Someone is seriously cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
But is it Wanda, Vision, the people of Westview or S.W.O.R.D.?
Episode 7 of the new Disney+ series WandaVision aired Feb. 19. Joining the regular cast was Julian Hilliard, Jett Klyne and Josh Stamberg.
This is a review, so consider this the spoiler warning.
Last week in Westview, Halloween night brought more spooks than Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) thought she was getting. Her twin boys (Hilliard and Klyne) both developed powers and Vision (Paul Bettany) tried to escape the anomaly. Before the credits rolled, we saw the borders of Westview expanding, turning the S.W.O.R.D. (Sentient Weapons Observation Response Division) compound into a carnival.
This week, in the 2000’s, Wanda’s control over Westview seems to be wavering as her home starts glitching. Vision runs into Darcy (Kat Dennings), who was sucked into the anomaly, and Darcy basically recaps the events of Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame for him. Outside the anomaly, Captain Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and FBI Agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park) work to get Monica back into Westview without Darcy’s help.
Something I loved about this episode was how the production crew finally addressed the elephant in the room: Westview isn’t real. Now, of course, this is obvious. However, it’s never really mentioned inside Westview how nothing is real. Within the first two and a half minutes, Wanda explicitly says, and I quote, “the false world we created.” In this episode, even if Wanda didn’t say this, it’s still obvious in Westview that nothing is real.
In terms of things that are real in the MCU, the scenes between Vision and Darcy in the funnel cake truck were a great recap of the first three phases of Marvel movies. They took 60 hours of cinematic gold, give or take, and reduced it to six minutes. Now that Vision is fully aware that nothing is real and knows what’s happened over the last 8-ish years, I’m excited to see what he does with that information.
While we’re discussing characters, I have yet to really address one character who’s been a driving force behind the series. Captain Monica Rambeau is the only character who’s been in and out of the anomaly. She has connections to Captain Marvel and her mother built S.W.O.R.D. from the ground up. Since she was introduced, the writers have done an amazing job developing this character. She’s gotten almost as much development as Wanda, despite having only about a third of the screen time.
Like previous episodes, the few things I would change were nit-picky, but the main one is releasing new episodes. With only two left and a million questions in my head, I can’t wait to see what’s next for Westview and for Wanda.
