Stay through the credits this week again.

 

An incredible episode, with some deep cuts and largely visual/thematic ties to the controversial but gripping and very influential John Byrne Avengers West Coast run - 

Spoiler

the image of the disassembled Vision's wiring, as well as his resurrection in the all-white form, are from Byrne's run.

 

Unlike Byrne though, who ultimately destroyed the couple and their family while pursuing an editorially-aborted remake of his Dark Phoenix/Days of Future Past storylines from X-Men with Wanda in the key role, I don't think this story will be doing that.

 

I had a feeling this would be coming, but the fateful silhouette Wanda saw in the light during her Infinity Gem encounter - complete with the famous horned cowl we saw hinted at two weeks ago - and the ending line made me gasp nonetheless.

 

Elizabeth Olsen's place in the Marvel canon in recent years has often overshadowed the beginning of her career as a very powerful dramatic actress. Her work in Sean Durkin's Martha Marcy May Marlene is incredibly good and made her an in-demand young star. This episode should hopefully educate more people. Kathryn Hahn is equally great and always has been.

Edited February 26, 20214 yr by Vee

2 hours ago, Vee said:

Stay through the credits this week again.

 

An incredible episode, with some deep cuts and largely visual/thematic ties to the controversial but gripping and very influential John Byrne Avengers West Coast run - 

  Reveal hidden contents

the image of the disassembled Vision's wiring, as well as his resurrection in the all-white form, are from Byrne's run.

 

Unlike Byrne though, who ultimately destroyed the couple and their family while pursuing an editorially-aborted remake of his Dark Phoenix/Days of Future Past storylines from X-Men with Wanda in the key role, I don't think this story will be doing that.

 

I had a feeling this would be coming, but the fateful silhouette Wanda saw in the light during her Infinity Gem encounter - complete with the famous horned cowl we saw hinted at two weeks ago - and the ending line made me gasp nonetheless.

 

Elizabeth Olsen's place in the Marvel canon in recent years has often overshadowed the beginning of her career as a very powerful dramatic actress. Her work in Sean Durkin's Martha Marcy May Marlene is incredibly good and made her an in-demand young star. This episode should hopefully educate more people. Kathryn Hahn is equally great and always has been.

 

Is that one of those right wing channels?

33 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

Is that one of those right wing channels?

I hope not. Never got that vibe from them. They make some interesting points.

I don't watch random clickbait videos. But based on its title, It's also wrong. He's credited this week.

Thoughts on the newest episode:

 

What a wonderful performance from Elizabeth Olsen in this episode - some portions, like the visions after the experiment performed on her, and her complete breakdown at her Westview home, had some of the evocative power of silent film in trusting the actor to get every agony and sense of awe across for us. I have never felt that the MCU could properly portray Wanda Maximoff, who is such a horribly complex and horribly treated character, but this episode did a lot of justice to making the MCU version a compelling and layered character in her own right. The MCU version has even more of a devastating sense of loss surrounding her (as in the comics, Pietro was at least alive much of the time, even if he was on the moon for many of those years), which was used to strong effect here.

 

And as a longtime comics fan who still remembers when these shows had the “no tights, no flights” type of attitude, it made me feel very happy to finally hear the words “Scarlet Witch.” No more of superhero monikers being verboten, an eternal victim of winking and shame.

 

My only real complaint about this episode was the clunky way they utilized Wanda using sitcoms as an escape - it feels like they just came up with something to justify the sitcom-per-week format which was such a great hook to sell a show on. Only with the Vision and Wanda scene at the compound did the idea come together for me. I would have preferred if Agatha had whipped up the sitcom element of her own volition.

 

I prefer the Agatha Harkness of the comics (who is manipulative and did goad Wanda into power tests/expansions at times, but also cared about Wanda), but we got a more delicate take on her here than I would have expected - she’s still a villain, but not as bwahaha as I had feared in the previous episode. She was genuinely fascinated by Wanda and how to use her, which served as a good mirror to Hayward’s plans for Vision. I appreciated that as an Easter Egg they had her in her comics getup at the end of the episode, even though it must have been confusing for fans who don’t know the comics version.

