WandaVision Ep. 4 review

It felt like a lot of folks were confused and quickly getting frustrated with WandaVision too early. The throwback sitcom setup was off-putting to others who wanted all the answers right away.

If that was you, then sit back and enjoy this one as it basically explains exactly what’s been going on. And not just with Wanda and Vision.

In a lot of ways Spider-Man: Far From Home took a distant approach to the events that occurred in Avengers: Endgame. A Spider-Man film didn’t need to tackle the traumatic nature of people being returned to existence, which made the opening act of this episode so powerful.

Instead of shifting immediately to the 80s as has been the pattern of the show, we get another flashback of sorts detailing what happens with The Blip.

We see how jarring it was when people’s ashes reassembled. One of them was Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), the daughter of Maria Rambeau — Carol Danvers’ BFF. Monica is shocked to learn her mother’s cancer return and killed her two years after she vanished.

Monica can’t dwell on lost time and returns to work at SWORD — Sentient Weapon Observation Response Division, the organization her mother created.

Additionally, she had guidelines set in motion for the return of the vanished. Since she can’t get back to monitoring extraterrestrial threats or allies, Monica takes a missing persons case from the FBI.

Traveling to an unremarkable town called Westlake, Monica meets FBI agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park), who reveals the town doesn’t actually exist and doesn’t seem that inviting to visitors. A drone vanishes and when Monica disappears too, Jimmy calls in reinforcements.

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Completing the homecoming of characters from various Marvel Studios films, Darcy from the Thor films is among a group of experts brought in. It’s Darcy who deciphers the harmless radiation is transmitting a signal she can see via an old cathode TV set.

Darcy felt like a character that didn’t need revisiting after two Thor films, but she comes off like a better fit with SWORD. Gradually we start seeing the connections from the first two episodes as SWORD Director Tyler Hayward (Josh Stamberg) sends an agent into the sewers that Wanda dispatched.

They start identifying the other people on the show that don’t seem to have any connection to Wanda or Vision. How was this “cast” assembled? Darcy figures out how to communicate through the radio and Jimmy tries to get a message across.

The one big mystery left is who’s censoring the broadcast so Jimmy and Darcy didn’t see Wanda toss Monica out of Westlake when she mentioned Pietro and Ultron.

I loved the shot of Monica rising up from the ground and saying ‘It’s all Wanda.’ That gave the episode a certain horror movie flair. If that wasn’t enough, Wanda seeing the destroyed Infinity War Vision for a moment suggests things are not well in Westlake.

Vision seems to be aware of what’s going on to some degree too as he breaks his smiling face for the briefest of moments. Is he playing along for Wanda’s mental health sake?

Of all the episodes this was the most frustrating having to wait another week for the next installment. We got so many answers but waiting another seven days for more breadcrumbs is going to feel very long.

This episode goes a totally different direction than what we’ve see so far from WandaVision. It should also help viewers questioning the show that yes, Marvel Studios knows exactly what it’s doing with this series. Let’s get to next week already.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Photo Credit: Disney+