Why Sitcoms, Why Westview and How It Changed

The penultimate installment of “WandaVision” was heavy on answers, while offering more insight into Wanda Maximoff’s life and story than we’d ever have time to explore in an “Avengers” film.

Ahead of next week’s big series finale, fans got to learn a little bit about just who Agatha Harkness is, how and why she came to be in Westview, just what she wants with Wanda and perhaps most importantly, what has been going on?

We finally got the answer to the series’ most fundamental question, why sitcoms? It’s a beautifully sweet and tragic explanation rooted in Wanda’s own tormented past with loss. There’s a reason she reaches for the comfort of sitcoms, because those are shows where people don’t really get hurt and everything works out in the end.

Real life doesn’t work out quite that way.

There was so much to unpack as Agatha took Wanda through a literal exploration of all the key moments in her life, providing answers to almost every question we’ve had all season long, while revealing just how incredibly powerful she is.

This one’s not a huge surprise, but we finally got Wanda’s perspective of that supposed shot where she stormed into S.W.O.R.D. headquarters and stole Vision’s body. All season long, it’s been believed that she stole Vision’s body and brought him back to life. But that’s not what happened at all.

She saw Hayward’s team already dismantling his body and when she caressed his ruined head, she noted that she couldn’t feel him there. And then she simply walked out. No mass destruction, no stolen body, nothing.

We know Hayward has been working his own agenda this whole time but we still don’t quite know what his objective is. We thought it was about recovering Vision’s body, but Wanda never had it.

In fact, in the post-credit scene, it’s revealed that Hayward has had Vision’s body the whole time. And thanks to the return of their drone with some of Wanda’s red magic still swirling around, he found the power source he needed to reboot the original.

Of course, that raises all kinds of new questions about what’s going on in Westview, how it happened and what Vision and the twins really are. After all, if Hayward has Vision’s real body, than what does Wanda have?

Interestingly, it turns out Agatha (aka Agnes) has been playing a long game with Wanda all this time. She doesn’t know any more than the rest of us how this strange sitcom world came to be, but she knows it’s a helluva lot bigger of a deal than anyone realizes.

A quick flashback shows that Agatha dates back at least to the Salem witch trials, though it was her own coven and mother who put her on trial for dabbling in dark magic. She even managed to overtake their blue magic with her purple (we’ve yet to see if these colors mean anything) and kill them all, sucking them dry.

That’s all we got for her origins, but it indicates that she’s been around a long time (that incident happened in 1693) and she knows a thing or two about magic. And yet, she has nothing but questions about what’s been going on in Westview, which is how she infiltrated it.

It’s interesting that she was able to do this without Wanda picking up on the fact that she couldn’t control her mind. But then, it was quickly clear that Wanda wasn’t as in control as we thought. She didn’t realize Monica had infiltrated Westview until a random slip-up about the outside world.

So how can Wanda not know how all of this was created, not fully be in control of everything going on and yet seem to be in control of everything going on and inside of everyone’s heads? It takes a minute, but Agatha finally figures out who Wanda is, and names her.

For the first time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Wanda is given her comic book superhero name, the Scarlet Witch. It’s also revealed why she has this name and we’re given just a hint as to what it means.

After leaving S.W.O.R.D. without Vision’s body, Wanda finds an envelope with a deed to a house made out to her and Vision in it. The accompanying note reads “To Grow Old In” and it’s signed “V.”

It’s not clear if she was discovering it for the first time, or brought the deed with her, but it was for a plot of land in Westview, New Jersey. And so we got our first glimpse of what this community actually looks like underneath Wanda’s Hex.

It’s … not great. With glimpses of some familiar citizens from the “WandaVision” show like Herb, Phil and Mrs. Hart, we see a sense of sadness in them. The town itself is dilapidated and rundown seemingly everywhere.

Even the place where Wanda and Vision are living their idyllic suburban life is nothing more than a raggedy foundation on an overgrown plot of land. It is in her complete and total grief in realizing that Vision is truly gone that Wanda cries out and her magic takes over.

Suddenly, a house grows around her and it is the stuff of 1950s sitcom dreams. Then, in a blast that sweeps from her house out, that aesthetic continues throughout the town. All the while, Wanda is screaming uncontrollably, seemingly as much a victim of her powers as the town and its citizens.

But then the most remarkable thing occurs, as out of the red chaos magic (that’s what Agatha called it) surrounding her comes yellow lights and it is from here that Wanda creates her Vision. He can’t remember who he was before Westview because he didn’t exist before Westview.

With most objects coming in and out of The Hex, they’ve retained their transmogrified form, but as Vision was made out of the air, that’s why he was falling apart when he finally pushed through the wall.

