(We have main spoilers below for the eighth episode of the Marvel series “WandaVision,” “Previously On”)
We are very close to the end of “WandaVision” now, and Marvel’s first series on Disney + continues with its big breakthroughs. We got some of them this week – perhaps the biggest one came from looking at Wanda’s past.
In the episode, Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) apparently investigates the mind of Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) to try to find out what her whole business is. And then we take a closer look at the story of Wanda’s origin that doesn’t fit with what we’ve already heard about her.
Wanda had his proper introduction to the Marvel cinematic universe in “Avengers: Age of Ultron”. She and her brother Pietro joined Hydra for experiments with Loki’s scepter, which at the time secretly contained the Stone of Infinity known as Stone of the Mind. The story said that the stone gave Wanda his crazy mental powers, and Pietro became super-speedy.
Read too: ‘WandaVision’: What you need to know about the episode 8 Insane Mid-Credits scene
The twins joined Hydra because when they were children their apartment was bombed with weapons made by Stark Industries. Wanda and Pietro told Ultron about it that day – they described how they hid in their apartment for two days watching an intact Stark bomb in the middle of their living room, on top of their parents’ corpses, while they waited for it to leave . This never happened.
The “WandaVision” version of the story is a little different. First, Wanda already had his powers. Because she was born with them. The Stark bomb in his apartment never exploded because Wanda avoided it by changing the likelihood that it would explode. Basically, she changed the very structure of reality to keep herself and her brother safe.
What Mind Stone served to do, according to “WandaVision,” was to increase its skills. It has always been powerful, but it seems that the Stone has unlocked its potential. Or maybe that trained her how to use those powers. Remember, the Infinity Stones are really sentient – the Mind Stone was actually part of the Vision mind, not just a source of power.
Read too: ‘WandaVision’ may have finally confirmed the MCU multiverse
Whatever the mechanics of Wanda’s interaction with the Mental Stone really – I doubt they really get into that kind of minutiae – the main thing here is that Wanda has not gained his power from the Mental Stone. She seems to have her innate abilities.
This is huge. No fully human superhero in the MCU has yet been born with powers. Everyone was born normal and then became superheroes. This detail was always strange with Wanda, because in the comics she and her brother were presented as Magneto’s mutant children.
But Wanda was brought to the MCU when Disney did not have the rights to make films about mutants – those that belonged to Fox, which had its “X-Men” films. But now Disney and Fox have merged, and the MCU may finally have mutants.
Read too: ‘WandaVision’: Monica Rambeau’s confrontation with Hex can help explain who Pietro is
So it certainly looks like that, with this retcon of Wanda’s backstory, the MCU could now have its first mutant. But there are still so many unknowns here – including a large comic book from a few years ago that reclassified Wanda as a witch, not a mutant.
Wanda was introduced to the comics in 1964 as a mutant, but she was always Furthermore a sorceress. As in, its mutant powers and its magical powers are distinct. In a series of “Scarlet Witch” in 2016, Marvel changed things quite dramatically, revealing that she was actually just a witch and not a mutant.
This does not mean that the MCU will go in that direction. But it may well be that the on-screen version of Wanda had its powers before it met the Mental Stone, and it wasn’t a mutant either. This seems a little more likely at this point, with Agatha and Wanda making use of Chaos magic for their power. As the name implies, Chaos magic is not a mutant power.
Read too: ‘WandaVision’: Yes, it was Kathryn Hahn singing Agatha’s theme song
“WandaVision” does not seem likely to exploit this potential distinction in the final episode of next week. This week’s episode was, after all, the departure of tradition that should pave the way for the conclusion of the main lines of the program’s history.
Although I have no doubt that we still have big twists in the store – we still know almost nothing about Pietro in the first place – it will probably focus more on closing arches than going into totally new things.