After spending its first five episodes exploring both sides idealogies and philosophies, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier comes to a decisively centrist view point in the end. It’s not about left wing or right wing, both wings together are what makes things fly.
It is quite clear that John Walker has lost the plot here, and Bucky and Sam need to get that shield out of his hands before more damage can be done.
Well, after a brief break we are back with yet another Season’s Writings article for The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. For the sake of brevity, we will be covering both episode three and four in this week’s write up—and there is quite a bit to get through, to be sure. Episode three picked up on the cliffhanger ending of episode two, with Bucky and Sam confronting Baron Zemo in gaol, to get more information from him regarding the Flag Smashers. Without Sam’s approval, Bucky aids Zemo in busting out of prison and we are off to the races. Zemo makes a fantastic foil for our heroes and it is hard not to like the guy—despite his being a bad guy and what not. Zemo guides Sam and Bucky to Madripoor, which in the Marvel comics has a lot of significance in relation to the X-Men, but that isn’t of importance in this show. Instead, Madripoor is the location of the mysterious Power Broker, a shadowy figure who had ordered the manufacturing of a new …
I have to give it to Marvel here: they really pulled a fast one here. While it would have been easy to make John Walker an awful human being and completely undeserving of the shield, they did the complete opposite—presenting him not only as a man trying to do his best and fulfil the role of Captain America, but one who genuinely seems to be a good man, not so different from Steve Rogers. This flipping of the script places our heroes in an interesting predicament. While it’s clear that John Walker is not a bad man implicitly, and he is simply trying to fulfil his responsibilities and do his best to follow in Steve’s footsteps, Sam and Bucky can’t help but not like the guy. After all, Steve chose Sam, and not this John Walker bloke. There were a lot of interesting elements on show in this episode, but the crux of the episode is the reunion and newfound partnership of Sam and Bucky—who both decide to team up together to investigate the Flag …
We didn’t have to wait too long for our next dose of Marvel, as The Falcon and The Winter Soldier launched on Disney Plus after only a week’s break since WandaVision ended in climactic fashion. Immediately, it becomes clear that The Falcon and The Winter Soldier is more in line with the MCU’s expected style than WandaVision was. It is action, intrigue, witty banter, and some authentic emotional beats throughout—all staples of what makes the MCU so successful. The episode takes place several months after the events of Avengers: Endgame and, after a heroic mission that felt very Top Gun-esque, we see that The Falcon has refused Captain America’s wish for him to take up his mantle and shield. Instead, he opts to hand the shield over to the government—who put it into the Captain America museum we saw back in Captain America: Winter Soldier. This decision feels like the furthest thing from what Cap would have wanted, considering his entire story arc was about not trusting in the government and believing that the “safest …
A part of me left the final episode of WandaVision feeling underwhelmed; but, after some thought and contemplation, I realise that a lot of the reason I had felt that way was due to unreasonable, great expectations that I had ultimately conceived in my own mind. Not unlike Wanda conceived the reality of the Hex in her mind, I had conceived several notions about what and who I thought should appear in this series. However, this was never meant to be a show about Reed Richards, Mephisto, and the X-Men universe’s Quicksilver, this was always meant to be a show about Wanda Maximoff and The Vision, and it is only fitting that this final episode gives them the spotlight—no surprise cameos or shocking twists to steal their thunder. Ultimately, most everything is wrapped up neatly as the episode concludes, leaving the major plot lines of the series resolved. Wanda defeats Agatha at her own game, Vision and White Vision have a big CGI fight (and then a philosophical debate), Fake Pietro was just a dude …
“What is grief, if not love persevering?”—poetic words from Vision that tell us everything we need to know about WandaVision. At its core, this is a series about grief, what it means, and how it can affect us all. This week’s episode is focused in on giving the answers we have been looking for. As we saw last week, Agatha Harkness has been manipulating things in the background in WandaVision and we learn here that although she has been pulling some strings, she is not the one who created the Hex, nor does she have control over it. Instead, she is a curious witch; an ancient one indeed, as we see her during Salem in 1693. Agatha is simply curious about how Wanda has done this spell-to-end-all-spells, and so she forces Wanda to take a trip through her memories in order to get to the bottom of it. We see Wanda’s childhood and come to understand why the reality of the Hex is in the form of sitcoms; it is honestly the most simple answer, …
