WandaVision - Episode 4 - Review

Finally, we have left the era of the 4:3 tv screen and had an episode fully in widescreen, but does this ratio shift equal some progress, or is WandaVision being as weird as always, thankfully it is a little bit of both.

                                                                      *Spoilers ahead*

Rather than progressing the tv show, within our tv show to the 80’s we actually take a step away from the small screen, to start taking a larger look on what is going on around the city and the show started in perhaps the most impressive and out of left field way, with the undoing of the blip. We start out with Monica Rambeau coming back, arriving in a chair, next to an empty hospital bed, while I won’t say who she was visiting, it was super nice to see the chaos of people returning. There was a small glimpse of it, during Spider-Man Far From Home, but this time, we got full on contact, people running into things, those who were around during the time of the blip, not fully understanding who is a returning person and who isn’t. But with Monica back, after a bit of time to recover, she went back to work at S.W.O.R.D., something we picked up on in the last episode and that there were hints of it in the earlier ones.

Being given orders to head to New Jersey, we follow her road trip and discover that FBI Agent Jimmy Woo is waiting and when he present a business card to Monica, we get a nice touch that he has been able to replicate the card trick he was studying in Ant-Man and the Wasp. The pair quickly set about attempting to solve the mystery before them and when Monica is sucked into the field they are investigating, Jimmy calls in for help, which is how we get Darcy Lewis back on the screen. The show is basically acting as an explanation of events that we already know, though there appear to be more episodes running that we don’t see, but nothing of note is ever mentioned. What is interesting is that each of the major plot points get some serious context, at least as much as they can guestimate about them, but as the episode ends, another bombshell is dropped, Wanda is responsible.

What I liked about the episode was the amount of context that it started to provide to folks, but still managing to maintain a level of mystery to the events that we have seen. Getting another perspective on things, might seem like cheating, but there were a number of times that we didn’t get to see what happened, but the final moments of the show were not one of them. In the 3rd episode, we got a hint that Wanda might know more than she was letting on, but just as Vision appeared, everything was seemingly normal again. However in this episode we got to see the outcome of the revelation that who was known as Geraldine, but was actually Monica, knew about Ultron, which also freaked the people in the real world watching. There wasn’t some mysterious force that took Monica from the room, Wanda herself used her powers to throw her out through two walls and a fence, until she appeared back outside the broadcast barrier, which lead to that ominous claim of Wanda being the one responsible.

I still don’t buy that, there has to be something more going on, Wanda’s reaction to seeing Vision, after he rushes in proves that, of course I could be wrong, but there is something else going on. We know that Wanda has the ability to manipulate minds, but there is a difference in that and manipulating the world, which is apparently what she can do here, but none of those powers would account for the changes external to her presence. The drone becoming a helicopter toy, or the lifeline on the guy in the hazmat suit, becoming a skipping rope, there is nothing from either of those that would reflect Wanda was actively responsible. My thinking is that someone has taken over her mind, due to her grief and as we know this ties into the upcoming Dr Strange movie, he might be attempting to help her.

From a production point of view, things looked very much they would have on an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., at least, before they lost a lot of budget. Most of the show was spent in the makeshift camp around the town, complete with tents all over the place, even the way equipment was placed seemed rough. Seeing both Randall Park and Kat Dennings return was fun, Randall because Jimmy Woo is so loveable, but for Kat, we got to see Darcy actually be useful and after some work, she has her Doctorate, though it is in Astrophysics, which is not what she was originally studying when we first met her. Of course, getting to see the S.W.O.R.D. base and learn of its origins was a nice touch, more so when you consider who might have helped, plus I really enjoyed the fact that the show based the location in the south.

The fourth episode of WandaVision didn’t break new homage ground on the small screen, but it did put a lot of what we have seen into context. Because it acted more like a recap of what we had seen, I was initially worried that it might feel to samey, but that was not the case at all. We got more information on a number of topics, plus the return of some fun characters helped make this a well-rounded episode. Marvel has quickly become a master of the episodic format and now I can’t wait for the next episode to see what happens next.

The Score

9.0

The Pros

+The return of fan favourite characters adds some life

+We start to get some context as to what is going on

The Cons

-It does feel like a recap episode

-They are clearly trying to convince us Wanda is the baddie