➤ WandaVision 1x06, the review 🎮

With the sixth episode, now three weeks after the conclusion, WandaVision deviates more and more from the sitcom formula with which Marvel Studios inaugurated the series. Not only are the story in the Westview bubble and the story outside more and more intertwined, but the new episode also sheds the recorded laughter to take a more serious and dramatic drift within minutes. The source of television inspiration, this time, is Malcolm in the middle, a famous sitcom that actually aired in the early 2000s: the focus shifts to the children of Wanda and Vision, Tommy and Billy, and to the family dynamics that became complicated with Pietro's return at the end of the episode previous. Character that becomes more and more mysterious ...

Brand new Halloween scary!

WandaVision 1x06, the review — A scene from WandaVision.

As we said, WandaVision now follows two distinct storylines that are converging more and more. We have to admit that, this week, the one focused on SWORD outside the ESA, he did not fully convince us: the writers arranged the pieces on the chessboard for the final rush in a way that was a little too forced and less credible than usual. As it turned out, Hayward hunts Monica, Jimmy and Darcy for contesting him, but the three manage to re-enter the base after a fist fight and hide in a compartment from which Darcy manages to, um, hack into SWORD's computer systems, uncovering some secrets. important. The mysterious Cataract Project is one of them, but we still don't know anything about it, while the other has to do with the effect that the ESA perimeter has had on Monica, who went through it twice: when she entered and when Wanda threw her out. In the comics, Monica is a superheroine who can transform into energy and who has recently taken on the alias of Spectrum.

As Monica and Jimmy leave the SWORD camp to meet the aerospace engineer Monica contacted - a probably very important cameo that many hope to be none other than Reed Richards in his first appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe - in Wanda's perfect world (?) it's Halloween. The episode of the sitcom, as we said at the beginning, faithfully follows Malcolm's cut in the Middle both in terms of direction and characterization. We have the naughty children who break through the fourth wall, addressing the spectators directly, the "big brother" and the crazy parents. Something, however, does not add up. Vision he takes advantage of the circumstance to patrol the neighborhood, but in reality he wants to explore the borders of Westview, and this leads him to discover that the further away from Wanda, the less control she - or whoever for her ... - exerts on the inhabitants. The episode immediately takes on much more disturbing contours. Border dwellers are trapped in a loop, if not quite frozen in time, but seemingly aware of their plight.

This would seem to clear Agnes, although her presence on the edge of the city remains suspect. Vision manages to bring her personality to the surface and finds herself in front of a panicked woman who blames Wanda for everything that happened. This prompts Vision to take the most important step: overcoming the barrier. Meanwhile, Wanda is hanging out with her brother and his children: Tommy, in particular, it would seem to have developed the super speed of the uncle, together with which he wreaks some chaos in the city. The dialogues between Wanda and Pietro are, however, the crucial passage of the episode because they raise many questions. It is clear that Wanda is trying to figure out if that Pietro - who looks different than that of Avengers: Age of Ultron, as we explained to you last week - is really his brother, and he defends himself by questioning Wanda's role in controlling Westview. In short, this Pietro knows much more than he should, and seems to exist almost only to provoke his sister.

But if much of the episode seems to revolve around nothing, the last few minutes are what really matter. Vision crosses the barrier but begins to disintegrate after having overcome it with great efforts, under the helpless eyes of the SWORD. Billy he perceives the danger and warns Wanda that, after knocking Pietro out of action at his umpteenth provocation, enlarges the perimeter of the ESA, regaining Vision and, at the same time, engulfing a large part of the SWORD outpost and even Darcy. Only Monica and Jimmy, already far away, and Hayward and a handful of soldiers, who manage to escape in time. In short, the cliffhanger warns us clearly that we have entered the final phase of this story.

Quotes and reflections

This sixth date with WandaVision was a transitional episode where next to nothing happens for over twenty minutes. The script is limited to arranging the pawns on the board, and in the meantime it tries to confuse even more the spectators and especially the fans of the Marvel comics who are killing themselves with theories day after day. The context of Halloween, in this sense, it is a concentrate of quotations that will send historical readers into a soup of jujube. The costumes worn by all the characters are the first thing that catches the eye, needless to say. Wanda, Vision and Pietro wear the same costumes their comic counterparts wore in the 90s. Obviously the feeling is more "cheap" and carnivalesque, practically a low quality cosplay which, however, manages to faithfully trace the characters we have loved on paper for many years. Pietro even sports the same hairstyle as his alias Quicksilver, complete with horned tufts above the head.

Horns that are there to play with the suspicions that comics fans have had for weeks, that is, that behind this slaughter there is Mephisto, one of the most powerful demons in the Marvel universe. And this is because, in the stories that inspired WandaVision, Wanda "created" her children by unknowingly employing the soul of Mephisto. The story is a bit more complicated than that, but in short, Mephisto claimed Wanda's children, erasing them from existence. The children later reincarnated and, having developed their powers, they discovered the common origins and entered the Young Avengers with the codenames Wiccan and Speed. And in fact, Billy and Tommy, respectively, are wearing Halloween costumes that quite faithfully reproduce the ones their teenage paper counterparts wear. This could suggest that Mephisto is really behind all this, and that the Peter who appeared on the doorstep Vision could actually be the demon in disguise, intent on regaining control of Wanda now that Vision has more and more suspicions about Westview.

We are still quite skeptical about Mephisto's involvement - that he would be a somewhat complicated villain to propose on Disney + being practically the Satan of Marvel - and we lean towards something a bit softer like Nightmare, the ruler of the dream dimension that Scott Derrickson would have wanted in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, but at this point it's clear that it can't all be Wanda's own work and that the writers must find a way to exonerate her: the inhabitants of Westview, after all, are literally subjected to torture. Which makes Monica's determination to save her even more inexplicable, even more than Darcy's super-champion hacking skills. What is certain is that WandaVision could be a great starting point to start reuniting a new generation of Avengers, starting right from Billy and Tommy.

We know that upcoming TV series planned on Disney + will introduce characters like Ms. Marvel, Ironheart and Kate bishop, and a year ago there was a rumor that Marvel Studios were looking for an actor who would even play Hulkling, the young half Skrull and half Kree who, in the comics, is paired with Billy. But perhaps we are going a little too far with the forecasts. But perhaps this is precisely the beauty of a TV series like WandaVision: it stimulates fans old and new to seek information, to imagine how the writers are trying to translate already known stories into a new language, distorting them so as to amaze even the most popular readers. navigated with surprising and unexpected turns. If nothing else, we're pretty sure that all the details we caught in the episode served to sidetrack us. And if Wanda was truly responsible for this tragedy, how could she ever go back to being an Avenger?

Comment

Resources4Gaming.com

7.0

Transition episode, this WandaVision 1x06: almost nothing relevant happens except in the last minutes, but each dialogue contributes to increasing the mystery that surrounds the city of Westview and the role of Wanda in all of this. The many quotes will delight fans of the comics that inspired this TV series, while for everyone else, all that remains is to spend another week speculating about the ending, now getting closer and closer.