WandaVision episode 8: chaos magic, Chthon and Agatha

WandaVision episode 8 wasn't what many people expected, but I thought it was extremely important to the story. It revealed much of Wanda's backstory, including that she was a witch with powers before she ever came in contact with an Infinity Stone. It also pointed, I believed, to a villain bigger than Agatha Harkness.

WandaVision (2021) is the Disney+ series starring Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany and Kathryn Hahn. Episode 8 led into the finale, which aired on March 5, 2021. Here is what I saw in the episode and what I theorized at the time, spoilers included.

Agatha Harkness could not work out how Wanda built Westview

The whole episode was about one thing: Agatha trying to find out how Wanda did everything. How did she create this fake reality, change it, and control all of these people? Agatha didn't know Wanda. She noticed her spells. She said she sensed the afterglow of so many spells cast at once in Westview, and that she couldn't make heads or tails of it.

That says something, because in the opening scene Agatha overpowered many witches, including her own mother, the head witch. Agatha knows her witchcraft, yet Wanda's magic baffles her. She compares the two. Wanda had thousands of people under her thumb, complex storylines filled out, and witchcraft stretching for miles, with every detail down to the crown molding. Agatha says it took her years to master simple spells like illusion and transmutation.

She doesn't put it all down to the Infinity Stone. She casually says Wanda came in contact with a stone that amplified powers that were already there. She has a theory but needs more evidence, and keeps demanding that Wanda tell her how she did it. At the end she realizes what Wanda is, and we get the Scarlet Witch name drop and the words chaos magic.

Chaos magic and Chthon: how I believed Wanda got her powers

I believed chaos magic revealed the next big bad of the MCU. It's a magic thought to be so powerful it was considered nonexistent; even the Sorcerer Supreme thought it was made up. It can reconstruct, manipulate and warp realities and change the fabric of existence, which is what we'd seen Wanda do. It can also bring total destruction to the cosmos, affecting the entire universe, not just Earth.

This magic came from the Elder God and arch demon Chthon, who used it to rule Earth as the god of chaos. After his rule ended, the mages of Earth spread a lie that there was no god of chaos and no chaos magic. That's why Agatha says Wanda is supposed to be a myth. Before Chthon was banished from the Earth dimension, he touched or marked Wanda and left her with a fraction of his chaos energy.

That's what I believe Agatha realizes. She'd heard the ancient myth, so she knows Chthon must be real and that part of him is in Wanda. In my reading, that's how Wanda got her chaos magic, not from the Infinity Stone. It also meant there was a possibility of Chthon returning to Earth, and I thought we might see that.

Two theories on what Agatha Harkness wanted

I thought one of two things was happening. The first was that Agatha was truly scared. She was depicted as bad, but over 300 years had passed since the opening scene, so she may not have been all that bad anymore. Maybe she came to Westview to investigate the spells, and now that she realized it was Chthon's power, she feared for her life, for the Earth and the universe, and needed to stop Wanda.

Look at her in her lair as she explains how long simple spells took her and how powerful Wanda's spells are: she looks genuinely scared. At the end, when she works out what it is, she looks terrified again.

The second possibility was that she truly was an evil witch, frustrated that Wanda had this power. The opening scene makes it clear Agatha dabbled in the dark arts, which is why the other witches tried to kill her. Having studied dark magic and knowing what chaos magic is, she might try to summon Chthon for her own purposes. Either way, it seemed Wanda had some of her powers because of Chthon, and I believed that would be a big part of the MCU moving forward.

The Salem 1693 opening and the Mors chant

The episode opens in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1693, where and when the real Salem witch trials took place. Between 1692 and 1693, more than 200 people were accused of being witches, 30 were found guilty and 19 were executed by hanging. Here, though, the hunters aren't humans accusing witches. They're witches accusing Agatha of breaking their rules, saying she stole knowledge above her age and station.

Agatha's coven has a hierarchy of ranks, and the higher your rank, the higher the magic you may learn. They accuse her of learning magic she wasn't allowed to, which happened to be the darkest magic. Agatha replies, "I didn't break your rules, they simply bent to my power," admitting she broke them.

The witches then chant in what appears to be Latin, and it seems to start with Mors, the Roman deity of darkness and agony and a personification of death, often depicted with a scythe. We'd talked about death and the Grim Reaper throughout the series, and I'd believed Agatha's brooch has a scythe on it. We learn she got that brooch from her mother, whom she killed. The rest of the chant could mean natural monster. It's unclear whether they're calling her death or calling on death to kill her, but death does seem to be part of WandaVision in some way.

