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Spoilers WandaVision discussion thread

Scarlett Witch is more powerful than the Sorcerer Supreme according to Agatha.....

Doctor Strange 2 should be interesting....
 
So having given it some time to process my feelings, I have to say my big problem with the episode and ultimately the series is that Wanda hasn't changed. She walks, sorry flies, away from Westview having taken no real responsibility for her torture of thousands and while she's no longer perverting the laws of nature to bring back her husband, she's now doing it for her kids instead.

She has changed though. She dealt with her grief. And, I believe, she has become an antihero. I still think that her role going forward will be more akin to the comics.
 
This ending resonated with me. Maybe partly because of things I'm going through in my life right now, but mostly because it was just really well done. Wanda isn't blameless, we shouldn't excuse her actions in Westview or hand wave them away. But we can understand them. And the resolution shows us that, under it all, Wanda is a true hero who has just made an unfortunate and tragic mistake rather than a villain.

She has changed. She understands her grief and has a better understanding of the nature of her powers. I don't think she feels guiltless over what she's done, but neither does she feel she needs to subject herself to the laws of "mortals". I don't think she is a hero like some of the other Avengers. In the comics, she is a classic Marvel character that is neither a true hero nor anti-hero--sometimes she can be an outright villain. What I like about the ending is that it makes her future more complex and we are left wondering what her future really is. The series did a great job of portraying a character who should have been the villain of the series in a complex and nuanced fashion so that we are left empathizing with her as she flies away from the damage and destruction she has (unintentionally) caused.
 
Scarlett Witch is more powerful than the Sorcerer Supreme according to Agatha...
Raw power is only part of it. Even studying the Darkhold she is unlikely to come close to Strange's skill, experience and depths of knowledge.

As it's had time to sink in, I'm feeling even more disappointed by the Quicksilver reveal. A massive redirect and let-down.
 
It was clear to me that Pietro was a fake because she didn't recognize him. She creates a perfect copy of Vision then this substitute brother pops up out of nowhere, so it was plain on the face of it he wasn't her doing.
 
Raw power is only part of it. Even studying the Darkhold she is unlikely to come close to Strange's skill, experience and depths of knowledge.

Yeah about that, if we were talking the actual Doctor Strange from the actual Marvel comics; maybe. But as shown in the MCU, Doctor Strange himself hasn't been studying magic all that long.
 
Raw power is only part of it. Even studying the Darkhold she is unlikely to come close to Strange's skill, experience and depths of knowledge.

As it's had time to sink in, I'm feeling even more disappointed by the Quicksilver reveal. A massive redirect and let-down.

Yeah about that, if we were talking the actual Doctor Strange from the actual Marvel comics; maybe. But as shown in the MCU, Doctor Strange himself hasn't been studying magic all that long.

Relayer1 makes a good point, but as Noname Given says, Strange is pretty new to this. And Wanda is studying right now.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but while Marvel got her powers from the Infinity stone, that doesn't mean she still draws from it. And Wanda they established was always a witch, the Infinity stone merely unlocked her abilities.

Vision is the only one who is actively powered by an infinity stone, and even there there is some confusion over what of him is from the stone, and what is from the vibranium/human mixed body, what is from Ultron, and what is from Jarvis. The new version was activated by what we later found out is Wanda's Chaos magic, so it may be that, since he's powered by chaos magic, there is no noticeable difference in his abilities at all.

There was also Quicksilver, whose power set clearly couldn't be described as magic. And this new vision is explicitly not powered by the mind stone, although describing the color Vision as 'the part of the mind stone that still lives in Wanda' means you could argue the white vision was also activated by it when he allowed his twin to unblock his memories.

What exactly did the Sword director guy do wrong? Yet Wanda got away scot free?

The thing is you could describe most villains like that -- The Tragic Villain is a pretty common trope after all -- but Wanda gets treated as the victim while the jerkass military guy trying to save thousands of people from a torture worse than death is the bad guy. It was rather uncomfortable to watch. Sure, he was a jerk, but I was on his side the whole time and he was completely in the right to shoot a missile at Wanda.

Yes, Wanda didn't face any consequences here but that very clearly does not mean we have to side with Hayward and call him a hero when he was obviously a terrible person doing terrible things deliberately for purely selfish reasons. He was experimenting on Vision's corpse for years in direct violation of Vision's will and with the explicit purpose of transforming Vision into his own perfectly controllable slave. He was falsely editing footage to justify his attacks on Wanda before he even had any information on what exactly was happening at all, or even knew that Wanda was doing it. He clearly lied about his activities up and down the chain of command the whole time. And his attempts to break through the hex were not only entirely focused on capturing Vision rather than saving anyone, but his bullish antagonism of Wanda was like a police hostage negotiator deliberately goading a criminal who's holding a gun on innocent people. And that's without even mentioning his illegal detainment of Jimmy, Monica and Darcy in order to keep his secrets as well as his bald-faced attempted murder of a Sword agent at the end.

Yeah about that, if we were talking the actual Doctor Strange from the actual Marvel comics; maybe. But as shown in the MCU, Doctor Strange himself hasn't been studying magic all that long.

I don't think that has been shown, unless you think years (exact number unknown) is 'not that long'. Strange wasn't Sorceror Supreme in 2012, but he became SS long before Thanos' invasion in 2017 and he spent months if not a year or more doing nothing but study and practice magic to get there, judging by Dr. Strange. Wanda's been using magic subconsciously longer than he's known it exists but he's still had years of study compared to her few weeks (maybe a year or so by the time MoM comes around).
 
