‘WandaVision’ Episode 4 Finally Reveals Why Wanda is Trapped in a Sitcom
Episode 4 #Episode4
WandaVision Episode 4 is streaming now on Disney+, and sees Marvel return to familiar territory after three episodes of sitcom pastiche. After briefly following Monica Rambeau (played by Teyonah Parris) as she got thrown out of Wanda’s (Elizabeth Olsen) reality at the end of the last episode, Episode 4 was set entirely in the world outside Wanda’s sitcom. With the help of two familiar faces from previous Marvel movies, the episode also explained exactly what is going on in the world of Wanda and Vision (Paul Bettany).
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the entirety of WandaVision Episode 4.
While doing this, WandaVision also confirmed something fans have long believed about the show—that it is set after Avengers: Endgame. This is confirmed in the early moments of Episode 4, when we see Rambeau come back into existence after being ‘snapped’ away by Thanos (Josh Brolin).
The episode then told us that Rambeau, who we left saw as an 11-year-old in Captain Marvel, now works for S.W.O.R.D. (Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division), a S.H.I.E.L.D. sister agency that fans saw set up at the end of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Asked to help the FBI investigate a missing person in Westview, New Jersey, Rambeau discovers something strange: Westview does not seem to exist according to locals, and yet there is a sign for the town. What is more, there is a mysterious forcefield around the town—a forcefield that Rambeau gets sucked into.
After Rambeau disappears into this town, the forcefield of which looks suspiciously like the image you see if you stand too close to an old TV, experts and agencies descend on the town to work out exactly what is going on. Among those who head to Westview are FBI agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park), last seen in Ant-Man and the Wasp and astrophysicist Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings), who previously appeared in the first two Thor movies.
It is Lewis that starts to discover what is going on in the town. After recording cosmic radiation combined with a broadcast signal coming out of Westview, she tunes into that signal, and discovers Wanda and Vision starring in a sitcom—the same sitcom that made up the first three episodes of WandaVision.
The episode also explained some of the weird goings-on in the last few episodes. The color model airplane that Wanda found in Episode 2, for example, was a drone that S.W.O.R.D. had sent through the forcefield, revealing that everything that goes through the field gets assimilated into the sitcom reality. This also explained the “bee man” that came out of the sewer earlier in the season. He was a S.W.O.R.D. agent who tried to infiltrate the world of Westview by going through the sewers. When he crossed the forcefield, his hazmat suit transformed into a beekeeper’s outfit.
The episode also revealed that the radio message Wanda received in Episode 2 came via Woo, who we saw try to establish contact with her.
It was not until the end of WandaVision Episode 4, however, when viewers got to see exactly what’s going on. After Monica mentioned Wanda’s brother and how he died at the hands of Ultron, the reality of the world was briefly broken as Wanda used her powers to throw Monica back out of the forcefield. This crack in the sitcom reality, however, also allowed viewers to see the ‘real’ Vision, who seems to be dead—his body is completely pale, and his head is caved in from where the mind stone had been removed from his head.
As such, it seems that what is going on in WandaVision is exactly what many fans had predicted—that Wanda is dealing with the death of Vision by creating a fake sitcom reality around her—sitcoms, of course, being a place where nothing bad ever really happens and where nothing changes from episode to episode. Or, as Rambeau put it at the end of the episode, “Wanda. It’s all Wanda.”
Of course, Wanda’s sitcom is phasing through eras, and keeps being penetrated by more and more interference from the outside world, so it remains to be seen exactly how long she can maintain it across the remaining episodes.
WandaVision airs Fridays on Disney+.
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