[camcorder beeps before Mikey sits down in front of it in the bathroom]
Mikey Zee: New week, new WandaVision. You know, someone once said “life is like a box of chocolates.” And sometimes in life you get the yummy chocolates with peanut butter inside, and sometimes you get the awful weird ones with the gross fake cream. Lately? Life has been a lot more like the white cream chocolates… or even the weird fruit ones. Who puts fruit-flavored goo in chocolate? Anyway, after dealing with wild family, chores, and even homework… it’s time to just kick back and relax with a totally normal TV show. Wait–who am I kidding? The Maximoffs have an even weirder life than I do! Thankfully, to handle all this, I have my partner in crime.
[whispered] Okay bud, that’s your cue to wave hi to the camera–
Dan McMahon: [The camera pans over to Dan who is standing in his tighty whities in front of the fridge]
OH, we’re doing this today. Uh, hold on.
[Dan frantically exits the camera’s view and returns with his robe]
Hi readers, I’ve been waiting for this one. I’ve probably watched the entirety of Malcolm in the Middle more than 15 times. It’s been a huge comfort show to me since I was young. I see myself in Hal more and more everyday, which is the energy I’m bringing here. I cannot tell you the kind of noise I made when I watched the opening for Wandavision, only because the English language hasn’t caught up to this level of excitement. In lieu of children for this bit, Reese, Malcom, and Dewey will be played by my dog Dinah and my cats Kori and Mera.
[Dan goes to pour himself a cup of coffee when a ball falls out of the pot into his mug smashing it.]
Mikey, can you please cover the next bit while I figure out which of my CHILDREN RUINED MY FAVORITE MUG!?
MZ: Uh… yeah, sure. Aaaanyways. There’s a lot to dig into this week, so, I’ve brought some slides. Try to keep up, will you?
[Mikey groans as he pulls up a pile of white posterboard cue cards scrawled over with Sharpie.]
Life Moves Pretty Fast
MZ: As my fiance Charlie always says, “Life comes at you fast.” No one’s really sure what he means by that, but whatever it does, it’s never felt more appropriate than this week’s episode.
[Muffled screaming and the patter of dog footsteps in the distance.]
Dannnnn…? Everything okay back there?
DM: So you know my neighbor’s prized rose bush? Did you know that flowers aren’t flame-resistant? Well the kids do now… sorry, I was fighting with the neighbors. But the intro of this week’s episode was a perfect homage to Malcolm’s. The walking in on Wanda brushing her teeth was reminiscent of Lois running through the house in what always looked like it was her towel. Like those little references are so good. But the thing that got it perfect was the grainy MTV-like editing of the whole opening. I’m not a film writer so I don’t have the correct words but the entire thing had that very Malcolm color grading and just look to it. What did you think of the actual music?
MZ: Oh my god, the surf punk. The surf punk!!! It was so, so good.
DM: I’m just so glad they committed so hard to the aesthetic. They could have done a Friends or Seinfeld, but they picked a show that fits where they weren’t afraid to show that people weren’t perfect. Like the story is getting darker and I think television of the Malcolm era was a bit darker too.
MZ: That era was a little irreverent too, which I think fits where we’re at in the plot very well–Wanda’s life is now less about her than it is the two twins and her brother, and they seem to have an agency of their own, not to mention their own thoughts and memories. Plus, it almost seems like Wanda brought Pietro back because she missed him… but seems to have forgotten how complicated he makes her life. Pietro himself is an homage to a specific Malcolm character too, right?
DM: Yes! Pietro is essentially the stand in for Francis. I think it works perfectly too because Francis is sort of a troublemaker. For almost the entirety of Malcolm, Francis doesn’t live with them. He goes from military school, to Alaska, to a ranch, and a few more different places. Through the series Lois does miss him, even if when he’s home, trouble seems to follow. There are a few scenes where Lois questions if she made the right choice sending him away. I think that’s sort of reflective of Wanda’s question of bringing Pietro back. At what cost did she bring him back, ya know? Like what is going to come of such a life altering choice? He’s also like that fun uncle/older brother type of character for the twins. Francis played that role as the actual older brother to the other brothers.
MZ: I think it brought a really great dynamic to the episode, especially since Vision is kind of the absent dad, way too focused on the greater mysteries of Westview than he is on his kids at this point. It actually kind of mirrors the focus in the comics of Billy and Tommy on Wanda.
For folks who haven’t read the stories these characters come from, I’ll try to give a quick primer. Billy Kaplan and Tommy Shepherd, as they’re known in the comics, were created by Wanda Maximoff from slivers of a demon’s souls (no, not the video game) and made into magical construct bodies in the form of boys. But since they weren’t real boys, the demons called to collect and reabsorb their souls. Eventually those soul fragments freed themselves to reincarnate in two young boys in New Jersey. Those boys, Tommy and Billy, eventually learn this history and go to find their mom, the Scarlet Witch, and even get a whole comics miniseries about their relationship eventually. But we don’t ever get to see what they think about Vision as their father.
