How the WandaVision finale sets up Scarlet Witch as the next big bad of MCU – Entertainment News , Firstpost

A Black man approaches the White woman who has hypnotised him and taken control of his body against his will. “I don’t recognise my face in the mirror, my voice when I speak,” he says. He is just one of many residents to have suffered this fate in a suburban enclave which feels like its own dystopia. This isn’t a scene from Get Out, though it very well could be. It’s one of many harrowing moments from the WandaVision finale. Bear in mind the people of Westview have been held hostage and forced to re-enact classic sitcom hijinks for a superhero’s grief therapy. When the Black man wonders, “I used to try to resist you, but now, I can’t remember why,” it evokes the visceral state of dimmed consciousness and being colonised by another, as seen in Jordan Peele’s horror film. When the townsfolk plead with Wanda, “If you won’t let us go, just let us die,” it is hard not to imagine them all falling endlessly in their own Sunken Places.

The monster in WandaVision isn’t America’s ingrained racism though, but grief. It is the transformative power behind many a superhero origin story. Matt Murdock became a lawyer by day and Daredevil by night after his dad was killed by gangsters when he was a kid. Batman saw his parents murdered in an alley, and devoted his life and wealth to fight crime. Spider-Man lost not only his parents but a father figure in Uncle Ben. Often, such trauma can turn victims into victimisers. It played a significant role in the supervillain origin stories of Magneto, Two-Face (in The Dark Knight) and Darth Vader. Wanda Maximoff finds herself on both ends of the spectrum in the Disney+ series. Only, where she settles isn’t conclusive.

Grief has always been the Dark Passenger (to borrow Dexter‘s tiresome metaphor) directing Wanda’s arc. Before she became one of the Avengers, she had joined HYDRA and then Ultron to take down Tony Stark, for it was his WMDs that destroyed Sokovia. In Episode 8 of WandaVision, we see Wanda’s parents killed by a missile manufactured by Stark Industries. Ultron, who killed her twin brother Pietro, was also a Tony Stark invention. Just as MCU let Tony off the hook for his crimes against humanity, it now lets Wanda off the hook for hers. Perhaps, we’re too soon to forgive superheroes for their transgressions. 

WandaVision was an MCU origin story for Scarlet Witch

It’s sure heart-breaking that Wanda never got to say goodbye to her parents, her brother and her lover. Lest we forget, she had to see Vision die twice in Avengers: Infinity War. First by her own hand, as she destroyed the Mind Stone, knowing very well it would kill Vision in the process. Second as Thanos rewinded time to undo her actions, before ripping the Mind Stone from Vision’s forehead. Moments later, she was snapped, along with half the universe, before she got a chance to mourn. Returning after the snap’s reversal, she tracks Vision’s body to SWORD headquarters, where the operative Tyler Hayward is leading the mission to revive Vision for use as a weapon. The horror of watching her soulmate being pulled apart pushes her over the edge.

Wanda wants closure for the deaths of her loved ones, and she’ll have it via whatever means necessary. She visits the lot in Westview that Vision had purchased so they could grow old together. Using chaos magic, she recreates the whole town based on formative memories of watching classic sitcoms like The Dick Van Dyke Show with her family. Conjuring up a new Vision and twin sons Billy and Tommy, she gives herself the happily-ever-after she was deprived. In the middle of a pandemic, the underlying metaphor of sitcoms as comfort food becomes a more expansive one. 

Wanda uses chaos magic to build a sitcom reality

As Wanda cycles through the stages of grief, each episode recalibrates our sense of empathy towards Wanda. Her denial is visible from the start: after all, she is playing house with a dead man in a sitcom idyll. Wanda doesn’t take kindly to any glitch in the matrix. When Monica Rambeau trespasses (in Episode 3), she casts her out in a fit of anger. When Vision tries to escape the Hex (in Episode 6), she regains control by expanding its boundaries. In an act of bargaining, she accepts the compromise of no Pietro, flinging him away. Worried Vision has become wise to her efforts to keep him ignorant, and in fear she has lost him all over again, she descends into depression (in Episode 7). Acceptance comes (in Episode 9) when she frees Westview from her spell, even though she knows it would mean saying goodbye to Vision and their two sons.

Wanda’s fantasy and her newfound powers, however, come at an all-too-painful cost for the people of Westview. Not only are they forced to play supporting characters in her sitcom, they have all been separated from their families. She appears merciful enough not to include other children (other than Billy and Tommy) in her fantasy. Until Vision questions her on their absence in Westview, and it’s Halloween the next episode. The people of Westview describe how they share her nightmares when they sleep, and how her “grief is poisoning them” that they’d rather die. By her own account, Monica described being under Wanda’s spell as “excruciating, terrifying, a violation.” Yet, in the finale, Monica empathises with Wanda, not the people of Westview. “They’ll never know what you sacrificed for them,” she says, as if the townsfolk must bow down in gratitude to Wanda for sacrificing her fantasy life for their real ones. What’s worse: Monica insists she would have done likewise to save her mother if she had the chance and Wanda’s powers.

Wanda with Vision, Billy and Timmy

True, grief often manifests in atypical ways. But if you’re taking it out on others, and subjecting them to your nightmares, there must be some consequences. Wanda knows freeing the people of Westview from her spell won’t change how they see her. Even if she pays for years of therapy for each one of them, it won’t. But by bringing in another villain in Agatha Harkness, it diverts our anger away from Wanda, and virtually lets her off the hook. At least, Agatha’s villainy helped Westview escape Wanda’s grasp. For trying to steal Scarlet Witch’s powers for herself, she is punished, imprisoned in her sitcom avatar for the foreseeable future at least. Hayward is taken away in handcuffs for trying to frame Wanda for his project to rebuild Vision as a sentient weapon. But Wanda simply gets to skip town, and isolate herself in a remote cabin. To say the punishment fits the crime is a gross understatement.

The bittersweet resolution WandaVision offers undercuts the emotional resonance of the preceding episodes. Simply put, Wanda deserves better. Perhaps, the intentions were always to set up Scarlet Witch as the next big bad of MCU. WandaVision was meant to be the story of Wanda’s rebirth as she actualises her alter ego. In the post-credits scene, we see her astral form studying the Darkhold, the Book of Sins full of dark spells which may have world-ending repercussions, come MCU Phase 5. Agatha describes Scarlet Witch’s power exceeding that of the Sorcerer Supreme aka Doctor Strange, and how it’s her “destiny to destroy the world.” With her sons calling out for help somewhere in the multiverse, she may end up opening portals to parallel worlds to save them. The plot synopsis of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness hints at the titular hero being “hindered by a friend-turned-enemy.” In all likelihood, it sounds like Karl Mordo, but what if (a tiny what if) Scarlet Witch goes full rogue too.

In response to Wanda not getting her comeuppance, head writer Jac Schaeffer told TVLine, “I think Wanda’s walk of shame back into the town…was meant to be like an assault of death glares from people, and we were meant to feel how angry they all are…She’s done a lot of wrong. And there will probably be reckonings down the line.” It’s really how MCU has always dealt with unanswered questions: Leave it to the next movie to figure it out. It’s frustrating in a “let someone else do the dirty dishes until they start piling up” way. But what is MCU, if not MacGuffins and unanswered questions persevering?