, going forward. It’s really cool to see him here, and I think… the Ant-Man and Wasp connection, obviously, but also starting to think about him from the comics, who he goes on to run Agents of Atlas, which is this whole other organization that I think could be fun.

Pete:                Plus, I really hope that he does get a family, it sounds like that’s something he really wants, it’s a beautiful little moment there.

Justin:              That’s nice, and he also, to carry on his game and style from the original Ant-Man and Wasp movie is super fun. He’s such a different energy from Kat Dennings’ character who is just like, sarcastic and in everybody’s face, and he’s just sort of like goofy and being funny in a totally different way, it’s great.

Pete:                I really did like the way Kat showed up, walked through all the madness and was able to right the ship.

Alex:                 So, two quick things about that. Jimmy Woo introducing his card, he finally learned the card trick from Ant-Man and the Wasp. Super fun, just a fun little bit there.

Justin:              Great, so fun.

Alex:                 Darcy, she’s now got a doctorate, so that’s very exciting. We last saw her in Thor and the Dark Worlds, that’s pretty cool. The other thing that I had a question about, and I think this is like, classic action movie stuff and I’m not mad about it or anything like that, but it was very funny to me that after Monica disappears into the dome or whatever it is, there’s suddenly hundreds of people there, but the only people who are doing anything are Darcy and Jimmy. What are the rest of these people doing?

Justin:              They do say it. They do say it’s a huge cross organization, cross military thing, so I think there’s a lot of people just being ready in case something emerges from there. I think it’s soldiers setting up perimeters…

Pete:                There’s people who are just studying the force field and stuff like that. I mean, they’re the people who care about what’s trying to happen. There are other people there for different nefarious reasons.

Justin:              Nefarious?

Pete:                Oh yeah.

Justin:              Who?

Pete:                You get a giant group of people like that, not everybody’s on the same team there.

Justin:              Like people overcharging other people for a bottle of water and stuff?

Pete:                Oh, yeah, yeah.

Justin:              Like selling T-shirts?

Alex:                 There’s probably a hot dog man hanging out there and he’s like yeah, they’re five dollars now.

Justin:              I used the sell them in this empty field but now all you people showed up and now I’m charging five.

Pete:                Now I’m going to be able to retire.

Alex:                 So there are a couple of those interesting things, talking about the staff that’s working outside here. We find out that the beekeeper, as far as we know, nothing to do with A.I.M. potentially, that was kind of our theory there, but actually is working with S.W.O.R.D., crawls through, and gets changed into this beekeeper once he passes the TV annihilation wall, whatever it is. Yes Pete?

Pete:                Not only the beekeeper, but then one of the worst jump ropes ever made. You guys remember that jump rope? It would pinch your skin when you were trying to use it. Just seeing that jump rope made me so angry.

Alex:                 [crosstalk 00:26:21] No, go ahead.

Justin:              Sorry. Pete, how long were you on the Olympic jump roping team, as a child? I know this is a big issue for you.

Pete:                It was just a shitty gift that I had to use.

Justin:              Sorry, Alex, you probably had a…

Alex:                 If any of you kids out there are listening to this, use your shitty gifts, too. You can make the Olympics someday like Pete.

Justin:              Like Pete did.

Alex:                 I do think it’s interesting, on that note, we did talk a little bit about Geraldine/Monica having the clothes that she had in sitcom world when she came outside. Same thing happens with this jump rope, coaxial cord, whatever it actually is. So that was kind of fascinating as well to see that some things are left over, some things do make it outside.

Justin:              That’s actually an important point I think, because it shows that what Wanda affects in the bubble lasts after it leaves the bubble, or after the bubble goes away. For instance, her children, perhaps.

Pete:                A little bit… oh…

Alex:                 I think the two big ones there are her children, and also Vision, who we get reaffirmed, the Marvel universe knows he’s dead. We do get that horrifying moment, so well done. But the way that was shot, with him blurry in the distance and then cutting to the close up. Like he is caved in on his head from Thanos pulling out the gem, but we don’t get that reveal until she turns around. We’re jumping over so many things that we probably need to get back to in the episode, where Wanda sees Vision, clearly dead, convinces him that he’s alive, says she’s totally in control, and then Monica reveals outside, Wanda, it’s all Wanda. Maybe I’m overthinking it, I’ve certainly been of the opinion for the first three episodes, that yes, this is Wanda, this is all Wanda, and the second I heard that, I was like, no, there’s something else going on here, somebody else is in control.