 

I thought the opener with Agatha and her coven was very well done - it would have been easy to let the CGI just do all the talking there, but Kathryn Hahn and the woman who played the head witch/Agatha’s mother were both great and made me feel a lot of the regret and pain and finally the complete transfer of power and loss of any sense of rationality. That whole segment really felt like a comic book panel come to life, which is not easy to do.

 

Good casting of Wanda’s parents, especially her mother, who reminded me of Elizabeth Olsen. I was thrown throughout that whole sequence because the Maximoff living room reminded me so much of the set for David Lynch’s “Rabbits” series.

 

I know some fans were disappointed at the thought of Wanda being manipulated because it would have been another example of the MCU not wanting to dirty up superheroes too much. I thought they got the balance right here, fortunately - she meant well, she tried her hardest through some incredibly traumatic and cruel moments, and she just broke. The scene of her keeping her composure even after Hayward tricked her into seeing the Vision’s dissected corpse was key to this - it showed a basic respect for the integrity of the character that we saw how hard she tried to be good. She was treated much more humanely than in the comics version, where, from what I remember of that trash (sorry to any fans), amounted to a quick flashback of another character reminding Wanda of her losses and then we are reminded she had blocked everything out and bing bang boom, she is now on a killing spree.

 

I always thought the shift to White Vision in the comics, at John Byrne’s apparent insistence because he felt that Wanda was basically in love with a toaster, was so depressing, and soured many of my happier memories of the characters and their relationship, and was one of the first glimpses of the nihilist, overwrought tone of modern comics that I saw (I know it wasn’t the first by any means, just the first that affected characters I was invested in). I have mixed feelings about seeing this again, but the idea works much better (or has the potential to, anyway) in this format.

 

I’ll be sorry to see the show end, but it’s been a great ride - much more than I might have expected. 

 

I wonder if Agatha’s link to the Fantastic Four will ever be explored in the MCU. Probably not, as I don’t ever see them exploring Franklin Richards. Hahn is a revelation though. 

1 hour ago, BetterForgotten said:

I wonder if Agatha’s link to the Fantastic Four will ever be explored in the MCU. Probably not, as I don’t ever see them exploring Franklin Richards. 

 

Oh, they will sooner or later.

SPOILER-ish leaked image from next week's finale (not too spoilery, but still):

 

Spoiler

 

Edited February 28, 20214 yr by Vee

I'm glad I waited to watch this, rather than looking at each episode piecemealed. The show didn't really start to get interesting until the last few minutes of episode 3 with the Wanda and Monica tension. The show really found it's stride from Episode 4 onward.  Elizabeth Olsen deserves a Primetime Emmy in the Best Lead Actress in a Drama Series category, stat. Like I don't care what Disney has to do, just make it happen. She pretty much single-handedly made Disney's service a thing, that's worth tuning into beyond their bad screen for screen remakes. 

 

Episode 8 was brutal, but also what this entire series needed from the very beginning. I really can't walk around from this episode without a burning hatred for Tony Stark and Tyler Hayward. Literally such awful people, and I feel it would be justified if Wanda hated them for what they put her through. That scene where Tyler gaslights her, is enough to make me want to push his head in. Literally every sentence he said was designed to trigger her. The behavior is just disgusting. Desecrating Visions body in front of her, telling her she has no say in how she can mourn him, and that his body doesn't belong to her but the government -- it brought up really bad themes of slavery to me. Just beyond unfair. But she maintains control the entire time. It makes me even angrier that he basically created Ultron again, by creating a sentient weapon. Showing how Tony continues to be a scourge on this earth. 

