Wow. This is it. This is the version of the show everyone was hoping for. We are officially past the halfway point in WandaVision’s nine-episode order, and it feels like the series has reached its full maturation point. WandaVision Episode 5, ‘A Very Special Episode’ features a delicious combination of intrigue, loving ’80s homage, and genuinely compelling character drama on both sides of “The Hex” (as Darcy puts it this week) for a thoroughly entertaining and engaging half-hour.
A big question arose in the aftermath of last week’s episode. Now that we are fully briefed on what is going on outside of The Hex, will we just go back inside Wanda’s (Elizabeth Olsen, Ingrid Goes West) sitcom safe haven or will the narrative splinter between our two leading ladies, Wanda & Monica (Teyonah Parris, If Beale Street Could Talk). After opening up inside a very 80s sitcom home where our still very happy and very in love titular couple are attempting in vain to soothe their newborns (with a little help from Kathryn Hahn’s Auntie Agnes), we jet across the televisual divide to the SWORD camp outside their doors. Here, SWORD Director Tyler Hayward (Josh Stamberg, The Affair) is giving his briefing on what now appears to be Wanda’s hostile takeover of a small New Jersey town and all its inhabitants.
FBI Agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park, Ant-Man & The Wasp), no stranger to playing the role of antagonist to an Avenger with a sorted past and loose respect for the law, questions Director Hayward’s choice to frame Wanda as a hostile terrorist whose years as an Avenger seemingly carry no weight nor consideration. However, it is clear that Hayward is the tactical leader of this operation and, despite Jimmy, Darcy (Kat Dennings, Thor: The Dark World), and Monica all feeling sympathy for Wanda, the team falls in line with treating her as, at least to some extent, a true threat.
This scene coming so early in WandaVision Episode 5 works hard to re-establish the audience’s understanding of the true ramifications of Monica’s “It’s all Wanda” comments at the end of last week’s episode. We have spent years looking at Wanda as a sympathetic hero, but it is easy to forget how much of what made her that to us was shielded from the public within the MCU. That helps inform Hayward’s aggressive pursuit of her as the singular maleficent force at the center of the anomaly, “victimizing” a town full of innocents. It also helps give our crew of sympathetic heroes (Jimmy, Darcy, and, most importantly, Monica) a chance to distinguish themselves from the somewhat unthinking and unfeeling man at the center of SWORD.
It has already been established that Hayward was maybe less of “The right person for the job” for director after Monica’s mother Maria died, and vacated her position, and more “the only person left for the job.” He seems to be showing himself to be well-intended but in over his head. By episode’s end, it is clear that, for this situation to be resolved in an honorable and safe fashion for all involved, it will be Monica (whose vital signs and brain scans happen to be coming up unreadable, possibly due to leaving The Hex and possibly due to events we have not become privy to yet, but may have occurred off-screen if her comic book origins are at all a factor) who will need to take the reigns, as she does in her direct appeal to Wanda towards the end of the episode.
Inside The Hex, Wanda’s perfect world seems to be spiraling a bit out of her control. Despite rocking excellent frazzled ’80s curls and a touching new opening credits montage that evokes ’80s sitcom classics like Family Ties and Growing Pains, where even the most serious story of the week can be happily resolved in 22 minutes, Wanda is having a much tougher go of it this week. As mentioned earlier, her first scene features herself and Vision (Paul Bettany, Solo: A Star Wars Story) unable to quell her new twins’ tears, a recurring theme of the episode. Once again, as with the stork two weeks ago, her magic seems ineffective at managing the twins’ sleep woes.
Auntie Agnes pops in, in her jazziest aerobics outfit, making cracks about her sex life that would have made the previous sitcom eras’ casts blush, and offers to help out. Vision nervously flails about, not loving the idea, and Agnes oddly breaks character to ask Wanda if they should just take the scene again from the top. This isn’t our first hint that Agnes has far more agency and awareness within this world than many of its other inhabitants, but it is our most explicit and it sends Vision over the edge. Bettany does an excellent job shifting out of dopey sitcom dad mode and into genuine, concerned confusion veering on terror in this scene.
Vision’s existential breakdown is halted however when the twins suddenly seem to age themselves up from babies to kindergarteners, the first of two times this episode where the boys take it on themselves to age up into a new level of maturity and awareness (first going from infants to five-year-olds and later from five-year-olds to ten-year-olds). Careful viewers of sitcom reruns from the ’80s and ’90s will remember several instances where shows would feature a lead character becoming pregnant for a season and having newborns to deal with, and then the show would quickly realize that involving very young children can sometimes be a plot anchor.
In those cases, it was not uncommon for a show to end a season with a baby still in diapers and start the next season with a walking, talking, wisecracking 5 or 6-year-old in that baby’s place. Watching Tommy and Billy rapidly age multiple times over the course of the episode couldn’t help but bring this sitcom trope to mind, but it is also a great way to help us understand that these boys may be magical beings in their own right, immune to their mother’s powers and maybe even able to conjure a pet dog at one point.
All this happening with the boys does not seem to phase Agnes or Vision, but when Wanda decides to make Saturday the new Monday and send Vision to work to check out those brand new computer gadgets his office is abuzz over, a message from SWORD accidentally intercepted by said computer certainly raises new concerns for Vision. He realizes that he seemingly has the power to turn off Wanda’s effect on the world around him and then turn it back on at will. He first notices this with his computer, and then he attempts it on his coworker, who quickly shows his true, liberated form: a modern person, infected with Wanda’s own guilt and grief.
When Vision confronts Wanda, the two have a standoff. Bettany’s rage and confusion are palpable here, and, while it’s understandable that he feels like he can no longer trust her, Olsen does convey a true sense of confusion as well. Wanda has clearly gained a meaningful level of awareness and agency over the course of the series, but she does not appear to be the creator of The Hex, at least not entirely, and she does not appear to be the only magic wielder. Certainly, her psyche, ravaged by grief, could have fractured, leaving her far more in control than she even realizes.
Potentially, Vision, who we know died during the events of Avengers: Infinity War, and whose body we see Wanda steal from SWORD headquarters in apparent security footage from Director Hayward, could actually be a projection of Wanda’s own moral center attempting to right the wrongs of her more base instincts. There is still too much unknown for us to say for sure, but what we do know is that X-Men’s Quicksilver Peter Maximoff (Evan Peters, X-Men: Days of Future Past), just showed up at the front door, exploding this show’s mystery box and sending it into another stratosphere as credits close.
Comments are closed.