When the twins come out to explain Halloween, I will admit I screamed in delight to see him dressed like his current comics costume. SO GOOD!
DM: Ya know, I don’t think I knew the demon part. Gotta be real honest with you, that’s wild. I actually loved them being in those costumes as a wink to viewers… but I really want these costumes to be a thing. They make jokes about the costumes that Wanda and Vision wear which are essentially just their biggest comic costumes. I love those suits and it’s just like sometimes you gotta embrace the weird stuff instead of making it a joke. I still loved it! I just want to see those costumes one day for real. But the twins themselves are so good. They have good chemistry together.
MZ: (I do gotta say really quick that Vision thinking his costume was a Mexican luchador was pretty great, in my opinion.)
I think it’s a nice way to make a middle ground that still feels genre-savvy, and is also possibly a subtle nod to the first issue of The Vision and The Scarlet Witch, where they have a spooky Halloween story in these very costumes.
The trick-or-treating doesn’t go quite as expected though, and that’s partially due to speedster antics… not unlike your, uh, antics with your neighbor’s rose bush.
DM: I’m never going to hear the end about it with that bush… Pietro doing all the mischief that normally could be done in one mischief night was great.
Love’s Affecting Our Reality
MZ: But the real part where Pietro shined, in my opinion, was in holding a dark mirror up to Wanda and her history… especially when it became clear that the version of growing up in Sokovia he remembered was different and even wackier.
Halloween as it’s known in the United States isn’t a holiday celebration in most Eastern European countries, as I confirmed with friends who grew up in Poland, Croatia, and Serbia, let alone trick or treating. So the flashback we see to the costumes their mom made them, and being given a fish. It feels like the kind of wildly overblown and irreverent version of “the old country” we see in a lot of sitcoms where immigration is a theme, especially during the era we’re riffing on here.
I can’t speak to the era they’re riffing on here, but my grandpa’s family were first-generation Italian immigrants right around the time of the Depression. When I think about some of the stories told about Grandpa’s irreverent sense of humor, the pranks he would pull on the kids, and the pranks my dad’s siblings would pull on each other… It feels very similar to the kind of stuff WandaVision is pulling on here: showing a version of events that’s not quite true, but the emotional core is there even if the facts really aren’t. Reinterpreting how we can laugh about the “bad” things used to be, through a lens familiar to American audiences, for laughs is so common in sitcoms and makes total sense to me here.
DM: I am not sure how much this was taken into consideration but Lois from Malcolm in the Middle is most likely a first generation American. It is heavily implied that her parents immigrated from Croatia. Her mother, Ida, often talks about the old country and how things were. They were often treated with humor as sitcoms can do but they show that things in a new place can be entirely different. It may just be coincidence but I think it’s relevant to that specific cutaway.
I think the thing Pietro does the best is to question Wanda. Vision has tried but it hasn’t been getting through to her but when her brother asks, she opens up more than we have seen. He is asking her some big questions about what she’s doing. One of the things I think cut a bit deeper was a question about her powers. When we first met her in the MCU, they were some cool mind control and some light up powers which her brother jokingly refers to. But now she has a whole town under her mind control and she is warping the fabric of reality. If Pietro isn’t real, this really could be her questioning herself and her own abilities.
MZ: Exactly. Vision… he doesn’t remember anything for one reason or another. But Pietro has a version of memory, a version of agency, and he can call Wanda on stuff. But with that… comes a caveat, and we see more of the lurking horror haunting either Westview, or Wanda herself. What did you make of that, Dan?
DM: The flashes of the “real” like what Vision REALLY looks like and now the Pietro zombie flashes are very grave. We are seeing things that maybe Wanda can’t control. Like life and death, she is toying with something so powerful that she is scaring even herself. Maybe those little glimpses are the cracks showing in her own mind but in the physical realm.
MZ: No kidding… which brings me to our next topic.
Creep
MZ: Like the infamous Radiohead song… there’s trouble in paradise.
DM: We see a lot more of the cracks once we move outside the normal street we normally see as Vision goes exploring. Everything is either frozen or moving in slow motion on the outskirts of town. It’s clear Wanda is losing her grip on all of this. What’d you think of the whole mannequin deal we got going on?
MZ: Oh god it’s so bad! Being… frozen at the edges of Wanda’s consciousness, unable to move or really think for yourself? Bad! Hate it. It was definitely very interesting to see that there are limits to Wanda’s powers here… and very convenient that SWORD were using Vision as their eyes while he explored the edges of the Hex, huh?
Speaking of which, we haven’t gotten much into the secret agent antics this episode…
DM: So the head of SWORD is the worst, right? He tried to oust our dynamic trio who is actually trying to handle this whole thing delicately. But their way isn’t fast enough for him… so he kicked them out.