Well, it looks like the theories were right. Agnes is Agatha Harkness and—as we learn in the chilling musical number that concludes this episode—when it comes to many of the series questions and mysteries, well, it is was Agatha all along. Fans of the Scarlet Witch comics would be familiar with the character of Agatha Harkness, a super-powered witch who has both served as a mentor and antagonist to Wanda in the comics. Many had theorised that Agnes was an abbreviation of Agatha Harkness and we learn here that that was correct. The episode opens in what is now a 2010s-style mockumentary sitcom, in the same vein as Modern Family or The Office. We discover that Wanda is slowly losing control of the world around her, as items are changing appearance without her say so, and things generally just seem to be falling apart. Lucky for Wanda, Agnes rocks up just in time to take care of the kids and give her some “me time”. On the other side of town is Vision, who is …
Shit has well and truly hit the fan on WandaVision. Following last week’s shocking cliffhanger ending, where we were introduced to the recast Pietro (as portrayed by Evan Peters), we are now in a Malcolm in the Middle–style sitcom, and it is Halloween in Westview. The episode makes great use of the unique style of Malcolm in the Middle and gives some great material for Tommy and Billy to work with, as we see them breaking the fourth wall and talking to the audience, much like Malcolm would do. While Malcolm in the Middle was an overall positive-vibe show, this episode is utterly fuelled by an undercurrent of dread. This reality that Wanda has been happily living in is falling apart at the seems and it seems to have devastating implications ahead. Wanda had planned for the family to go trick-or-treating together but Vision decides to go off script, claiming he is going to be part of the neighbourhood watch. Wanda knows this isn’t the plan but she loves Vision and doesn’t want to fight …
Marvel have really left us on a tantalising cliffhanger this week on WandaVision. Despite the longer episode run time, I was left begging for more, with the episode ending in shocking fashion with the appearance of a certain character who, you could say, you may not have seen coming. This week’s episode expands upon the series’ formula thus far, after last week’s break from the sitcom style to give us a look at the world outside of Westview. This week, we get pretty much an even split as the sitcom world continues in a 1980s style—reminiscent of Family Ties or Rosanne—alongside the ongoing events outside of the anomaly, as both begin to truly intersect. The events in the sitcom world largely revolve around Wanda and Vision now having to be parents to young Tommy and Billy. However, unlike previous episodes where things were slightly off-kilter, the wheels are well and truly off the wagon now. Agnes in an odd moment asks Wanda if she would like her to “take it from the top” and redo …
It seems that the villain of WandaVision has been hiding in plain sight all along. Who’d have thunk it? Certainly not this humble viewer. However, episode four of WandaVision goes to great lengths to confirm what we had hoped wouldn’t be true: Wanda is seemingly the one behind this strange new reality and has potentially enslaved an entire town of people to play a part in her elaborate sitcom fantasy. Episode four begins in a truly intense fashion as we flashback to the events of Avengers: Endgame, when The Hulk had used the Infinity Gauntlet to bring back everyone who was snapped out of existence during “The Blip”. We see Monica Rambeau materialise in a hospital, as dozens begin materialising all around her. She learns that she has been missing for five years and, during that time, her mother and best mate of Captain Marvel, Maria “Photon” Rambeau, has lost her battle with cancer. We see the world slowly begin to adjust to half the universe’s population returning and see that a new organization has …
After the world of WandaVision entered into the age of colour television at the end of last weeks episode, we join Wanda and Vision in a Brady Bunch–style sitcom setting as they come to grips with the reality that Wanda is now pregnant—and it is progressing remarkably fast. The episode continues the general plot of Wanda and Vision trying to keep their super abilities a secret from the other inhabitants of Westview, but the reality in which they live has well and truly begun to crumble. The surprise being that Wanda is seemingly aware of the false reality she is living in and able to manipulate it, should it venture too far from her ideal fantasy life. There is a crucial moment midway through the episode where Vision appears to begin questioning things, telling Wanda that “Something isn’t quite right here.” With a brief look of sadness on Wanda’s face, the episode suddenly appears to glitch or skip back a few moments and Vision no longer seems to be questioning the insanity around him and …
After an eighteen-month-long hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic—which felt like an infinity, to be sure—the Marvel Cinematic Universe is back with the Disney+ series WandaVision. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder and that was definitely the case when it came to the MCU. I watched the debut of WandaVision with the biggest, goofiest of smiles etched across my face. It was good to be back in the world of Marvel again, although things aren’t quite as they seem in WandaVision. The first episode opens in the style of golden-age sitcoms and television of a bygone era. The entire episode is in black and white, and we are introduced to the familiar faces of Wanda Maximoff and Vision, albeit styled as husband and housewife of the 1950s. It is immediately clear that things are not as they seem, with countless curious moments that highlight the surreal reality that Wanda and Vision now inhabit, but the series does not yet stray too far from it’s sitcom genre framing. Rather brilliantly, the show actually plays …