 

In the end of the episode, I was actually glad to see her reject the reality that life gave her, and just sort of create her own in sheer denial and obstinance. I would totally do the same thing. I stan. Wanda gave herself the life she deserved, and I don't really see a problem with that, even though what she is doing is technically "wrong" with the mass brainwashing of an entire town. It's hard not to see this story as a bit political, or at least a commentary on gender? Women are constantly told to keep their emotions in check and that they can't get overly emotional, Wanda has to hold back against someone who deserves all of her anger, which is deeply unfair and unsatisfying. The idea that Wanda has this conga-line of grief and she is still seen as someone who deserves to be put down, and is dehumanized when it's men who put her in this position time after time, just makes me seethe. Especially since she came into S.W.O.R.D. peacefully, listened to them, let them point guns at her, threaten her, and walked away without much fuss. It's also kind of wrong that everyone in the universe gets a happy ending but her? 

 

It's kind of cool that they are finally adding Wanda's powers into the MCU, her powers have always been a bit confusing and I feel comic book editors have never known how to describe them: she impacts probability fields, she has magic, she warps reality, she has telekinesis, she reads minds until she can't, etc. Her capabilities are monstrous, but I guess that will help scale Phase 4 effectively. It's hard to not see her as the strongest Avenger moving forward. Even Agatha seems to be completely out of her league. 

Edited March 1, 20214 yr by Skin

 

I have not watched yet, but a friend has advised me: Stay for all the credits this time, as there are apparently multiple surprises.

A great, fun and heartbreaking finale. Definitely stay through the entire credits (and beyond).

 

Spoiler

Words cannot express what it meant to me to finally see the true Scarlet Witch costume embodied onscreen. Right to the last few scenes of the battle I didn't know if they'd really show it in this - I thought they might wait for Doctor Strange 2 - but when they did, I lost it.

 

I knew they'd keep Kathryn Hahn around. We will definitely be seeing Agatha - a gray figure often in the comics - again and I suspect soon. She played everything to the hilt, even the stuff just behind her eyes when Wanda turned her back into "Agnes".

 

Some people are likely going to whine because Evan Peters didn't turn out to be the same Pietro from the X-films, but really, how could you possibly bring over the disastrous continuity of the Fox X-Men? It's obviously a wink towards the multiverse and I am sure we'll see it expanded on a bit in the future to indicate that universe exists and Agatha drew from it in some way, but you're not going to see the Fox universe return in any major way or be ported into the MCU proper. You might see cameos from Jackman, Stewart or McKellen, Fassbender or McAvoy, but I really don't think any one actor will be brought over permanently.

 

They are obviously setting up Bettany continuing as the Vision with the new model regaining his memories, and thank God for that. Olsen and Bettany are way too good together to lose and look poised to become two tentpoles of the new phase of the studio. The final scenes with them and the boys were just crushing stuff. I loved the Incredibles-style stuff with the family in battle.

 

Obviously Wanda and her magic exploration leads directly into Doctor Strange 2, where she is co-lead with Benedict Cumberbatch's Strange - the two children who play the twins have also been filming on that movie, so we know they'll be back. But I'm sure they'll be SORASed soon because all the other Young Avengers are currently cast and either filming or about to start filming on upcoming projects. It will be a shame to lose Julian Hilliard and Jett Klyne but they made a solid foundation for whoever takes over.

 

They finally did the Scarlet Witch and the Vision (and Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany, two brilliant actors) their full justice, though I am glad this has made some people reevaluate Age of Ultron which I thought intro'ed Vision especially beautifully - I've always found it deeply underrated, latter-day controversies in recent days and all.

 

Obviously the Monica stinger has to do with CM2, since the Skrulls are presented as benevolent refugees in the MCU so far, having been friendly with Monica's mother Maria as well as Carol in the first CM movie. Ben Mendelsohn is supposed to be appearing in another MCU series as the lead Skrull in question with Nick Fury.

 

Anyway: Great stuff.