Her mother wears a crown. That could nod to the goddess of witchcraft, but in the comics that goddess wasn't Agatha's mother, so the crown more likely marks her as queen of the witches. I also thought this scene set up Doctor Doom, whose mother Cynthia von Doom was a powerful witch in a coven. Doom has a connection to Mephisto, and I still believed the main villain could be an amalgamation of Chthon, Mephisto and Nightmare.

Señor Scratchy, the protection runes and a possible Magneto Easter egg

Back in Agatha's lair, her rabbit makes a noise and she holds him up and asks what that was, as if he's talking to her. That's what we'd expected since we met Señor Scratchy. Agatha has a son, Nicholas Scratch, who could somehow be the rabbit. My buddy also had a theory that it could be Doctor Strange, transformed after crossing Agatha while going after Wanda; she does mention transmutation. I wasn't sure that would happen, but I thought the rabbit was a person.

Wanda tries to read Agatha's mind and can't. Agatha is too powerful and experienced. Wanda still thinks her powers came from the stone, while Agatha expects her to know spells. Agatha explains protection spells: runes on the wall stop Wanda from doing magic in that space. One rune, glowing purple, looks an awful lot like Magneto's helmet and an M for Magneto.

We'd long speculated that Wanda's father in the MCU could be Magneto. In the comics, Wanda learns the Maximoffs aren't her real parents and Magneto is her dad. I thought Magneto could perhaps be the secret cameo in the final episode that we'd been hearing about.

In another shot, the rabbit sits on a table beside a book with a tree symbol. It resembles, though not exactly, the tree in Captain America: The First Avenger where Red Skull finds the Tesseract, so it could perhaps be an Asgardian book. Agatha has been around a long time, so I'm sure she knows about Asgardians.

Agatha was behind Evan Peters' Pietro

We learn that Evan Peters' Pietro was Agatha's doing. She was possessing him, which explains why he kept asking Wanda how she did everything. She says he was just her eyes and ears, a physical person, and that she couldn't get Wanda's real brother because he wasn't on the same continent and had a bunch of holes in him.

That explained why Vision was sometimes seen dead and Quicksilver once appeared with bullet holes: Agatha was trying to provoke something inside Wanda. She says she waited patiently but now has to resort to controlling her. Was this the Quicksilver from Fox's X-Men universe? I was leaning toward no. I thought he was someone she plucked out of nowhere and that Marvel was being clever with the casting, but I hoped I was wrong and that the multiverse was opening up.

Wanda's childhood in Sokovia and the sitcom DVDs

Wanda has repressed her memories, so Agatha takes her into her past. In Sokovia, Wanda's father sold sitcom DVDs to make money. He comes home with a suitcase full and tells his wife he'll sell them all. Inside are shows the series moved through: I Love Lucy, Bewitched, Malcolm in the Middle, The Addams Family and Who's the Boss.

Pietro reveals that TV night helps them learn English, probably to prepare to move to an English speaking country, which would make sense with their country at war. The parents are trying to lose their Sokovian accents. The series pokes fun at this, including Agnes saying the accent comes and goes. Fans noticed Wanda's accent disappeared after Age of Ultron, so this is Marvel making fun of itself while giving an explanation.

Wanda takes her younger self's place. It's her turn to pick, and she chooses The Dick Van Dyke Show. Pietro says it's always sitcoms with Wanda, which explains why her perfect reality was a sitcom. As The Dick Van Dyke Show starts, the couple on screen is even in separate beds, like Wanda and Vision were in the first couple of episodes.

The Stark missile and Wanda's probability hex

Then a missile hits the house, and we finally see the story Wanda and Pietro told in Age of Ultron: a shell marked Stark landing in front of them as they stared at it. That's why they volunteered for Hydra's experiments and fought alongside Ultron, seeking revenge on Tony Stark. A light on the shell blinks like the red light in the earlier Stark Industries toaster commercial.

The Dick Van Dyke Show keeps playing in the background, and its situation suddenly matches theirs: a scream, then the line "oh what a nightmare," which is what the twins were living through. Wanda comforts herself that at the end of the episode it was all a bad dream. She reaches toward the missile before Agatha pulls her out.

Here our perspective on Wanda changes. Agatha realizes Wanda was a witch from the beginning, and that she stopped the bomb with a probability hex. Wanda thought it was defective. Nexus beings can affect probability, and episode 7's Nexus pill commercial is something we believed referred to Wanda being a Nexus being. Still, her powers weren't that strong yet, so Agatha asks where she got the big guns.

