WandaVision episode 4: Monica's return and Agnes theories

WandaVision episode 4, released on January 29, 2021, finally stepped outside Wanda's sitcom world, and we came away excited. The verdict in our discussion was that it was "so far the best episode by far." The series, WandaVision (2021), stars Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany.

Monica Rambeau's return from the snap opened WandaVision episode 4

Going in, we hoped to see what happened after Monica, known inside the sitcom as Geraldine, was thrown out of Wanda's reality. We also wanted to see what was going on outside Westview. Instead, the episode began with Monica coming back from the snap and asking for her mother, only to learn that Maria Rambeau had died years earlier.

The reaction in the room was immediate: "i didn't even know i wanted that until i just got it." It was described as sad, awkward and traumatic, made worse by the thought that she could have had two more years with her mom. There was also a point about her being kept planetside to avoid a traumatic return to space. Maybe they should have sent her to space, the thinking went, though who knows what would have happened there.

SWORD, Darcy and Jimmy showed Westview from the outside

The police said Westview, New Jersey, did not exist, even though Westview did. Something stopped people from wanting to go in. The feeling was that this was either Wanda or someone else very powerful. A drone was pulled in, and then Monica was pulled in too.

Within 24 hours SWORD had built its operation. A steady amount of cosmic microwave background radiation was coming through, and an old tube TV with antennas was set up to pick up the signal. The beekeeper turned out to be an agent sent in through the sewers. SWORD believed someone was censoring the broadcast, but the sense in the discussion was that the censor was Wanda herself.

The scene of Vision with gray skin and a sunken forehead was called frightening, "a bit like a horror movie." It came across as possibly Wanda's last real image of him. Darcy stating plainly that he was dead, not blipped, was a moment we liked.

Agnes, Agatha Harkness and the Mephisto theory

SWORD matched a driver's license to every resident except, we thought, her, and nobody talked about it. In the comics she is Agatha Harkness. The speculation was that Wanda wanted this so badly that Agatha was helping her, and that Mephisto could be involved that way. She was also, we thought, the first person besides Vision to interact with Wanda.

The missing persons report raised another idea. Family members did not know who investigators meant, which suggested Wanda could affect people outside Westview, though this was all speculation. Hydra had appeared in the commercials, so the assumption was that Hydra might be behind it, or perhaps AIM.

The open questions after episode 4

The big question then was what triggered Wanda's reality. The beekeeper raised another: after Wanda rewound that scene, did he get stuck inside? The expectation was that the next episode would mix scenes inside and outside Wanda's world.

The episode ran about 28 minutes, with six minutes of credits, and felt far too short. As the discussion put it, the show does a really good job of making you want more.