‘WandaVision’: It’s Trick or Treat Time in a Life-Changing Halloween Episode (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for WandaVision Season 1, Episode 6, “All-New Halloween Spooktacular.”]
The WandaVision sitcom world changes time periods again, landing in 2004 — October 31, 2004, to be exact. But while Halloween’s usually a great time, no one’s having fun. Powers are used, there are more reveals about the Hex and the motives of high-ranking SWORD operative Tyler Hayward’s (Josh Stamberg) — plus, a major character tries to leave Westview…with disastrous consequences. Here’s how it happens.
Unhappy Together?
Everyone in the Vision house — which now includes a recast Pietro (Evan Peters) — is readying for the big day. Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) is dressed in her traditional comics garb, which she explains to her kids as “Sokovian fortune teller.” Vision (Paul Bettany) is in a discount-store version of his regular comics getup, too, which he describes as “Mexican wrestler.”
But all is not well between the normally happy couple. Wanda wants Viz to take the kids trick-or-treating, but he’s on neighborhood watch that night and maintains that Pietro can take them. This upsets her, and voiceover narration from the twins reveals that they’ve been fighting; a far cry from their cheery, always-on-the-same-page ’60s and ’70s selves.
A little bit after, when she and Pietro are talking, she tells him she doesn’t know why he looks different — implying, for the first time, that she’s not in total control.
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Completely Alone
Unsurprisingly, Halloween’s total chaos with “cool uncle” Pietro and his super-speed powers; he helps the twins take everyone’s candy in the neighborhood, smashes pumpkins and covers everyone in Silly String.
Back at the house, after making her kids give the stolen candy back, she asks Pietro why he’s there. He says he thought she needed her, and that all he remembers after getting shot in the street (which is how he died in Age of Ultron) is her calling his name.
Spooky? For sure. But the cobwebs don’t have time to settle before her son Tommy sprints away — unnaturally quickly. He has super-speed. He and his brother take off (their other son, Billy, at normal speed), and Wanda warns them not to go past Ellis Avenue.
A Very Thorough Neighborhood ‘Watch’
Which brings us to Vision’s turn around the neighborhood, which turns out to not so much a safety check, but an investigation. He’s taking note of everything he sees that’s off, of which there’s a fair amount. A neighbor is crying as she hangs up Halloween decorations for one, and, far more curious, everyone on the edge of town is frozen and unresponsive. A few blocks away Vision finds Agnes (Kathryn Hahn), who is mostly unresponsive and totally confused.
He uses his powers to snap her out of the near-vegetative state, and when she’s alert, she says she’s very excited to see an Avenger. Vision, having no memory of the outside world, has no clue what an Avenger is. This baffles Agnes, and she asks Vision if she’s dead. When he asks why she would say such a thing, she says, “Because you are!” Yikes. There are better ways to break it to a dude that he’s no longer among the living, Agnes!
Meanwhile, with the kids and Vision gone, brother and sister have a chat. Pietro congratulates Wanda on what she’s accomplished with the Westview Hex, and he asks her how she did it. Wanda confesses that she doesn’t know. “I only remember feeling completely alone,” she says. “Just endless nothingness.” Suddenly she sees him as his dead self, with bullets in his chest, his eyes glazed over. She recoils, and Pietro asks her if she’s OK. That’s an obvious no, dude.
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Vision Wants to Break Free
In the real world, tensions have reached a head between Hayward and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris). She’s angry with him for trying to take out Wanda when they don’t know what’ll happen in the real world, or inside Westview, if she dies. “If Wanda is the problem, she has to be the solution!” she exclaims. Her boss won’t listen, and he orders Monica, Jimmy (Randall Park) and Darcy (Kat Dennings) removed from the base.
They sneak back in after taking down a squad of soldiers and stealing their clothes, and hack into Hayward’s devices, discovering that he’s tracking Vision. Monica decides she needs to go back into the Hex, determined to help Wanda deal with her grief and pain — even though they learn that the Hex is rewriting Monica’s cells on a molecular level.
Jimmy decides he’s going into Westview, too, but Darcy stays behind. She discovers Hayward was trying to make weapons with Vision, which is why he, but not Wanda, is being tracked. And through that tracking, she picks up something strange….Vision is at the very edge of Westview, trying to break through the border. He makes it to the outside world, but the energy field pulls him back — and starts pulling him apart until he appears dead.
Inside Westview, Billy comes into his powers, too — he can hear outside Westview and knows his dad is in trouble. He tells his mom, who’s understandably worried, but Pietro, of course, has a quip. “Chill out, sis,” Pietro says. “It’s not like your dead husband can die twice.”
This enrages Wanda, who sends him flying with a burst of red energy. She then pauses everything in Westview. The town comes to a screeching halt, except for her, and she expands the town’s border so that Vision is inside, which heals him. That causes chaos outside of Westview, though; Darcy’s pushed through the Hex, as is the entire SWORD base, which becomes a carnival. As the episode ends, Hayward, who got out with a few of his soldiers, tries to radio the rest of the team…and is rewarded with pure silence.
WandaVision, Fridays, Disney+