Pete:                Wow.

Justin:              Really? That’s interesting, maybe that’s where Agatha Harkness comes in, because I did think it was interesting there’s the montage where they’re naming all the townspeople and what roles they’re playing and we never get Agnes here. So I think that just shows that she is definitely outside of a normal towns person. I don’t know, I took another fact to hear the other way, they talk a lot about the CMBR, the background radiation, or relic radiation, that was there from the Big Bang. I think that is a signal of just how powerful she is, and the fact that what she does is permanent, like as permanent as the Big Bang was.

Alex:                 The popular theory is this is how Monica is going to get powers. She has powers in the comic books, she’s probably going to take on the name Photon. To take it one step further, I don’t know how much I believe in this, but there’s certainly been a lot of speculation about maybe this series is going to lead into mutants in some way. Certainly Ms. Marvel lives in New Jersey, and we know that’s coming up pretty soon. So if there is some sort of Wanda explosion M. Day style event, or something like that, where it just irradiates all of New Jersey and gives people powers, that would be pretty funny, right? Mutants coming from New Jersey?

Pete:                [crosstalk 00:29:35] scary.

Justin:              All mutants come from New Jersey? Bummer.

Alex:                 I’m into it.

Pete:                No way, man.

Alex:                 Wolverine, total hairy dude from the beach.

Pete:                Oh my god.

Justin:              Ey, it’s me, Wolverine, hey. You like Bruce Springsteen?

Alex:                 Hey, it’s me, Wolverine “The Situation” Howlett.

Justin:              Everybody’s dream. I don’t think that’s the way they’re going to go. I think it cheapens mutants as a thing in the Marvel universe, to have it be just an off hand creation of the Scarlet Witch.

Pete:                I had the opposite reaction happen when she was like, it’s all Wanda, I was kind of like yeah, that would explain why she went in and then all of a sudden was kind of mind wiped, and she didn’t know who she was until she touched Wanda’s hand and then she was like oh, and got right into character. So I feel like it does make sense that Wanda is, through this trauma, kind of creating this whole thing for herself.

Alex:                 So a couple of quick things about the residents, just because we talked about that. Most of their names, as far as I can tell, don’t mean anything. Except for the guy who plays Herb, is named John Collins, which, by the way, I thought it was a very funny note where they were like Herb, played by John Collins, Ms. Hart, played by Sharon Davis, very funny in joke thing.

Pete:                Yeah, that was really fun.

Alex:                 But John Collins who plays Herb, and Sharon Davis, who plays Ms. Hart are both art directors, on WandaVision. I don’t think that means anything, that’s just a fun little Easter egg they put in there.

Pete:                A little nod.

Alex:                 Also, I definitely don’t think this is an Easter egg in any way, it just made me laugh. Mustache man, his real name is Harold Copter, which is basically helicopter, very close, he just has a doofy name, there you go. And then there was one other thing… Oh, let’s talk about Agnes, and how she does or does not connect to whoever’s in witness protection, because that’s a very offhand thing that they throw out. That’s the impetus for Jimmy Woo being there at Westview, because their person in witness protection has disappeared. He used him, as a pronoun, and then Darcy enters he, so we can kind of assume this is a man. My first thought was oh, okay, Agnes is the one in witness protection. Probably not, who is it? That’s got to play in at some point.

Justin:              I agree. I’m curious, maybe this is where we get the Grim Reaper and Wonder Man connection, and maybe that’s what sets her off initially? Because we do need to find out what triggers this trauma, because it clearly wasn’t the death of the Vision, like we had speculated.

Pete:                It seems like it is.

Justin:              I think that’s the underlying issue, but that’s not the actual catalyst that caused her to take over the town with her hex powers and build this TV reality. Something happened there, and we just don’t know anything about what that is, and that may be the mystery that we’re going to unravel going forward, and I think it will have to do with Agatha Harkness, Agnes in there, and whoever this missing person is going to end up being.

Pete:                So just real quick, you’re saying if somebody you died, you wouldn’t go to New Jersey, kick everybody out of a town, and then start your own town based on television shows that you saw from your childhood?

Justin:              I mean, are you saying if I have scarlet witches powers, or I just have to, myself, go to a town in New Jersey, and be like, hey, get out of here, I’m doing a little play about my dead friend.

