“On a Very Special Episode” and the Painful Truth at the Heart of WandaVision

Caution: This review contains MAJOR SPOILERS for S01E05 of WandaVision

There’s so much to buzz over at WandaVision’s halfway mark. Quicksilver from the X-Men as Quicksilver from the Avengers! Scarlet Witch’s stand-off with Sword! Pitch-perfect 1980s TV spoofs! Bulletproof hot pants!

But here’s the thing that grabbed me the most while watching this “Very Special Episode” — the sequence where Vision confronts Wanda over what’s happening to both of them. That harrowing scene has some extra oomph because of the special effects at play. There’s something eerie about the two of them arguing over the end credits until they stop. And there’s something scary about the couple rising into the air at the same time they’re raising their voices to one another.

What stands out the most, though, is the emotional rawness in the moment. Vision isn’t just upset; he’s worried that he can no longer trust his wife, that she’s done something terrible to him — to everyone — and doing everything in her power to keep the truth from him. Wanda herself is straining to hold it together, feeling hurt and vulnerable to the point that she admits she’s not even sure how this all started. Both of them are so plainly messed up by what’s happening, so riven by it. They’re driven apart over whether to tear this all down or do everything they can to continue propping it up.

The tenor of the scene is familiar to anyone who’s dealt with a loved one who’s unwell, whether through grief or mental illness or some other trauma that jeopardizes their ability to process the world as it is. There’s an honesty to the scene, one that is frankly startling, and it’s the kind of place I never expected an MCU project to go. WandaVision drapes these difficult interactions in reality-distorting fiction and the trappings of family sitcoms. But somehow that just makes it all the more unsettling and poignant when the truth of those moments bursts through the bracing layers of abstraction.

This is a liiiiiitle bit darker than anything they ever got into on Full House.

It’s also bolstered by the second most stunning revelation of this “Very Special Episode” — that Wanda stole Vision’s corpse from Sword. More to the point, that Vision left a living will expressing his desire never to be revived, for fear of turning into someone’s weapon. It’s plain that Wanda (either by herself or with help), revivified him, and that he’s starting to reckon with the margins of what happened to him, if not the full picture.

That means he begins to see through the illusions and deceptions that Westview is built upon. The show continues to do an incredible job of making the moments where we break from the usual sitcom rhythms unnerving. Agnes’s “Should I take it from the top?” bit is eerie, and for once, Vision has a chance to realize that before Wanda resets things. Wanda tries to play the awkwardness of the moment off, aiming to distract her husband with puppies and doorbells and other head-fakes that Vision notices nevertheless.

The same disturbing atmosphere comes through in the odd behavior of Vision’s coworkers, who respond to a Sword email by reading and laughing in unison. Vision briefly frees Norm, his coworker and fellow abductee, who is understandably frantic, unraveled, and most importantly, in pain over what’s being done to him. The barely-hidden secret of WandaVision is that it’s not a comedy or sitcom spoof or a superhero series. It’s a horror show, and Vision’s starting to realize that too. He’s gradually realizing that everything is wrong here, starting with himself and extending to the mother of his children.

Meanwhile, more traditional (but still engrossing) developments take place on the outside. Monica Rambeau, Jimmy Woo, and Darcy Lewis are fighting to save Wanda and show her compassion despite the ever-present danger of the situation. At the same time, Sword Director Hayward thinks Wanda’s just a terrorist who needs to be taken down. Despite those headwinds, the trio of familiar characters are the ones finding solutions to the problem, realizing that 1980s tech can penetrate the Hex without being transfigured by Scarlet Witch’s powers.

(Sung to the tune of Yentl) Wandaaaa! Wanda can you hear meeee?

Of course, the intrusion doesn’t go unnoticed by Wanda, and she storms out of her bubble to threaten Heyward and everyone else after when, unbeknownst to the good guys, he uses the drone to try to eliminate her. It’s a scary moment, one only slightly undercut by Elizabeth Olsen reverting to her dodgy Eastern European accent. The standoff reveals definitively that Wanda has at least some control and awareness of her surroundings and the nature of the Hex, enough to want to protect it from interlopers and those trespassing into her perfect little world.

It’s become increasingly clear why she’s so protective of that pristine bubble of happiness and what she is running from — grief. The show channels that idea through 1980s sitcom pastiches in an amusing fashion, with Agnes as the friendly (albeit intrusive) neighbor, kids growing up too fast, and dogs dying so that parents can give an important lesson about making peace with certain facts of life.

At the root of it, though, is a deep sense of loss and the afterimages of having to reckon with death over and over again, something that never stops being difficult no matter how old you are. Wanda says to her boys, and in a roundabout way to herself, that she cannot reverse death, that they cannot turn away from it, because some things aren’t meant to be elided and some lines shouldn’t be crossed, even as she crosses them on a daily basis.

“On a Very Special Episode” confirms that Wanda brought the corpse of the man she loves back to life, presumably because she couldn’t deal with his absence and the tragedy of his end. The commercial break in this episode name-checks Lagos, the Nigerian city from Captain America: Civil War where Scarlet Witch accidentally killed dozens of civilians when trying to redirect a blast, more mess than any paper towel could clean up. She reflects, at her sons’ urging, on the loss of her own twin, Pietro, the only lifeline she had after she lost her own parents at the same tender age Billy and Tommy are now.

"Next week I'll teach you about the dangers of perms."

So she does what she’s already done in this dark-edged fantasy world — she brings him back, after a fashion. It’s an inspired bit of stunt-casting to bring in Evan Peters to quasi-reprise his role as Quicksilver. But beyond the jolt of the misdirect and reveal is a simple truth — this whole thing is wrong. It is a coping mechanism, one meant to shield Wanda from yet another horrid and senseless death to once again mar her personal history.

So she, or some other force working with and through her, has constructed this place to evade that destabilizing realization. Vision is breaking out of it, shaking off the cobwebs of his violative rebirth and seeing through the comforting lies that Wanda is straining so hard to hold onto. It is difficult, hollowing, wounding to watch someone you care for undone by grief and trauma, dragging the world down with them. So much of what WandaVision does is clever or exciting or amusing. But what it does here is disquieting beyond words, and deeply, painfully true.