WandaVision episode 4 Easter eggs and Marvel references at Disney Plus

The first three episodes of WandaVision jumped from decade to decade while Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) lived a lovely sitcom life in the idyllic (and bizarre) city of Westview. Episode 5 of the Marvel show, now broadcasting on Disney Plus gave us a dose of Marvel Cinematic Universe “reality.”

Last week’s episode left us our biggest tip on the true nature of Westview when Wanda kicked “Geraldine” (Teyonah Parris) out of the lovely comedy town for mentioning his twin brother Pietro and your killer Ultron (which, to be fair to Wanda, was a little rude to Geraldine). The show did not reveal Geraldine’s identity, but Marvel Studios didn’t kept it a secret.

Let’s jump into an idyllic city of SPOILERS.

Full disclosure: I hoped this episode would push the story of Wanda and Vision into the 1980s and I made a big speech about how much I love pop culture from that ready decade. Unfortunately, things don’t like neon as I expected, then we will have to wait until next week to put on our leg warmers.

Instead, we get a satisfactory dump of information about what the hell is going on.

The real Geraldine

Finally we received confirmation on the screen that Geraldine is actually Monica Rambeau (also known as Lieutenant Disorder), previously seen as a child in the 90s Captain Marvel. This episode gives us a flashback revealing that Monica disappeared in Avengers: Infinity War crackle shortly after her mother, Maria underwent (apparently successful) surgery to remove the cancer.

In the five years that Monica was gone, Maria’s cancer came back and she died. It is the first time that we have seen the chaos caused by everyone returning Avengers: Endgame – Spider-Man: away from home took a jokey approach – and it’s brutal. She woke up with everyone in a panic and found that her mother had died. Jeepers.

Draw your SWORD

After provoking us with the logo so far, SWORD is revealed in this episode. The Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division is a U.S. intelligence agency created by Maria to monitor threats and potential space allies – except that it shifted focus during Monica’s absence to “robotics, nanotechnology, AI and sentient weapons” . It also shifted to creating conscious weapons – what could go wrong?

Darcy and Jimmy

The real stars of the episode are astrophysicist Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) and FBI agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park), last seen in Thor: The Dark World and Ant-Man and the Wasp respectively. This pair are basically the substitutes for the audience, as they try to find out what’s going on while watching Wanda and Vision on an old TV.

Wanda took control of the city of Westview, New Jersey, and residents were forced to become “actors” on the show. The city has also been erased from the memories of people in the area (even the people of Eastview, which is presumably the Shelbyville of Westview’s Springfield).

Darcy and Jimmy are also totally interested in the program, but we saw disruptions like radio broadcasting and “beekeeper” in Episode 2, the show simply skipped a scene for them. It cuts off when Wanda reacts to any interruption of the MCU reality, censoring everything she doesn’t like.

Fit

It is confirmed that the beekeeper-looking guy – Agent Franklin – in episode 2 was a SWORD agent sent to infiltrate the city, but he went into the sewers in a radiation suit that changed into a beekeeper suit when he passed the barrier.

Where did the bees come from? It seems likely that the radiation suit automatically changed to something that fit Wanda’s artificial reality – that’s probably how Monica got suitable clothes too. She probably then proceeded with the program’s narrative to infiltrate and find out what was going on.

The SWORD drone changed color “to match production design,” according to Jimmy, but turned red instead of monochrome – the same color as the energy of Wanda’s chaos and the Stone of Reality (one of the destroyed Infinity Stones) ).

Living Dead

After Wanda expels Monica for trying to give her a dose of reality, she briefly sees Vision as a gray walking corpse, with a large hole in the head from which Thanos pulled the Mental Stone at the climax of the Infinity War. It is horrible and probably indicates how fragile Wanda’s reality is. It also seems likely that Vision is still dead, especially after Vision suggested that they should leave Westview.

“No, we can’t. This is our home,” Wanda replies with tears in her eyes, suggesting that Westview’s reality is the only place where she can keep the Vision alive.

Monica’s interruption also changes the aspect ratio of the 4: 3 retro to a more suitable widescreen, but 4: 3 asserts itself with the illusion of Wanda.

The world of Wanda

“It’s Wanda. It’s all Wanda,” said a shaken Monica after being expelled from Westview.

Really? Wanda is apparently getting what she wants, but could she be under someone else’s influence? Most of the identities of the townspeople are accounted for in the council of Darcy and Jimmy outside, but Agnes (Kathryn Hahn) and Dottie Jones (Emma Caulfield) are visibly absent. We also never saw Agnes’ husband, but she mentioned him several times.

It is possible that one of these people is the puppet master who controls Wanda and wants his children (who are likely to be overpowered). In the mainline comic book universe, Wanda’s children, Billy and Tommy, grew up to join the Young Avengers like Wiccan and Speed.

Voodoo Child

The music for this episode is an absolute ripper: 1968’s Voodoo Child (Light Return) by Jimi Hendrix, which includes the iconic lyrics “Well, I stand next to a mountain and drop it with the tip of my hand”.

However, the next lines seem even more relevant to Wanda’s apparent achievements: “Well, I take all the pieces and make an island, I can even lift some sand.” She collected the pieces of life that Thanos destroyed and created an “island” in Westview.

The title “Voodoo Child” also fits the magical nature of Wanda’s twin boys.

It is no wonder that Jimmy Woo is now on WandaVision, as Scott’s magic tricks in Ant-Man and Wasp really impacted him. He’s after Wanda’s magic now. pic.twitter.com/49Xr640d7V

– alias – WV SPOILERS (@itsjustanx) August 24, 2019

WTF notes and questions

• Monica reports to SWORD headquarters three weeks after responding, putting on this show right after Endgame.
• When he meets Monica, Jimmy plays his card like a magician – a trick he learned Scott Lang and Online Close-Up Magic University in Ant-Man and the Wasp. Whether or not you think this move is incredible or stupid, it can be a kind of Rorschach test (I’m firmly in the first category, but I’m a little proud of my idiocy).
• Why was Monica sucked into the barrier while Jimmy was unable to enter? Could it be because she was dusted by Snap? We don’t know if he went, but it looks like he survived.
• Monica’s SWORD jacket is beautiful, and I would wear it.
• What happened to Agent Franklin after Wanda got him out?
• Darcy detects cosmic microwave background radiation around the city, which SWORD acting director Tyler Hayward notes is “relic radiation dating back to the Big Bang.” Since the Infinity Stones were formed at that time, it is another suggestion that the Reality Stone (or at least its energy) is involved.
• Who is Jimmy’s missing person? They are on the witness protection program, and he probably didn’t see him on the program – otherwise he would be on the council. It is also possible that he did not mention this to Darcy, since she is not a law enforcement officer. Agnes’ mysterious husband seems like a great possibility.
• Jimmy addresses this on the white board of questions, but Westview is in a hexagonal shape. It is not clear what the meaning of this form is, but it is the symbol of the ethically questionable scientific think tank Advanced Idea Mechanics in comics and game universe. At the MCU, they were the villains in Iron Man 3.

Check back for more Easter eggs and remarks next Friday, when episode 5 of WandaVision arrives at Disney Plus.

Caitlin Petrakovitz from CNET contributed to this recap.