WandaVision: The Secret Origin of The Scarlet Witch

Episode 8 (“Previously On”) opens in Massachusetts 1693 as a coven of witches lead Agatha Harkness to the stake and tie her up. As Agatha’s mother and the other witches try to destroy her with beams of “blue magic”, Agatha reverses things, turning the blue energy to her signature purple. She kills them all, including her mother.

We return to the present where Agatha is holding Wanda in her basement dungeon. Agatha admits Pietro was fake (“Fietro”), just serving as her eyes and ears. Agatha is extremely interested in Wanda’s abilities and she is using Billy and Tommy as leverage to make Wanda take a trip down memory lane.

First stop: Sokovia when Wanda and Pietro were children. Hiding in their apartment with their parents while the streets outside are a war zone, they pass the time watching old American sitcoms. Wanda’s favorite is The Dick Van Dyke Show. Abruptly, their building is destroyed by an explosion and the parents are killed. Wanda and Pietro hide under a piece of furniture and a missile lands in front of them but does not explode. On the side of the missile it reads “Stark Industries”. Agatha literally pulls Wanda back from the flashback. She thinks Wanda used a “probability hex” to keep the missile from exploding. In the comics for many years the only way they explained the Scarlet Witch’s powers was by saying her hexes influenced probability fields. So, when she used her powers they would typically cause things that normally wouldn’t happen to happen….such as a rock slide or ceiling caving in.

Agatha says “What I see here is a baby witch, obsessed with sitcoms with years of therapy ahead of her. It doesn’t explain your recent hijinks. Where’d you get the big guns, Wanda?” Agatha takes Wanda next to when she was involved in the terrorist organization Hydra.

The Hydra scientists have Loki’s scepter and they ask Wanda to touch it even though no one has yet survived doing that. When Wanda touches the blue casing around the Infinity Stone it shatters in a burst of amber colored energy. In it she sees a vague shadowy figure. It’s unfortunate that Marvel didn’t bring back Aaron Taylor Johnson to play Pietro in these scenes. If the Infinity Stone–the Mind Gem–unlocked powers within Wanda, then how did Pietro get his powers?

Agatha is building her theory but needs more info. For that, Wanda is taken next to Avengers Compound in a time that appears to take place right after Avengers Age of Ultron, the first home she and Vision shared. This occurs before their relationship began. Wanda is deeply mourning the death of her brother. She is tired and worn from being knocked down again and again. Vision comes into her room by phasing through the wall. He wants to comfort her but lacks the human experience…he has “never lost someone he loved”. He tells Wanda “What is grief, if not love persevering?” Heavy stuff from a synthetic man only a few weeks old. He lets out a chuckle watching The Brady Bunch with Wanda. Another departure from the comics as Vision’s emotions grew over a much longer period of time.

Agatha is still trying to grasp Wanda’s abilities, how she has accomplished what she has done. Parents dead. Brother dead. Vision dead. Wanda wanted Vision back. So the next memory reveal is of Wanda entering S.W.O.R.D. Headquarters…very calmly. She tries to reason with the man at the front desk. All she wants is a funeral for Vision. She is allowed to go inside and instead of buzzing her in, she uses her power to open the door. Get where I’m going? All of this is, of course, being videotaped. The video Hayward showed Monica and Darcy was edited and did not depict the way things really happened. Wanda heads down the corridors and enters the office of S.W.O.R.D. Director Tyler Hayward. Hayward takes Wanda to a balcony overlooking a science lab.

And in a scene taken right from West Coast Avengers, Wanda looks down and sees Vision…in pieces parts all over the lab, dismantled, an arm on a table, a scientist working on Vision’s severed head on a tray. The scientists are disassembling “the most sophisticated sentient weapon ever made” (Hayward). Wanda is only being allowed to say good bye here, they won’t allow her to take 3 billion dollars worth of vibranium  and bury it in the ground. Hayward angers Wanda further after she says he’s all she has and Hayward says he isn’t hers.

So Wanda shatters the glass and floats down to the lab. Guns are pointed at her but she just quietly walks around the lab looking at the pieces of what’s left of the one she loved. She touches Vision’s lifeless head. “I can’t feel you” she says softly. Then she quietly exits the facility and dives off…ultimately coming to a stop in a town called Westview. A very quaint little town. She drives to an empty lot and gets out and stands there. She opens up an envelope and looks at the deed inside. There is a heart drawn on the deed and inside the heart it says “to grow old in-V”. This is where Vision intended to build a house for them to live in far away from the crazy life of super heroes.

Wanda begins to cry…then bursts forth with the full might of her power, creating a house on the lot and over-writing the whole town of Westview. With a full concentration of her hex ability, Wanda remakes Vision and then everything turns monochrome. Wanda now stands watching herself and Vision right there…on a stage. A clapping breaks the illusion and she is alone.

She hears the screams of her children and runs outside only to see Agatha floating in the air with her purple magic tendrils wrapped around the necks of Billy and Tommy like a leash.

Agatha: “I know what you are. You have no idea how dangerous you are. You’re supposed to be a myth. A being capable of spontaneous creation and here you are using it to make breakfast for dinner. Vision and the whole little life you’ve made…this is Chaos Magic, Wanda. And that makes you…the Scarlet Witch.”

After credits scene: S.W.O.R.D. Base, outside Westview…using some residual hex energy from the drone Wanda returned to them, S.W.O.R.D. is about to reactivate the ghostly white body of The Vision.