Raw power is only part of it. Even studying the Darkhold she is unlikely to come close to Strange's skill, experience and depths of knowledge.

As it's had time to sink in, I'm feeling even more disappointed by the Quicksilver reveal. A massive redirect and let-down.

Doctor Strange is a noob.

5 years?

The Ancient One had been on the job for a thousand years.

She was what you think he is.

Stephen lost the time stone.

Is he even still the Sorcerer Supreme if he lost the stone?

That may be the main part of the job.
 
Hayward basically wanted his own, much deadlier version of a Winter Soldier, right?

One that he wouldn't have to forcibly mind-wipe after every mission or risk losing because someone reminded it who it really was but otherwise yeah that's pretty much exactly right. Kind of funny, actually, that he lost it in the exact same way Hydra lost Bucky after all.
 
Yeah about that, if we were talking the actual Doctor Strange from the actual Marvel comics; maybe. But as shown in the MCU, Doctor Strange himself hasn't been studying magic all that long.

Up until Infinity War, he had the Time Stone. (Think Hermoine Granger and her Time Turner.) Between that, his photographic memory and the Mirror Dimension, he could have gone through the whole Kamar-Taj Library in less than a year and leveled up considerably.

So having given it some time to process my feelings, I have to say my big problem with the episode and ultimately the series is that Wanda hasn't changed. She walks, sorry flies, away from Westview having taken no real responsibility for her torture of thousands and while she's no longer perverting the laws of nature to bring back her husband, she's now doing it for her kids instead.

I don't think that's what she was doing at the end. She was doing what she said she'd do - gaining knowledge and trying to understand her power (albeit with the wrong book - she must have decided Strange might see her as an rival/enemy and refuse to teach her). Billy & Tommy's voices were as much a surprise to her as it was to us. They reached out to her from wherever they are.
 
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Up until Infinity War, he had the Time Stone. (Think Hermoine Granger and her Time Turner.) Between that, his photographic memory and the Mirror Dimension, he could have gone through the whole Kamar-Taj Library in less than a year and leveled up considerably.

Given what we saw in the final post and credit scene; I don't think you can say Wanda Maximoff was just slowly leafing through the Darkhold. She seemed to be using her abilities to quickly and intensely reading every page of that book in a very timely fashion.

Also it seems to be a tome that Doctor Strange himself may not ever have had access to given that it was something Agatha Harkness possessed. Again not saying Dr Strange wouldn't have an advantage here as far as magical knowledge; but the knowledge Wanda gains combined with her sheer raw power might still make her overall, much more powerful than Steven Strange.

And while yes, Doctor Strange put up a very good fight against Thanos (and it might have been an even closer fight had he openly used the time stone during it); when Wanda Maximoff returned and faced off against Thanos; It was clear on raw power alone that she nearly equaled Thanos even while he had the Infinity Gauntlet and the Infinity Stones under his control.

I have to wonder if the story for Wanda is going to be: "How can I use my magical powers to completely restore my family in the real world, without harming others?" (IE - Can she permanently alter reality with no consequences to others?)

And remember she was one of the ones who was blipped out and blipped back; so she may not fully realize just what the Avengers went through themselves to restore their universe; and why this would be such a bad thing even though we're only talking three lives restored here.

(And also since her version of the Vision didn't inform her of what he did to 'defeat' the White Vision; she is probably not aware at all that the White Vision still exists.)
 
Westview may have started unconsciously but she was reversing time and mind controlling people purposely in the 2nd episode, if not the very first. There were multiple episodes after Vision confronted her about it.

You can't hide responsibility for crimes behind trauma and grief.

It may make you a sympathetic villain, but you're still a villain.

It isn't an excuse and it isn't a defence. Not morally or legally.

Why is Wanda's trauma more important than that of her victims?

"Oh no I had something bad happen to me and then I acted out and caused more, possibly irreparable, harm to 4,000 people but it's all ok because I was sad at the time but now I'm processing my grief in a healthy way and was rewarded with even more power"

Assault isn't forgiven & ignored because the person committing the assault was in a bad place emotionally when it happened.

Yeah, she's pretty evil. And ending it with her studying the darkest of dark magick tomes (the book of the Damned!) does not fill me with optimism for her journey.

At this point, though, it's a bit of a Kevin Uxbridge situation. Her crimes are so massive but she is so unpunishable that the only thing to do is to shrug and be glad that she feels guilty enough to go off to a cabin in the woods. Hopefully the government gives some serious psychological help to the people of Westview. I'm not sure how they will react to Agnes, or if Wanda's lingering super-magic is still making everyone assume that Agnes was always a resident of the town. That does lead to some creepy Kilgrave-level stuff if she and Ralph both believe that they are husband and wife.
 
So basically, the first season was just an introduction into the Scarlet Witch. Makes you wonder what they have planned for next season.
 
Hopefully the government gives some serious psychological help to the people of Westview. I'm not sure how they will react to Agnes, or if Wanda's lingering super-magic is still making everyone assume that Agnes was always a resident of the town.

That's what bothered me about Agatha's fate. After it was revealed everything Wanda had done to the residents of Westview it didn't sit well that is how she chose to deal with Agatha. It'd be different if it was poetic justice if Agatha had been the one to do that to them but it just seemed tone deaf given everything.
 
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