‘WandaVision’ Revisited

Hello. Welcome back to The Hex and welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson. Joining me today, if she weren't here, I'd simply have to create her. It's Mallory Rubin. Hey, Mall. Oh, Joanna. What is podcasting, if not love persevering? Wonderful to be here with you today, though not in the flesh. I'm home fighting off something, fighting a cold, coming down with something. Didn't want to expose you and the team, but I'm sad not to be with you today for this pod because we love the show so much. Are you mostly sad not to be here today because I promised to make Tom King's ancestral family dip for this podcast and I didn't make it because you're not here and I wasn't going to eat it solo on Mike? I could talk about books solo on Mike, but I'm not going to eat dip that might kill me on Mike by myself. So I still look forward to sampling the dip at some point, at some point in the near term, hopefully. Perhaps next time. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. Get everything you need to win Thanksgiving at Whole Foods Market. We're talking seasonal favorites from the bakery, easy weeknight meals for before the big day and sales on body care and candles for last minute gifts. Plus, with more than 300 band, food ingredients storewide. You know it's quality you can trust. Shop Thanksgiving favorites with higher standards at Whole Foods Market. Prime members shop at WFM.com and get your first order over $25 delivered free. Terms apply. Progressive's accident response can contact emergency services if you're in a major accident. The only thing worse than someone you love being in an accident is not being able to help them. So Progressive is here to help when you can't. So get peace of mind knowing your loved ones are protected. With Progressive's accident response. Learn more at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Limited availability in California. Driver is responsible for emergency and towing charges not covered by the policy. Coverage subject to policy terms and conditions. This week. So listen, next week, programming reminders, next week, Vision Quest starts. New Marvel Disney Plus show. Been a minute. Here we are with our guy, Paul Bettany, in the mental for Vision Quest. We're really excited to cover that starting next week. And so this is our Wanda Vision sort of rewatch primer to get us ready to watch Vision Quest. So that the only episode we're doing next week is Vision Quest. Very exciting. And then after that, the week after that is a week we've been talking about for a very long time because we looked at the calendar and October 23rd. There are just so many House of Arcoded movies coming out, including Clayface, Wicker, Wildwood, Clara and the Sun, which we'll actually get a mention in. My sort of vision conversation today. And so we will be covering some of those in some form. I mine eyes have seen the glory of Wicker. Mallory is going to see it soon. We're very excited. Other things are on the horizon. But that is what is coming up on House of R. Mallory Rubin. How can folks keep track of all of that? Perhaps watch us poison ourselves with molten cheese dip in the future. I feel like the dip is going to be just delicious. Here's what I would recommend. Follow the pod. Follow House of R on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch full video episodes of House of R on Spotify. Incredible stuff. And also on the Ringiverse YouTube channel. So follow us there, too. While you're at it, follow us on social at House of R pod on Instagram, on TikTok. Follow the Ringiverse as well. And then, you know, your phone's in your hand or your computer, whatever. Send us an email inbox is always open. Hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com. If you have questions about Wicker, questions about Vision Quest, questions about, you know, really anything at all. Questions about what Mallory thinks of the baseball musical Damn Yankees, which she drafted in her baseball draft. Do you know how thrilled I was to see Damn Yankees in your baseball draft? Amanda was furious. I mean, I got a little bit of the like the response that Mahoney typically gets from Dobbins when, you know, when he steals something right before the game. So that was that was a fun moment. I mean, it's pretty good about my performance in that draft. It's it's fun to to provoke that kind of delightful outrage in Amanda. But mostly, I felt like you were honoring our connection by drafting a baseball musical. And I thank you so much. I always am. One last thing before I get to our spoiler warning, and this is really important. The Valkyries are leading in the semifinals. I believe they're going to the finals of the NBA play of WNBA playoffs. So I just just want to shout out. I love this for you. Just want to shout out. They're doing really well. Listen, this latest journey for Sports Joe's is a wonderful. Are you watching any of the baseball playoffs? No, no, I'm not. Who's in the playoffs? Like who? I just I just don't want to ever miss an opportunity to say on the public record, the Yankees got swept last night. Now, is my team in the playoffs? No. So a lot of Yankee fans going to hear that and say, fuck off. Yeah, but I don't really give a shit. Who's the Yankees? Scott swept. Who swept the Yankees? All right. Tampa Bay. The Rays. Yeah. Spoiler warning today. We have not seen any of Vision Quest, so we are not able to spoil Vision Quest. We have not seen it. We have seen