[Analysis & Review] WandaVision Episode 3 [Impressions & Easter Eggs]

Hello!

Today I’m writing about WandaVision episode 3, which dropped on Friday 22 January — the points worth flagging, the theories, and my predictions for where all of this goes next.

In this post I’ll write up, briefly, everything that caught my eye on the first watch and the Easter eggs, and then give a proper verdict at the end.

Spoilers ahead

The review of episodes 1 and 2 is here!

https://movie-paradise-blog.com/2021/01/%e3%80%90%e8%80%83%e5%af%9f%e3%83%bb%e3%83%ac%e3%83%93%e3%83%a5%e3%83%bc%e3%80%91%e3%80%8e%e3%83%af%e3%83%b3%e3%83%80%e3%83%b4%e3%82%a3%e3%82%b8%e3%83%a7%e3%83%b3%e7%ac%ac1%e8%a9%b1%ef%bc%86%e7%ac%ac2/

Every WandaVision episode review is here!

Contents

The source comics & other bits

WandaVision is built on The Vision, volumes 1 and 2. The synopsis of that comic runs like this.

Vision, the synthezoid — created by the hand of Ultron, the mad android bent on wiping out humanity, and yet turning his back on his creator to take his place in the ranks of the just. Having won the trust of his teammates and everyone around him as the most upright of the Avengers, he begins a new life on the occasion of his transfer to Washington D.C. as the Avenger attached to the White House. He looks for a house in the suburbs of the capital, takes in a wife, a daughter and a son who are synthezoids like him, and resolves to live a “human” life. And so, at 616 Hickory Branch Lane in Arlington County, Virginia, where the elites who work at the heart of the United States live, the lives of four synthezoids trying to be “normal” begin. But one incident sets the gears of their life grinding out of true. And then a terrible tragedy… A strange, outlandish, dangerous psychological family horror from Tom King, the sharp young writer known for the unusual background of a former CIA officer. The rare masterpiece that stands for 21st-century Marvel Comics has arrived at last!

https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4864914699/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

That run was very highly rated, and apparently picked up a stack of awards too.

Embarrassingly, I hadn’t read it yet, so I took this as my chance and bought it. Read it, and it’s soooo good! This is literature!

Also picked up the Japanese book Marvel Taizen, released 21 January 2021 — the kind of book that gets you a very long way into Marvel Comics in one go. Planning to work through it slowly on days off.

256 pages sounds short, but it’s a large-format book, so it might help to picture one of those big Shogakukan illustrated insect encyclopedias. Which means I’d say the amount of information in it is on another level compared to the books I’ve had up to now. And it came out in 2021 lol

Episode 3, “Now in Color”

The hexagons everywhere

The hexagons really stood out in the episode 3 opening. Which does look like AIM is mixed up in this after all.

Full details in the episode 1 & 2 review below

https://movie-paradise-blog.com/2021/01/%e3%80%90%e8%80%83%e5%af%9f%e3%83%bb%e3%83%ac%e3%83%93%e3%83%a5%e3%83%bc%e3%80%91%e3%80%8e%e3%83%af%e3%83%b3%e3%83%80%e3%83%b4%e3%82%a3%e3%82%b8%e3%83%a7%e3%83%b3%e7%ac%ac1%e8%a9%b1%ef%bc%86%e7%ac%ac2/

The parody is The Brady Bunch

Episode 3 finally goes to colour! The parody was The Brady Bunch, which aired from 1969 to 1974

I knew the name of this show but had never watched it, so I didn’t catch it… At this rate it would run

Episode 1, the 50s, I Love Lucy

Episode 2, the 60s, Bewitched

Episode 3, the 70s, The Brady Bunch

Episode 4, the 80s, Full House

The twin sisters who played Michelle in Full House are the real-life big sisters of the woman playing Wanda, so I’d really love them to do the Full House parody.

Episode 5, the 90s, Friends

Episode 6, the 2000s, How I Met Your Mother

Episode 7, the 2010s, The Big Bang Theory

Something like that? Full House and The Big Bang Theory are particular favourites, so it’d make me very happy to see them parodied.

The quality of the look

The texture and atmosphere of an image is commonly called the “look,” and WandaVision is outstanding at it compared to other shows.