Hydra, the Mind Stone and the Scarlet Witch within

A door with the Hydra symbol leads to the experiments. One of two scientists is a bald man who I believe could be Strucker, despite being a different actor from Age of Ultron, given that Strucker experimented on the twins and the series had Strucker callbacks like the Hydra Strucker watch commercial. Loki's staff sits in the background. One scientist warns that not one subject has survived direct contact, but they start anyway.

As Wanda approaches, the stone leaves the staff and floats before her, as if it knows her and is speaking to her. It's blue at first. When she nearly touches it, it breaks its outer shell, revealing the Mind Stone, and explodes, but something holds it back: the Scarlet Witch. I interpreted that as a manifestation of who was inside Wanda. Proof that only she saw it: when the scientists review the moment, the stone never leaves the scepter.

Agatha says the stone amplified a power inside Wanda that would have died. In my reading, the stone awakened the Scarlet Witch, and the explosion takes place inside her. Back in her room she watches The Brady Bunch. Agatha says she has a theory, which I believe is that Wanda has chaos magic because Chthon marked her.

Vision at the Avengers compound

After Age of Ultron, at the Avengers compound, Wanda is alone in a new country with her brother dead, watching Malcolm in the Middle, one of the shows from her father's suitcase. It most likely brought her comfort but also sadness, reminding her of watching TV with her family.

She senses Vision before he enters and has him sit with her. He's surprisingly human and seems to be starting to understand emotions, which would explain how a synthezoid fell in love with her: he learned those emotions through her. He's surprisingly deep, delivering the line "But what is grief, if not love persevering?" This is where they bond, and even Agatha sheds a tear.

Hayward and the truth at S.W.O.R.D.

Agatha pushes further, and a door to the S.W.O.R.D. facility reveals the truth, not Hayward's lie. It appears to be when Monica Rambeau returned, since the screens show the same news about people coming back from the blip. Wanda stays civil. She tells the man at the front desk she knows Vision is there, and that when she came back he was gone. She wants a funeral and closure for herself.

Hayward shows her they're disassembling Vision, the world's most sophisticated sentient weapon; S.W.O.R.D. stands for Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division. He won't let her leave with three billion dollars of vibranium. When she says Vision is all she has, he answers, "He isn't yours." That sends her over the edge. She breaks the glass and jumps down but only says goodbye, trying to feel him, a callback to Infinity War when she felt the stone inside Vision and said all she feels is him. Now she can't feel him. She leaves without the body, contrary to what Hayward claimed.

Since he rebuilt Vision as his own weapon, it's clear Hayward is a villain. Maybe he's just a jerk, but he could also be a Skrull.

Westview before the Hex and the chaos magic that created Vision

A letter in Wanda's car sends her to Westview, New Jersey, which turns out to be a sad town with businesses closing. Herb walks by without an afro, Norm posts a flyer for piano lessons, and Mrs. Hart doesn't seem happy. Wanda reaches a lot where a house was going to be built, a gift from Vision, whose note says to grow old in, signed with a V and a heart. They were going to leave the superhero life and be together.

Standing on that lot sends her over the edge, and her chaos magic explodes. It looks different from the magic we'd seen before. This is true chaos magic, reshaping Westview into a sitcom reality. A wall ad reads make cleaning up a snap, referencing Thanos and Wanda cleaning up the town, for Lagos paper towels, Lagos being where Wanda accidentally killed people in Captain America: Civil War. A theater sign reads the Tannhäuser Gate, a Blade Runner reference, then Big Red and Kidnapped, since Agatha kidnaps her sons.

Golden energy flows out of Wanda to create Vision. The Mind Stone powered Vision and had a golden yellow color, and it also enhanced Wanda, so this could be energy from the stone inside her, perhaps meaning Vision had some hope of surviving outside the Hex. That's all Agatha needs to see. She grabs the crying twins, looking about to rip their heads off, and names Wanda the Scarlet Witch.

White Vision in the post credits scene

In episode 7, Hayward talked about a launch, and I believed it would be a weapon, another version of Ultron. As it turns out, I was right. S.W.O.R.D. took Vision apart and rebuilt him countless times but lacked a strong enough power source until Wanda threw the drone back, seemingly charged with her power.

This White Vision calls back to the West Coast Avengers version. Instead of the Mind Stone, he seems to have something like Tony Stark's arc reactor in his chest. Vision was originally meant to be Ultron, so this is essentially a different Ultron that S.W.O.R.D. controls, though I didn't think they'd be able to control him for long. With Agatha, Wanda, both Visions, hopefully the twins, Evan Peters' Quicksilver and Monica Rambeau in play, I thought the finale was shaping up to be a big one with many fight sequences.