trailers. That's it. So no spoilers for Vision Quest. Just our hopes and dreams and expectations. And what could possibly spoil that? We will be talking about primarily about WandaVision. Agatha all along is definitely on the table for discussion. Anything in Marvel comics is definitely on the table. I'm going to be talking about WandaVision. Anything in the MCU thus far, specifically, you know, as it pertains to Wanda and Vision is on the table. Certainly, Doctor Strange, the Multiverse of Madness, which is a key part of the Wanda story is on the table. So that is a spoiler warning. Should we go now to our opening snapshot? Let's do it. So we alluded to this the other day, but I thought we'd just start with refreshing people who don't know what our personal relationships are to the television show WandaVision, a show we never got to podcast about together, but a show we certainly watched when it originally aired. Mallory, what's your WandaVision relationship? Oh, I love this show. You know, it's one of my favorite, not just MCU shows, but MCU projects, and especially now the connection to Agatha, a show that we also adored and did get to cover together in the anticipation for Vision Quest, this trilogy. That's obviously part of what is fueling our anticipation for what might await, and Vision Quest is just the quality of the two prior installments in this little triumvirate. WandaVision, we briefly kind of like talked about this a couple pods ago, but it was so harrowing to confront that this came out more than a half a decade ago. Like, obviously, the COVID time dilation thing is- Time isn't real. Makes it really difficult. Yeah. When did things happen? Where were we in our lives? But I kind of can't believe how long ago this was. It feels very recent, even though so much story has been released since. You know, I think still to this day, even though all of that time has passed and we've gotten so many shows since, this is my second favorite MCU show. Loki is still number one for me, but it's close between them. I just have like a really, really deep attachment to and love for Loki. But I think that the creative, execution of WandaVision, the cleverness and deftness of experimentation and exploration and concept paired with the character dynamic and the really thoughtful interrogation of grief and loss and pain and identity and family was just beautiful. So the combination of watching it in real time, wondering what was going to happen next, what sitcom, what decade were we going to be dabbling in? How was that going to render? And then the just wallop after wallop as we started to really understand what was happening, what Wanda was doing, why. Just a really, really, really pleasurable experience in the moment and something that has not only held up, but I think in many ways strengthened over time as we have seen so many MCU shows that were not very good and have even more appreciation for what they did here. So yeah, WandaVision, just love it. Really delighted to have a chance to revisit it. Heading into Vision Quest, just to rewatch it. It's fun to have the opportunity to do that, but mostly excited to talk about it with you. Yeah, I love the show. Yeah, canonically, Loki is Mallory's favorite MCU Disney Plus show. This is my favorite MCU Disney Plus show. Loki, a close second. And Agatha is in there as well. And I think if Loki season two had been as good as Loki season one, I think maybe Loki would have edged it out. But WandaVision, if you choose to take it as a standalone thing, is just so strong. And then if you choose to make Agatha its sequel, which why wouldn't you? These two things could not be more for me. Agatha, as we talked about at length, which stuff go, is so for me. But as a latchkey kid of the 80s and 90s who grew up watching these sitcoms, watched the Dick Van Dyke show over and over again, watched the Brady Bunch, watched Bewitched, watched all of this stuff. family ties, et cetera, et cetera, like the world they're playing in and it's just astounded to think about this as like the first it wasn't supposed to be that this wound up being the mcu sort of first foray into television and you know comes out january 2021 um in the wake of of the smash success that was the mandalorian we were just sort of like wow disney plus they have it all figured out and then they didn't but like for a shining moment we were like the nerds we have arrived in prestige television land and uh no matter what has happened the ups and downs of mcu television the secret invasions the whatever like nothing dims the light that is that is wandavision these are characters i just think this is such a smart uh way to pluck out characters who had significant roles to play but definitely could stand to have a bit more attention paid to them uh elizabeth olsen and paul bettany have just such incredible chemistry so to watch them play together is just so astounding you mentioned grief as a theme i think also thinking about wandavision and agatha together and then you know using that to sort of speculate about what we think vision quest might be about thinking about created realities uh you know as they relate to trauma uh coping with trauma right and so um the the way we submerge ourselves in stories to avoid dealing with uh looking in the mirror and dealing with our own grief uh who could possibly relate to that um and and the way that stories can help us heal at the same time like you know stories can be can be used to numb and