I don’t usually comment on pop culture what-not but:

(spoilers – if you haven’t seen WandaVision or haven’t finished, then don’t read below)

I’ve only enjoyed comic based stories because of the depth due to their limitations – implications rather than big shows, to give one a real thinking bite of something. Sometimes it’s in the big reveal of master plans, sometimes in perspectives not thought about much, sometimes the unusual or motivations or origins. They rely on imagination to fill gaps of how big of a something is. It’s fun to watch fights, but without those depths they’re standalones and like watching a boxing match.

WandaVision did a great job in the first majority by being weird, suspensful, foreboding, and heavy on the implications of whether we’re watching something sad and relateable, or monstrous and a terrifying idea. It’s been done before (The Dome, Wayward Pines, or most of Lynch’s work, or even call backs to Poe) but the TV genre element was a new schtick and interesting to see play out.

Very good stuff throughout – what’s going on? Is Wanda in control? What’s the endgame here? Are these people’s lives hanging in the balance while someone figures out how deeply and emotionally they’ve been hurt? Is the entire world in peril? What forces are working with/or against her? Really big concepts flying, both within and without someone’s hectic mind trying to make sense of things.

And then Agnes reveals herself.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen as flat a villain, or as arbitrary (I just wandered over here as an interloper and relatively unconnected from anything), or a power representation as two dimensional (magic turned into pew pew lasers indistinguishable from power fists or laser beam eyes). Or as ridiculous, figuring out ways to beat the villain monologuing trope to death – ‘I will now win because I’ve educated you on the means of stopping me!’

It immediately turned the proceedings into a rote, fly in the ointment, torn and traumatised main character once again let off the guilt hook because of slightly worse agendas. Likewise, the happenings outside The Dome/Hex/Barrier Wall turned into ‘bad boss man and sneaky sneaks’ where the world’s problems, no matter how bad, are easily duped or turned around by Scooby Doo style sheninagans.

On the plus side, inside a house Paul Bettany talks to Paul Bettany and reminds there is some depth still to be covered, even though it is outside this plot. I could watch a show with Paul Bettany doing different situations as he figures out the existential room he finds himself in every week.

Shoehorned characters from other things, ineptness by sneaky sneak government agents, and lack of ultimate consequences are TV staples, but when you’ve got a great premise, stretched atmospherics and great actors and setup, the most likely place you’ll flatten and fizzle is the big reveal and end. That the subject of suspense in the first part is TV itself, where things like that are to be expected, doesn’t cushion the dissapoinment, though.

But here’s an interesting thought – why couldn’t Agnes have been a subconcious persecutor conjured up by Wanda, who obviously can create brand new lives with her fantasy kids? Explaining both the almost soap opera flatness of a single set ‘origin’ as well as reality warping and retconning of the universe to include the existence of magic, know-it-all books, and a super hero looking suit and identity for the Scarlet Witch? Which at times seem as flat as the sitcoms she’s emulating?

In a way, this would symbolize the most basic of human motivations – finding meaning to escape grief. Wanda sort of bubbles through life, as depicted here, inconsiderate of the larger world in a grief outburst rewriting things as she wished, and not altogether aware of how she was doing it. Could we have seen something transcendent, a true spectacle of gravitas as Wanda plants the seeds for an entire Multiverse, here, within this thin reality of TV flatness and the consequences of three dimensional real world lives? A child of fictions rewriting reality to incorporate fictions when she can’t work herself out of her box (or Hex/her own emotions in this case)?

‘The Scarlet Witch’ as prophecy is as tired of an idea as you can get, but within the not-thought-out creation of Wanda’s Westview, her mind races to keep things moving and solve tensions arising from new challenges to her universe – in response she increases the size of the area, affects people outside of it, and constantly rewrites people’s lives to keep up. These are all concious decisions, born of emotions, impulses, and self doubt, and once in a while we see the effects of an unintentional outburst, but ultimately this is her creation, one that she’s not completely aware of in the beginning, but comes to realize over time.

Once she begins to realize the inevitability that this will never be ‘ok’, it almost seems logical that her mind would create a competing idea, or a persecution of herself (in the only-motivated-by-power Agnes). Else she would have no choice but to eventually rewrite the entire world – challenges to her pocket reality are not going to stop. And with her Samantha-like powers used in very similar ways, perhaps she could bury her unresolve or second guessing into an identity that is terrifying to her desire to make everything good and live a quiet life with her family. A ‘keeping in check’ that provides some kind of end, boundary, or escape. The ‘I’ll always be this way/destined to mess it up’ TV trope turned on its head, when very human fears and self revulsion retro cons the self fullfilling prophecy.

To say nothing of the potential to ramhorn in other Marvel concepts like mutants, magic, and mayhem for future works like Dr Strange and the Multiverse, etc. or how to bring mutants into the fold (hello, Quicksilver/not Quicksilver!). We’re inevitably talking about the power of the creation of the universe weilded by a traumatised individual – this should be a thrilling predicament, and one that could be used to open up whole other dimensions in parallel with someone rebuilding their identity, or reshaping the constants in the universe to find their way. But it’s not.

The last act reminds the viewer that this all becomes a bookend to other proceedings, a greater universe of films and merchandise that Team Disney needs to perpetuate. Perhaps that’s ultimately the greater villain at work.