MZ: Oh, yeah, he’s totally a piece of shit. And like I said, I don’t trust what SWORD was doing with Vision at all. Everything lines up a little conveniently for the director, Hayward, for my liking. But one consequence of their little sneak back into the server room (which was super-fun by the way) is that we find out from Darcy that Monica’s cells are being altered on a molecular level… and also see why Monica was so blase about her medical results. She doesn’t like looking at them, she doesn’t want to know; she had to deal, alone, with her mom’s cancer. Carol wasn’t there. Superpowers couldn’t save her. (I know that’s a little serious, but I felt like the moment deserved it.) It was such a subtle and well-done moment of characterization.
The twins got powers this episode too, which feels like another symptom of Wanda’s power creep to me… but while Tommy gets his powers in a moment of uncle-bonding, Billy gets his… in a bit of a crisis. So. We mentioned Vision taking a little… excursion earlier…
Hey, Dan, what the fuck is up with Agnes?
DM: I’m really hoping she’s not the big bad because I love her. But we see her in her car, the only one sort of between frozen and alive. Vision does his little brain blast to bring back her normal self. She calls him an Avenger and Vision is like “What’s an Avenger?” so it’s clear he has no memory of the before times.
Either Agnes did this on purpose to drive him further away from Wanda with this new idea or she saw a superhero which meant she was saved. It’s that tightrope act she’s been playing the whole show. Eventually she has to fall one way or another…
MZ: For sure, and I think that balancing act is part of what makes her so fascinating, even when she’s just vibing at the edge of the Hex in her witch costume. Besides Monica, she might actually be my favorite character of the whole show. I’m very, very curious to find out more about her, but I feel like this episode raised more questions than it did answers–which is honestly fine with me at this point.
For whatever reason after meeting with Agnes, Vision gets the idea inside his little robot-dad head that he needs to try to escape the Hex. Which, unsurprisingly, goes badly, and Wanda only finds out because… this is how Billy gets his powers.
So, Billy in the comics initially starts with electricity powers. As a teen, he’s picked on and bullied for being queer and nerdy, and his mutant powers activate with a huge electrical shock, nearly killing the bully. He grew up as a big Thor fan, so his first superhero code name was Asgardian, before someone pointed out that the name wouldn’t go over so great with the press. (Speaking of which, it’s worth mentioning he’s one half of the first canon gay couple in Marvel comics!) He picked a new name, Wiccan, based on his burgeoning glowing blue constructs and “make a wish” powers. With the help of his boyfriend, he comes to realize that if he thinks hard about making something a reality, he can make it happen. When another character realizes that he and Tommy Shepherd are actually the reincarnations of the Scarlet Witch’s lost twins, everything clicks for him: his spells are actually a version of the Scarlet Witch’s control over the force of chaos magic, a natural, primal form of magic in the Marvel Comics.
Of the two twins, Billy has always been the one with the closest connection to Wanda; his appearance, his costume, and his powers all mirror hers, while Tommy’s mirror Pietro’s. Their personalities are similar as well: Tommy is the impulsive and brash one, Billy is the thoughtful and anxious one. Here, we see Billy’s connection to Wanda continues in the similarity of their powers. Wanda’s original power was telepathy and “red glowing hands”; Billy gets blue glowing hands and telepathy. And that telepathy lets him see what’s happening to Vision, which is… he’s literally falling apart? Yikes!
DM: I love having to watch Vision die for the third time. My heart can only handle so much… the effect of him literally being torn apart is horrific. Vision loves Wanda, I believe he’s loved her since he met her. But now he’s facing the fact that maybe she isn’t in control and what’s she’s doing is wrong? He’s going to pieces in all sorts of ways. Now he has children he also has to think about so it’s not a great time to be Vision. I’m curious to see how this relationship continues…
MZ: Definitely, especially because it becomes clear that Wanda loves Vision… and maybe loves him a little too much, freezing the entirety of Westview’s residents to save him as he starts to fall apart into so many little fragments of data. She expands the borders of the Hex, slurping up the government agents into a clown and circus show (fittingly apt!), along with an unfortunately-handcuffed Dr. Darcy Lewis, as the various other SWORD members try to outrun the borders creeping forward.
(Can I just say, I love how fucking spot-on I was with my Annihilation pull in the first article… not to toot my own horn.)
Well, Dan, I think our digital camcorder is out of battery, but thank you so much for joining me on this wild ride! Hopefully you don’t get eaten by a claymation shark on your way back home…
[There is a loud thud from above Dan as he looks up]
DM: I don’t know how but they’re on the roof so I need to go. Mikey, this has been a blast. Just mind the door on the way out, it’s still squeaky. Dinah went through it on roller skates last week because the cats strapped Roman candles to her back like a jet pack. It was a mess.
MZ: Yeah, uh, bye!
Well, thanks everyone. Join me again next week, and we’ll see where the Hex takes us…