avoid but they can also be used to process and self-reflect and so i just think the layers that are involved here and you know jack schaefer who we just you know absolutely love uh the creative a creative mind behind this show and agatha all along as well and then matt shackman who just did an incredible job as her close collaborator as the as the series director the production design um the special effects just everything together do i have some notes for like what's happening outside of the hex with sword and all of that like is that my favorite uh stuff in the season no it's not but there is enough of uh that's like the mcu's worst tendencies and then the mcu's best tendencies are what's happening inside of the hex and everything that has to do with wanda with vision with the kids with agatha um you know and and and with monica to us you know when she's sort of more closely involved in that story etc etc so i'm really excited to talk to you about it we it is it has been a hole in our sort of like shared loved relationship that we haven't gotten to cover this in earnest so uh so yeah here we go 2021 january 2021 full pandemic mode uh is when this show came out it premieres over a year after the release of avengers endgame wasn't supposed to be even that long but that still feels so close to avengers endgame uh and in universe only three weeks between the end of avengers endgame and when this uh show starts and that's so wild because like to think about this show having such strong tissue to the biggest movie in the world this was the dream and the promise of what mcu television could be which is just sort of like this feels like a beautiful continuation of a one of the biggest stories that we all watch together in theaters and now we can watch an offshoot of it a sort of like beautiful pea tendril uh unfurling at home for us and uh and then that all sort of like got overburdened and and confusing and all this other stuff but like at the beginning it was so clean and so perfect do you remember what your reaction was when you found out that like wanda and vision were going to be at the core of of their own story i think mostly just intrigue like a little bit of surprise in terms of what it might indicate for the mcu's intention but certainly not surprised in terms of the depth of comics canon and the history of great stories for those two characters together individually so you know i think the thing that i now with distance from the release cannot wrap my mind around anymore is the fact that five mcu shows came out in one year like that is just so far removed from where we are right now we had one division we had falcon we had loki we had what if and we had hawkeye hawkeye obviously the very very end you know a holiday release again but all of those shows either aired in full or debuted in 2021 and that is just wild and i think you know given what you what you already indicated about the the evolution on that front and the necessary genuinely necessary recalibration right we were getting too too much content the quality was not maintained the ability for people to know what they needed to have seen and consumed in order to be able to dip into a new release became prohibitive for many fans um but this was just a moment of kind of pure excitement right oh what what does it what does it mean that we're going to get to spend time with these characters so it for for me and i mean obviously also it's not just about thinking of it inside of the the hex and the cocoon of the of the mcu it's like where were we as fans of pop culture one of the things that i was thinking back on was like now my brain is barely working in general at this point in my life and certainly not today while i'm fighting off a cold but my memory is that because i was like did i podcast about wandavision yeah and you know jason and i were wrapping up binge mode marvel we like talked about it we would check and we would mention it but we didn't we didn't cover it in full the ringerverse did not yet exist my memory is that van and charles potted about this on tv concierge now prestige tv and that i pot i potted about this on the big picture with sean because there were no movies so he was like right because it was it was covid wow it was covid wow yeah so it was like we're not in a stretch of active film releases people aren't back at the theaters and sean was like you want to talk about wandavision on the big pic um and so you know i think that was also obviously part of it now if it had not been covid i think we would have still been very excited for the show and certainly nothing would have changed about our assessment of its its uh quality and its inventive nature and its heart right and depth but the fact that it was a moment like a real dearth of um this is like the counterpoint to how many mcu shows we got that year was like a real dearth of new releases more widely across the pop culture universe it was really central it just felt like everybody was watching wandavision and talking about wandavision and excited about wandavision the theories were inescapable in a way that i think definitely this is a real two things can be true at once like made this feel like a shared weekly experience and also hurt the show because then there was so much disappointment when a number of those theories either went differently or didn't pan out but uh yeah i have like really strong memories of watching wandavision in real time much stronger than i have of like many of the