Where Could WandaVision Lead Us in the MCU?
Over the course of its eight episodes, WandaVision (SPOILERS TO FOLLOW) drew together a story as compelling as any ‘standalone’ movie in the MCU, with the added advantage of the episodic format like that of the Comic Book. The movies of the MCU, in comic book terms, form a ‘Crossover Event’, moving across titles to the climax, which is its own special edition book.
Behind the various phases of the MCU, there has been the ‘grand design’, climaxing with “Avengers: Endgame”. WandaVision is the hook to the next phase of the Marvel Universe (who does NOT want to see the Scarlet Witch versus the Sorcerer Supreme?). The episodic structure of WandaVision carried me back to the comic books because of the density of potential ‘hooks’ for other future stories. Actions have consequences, and in WandaVision, there were so many openings for new possibilities for future stories. Here are a few possibilities of hooks for the future that are my favorites from what I found in WandaVision.
What I am sure of is that it is my ignorance of the Comic Book time lines of the Multiverse where one or all of these may already have happened so I apologize in advance, but I truly am NOT intentionally stealing from what has already been written.
The Return of Agatha Harkness. She is a powerful witch, an extremely powerful witch who, unlike Ronan, Hella, Ultron, the foes in Iron Man 1, 2, and 3, and Thanos himself, was not killed off in the end. In the Cinematic Universe, dead can mean dead. But in the ‘comic book’ universe, heroes and villains are like Mike Myers in the “Halloween” movie franchise, carrying a ‘not dead forever’ clause somewhere in the fine print. Agatha was left under a magical curse. She had her ‘lair’ built into the basement of her house. She’s been alive since the witch trials in Salem in the 1690’s. What are the odds that she has a ‘failsafe’ planted somewhere, just in case something like this happened? Something that she, or someone else, might stumble upon, by accident or design. Then, it is Agatha once again…
Chaos Magic: The Next Generation. It moved me more than the death of Tony Stark to watch Wanda slowly unweave the world she’d set in motion, especially when she tucked in her boys for the last time. Billy inherited her mother’s powers. We watched them manifest as the series unfolded. A favorite moment of mine was when the boys were left to handle the military. To create someone who is the embodiment of the powers of this chaos magic; is it to create someone powerful enough to wield it independently? And an understanding child who suddenly realizes that mom was wrong, that everything could have worked out, that his brother and father did not need to be ‘unwoven’ can create an angst-ridden antagonist with serious ‘mommy issues’.
SWORD, as Devious as SHIELD. Nick Fury never pinned his hopes on the next generation of weapons based on Tesserat technology, but he had a response team. And when they needed a push, he had Coulson’s “Captain America” trading cards bloodied to give them that push. If the response team failed, he had a pager tuned in to Captain Marvel. There were contingencies within contingencies within contingencies. Tyler Hayward, the leader of SWORD, could reflect that genius. (paranoia?) When multiple exposures to Wanda’s Hex around Westview altered Monica Rambeau at the cellular level, would he have seen the opportunity? He was rebuilding Vision as a weapon for his arsenal. When Rambeau began to manifest her powers, how about agents exposed to the Hex as she was? He wants his super weapon, so maybe he did not put all his eggs in one basket. Find the agent or agents who match his ethical code and assumptions for the future, it is possible Hayward never makes it to where the FBI intended to book him.
Westview: the Vengeance. Tyler Hayward is going to prison, but Wanda Maximoff is too powerful to face justice. She got to fly away. Her only punishment for the enslavement of the community of Westview to her own grief is her own conscience. Is that truly fitting? Maybe an enforcer of justice rises among them, maybe they connect to the Chaos magic, maybe it’s the magic of Agatha Harkness? Maybe there are provisions in the Sokovia Accords for just such an excessive use of power by an ‘enhanced’ individual? Maybe a present-day witch trial becomes the consequence for what Wanda has done. “I was upset” is not nearly a good enough excuse after all.
Quicksilver: The Double-Bind. It was taken as a joke on the expectations of the audience that Quicksilver, apparently from the “X-men” timeline in the Multiverse, was, in fact, the poor schlub that Agatha kept referencing as her ‘husband Ralph’. Or was he? One of my favorite X-men villains from the Comic Books was Master Mind, who spun stories within stories within stories. Granted, this is getting kind of ‘meta’ in its consideration.
Reverse Engineering the Ship of Theseus. This was a brilliant line of philosophical reasoning that Vision used with Albino Vision. The implication was, I think, that the new planks building the ship represent Albino Vision, while the old planks are Wanda’s Vision (they were distinguished in the credits as “Vision/The Vision”. We witnessed Wanda Maximoff crank up enough power to destroy an Infinity Stone (an ultimately futile gesture) and she then reconstituted Vision apparently to “infinity stone” power through her Chaos Magic. Yes, he was ultimately unwoven with the rest of her altered reality, but let me use philosophy again: There is reality in an object, but there is also reality in the perception of that object. Is Colorful Vision truly gone?
Resetting the Foundations. When Wanda finally left the foundations of the house that Vision saw them building their life together in, where she’d built a life to fulfill that dream even after Vision’s death, it was the most poignant scene for me in the entire show. But what if it were not simply Vision’s desire for them to have a home together that drove the purchase of this property? What if there was another power, behind the scenes, playing a larger game, where Wanda Maximoff is not simply the Scarlet Witch, but also the Red Queen in a twisted game of chess? Could it arc forward to a climax as things did with Endgame?
These are seven possibilities, seven hooks that could lead down their own timelines in the multiverse. The longer form of WandaVision, it feels more like the story arc of the comic books I read. If Marvel did not follow a hook in their comic books, Marvel has its own tribute to the ‘hooks never followed’ with their “What If” comics. As much fun as those were, the enduring love I have for comics is in large measure how they spurred my own imagination as I wondered “What If” this hook happened to my favorite heroes?