Pete:                I’m going through a loss and I need to work this out.

Justin:              My friend Pete died, and he wanted me to come to this small New Jersey town and take it over briefly.

Alex:                 Very briefly turn it into Tommy Boy, a fantasy of Tommy Boy.

Pete:                Oh! Please!

Alex:                 I’m with you Justin, I think-

Pete:                If I die, you’ve got to re-enact Tommy Boy.

Justin:              Re-enact.

Alex:                 This is what, in my mind, pushes the ‘no, they’re telling us to early that Wanda is the villain of this piece’ there’s something else going on here. To throw out a couple of theories that are probably very wrong, but the person in witness protection could be Ralph, Agnes’ husband that keeps getting mentioned that we’ve never seen. It’s also possible it could be a villain, it could be a Strucker, like we’ve talked about before, or somebody from Hydra who had to be in witness protection, started A.I.M. there and there was some sort of inciting incident event that kicked Wanda into high gear here. We don’t have enough information yet, but it’s too much of a dangling detail not to follow up in some way.

Justin:              I also think- go ahead Pete.

Pete:                I was just going to say the fact that Kat is watching the shows and taking notes, and then the commercials came up and she didn’t say anything, to me, kind of felt like it would be Hydra, that that would be the…

Justin:              It is very funny.

Alex:                 I feel like they’re not quite looking into enough theories.

Justin:              100 percent, they’re treating commercials like actual commercials in TV shows, like oh, we don’t need to watch this let’s go to the bathroom. But it’s like, no, those are clues! Those are big clues guys, pay attention.

Pete:                Fast forward through this, we don’t need to see this commercial.

Alex:                 What other clue, and again, maybe I’m reading too much into it, but those weirdly ripped cops from Eastview right at the top of the episode? Definitely felt like there was something going on with them. They were a little too ominous, I felt, for what the role demanded.

Justin:              I feel like those are somehow creations of Wanda as well, to try to keep people out, and their job is to turn people away who happen to go in, despite the sort of hex on the town. Jumping back a little bit though.

Alex:                 Wait, sorry, one last thing that I want to say about the cops. I didn’t even catch on to this, this was Brett White, a friend of our show who we work with, caught on, but their license plate does say 1966 on it, and that’s the year that A.I.M. was introduced in Marvel comics.

Pete:                Wow, that’s a deep cut.

Justin:              That’s a deep cut right there. Could also be pretty arbitrary, because I do think to your point earlier about who’s causing this. The fact that in the comics, Agatha Harkness was the next door neighbor to Vision and Scarlet Witch and was observing Wanda, I feel like maybe in the years since Vision died, her powers started to deepen, and maybe she was losing control of them, so Agatha’s there to monitor her as a danger, because she’s sort of losing control, and then perhaps this villain that was there, is someone who is pushing her powers, pushing her trauma, which causes her to finally go into this fantasy world. And that would, I think, play into the Grim Reaper Wonder Man side of it.

Alex:                 Well, I guess we’ll see what happens there. Before we move on here, we’ve certainly speculated quite a bit, but there’s lots of other great moments in the episode. Pete, anything you want to call out in particular?

Pete:                I couldn’t get enough of Kat in this episode, where she talks about… she has so many great one liners, and it’s also really fun how quickly she’s able to assess what’s going on, process it, and make decisions, like that whole clown car comment and then when she was breaking it down, like they have no idea what’s happening, all of us in here are just kind of like a crazy shot in the dark, I did really like how she broke down, she washes dishes once an episode, barf, and then the twins, what a twist, I love that.

Alex:                 Yeah, Justin, what about you, any moments you want to call out?

Justin:              The whiteboard, I think is something we didn’t really talk about. You do see on one side of it, Skrulls sort of on the edge, I thought that was interesting, and then the first question up top was ‘Why the hexagonal shape?’ Which I thought was something, that feels like a clue as to maybe…

Pete:                Yeah, because there’s a beekeeper, and then that shape.

Alex:                 Yeah, I do wonder, getting back to the A.I.M. theory, we talked about the hexagons, I think in the first episode of the podcast, so I like that we weren’t necessarily on the wrong track with that, but what if it is, again, I know I’m sticking with this thing, but what if it is Wanda into this, because Vision is alive, she has kids, she’s happy, so that’s what’s keeping her along, but at the same time, her subconscious is giving out clues of A.I.M. with the beekeeper, with the hexagons, with these other things sort of shouting under everything that’s going on to try to free herself.

