WandaVision Explained: Questions, Answers, and Observations on Episode 4

Episode 4 of WandaVision continues to make every other television series look lazy. There is such a fine attention to detail with regards to everything that’s going on in this series that absolutely nothing in it is there by chance. Every line, every action, every prop has its place and a purpose. Make no mistake, this is a full blown MCU movie that’s been serialised into nine parts.

Jumping out of the sitcom universe and back into reality, this latest instalment of the series finally sheds some light as to what’s going on with Geraldine, while showing us a teeny tiny glimpse of the world following the events of The Blip. Kat Dennings and Randall Park join the cast, reprising their roles as Darcy Lewis (Thor) and Jimmy Woo (Ant-Man and the Wasp) respectively. And we might also have an answer to just who is doing this to Wanda.

Here we go…

Season 1 | Episode 4: “We Interrupt this Program”	35 minutes
Director | Matt Shankman	Writer | Bobak Esfarjani and Megan McDonnell
Monica Rambeau, tasked with a special assignment regarding sentient weapons, goes missing.

1. What a phenomenal way to open the episode. Professor Hulk has just snapped his fingers in Avengers: Endgame and the world starts to blip back into existence. It was an incredibly thrilling and moving moment. We see Monica Rambeau slowly re-materialise in a hospital room as chaos slowly erupts around her. What felt like a 20 minute catnap for Monica was, in fact, five long years.

2. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the consequences of The Blip on everyday people. See: Spider-Man: Far From Home.

3. Note: This is the first episode of WandaVision without an opening theme song or an ad break in the middle.

4. We now have an idea of when all of this is taking place. When Monica returns to work at S.W.O.R.D. it’s been three weeks since The Blip and the events of Avengers: Endgame.

5. Just who in the Witness Protection Program is FBI Special Agent James E. Woo looking for? All we know is that it is a “he.” It isn’t anyone we’ve met before or Agent Woo would have recognised him from watching the WandaVision sitcom. Could this person be the one who triggered Wanda’s breakdown, causing her to create this bubble universe?

6. What is S.W.O.R.D. up to? When Acting Director Hayward gives Monica the tour, it looks like S.W.O.R.D. isn’t just “observing” and “responding” to Sentient Weapons but also creating them. When she asks him about this, he simply tells her that “the world’s not the same as you left it.”

7. Agent Woo couldn’t go into the town to investigate (“Because it doesn’t want me to.”). Why then did it suck Monica in when she touched the energy field?

8. Was Monica the only one who could see the energy field? Why? In the comics, Monica Rambeau’s powers include the ability to control and become any energy form along the electromagnetic spectrum. Is this an allusion to that? As far as we know, the Monica we met in this episode doesn’t have any superpowers. Yet.

9. Why is Darcy Lewis hating on chemical engineers? Is she channeling Sheldon Cooper?

10. The events of this episode happen concurrently with the first three episodes of WandaVision. Darcy Lewis is revealed as the mysterious woman watching the sitcom in Episode 1. We get confirmation that Jimmy Woo is the voice on the radio in Episode 2. And Agent Franklin is the beekeeper seen at the end of the same episode.

11. We know things change in form when they enter Wanda’s bubble – i.e. the S.W.O.R.D. drone we saw in Episode 2 – but what does it mean that Agent Franklin appeared to Wanda wearing a beekeeper’s outfit and surrounded by bees?

12. There is something insanely meta about having the characters in WandaVision watch and experience WandaVision in the same way that we do. Just when you thought this show couldn’t get any more self-referential.

13. Agent Woo’s whiteboard looks almost exactly like the scrawlings in our notes. Here’s what we managed to derive from his:

… triangulated to Westview … Amnesia – 5 mile radius … Location unknown	What we don’t know Why hexagonal shape? Why sitcoms? Same time & space? Is Vision alive?
What is behind this? Extraterrestrials (Skrulls?) … Threat	Failed attempts at contact Phone lines Digital Drones
… if its not

14. “The Perp Board” that they’re using to identify the other “characters” in the sitcom tells us that everyone in Wanda’s bubble is a real Westview resident, who have been hijacked into this reality against their will. This is probably why Agnes and Herb were referring to Geraldine as having “no home” in the previous episode.
    
    In case you needed a refresher, the cast within the cast are: Mr. and Mrs. Hart as played by Todd and Sharon Davis, Norm as played by Abhilash Tandon, Jones as played by Harold Copter, Beverly as played by Isabel Matsueida, and Herb as played by John Collins. None of those names reference anyone in the comics or the MCU.

15. There are two names/identities missing from the board and they are Dottie (Emma Caulfield Ford) and Agnes (Kathryn Hahn). Given that this montage takes place before (or around the same time) as Dottie’s introduction in Episode 2, it is perfectly reasonable that they haven’t had time to print out her photo and stick it on the board. Agnes’ omission, however, remains suspicious. We’ve also never met Agnes’ offscreen husband Ralph. Could he be the witness that Jimmy is looking for?

16. Vision is most definitely dead. That heartbreaking moment in the final few minutes of the episode, when Wanda briefly sees him as a colourless corpse with a hole in his head, tells us that Vision remains as Thanos left him at the end of Avengers: Infinity War.

17. The episode closes with the revelation that it is indeed Wanda who is behind everything. But why? What triggered this mental breakdown in the three weeks between Tony Stark’s funeral in Avengers: Endgame and WandaVision? Are Marvel setting Wanda up to be the big bad of Phase 4?

Other Easter Eggs and Wild Speculations

18. At the start of the episode, as Monica Blips back into existence, we hear the following dialogue from Captain Marvel.

Maria: No, I can’t leave Monica.
Young Monica: Mom? It’s okay, I can stay with Grandma and…
Maria: I can’t leave.
Young Monica: Maybe I’ll build a spaceship. I wanna be an aircraft pilot.
Captain Marvel: When they were handing out kids they gave her the toughest one. Lieutenant Trouble.

19. We learn from the episode that after the events of Captain Marvel, Maria Rambeau did a Peggy Carter and helped set up the government agency S.W.O.R.D.

20. In the comics, “Photon” is one of Monica Rambeau’s many superhero aliases.

21. Having this story set in New Jersey is also a callback to the comics where Vision and Scarlet Witch resign from The Avengers and move to the town of Leonia in order to try and have a “normal” life.

22. New Character Alert: Josh Stamberg plays S.W.O.R.D. Acting Director Tyler Hayward. This is a character unique to the MCU and did not originate from the comics. (There was a Brian Hayward in Season 1 of Marvel’s Agents on S.H.I.E.L.D., but that could just be a naming coincidence.)

23. And finally, it looks like Agent Jimmy E. Woo has perfected that sleight of hand trick that he wanted to learn from Scott Lang in Ant Man and the Wasp.

You can check out all of our explainers for WandaVision here.

WandaVision is now streaming on Disney+.