‘WandaVision’: Was it Really REDACTED All Along?

This week’s WandaVision was the biggest yet, as we finally started to get some answers with the show moving into its final act.

Even though WandaVision has been refreshingly different from basically every other Marvel Studios project, it still has a classical story structure, and this week we hit what Blake Snyder called the All Is Lost moment in his Save the Cat beat sheet and what Dan Harmon’s story circle labels “They pay a heavy price for it.” Either way you look at it, it means we’re moving into the final act.

Basically, everyone was right and Agnes is really Agatha Harkness, Wanda’s mentor in the original comics, and everything going on in Westview has been her doing. We even got a Munsters-inspired opening credit sequence explaining it was Agatha All Along, one of the highlights of the entire series, which showed her manipulating events with her purple magical energy.

Something I noticed that I think a lot of people missed is that the energy field around the Hex was a bluish-purple in episode 4 and 5 until Wanda came into the real world for her showdown with Hayward; Wanda reinforced the magic to make the barrier harder to pass through, and that’s when it turned red.

Passing through this magical barrier a third time in her attempt to save Wanda (who she thought was behind the Hex) gave Monica Rambeau her superpowers. She even did the superhero landing Deadpool joked about in his first film that’s become visual shorthand for someone having superpowers.

Now that we know the Westview anomaly was Agatha All Along, that raises the question of what Agatha actually wants. She clearly wanted Wanda and Vision to have children; she pushed them into a romantic evening in the first episode and was behind the town’s creepy, synchronized “For the children” chant in the second.

Tommy and Billy also only aged around Agatha; first while she was watching them as babies, then when she brought the doghouse for Sparky and then Wanda had to talk them out of aging themselves up again when Sparky died, which was also Agatha’s doing. Maybe she was trying to get the twins alone to try to age them up again and we’ll see them as teens in the final two episodes.

After the birth of the twins, Agatha focused on creating strife in Wanda and Vision’s marriage, starting right after they were born, hinting that something is wrong through Herb. She even sent Pietro and pointed Vision to the edge of the anomaly by sitting there in her car pretending to be frozen like the rest of the people at the edge of town. She really gave up the plot at that point, as she still responded to Agnes when Vision “freed” her from mind control even though everyone in Westview has a TV name, not their own.

That book in Agatha’s basement with the red glowing energy (that matches Wanda’s) isn’t a coincidence, either. One theory is that she needs Wanda to use her powers so she can siphon them off into the book or use them to open the book for whatever reason, possibly to summon the show’s real villain. That would explain why the “Previously on WandaVision” from the recap had been re-recorded for every episode to sound slightly more lethargic which each episode.

Despite her theme music describing her as “insidious” and “perfidious,” maybe Agatha Harkness isn’t actually evil. Pietro, who we know is under Agatha’s control, pointed out in episode 6 that Wanda’s powers had really grown from what they appeared to be in Age of Ultron. And Billy has inherited Wanda’s hex powers now that he’s grown up. Maybe Agatha is using Wanda’s powers to keep that ominous book closed so whatever is inside stays inside. And maybe she’s trying to increase Wanda’s magical abilities (as well as create another magic user in Billy) in order to fight some as-of-yet unnamed evil being.

That’s something of a longshot, but WandaVision has been so full of twists that this could be another misdirect. But Agatha Harkness was never evil in the comics per se, and she was Wanda’s mentor in the mystical arts.

There’s also the matter of Monica’s “aerospace engineer” friend and that promised “big guest star” that didn’t get leaked. Teyonah Parris told comicbook.com “I can’t wait to see what y’all’s reaction is when you learn with the aerospace engineer is.” The person we met in episode 7 who delivered the rover Monica attempted to breach the anomaly with was not an existing Marvel character and was played by a relatively unknown actress. One of two things is going on here: either that wasn’t the engineer Monica was talking about who delivered the rover or she’s a Skrull, tying the show into both Captain Marvel and the upcoming Secret Invasion series. Billy’s husband in the comics, Hulkling, is the son of the Kree hero Captain Marvel and a daughter of the Skrull emperor, so he could be introduced in Captain Marvel 2 or Secret Invasion. We’ve already seen at least one of their Young Avengers teammates, Ant-Man’s daughter Cassie Lang, and Hawkeye is set to introduce Kate Bishop, the new, better Hawkeye to the MCU.

If Major Goodner is revealed to be a Skrull, that means the promised guest star could be anyone, though Doctor Strange would be the safest bet at that point. Whatever Agatha is up to, Wanda’s powers have grown incredibly fast and she’s going to need someone to help her learn how to harness them.