After last week’s impressive episode, it was always going to be a tricky task to match that level of quality, but with ‘On a Very Special Episode…’ Wandavision just about does it. It might not be perfect or have exactly the same amount of satisfying reveals, but what it does do is start to address what is going on and raise some interesting questions. *Warning: this review includes Spoilers!*
Carrying on from ‘We Interrupt this Program…’, Monica (Teyonah Parris) is back in the S.W.O.R.D. compound and they are trying get some kind of idea of what happened to her while she was inside ‘The Hex’ as Darcy (Kat Dennings) has christened it. There is incomplete data and no one is exactly sure what Wanda’s (Elizabeth Olsen) motivation is. While Monica is convinced that there is no aggressive intent towards the outside world, Director Hayward (Josh Samberg) has a much more antagonistic attitude. This definitely sets us up with a key trio of Jimmy Woo (Randall Park), Monica and Darcy within the S.W.O.R.D. group, against a more militaristic viewpoint, which will no doubt play out later.
Within ‘The Hex’ things have moved on and the sitcom set is fully rooted in the 1980s of Family Ties, the show that launched Michael J. Fox as a household name as Reagan era capitalist Alex P. Keaton. A swipe at that was half-expected, but instead the focus was much more on the family aspect, primarily responsibility and coping with loss. At the same time, the cracks are beginning to show in Westview, and Wanda is finding that either her control is waning, or another force is having an impact on events.
For instance, while Agnes (Kathryn Hahn) is offering to help with the twins, she breaks character and shows genuine fear of Wanda, which confuses Vision (Paul Bettany). In turn, this starts a whole line of questioning for Vision, which includes allowing Norm (Asif Ali) to speak freely, away from Wanda’s control, and what he says concerns Vision greatly.
Even the twins are becoming out of her control, as not only does she fail to use her powers to help them sleep, but when confronted with being told they can’t have the puppy they found, they force rapid aging to get it anyway. This leap from babies to age 5, and then to age 10 during the episode is taken mostly without comment within that world, but does make more than one character pause for thought at least. The biggest sign that all is not well there though, is when they find out that the puppy has died and they plead with Wanda for her to use her powers to reverse the death. With her insistence that some things are just permanent, they find the pain hard to take and we are left knowing she is aware of her own hypocrisy.
What is especially good throughout ‘On a Very Special Episode…’ is that there are layers of nuance that could easily have not come across properly, but all the performances are so on point that there is a smooth flow between these potentially jarring elements. Hahn’s masterful switch from controlled character to fearful pawn, and Bettany’s mixture of doubt and uncertainty are just fantastic to watch. When you then couple that with Olsen’s Wanda, who is full of so many conflicting emotions all at once, you just get a tremendous amount of complex depth, deftly handled into compelling scenes.
That’s not to say that the excellence is restricted to inside ‘The Hex’, as outside there are equally fine performances, especially with our main trio. Capt. Monica Rambeau could have easily become a stereotypical figure we see so often in cop shows, but here Parris has given her a steely core, with a quick wit and determination that will transcend the normal tropes. There’s no way her character is anything other than impressive, with more to follow.
Monica is by no means phased by Wanda, and is happy to confront her with compassion and strength, even though it’s pretty clear Wanda could snap her like a twig. She also figures out several key points about how ‘The Hex’ seems to work and comes up with a great plan to learn more. Even after Director Hayward betrays that plan by trying to attack Wanda with a missile, Monica continues to sympathise and attempt to make a connection.
Structurally, ‘On a Very Special Episode…’ doesn’t fit either the early pattern from the first few episodes, or last week’s format, and instead mixes the two. This means that there is certain amount of jumping between 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios as it switches between inside and outside ‘The Hex’, but this is never an issue. Nor are there any problems with the pacing, until they deliberately upset that natural flow as Vision questions Wanda, even breaking through the credit scroll she is trying to impose. This again gets disrupted by the big reveal for the episode of her brother Pietro (Evan Peters) appearing at the front door, which takes everyone by surprise, including Wanda.
Exactly how they are going to explain this situation is one of the main questions raised by ‘On a Very Special Episode…’. When Wanda sees him she seems confused, and doesn’t properly acknowledge him until he says “Long lost bro get to squeeze his stinkin’ sister to death or what?”. This is the cue that despite it not being the Pietro we’re used to from the MCU, who was played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and died in ‘Age of Ultron’, it is definitely supposed to be him.
Darcy speaks for everyone when she sees this on screen, exclaiming “she recast Pietro?”. It’s a nice way of highlighting the fact that we’re seeing a collision of the pre-MCU X-Men with the current MCU, as Peters played Pietro/Quicksilver in Days of Future Past, Apocalypse, and Dark Phoenix. What this exactly means for the MCU going forward is anyone’s guess, as Kevin Feige previously stated that Pietro was definitely dead and would stay so.
There are many aspects like that in ‘On a Very Special Episode…’ that leave us wondering exactly what is going on, but it looks like some of those will be answered quite quickly. Vision is pushing the boundaries pretty hard, and Wanda will have to give him some answers, unless she takes drastic action. What’s certain is that things can’t carry on in a neat little sitcom world.
Wandavision airs every Friday on Disney Plus
