Shocking Guest Star Changes MCU Forever

If last week’s perspective-altering episode of “WandaVision” brought Marvel fans back into the fold, the closing minutes of this week’s breathless episode must have them hyperventilating with a surprise guest star that permanently alters the MCU forever.

Before we get to that, though, we should say that we appreciate the hybrid structure this episode explored, with perspective shifting form the now-1980s sitcom world inside Westview to the work being done outside the Maximoff Anomaly.

It’s particularly important we keep this dual perspective at this point because it looks like the slight degrading of the perfect sitcom reality Wanda’s created that began in the 1970s is nearly collapsing in on itself.

Once again, this week answered several of our key questions, further solidifying just who is in control of things in Westview right now — though we still have questions about how it started and just what Agnes’ role is — and exactly what this Vision is.

We also got a definitive timeline for how long this has been going on, as well as a sense of just how powerful Wanda is. We thought there was something to the fact that Monica came out wearing those ’70s digs when Wanda booted her from the simulation.

After seeing the drone turned into a helicopter, a hazmat suit into a beekeeper’s suit and even a cable into a jump rope, we had a feeling these were permanent physical alterations, which would indicate reality-altering abilities that are off the scale.

So just how powerful is Wanda? That answer may be absolutely terrifying. While we agree that Heyward is a dick, Darcy, we’re not entirely sure he’s wrong to think of Wanda as a terrorist. After all, we also learned that there are literally thousands of people trapped in Westview.

We don’t know how Darcy’s email made its way into the simulated world, or why the entire office staff “read” it out loud, but it has us wondering if it will become harder and harder for Wanda to control everything in this reality as she moves forward and the technology inside Westview moves closer in line with that outside.

It’s particularly dangerous for her because Vision is technology. We saw that in action this week, as he was able to temporarily disrupt her control over Norm in that same scene. It was heartbreaking finding that he has a family, he’s in pain under Wanda’s control and he’s terrified.

And yet, when Vision confronted Wanda about it, she tried to deny everything. We kind of loved the conceit of Wanda trying to end his confrontation by trying to end the episode, even triggering the closing credits.

But it was Vision who was able to disrupt and even stop those by fighting back and resisting her. Wanda doesn’t have as much control over this reality as she might want, or perhaps it’s just Vision she doesn’t have control. What’s interesting is that he seems to have some control.

We still don’t know exactly what’s going on with Vision, but he may be more tied into the VR aspect of this surreality than we first suspected. That means that if he regains some sense of who he is and what’s going on here, he might be able to stop it or at least influence the reality like Wanda does.

From the outside, we saw that Wanda stormed the S.W.O.R.D. facility holding Vision’s body nine days ago and somehow resurrected him. So it would seem this is the real Vision we’re seeing in Westview. That would fit the brief shot of him we saw with the caved in head.

Or would it? If she can permanently change reality, why would she not be able to permanently fix that damage? Or what that an illusion, and the Vision we’re usually seeing here is what he actually looks like?

We also learn within the sitcom world that for all Vision is figuring out that Wanda is in control and things aren’t what they seem, he has no recollection of a life before Westview. He has no idea what lies outside the town, and he’s bristling to fill in those gaps.

It may be that this is a rebooted Vision, but he clearly has no access to his prior memories. So is this the same Vision, or some new entity that exists inside his husk. As we also learned that she resurrected him against his living will, she might be suppressing his past identity to keep him from knowing she violated his wishes in her grief.

Darcy made it pretty clear that she believes the twins are truly Wanda’s babies, though what they really are has to be in question. After all, in a sitcom trope, they aged up (twice!) in this episode alone to the point they’re now ten years old.

Even more telling, they did so intentionally at one point, after being told they wouldn’t be old enough to have a dog until they were ten, and considered doing it again after that same dog died later in the episode.

That moment triggered a conversation about grief and loss and having to know when to let go and say goodbye. But the twins seemed to know that Wanda could circumvent death, which obviously leads one to think of Vision.

At another point, they questioned the way time works in their reality, wondering how Vision is at work if it’s Saturday. Wanda tried to say it was now Monday (sitcom logic allows jumps like this, but the boys aren’t sensing them properly) before changing her story.

How much do they know of her powers? If they are pieces of her in a more literal sense than actual children, perhaps they know everything that’s going on. Now that we know Vision was brought in and the other citizens are trapped there, overwritten by Wanda, the only entities in Westview we have no explanation for at all are the twins (and Agnes, but more on her in a second).

So what are they? What do they know? And what other powers do they have? If they can do even a fraction of what Wanda can do, aside from aging themselves up, they could be a real danger to her power here.

We still don’t know exactly what Agnes is, but we’re starting to wonder if maybe she isn’t an in-game ally to Wanda. Not quite an NPC, as she seems to have some autonomy, but another individual who may be fully aware of what’s going on.

At the same time, Wanda seemed genuinely confused when Agnes asked about taking it “from the top” when she failed to deliver her line. Suddenly, Agnes was an actress looking to her director for how to proceed. But Vision picked up on all the oddities of the moment.