Justin:              I think that’s true, and that keeps her as a hero, I think throughout this story, because I don’t think we would want to lose that.

Pete:                Also, I liked the, again, this thing that Vision doesn’t like what’s going on. Like the shot of Vision kind of like ‘Hey, what’s wrong Wanda?’ And she’s like ‘Everything’s fine let’s go watch something.’ And he’s like hmm… So I’m glad that they’re keeping that theme going on for what’s to come. I feel like there’s going to be a real WandaVision showdown at some point.

Justin:              And I think an emotional showdown and something where maybe Scarlet Witch will have to give up her love for him. Let him go.

Pete:                And great use of Voodoo Child by Jimi Hendrix there at the end, that was really nice.

Justin:              That’s another thing that I wanted to say, the credits are starting to be influenced by the content of the show, in the background, maybe I hallucinated this, but isn’t the dead Vision head in the background of the credits?

Alex:                 It was, yeah.

Pete:                Yeah.

Justin:              I thought that was interesting as a little nod there.

Alex:                 Good stuff, let’s talk about what’s on your vision board for the next episode. Justin, you want to go first?

Justin:              I feel like we have to jump back into the Wanda side of it and get back into some TV after this episode. This was a nice break, but we’ve got to get back to those big breathtaking moments we saw early, and then my long term vision board, is Wanda, I know I just literally said the opposite of this, but is Wanda being set up as the next big villain?

Pete:                What?

Justin:              Is she perhaps being positioned the multiverse of madness. She seems like she could be a big creator of that, or queen of that. Does this series push her into that way and then this becomes the true first step into the next phase of the cinematic universe?

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

Pete:                Well, for me, it’s who do we send into the bubble next? Now that this failed with Rambeau, who do you send after Rambeau?

Justin:              What about Rambeau? The voice of freedom.

Pete:                Right, but I’m just saying, who do we have on the roster that we can send in next to kind of get more information, which I’m excited about.

Alex:                 Rambeau, we already said that.

Pete:                Yeah, yeah, I’ve…

Justin:              Or, I’ve got a good one. How about Jersey Wolverine, this new character we created?

Pete:                Forget about it. I feel like we are going to go back into the sitcom world a little bit, but I’m excited to see who Jimmy’s going to get on his team to send in next.

Alex:                 Yeah, we’ll see. Getting backing to what we talked about right before this section, I think the thing that I’m really looking forward to; Is Vision exploring this more? We got a hint to this, I think the first three episodes really worked as an Act with an emotional arc, the thrust, with everything. Potentially, what we’re getting here, this three episode chunk is more, okay what’s going on in the outside world versus the inside world, but what I want to see is Vision explore his instincts and continue to push this because he’s dead, so if he tries to go outside this dome, what happens to him? What happens to emotionally, when he starts to not trust Wanda maybe not as much? We’ve seen them together, now potentially we see them break apart, that’s going to be very emotionally fraught, and I’m excited and nervous to follow it going forward.

Pete:                Plus there’s this whole-

Justin:              I think he turns into a Roomba, if Visions leaves…

Alex:                 That’s how I got my Roomba.

Pete:                You killed Vision for your Roomba?

Alex:                 Yeah.

Pete:                That is too much.

Alex:                 Roomba’s slogan is every Roomba was a husband someday.

Justin:              That’s exactly right. The second season-

Pete:                By that logic, you could be turned into a Roomba.

Alex:                 If it happens, it happens.

Justin:              That’s the fear we all have. Season 2, Wanda Roomba.

Pete:                I just wanted to quickly talk a little bit, like topically, having this right now, this bubble going on, while we’re all kind of living in this dome of oh shit, I can’t go outside without all this stuff on is kind of crazy and freaking me out a little bit.

Alex:                 Yeah, no yeah, that’s a good point.

Pete:                It’s very timely, and I’m freaked out.

Alex:                 Sorry Pete.

Justin:              No doubt about that.

Alex:                 As we start to wrap up here, a couple of things to plug. You can support us at Patreon.com/comicbookclub also we do a live show every Tuesday night to crowd casted YouTube, come hang out, we would love to chat with you. Choose Android, Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice to subscribe and listen to the show. Socially, MarvelVisionPod on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Comicbookclublive.com for this podcast and more. Until next time, start with the basket first, everybody.

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