mcu shows that followed it was like yeah to take people behind the curtain of sort of what it meant to cover things during the pandemic it was such a strange time to be you know i was still at vanity fair and to you know we were kind of leaning into these mcu shows sort of only by my own sort of like we're gonna do this and basically they just let me do whatever i wanted on on that podcast feed and so um but everyone was home so yeah we could talk to any talent you know it was all over the place and i over zoom obviously but like we could talk to any talent for a podcast because they were just sort of like we're at home so yes you can have anyone you want and it was just like weird scrambled time where they weren't giving us screeners uh after the first three episodes but we were trying to get those podcasts out the next day so it was just sort of like crack of dawn recording with richard and with anthony we would like scramble record it first thing in the morning and then also a talent interview and try to package that all out the next day and it was just just sort of like because we weren't doing video it was easier but like it was just uh it was just a completely insane uh i i don't i don't think i've ever like sweated harder than i did to like get those podcasts out there and that was sort of like the last hurrah but also i guess kind of my audition for working uh on the ringer speed so you know this is not a wandavision story but obviously very closely thereafter one of my favorite oh i'm also you know i'm thinking about covering it but i'm just like i can't wait to hear about it and what are people talking about obviously you know as i've told you before my first vanity fair tote came from signing up to read your pieces so long time fan long time admirer but you're the look the turnaround on the loki finale the loki season one finale i just have such a clear memory of watching that being on by it still to this day one of my favorite hours of mcu tv you know texting with and slacking with td we miss you td with arjuna we were just like this is incredible and we were talking about it into the wee hours of the morning and then your pod was up it was up at like 5 a.m or 6 a.m or something and i remember you opening it and basically i'm paraphrasing we were like i didn't go to bed because this this ruled and i just had to get i just had to get on it and it was one of those ways that really like genuinely heightened the sense of connection during a time when people were not seeing each other as much right so that also contributed i think to why some of these you know wandavision loki season one those shows those are just dynamite seasons of tv but they allowed people to feel like they were sharing something like that was really really meaningful i also just loved how much so you know this is smash it it's the beginning of phase four for better or worse uh beginning of mcu tv for better or worse um yeah 92 critics on rotten tomatoes 88 audience on rotten tomatoes high score flawed metric high score um large viewership uh as you mentioned theory corner huge driver of the show but i remember the agatha reveal you know which happens late in the game but the agatha reveal with the accompanying like viral bop that that comes with it um was partially responsible um for breaking this show out into a wider audience because i remember so like when i worked at vanity fair um with anthony bresnikan everyone everyone there most people there felt like they were too good for marvel or too good for nerd stuff so they were like joanna and anthony will cover the nerd stuff and we don't have to worry about her to deal with it um but agatha became but wanda became such like a thing that everyone was watching and that was like that was just sort of like my canary in the coal mine is that like my vanity fair colleagues were watching and were invested in wandavision and i was like what's happening like i'm not even sure these people saw endgame like what is even happening that was like the the insane thing that happened with wandavision um do you do you know uh are you in touch do you know if they've seen endgame encore i should ask i know exactly who to ask to find out um and so then the show got 23 emmy nominations overall which is an insane number but like i think what's even wilder is the eight sort of like like main competition emmy nominations it got because like it's one thing for a nerd show to be nominated in a lot of the technical categories because you know and certainly like game of thrones was was running running the table on to a certain degree but like there was something about wandavision like for paul bettany elizabeth olsen and katherine hahn to um all get nominated for their performances and katherine hahn was the front runner she did not win her category but she was the front runner to win that category uh for for those people who were like speculating iconic performance yeah i mean julian nicholson won and i i would not take her mayor of east town emmy away from her but like you know yeah like i wouldn't have been surprised if paul bettany and katherine elizabeth olsen her category she's up against kate winslet she was not going to win but paul bettany and katherine hahn like i wouldn't have been surprised if they won emmys for wandavision that year and that is just an insane thing to think about uh yeah you know even even this many years later so just really wild stuff um amazing you think uh you think spader is going to