WandaVision episode 7 reaction: Agatha, Monica, Nightmare

WandaVision Episode 7 arrived on February 19, 2021, and my verdict at the time was that it was "really great." The Disney+ series (2021), starring Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany, ended this one on the reveal that Agnes was Agatha, and my reaction was that "this has been Agatha's show all along." I thought it was a great place to end, though I couldn't believe how short it was.

The Agatha reveal set up the Wanda battle I expected

The descent into Agnes's basement was creepy to me, very Stranger Things, like a Sabrina crossover, even like The Addams Family. Once Agatha was revealed, I said I had told everyone there was going to be a big battle between Wanda and Agatha, and that it was going to happen. My read was that the show was lining up science and witch villains, one after Vision and one after Wanda, with red versus purple magic. I was very happy for Kathryn Hahn. "What a place to end it."

The show is very good at ending on cliffhangers, and I called this the worst ending of them, the kind where you're left saying oh my god. A post credits scene also turned up, after I had assumed there wouldn't be one.

Monica gets her powers, and Evan Peters may be Nightmare

Before Monica drove through Wanda's barrier, I suspected she was still going to get superpowers, and that's what happened. I'd have driven very slowly. Her transformation looked very cool, and I came out of it in favor of the change. Then came her very blue eyes and what looked like a superhero landing. I loved her having her powers and hoped she'd start to use them more.

On Evan Peters, I admitted I didn't know who he was, and I didn't know why Agatha would create the wrong Pietro. Still, I leaned in: "I think he's definitely Nightmare. I don't think he's Mephisto." There was a rumor that Nightmare would show up in Doctor Strange too, so I switched my allegiance to him, and floated that it might be Nightmare and Agatha teaming up. I was glad Peters wasn't totally gone.

I didn't know who Dottie was, and I wondered where the twins were.

Runtime, rumors and the sitcom styles

The episode listed at 38 minutes, which I expected meant about half an hour once seven to eight minutes of credits were counted, and that's how short it felt. Before it aired, someone spread a claim credited to Kevin Feige that the last three episodes would be an hour long, with no source cited. It was fake. My advice was not to spread anything without a source or a known scooper. I did hope the last two might run an hour, maybe the finale an hour and a half on March 5.

Other spoilers had been wrong too: people said this episode would show Vision being broken out, and it didn't. I was glad, because we want to be surprised. On calls for Magneto, I didn't think it was going to happen, at least not yet. And on the sitcom homage, I didn't think the show did much with the Modern Family or The Office styles; it felt more like general to camera sitcoms.

With two episodes left at the time, my feeling was that we were closing in on answers, and I was very excited.