The rough feel of the black-and-white broadcast era in episodes 1 and 2, the washed-out colour of episode 3 coming through a cathode-ray tube — all of it is tremendous.

From pregnancy to birth

Episode 3 covers Wanda from pregnancy through to giving birth. Astonishingly, she gets the whole process done in a few hours.

And the children born aren’t red-skinned like Vision — they’re ordinary humans.

The elder boy is Tommy, the younger is Billy

In the comics, Vision and Wanda have Thomas and William. One thing and another happened and those twins ended up gone… And in the comics the twins are born using magic.

Later still, in The Vision volumes 1 and 2, Vision — who has separated from Wanda — builds himself a wife, two children (a daughter and a son) and a dog.

Herb next door

Herb next door doing his pruning and “pruning” straight through Vision’s wall as well had me laughing lol

Vision, retaken

Vision, afraid of the secret getting out.

Why is he that afraid, though? Loaded with meaning. Even though in the MCU up to now Wanda and Vision never particularly hid their powers from the world…

Vision blurts out the dinner with Mr Hart (episode 1) and Herb being outside (the magic show in episode 2, or the start of episode 3?).

And then he notices that something is wrong with this world. The house and the residents’ setups changing with every broadcast, for instance

At which point it suddenly cuts back to a shot from about 30 seconds earlier. Put that together with the beekeeper turning up at the end of episode 2 and there’s no doubt Wanda is the master of this world.

The ad, “Hydra Soak”

The episode 3 ad was for bath salts.

Hydra turns up yet again.

Now, every one of the ad taglines is loaded with meaning, so let me lay them out.

• Episode 1: Forget the past. This is the future.
• Episode 2: Strucker is always keeping time.
• Episode 3: Wash it all away and soak in a world of your own. / For when you want to escape somewhere, but you don’t want to go anywhere.

https://theriver.jp/wandavision-cm/

Episode 1 is Wanda’s past trauma (waiting in terror for the Stark Industries missile to go off), and episodes 2 and 3 are her roots (turned into a superhuman by Hydra’s Strucker). What will episode 4 be? Something about Pietro?

The stork that won’t disappear

When Geraldine comes to visit, the children in the belly play a prank and a stork appears.

What got me was why the stork couldn’t be erased. The two things I can come up with are these.

1. Because the twins produced it. Which would mean the twins aren’t under Wanda’s control?
2. Deliberately playing a comedy character, sitcom style

The townspeople and their loaded lines

In episode 3 the residents kept coming out with lines that cut right to the heart of the story.

First, Stan the doctor

Next, the neighbours Agnes & Herb

Why she came here is something I get into later, in the section on who Geraldine really is.

The one worth singling out is Herb’s We’re all…. What that line and others like it suggest about who these residents really are is

1. People Wanda brought here, roped into playing house with her
2. This is the afterlife (why needing a family and having a house would be the conditions is a mystery)

Those two, I’d say. But with theory 1, it would mean Wanda has completely fallen to villain from the shock of losing Vision… which personally is pretty hard to take…

Pietro

In the conversation with Geraldine, it’s Wanda herself who brings up having had a twin brother called Pietro. Pietro was killed by Ultron’s forces in Avengers: Age of Ultron while protecting a child.

And then in that conversation Geraldine suddenly comes out with

… so why does she know that? It doesn’t seem like something any ordinary person in the MCU would know…

Geraldine went home

Things between Wanda and Geraldine turn ominous…

Vision, now suspicious of Geraldine, goes back to Wanda, and Geraldine isn’t there.

Wanda obviously did something to Geraldine.

And the aspect ratio goes from 4:3 to 16:9…

Westview

Some kind of open ground?

Geraldine comes flying out of a tear in space-time patterned with the three primary colours of a television.

Wanda clearly threw her out of that space.

Which means that space isn’t only inside someone’s head — it looks certain to be a space that exists somewhere in reality.

And at the edge of the frame, a sports field covered by something like that same tear in space-time…

The ending song is “Daydream Believer”

The episode 3 ending was Alala’s “Daydream Believer.”

Plenty of people have covered it in Japan too, and the famous bit of the Japanese lyric is the line about going on dreaming.

The theory review starts on the next page!