be competing for emmys for vision quest don't roll it out uh you know the man loves the competition loves the competition um key players so something i also i want to mention marvel is still struggling to figure out its approach to television um but a wild thing that those of us who are covering marvel tv at this time like sort of learned in real time was the very strange approach marvel took to they just decided to make television unlike television had ever been made before and that worked for a minute until it didn't but uh the way they they would think about it like film so they hired a director and a writer and there was a there's a writer's room there are individual writer credits on these episodes but there was a head writer which is you know often the case with with television but that that person the head writer is usually called the showrunner and is usually in charge of the show that's not what they did they hired a director and a head writer and those two people were sort of in charge or in the case of like falcon and the soldier it was like a handoff from one to another and that was like very uh dysfunctional um but like they were like we don't do showrunners because they didn't really want to like empower anyone that much with the tv shows because it was still very much like this is all under the mcu dome and so i remember talking to jack shaffer and matt shackman and i was like i don't know if i'm going to matt shackman um you know and and waldron and kate heron about loki and stuff like that and they they would talk about this process where um you know we'll talk about this a bit when we talk about like darcy and and jimmy and the way that they're using this episode we're basically like uh here was the description it was like you are one car on a train and you're allowed to decorate your car but the car and your train has to fit with the other cars in the train but you're not allowed to go into those other cars in the train to look at them and they're not allowed to go into those other cars in the train to look at them and they're not allowed to go into those other cars in the train to look at them so they were like we weren't allowed to know what was happening elsewhere in the mcu we were just sort of told unilaterally sometimes we couldn't do this for reasons that they wouldn't explain but because it would impact something else that was happening the mcu but we weren't allowed to know about it or we'd be given a character to play with you know they would say you know kevin feige talked about this a lot it's like okay we look at wandavision and we need um a law enforcement person and a science person and they picked jimmy and they picked darcy but they could have picked a number of people but they didn't and they didn't pick jimmy and they picked darcy but they didn't sort of like they have these holes in the story who from the larger mcu can we plug in to fill it you know so like that's something they were doing but like some of these uh creatives behind the scenes of the tv shows would say we were given a character told we could use them and then they were taken back away from us because they were being used somewhere else or like we couldn't use them so it's just this very like weird black box way to try to make a story that makes sense on its own but also makes sense in a larger world that you're not allowed to know all the details of so it was like a quite impossible task when you think about it so the fact that jack and and matt pulled it off the way they did is just a huge testament uh to their ability but also uh this show sort of lends itself to that because it's literally taking a place inside of a bubble falcon and winter soldier had a much harder time with that because it's trying to deal with the global impact of of the snap just like a really really tough uh assignment whereas this is like what's happening in this literal bubble here uh in new jersey you know at the end of the day incredible stuff anything you want to say about like uh that moment in the mcu or or matt and jack in general or anything like that i think we've talked about the moment in the mcu part of it i mean i think the the creative hive mind of of that show um you know is uh just wonderful um we've had the pleasure as you you indicated earlier of of having jack on on the pod before you know during the agatha run came back for a house of recommends and just like a a genius and a dynamo um and you know i i think that something that is uh undeniable about jack and about mad and about the pairing and what they did in this show and then what jack and her team did moving forward and in agatha is the you know innovation and the thoughtfulness of how um the show should be made right just the craft is kind of undeniable like i don't know one of the things that i always love so much about re-watching wandavision is the color bleed clues you know because you have in your mind oh okay like the drone we see the drone in color in the bushes but even before you know there's the little blinking indicator on the on the stark toast made 2000 even before that right and the the the color bleed but then also the bleed of the clues like things like that are just so um it's also intentionally and methodically calibrated and dispensed to us so i don't know if you've ever heard of that or if you've ever heard of it but i don't know if you've ever heard of it but i don't know if you've ever heard of it but i don't know if you've ever heard of it but