The fact that he was made instinctually is why he’s not played his role perfectly, instead bristling under the strange rules and attempting to find out the truth of what’s going on. Wanda’s magic created him, but she was not entirely in control. That’s the chaos part of it, and it’s why she’s able to maintain it across such a wide area (despite glitches at the perimeter).

So was Wanda lying when she said she had no idea how Westview became what it was, or does she have no recollection of having created it? How much is she hiding because she wants this to be real and how much is she lost in it?

By that same token, just as Vision isn’t real, Agatha certainly seems to be suggesting that the twins aren’t real, either. If that’s the case, then none of them can survive outside of the Hex, which means Wanda will have to lose everyone she loves again. And we saw how much it broke her the first time.

Further proof that Wanda’s chaos magic works with a will of its own based on her instincts and deep-rooted parts of her psyche is the very fact that Westview became a pastiche of classic sitcoms.

Our earliest flashback took us to the night that Wanda and Pietro lost their family. It happened while the family was enjoying one of their favorite pastimes, watching classic American sitcoms on DVD.

This would continue through the various phases of Wanda’s life we explored. She was watching “The Dick Van Dyke Show” when her parents died in a genuinely shocking explosion (that was an effective moment), “The Brady Bunch” while working as a volunteer for HYDRA and “Malcolm in the Middle” when she and Vision first started connecting with the Avengers.

When Vision wonders if Hal (Bryan Cranston) got hurt in one of the episodes, Wanda explained to him that he’s not really injured. “It’s not that kind of show,” she told him gently. At this point, Wanda had violently lost her parents and most recently her twin.

She recedes into the comfort of family sitcoms with their safe realities where no one truly gets hurt or suffers real loss throughout her life, and especially in her most painful moments.

While with HYDRA, Wanda survived an encounter with an Infinity Stone (it started blue and then turned yellow before she passed out) and it is this experience that Agatha believes opened up her magic to another level.

But that level is so far beyond anything Agatha has ever seen or even comprehended in her hundreds of years of living. It’s a power that can reach deep into her grieving psyche and create an entire reality to bring her comfort and solace where she’s always found it.

Now that Hayward has reactivated Vision, what does he intend to do with him? Is he hoping the real deal can lure Wanda out of the Hex? And what is he really trying to do here since it’s not about securing Vision at all. Perhaps Wanda herself is the new weapon he wants to get a hold of.

We still don’t know how or why Agatha’s fake version of Pietro looked like the X-Men Universe of him. Was it just an Easter Egg for fans or is there some deeper meaning? Did she pull his likeness from an alternate reality as a teaser for the eventual official connection between the X-Men and Marvel Universes?

While we’re talking about Pietro, what exactly is he? Is he a citizen of Westview who’s been transmogrified? It doesn’t appear Agatha is at Wanda’s power level, so she probably can’t create people out of thin air. Could she grab someone from an alternate reality?

What does Agatha really want here? Is she just hoping to learn how Wanda is able to tap into that much power so she can harness it herself? And while we’re at it, what is “the Scarlet Witch”?

Agatha seems to know about the supposedly mythical being, so have their theoretically been others who’ve borne this title? If so, how did they achieve their level of power, if it took an Infinity Stone to push Wanda to this level.

Is there anyone else in Westview who isn’t quite what they seem? Dottie has been a little odd — bleeding red in a black-and-white world — and some others have stood out. Are they all just victims of Wanda’s power, or is it possible that Agatha wasn’t the only unknown infiltrator?

Since we now know Wanda didn’t exactly create sitcom Westview consciously, does she have the ability to turn it off? And when she does, what happens to the citizens and everything there? Would they even want their town to go back to its sad prior state or could they choose to keep it in one of the eras she’s given it.

We also still don’t know why it was shifting from show to show and advancing through time. Was this just another manifestation of her chaos magic kind of working on its own? Are the twins also the product of that? Is there a way for them to survive the dismantling of Westview or are they destined to die/disappear? Is Wanda’s Vision?

Is Hayward’s Vision actually him, or is it just his body Wanda couldn’t sense anything of him when she touched the body, so it’s possible Hayward has an empty vessel. If that’s the case, Wanda’s version of Vision (which is pretty complete) could perhaps inhabit that real body and in that way survive this series.

And of course, there are the more fundamental questions that will obviously be answered like where is Monica after Pietro snatched her up before she entered Agatha’s lair? And who is the special guest star that Paul Bettany keeps telling us no one has guessed yet?

We suppose we’ll find out as much as we’re going to in next week’s series finale, and then we’ll have to wait for “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (coming next year) for any further answers as that will be Wanda’s next major appearance.

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