We couldn’t tell if Wanda was truly confused by Agnes seeking to reshoot the scene, or if she was bristling at Agnes being so upfront about it in front of Vision. Is it possible that in previous episodes and decades they were able to do this, but it’s proving more challenging now?

If Agnes is an in-game ally, then who is the true architect of Westview? Perhaps Wanda is in control of it, but did someone else set it up as a sanctuary for her and Vision in some kind of deal with Wanda? Maybe there’s an even more powerful entity that’s controlling the overall broadcast, allowing Wanda directorial power.

She did say at one point that she doesn’t know how all of this started. We’re still on the fence about just how immersed Wanda is in this reality, whether she’s playing a role or at least somewhat under its spell, as well.

She even told Vision at the end, when he was really pushing against her control, that she’s not in control of absolutely everything. That quickly became clear.

In what is easily one of the most shocking moments across the entire MCU, Wanda found herself faced with a mind-blowing family reunion at the end of the episode, and she seemed genuinely stunned. She as much as told Vision she did not have their doorbell ring at that moment in their fight.

And yet, somehow, she did recognize her brother standing there. So did Marvel fans, even though he’s never before been seen in the MCU. That’s because it wasn’t Aaron Taylor-Johnson (who portrayed Pietro before his death in the MCU) but Evan Peters standing there.

That’s right, the Fox X-Men Universe just came crashing right into the MCU with, as Darcy brilliantly put it,” a “recast” of Pietro Maximoff. This has huge ramifications for the MCU going forward if it really is him and not some projection.

Suddenly, the entire X-Men universe of characters could be involved in the Maximoff Anomaly. Certainly Wanda and Pietro have a long and storied history with the X-Men in Marvel’s comic book universe.

But another huge thing to notice is that even though Wanda did somehow recognize Evan Peters as her long-lost brother, Darcy recognized that this was not the Quicksilver of the MCU. So if this is the Fox X-Men Universe converging in some way, it’s not going to be just a seamless merger.

On top of that, Wanda seems to have no idea how he got there, which raises the question … how did he get there? Is the Fox X-Men Universe currently a parallel universe to the MCU and he somehow crossed over? After all, Pietro in the MCU is still dead, so no matter who’s playign him, he shouldn’t be alive.

On top of that, no matter how he got into the MCU, how did he manage to get into Wanda’s Westview construct? Is he immune to her powers because of their blood relationship? That could perhaps explain why her boys seem to be as well.

If Pietro were a construct created by Wanda, he would look like the brother she knew, right? So this can’t be that. This has to be the real Pietro from the Fox X-Men Universe. So what does his involvement mean for this show and the future of the MCU?

Could more familiar faces from the Fox X-Men films be on their way? How quickly will they infiltrate the MCU and how will they do it? Phase 4 already seems to be playing with alternate universes, and this appearance really does feel like that.

If last week’s episode didn’t hook fans of Marvel into the potential and importance of this series to the bigger picture, this episode should be bringing every single one of them into the fold. This may prove to be the single most important series of the MCU yet.

It was so appropriate that Wanda reunited with her brother and we even saw serious trouble in her marriage to Vision, as well as rapidly aging children this week as the sitcom world shifted into the 1980s.

This was the era of the “very special episode,” with sitcoms taking carefully promoted time to talk about serious issues, like grief and loss by having a puppy die from eating azalea bushes.

We also have to give a nod to the “Family Ties”-inspired opening credits and song filled with lots of clues. There are lines about not being able to control kids, and we have a feeling these kids are going to be a big part of this reality’s undoing.

We also appreciated the “we’re making it up as we go along” moment, revealing that Wanda may technically be in control, but in many ways she’s flying by the seat of her pants here and barely hanging on by a thread.

We saw that with an incredible sequence where Heyward actually flew an ’80s-era drone into Westview and actually tried to shoot a missile at Wanda (Monica didn’t know about the missile). In an incredible sequence, Wanda herself came out of the anomaly to fearlessly confront Heyward and all his men, hurling their missile back at them, useless.

As she stepped out, unlike Monica, her look did revert back to modern day, emphasizing she is in absolute control (even if we’re not so sure about that). We also heard her native Sokovian accent return.

This was a cold, sinister and quite frankly, terrifying Wanda who told everyone in no uncertain terms that this would be their only warning. She then returned to the anomaly, changing the border to a red color. We suspect she just upped its security.

The problem is that there are thousands of people in there. We get that she is grieving Vision’s loss and seems to have lost herself a bit along the way, but that is a lot of people kidnapped and being psychologically tortured (remember Norm’s pain).

There’s another tantalizing clue after they did what appeared to be a brain scan on Monica only to have it come back completely blank. What could that mean? Monica seems to be fully in her right mind, but a blank scan might indicate she isn’t … or maybe she isn’t even Monica? Or maybe the damage Wanda did to her brain permanently altered it into something else.

Is Wanda fully aware of what she’s doing to people? We’ve seen moments in the sitcom world where she seemed immersed in her character. We’re just not sure if she’s acting it out, as Agnes appears to be, or if she has in a way rewritten her own brain to fully live in this world in the same blissful ignorance she thinks she’s giving Vision (and maybe everyone else).

“WandaVision” just blew our minds again. What does it have in store for us next Thursday on Disney+?