i don't know if you've ever heard of it but i don't know if you've ever heard of it but the thing ultimately that i think makes the show made the show impactful in real time it makes it lasting right allows it to have have kind of held on to the the place that it took root in our hearts is that there's an understanding of and a love for the characters right there is a genuine desire to not just show us something about their lives but to try to understand them to try to parse and navigate and mine the heart and the psyche and like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know but i i i feel like if you know our respective and our shared coverage of mcu over the years if we went back and said what's like one of the notes that we have like hit the most it's probably that like things can be different in adaptations things so you know but do you understand the character is there like an appreciation of and an understanding of the spirit of the thing and i think that's that had to be right with wanda here but it's as important ultimately and now as we think about where the uh the story was going to go moving forward as important to have nailed that with with vision you know i think like i don't mind teasing we have categories coming i don't mind teasing that the finale is my least favorite episode of the season but that it contains some of my favorite scenes of the season inside of it and those are the ones that are rooted in their relationship and also the questions that those characters are asking themselves and each other um and you can't you can't bring that to your audience if it's not something as a creator that you're interested in in discovering so i think that's just really to their to their credit and something that made this such a rewarding watch you bring up such an such an important point of of why these shows can and should be so impactful which is just sort of time invested in character so um yeah i was just thinking about this last night actually because i was i was looking at the new release uh books this week this is this is related i promise and uh i was reading the description of a book and i was like wait i think this is yet another dermide fan fiction that has that has just true it's called once again always i've read i've read that story i was like wait i know this story um but something that that these books that are either based on raylo or germany or any kind of fan fiction bump up against when they become when uh a fan fiction writer reskins the story and takes out the the draco and hermione and takes out the magic and takes out all this sort of stuff and and and puts it it puts it in new context is you what you lose is context you lose the history that you have with those characters so that's why fan fiction can be so powerful is like you're already emotionally invested in these characters you you already know their background we don't have to explain their background and so when we meet wanda and vision from scene one, episode one of this episode, like of the show, we are already so invested in their love relationship and also just like deeply curious and confused because we're like, isn't Vision dead? Like what's happening here? So there's the intrigue and the confusion that comes from the continuation of the story. But like in theory, that's, you know, what should make an Obi-Wan show work and that's what should make an Ahsoka show work and that's what should make a Loki show work. And that's, you know, is like, we're already in these worlds and in with these characters. And so like a pilot doesn't have to do what a pilot normally has to do because we're already emotionally invested. And so I just, I love these characters. It's wild to think about actually how little time we had with them, you know, in Ultron, in Infinity War before we got here. It's just like, it's actually just like kind of mere minutes of screen time at the end of the day. But like a little, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany are so good. And also like her love for him or his survival is the core of, you know, what happens with Infinity War, obviously. But like it's, I just feel like this show is a miracle. Okay, we wanted to do a little mini Billy and Tommy primer refresher just because we know that, we know, as opposed to them hiding, trying to hide the fact in Agatha, we know that Tommy is going to be in Vision Quest. And we know that Agatha ended with Billy and Agatha saying like, let's go find Tommy. So we know that like the search for Tommy, the potential reunification of Billy and Tommy and Vision like as a family unit, it is something that this new show is going to tackle. So, you know, I sort of vomited a bunch of information into our doc here, Mallory, but like what do you think is the most important thing to remind our listeners about in terms of, Wanda and Vision's invented, but real children, Billy and Tommy? Yeah, created, right? Creations, the magic, that big bang, radioactive energy. Yeah. You know, I think one of the things that was really on my mind was actually what you just said, which is, you know, if you think back to the, we obviously were talking about this every week on the pod when we were covering Agatha. I can't even remember if we were like, attempting to be discreet about it and doing it in like separate theory corners or if we were just saying throughout, like, this is definitely going to be Wiccan. He's just a dude being a guy. Yeah, we did for sure a lot of that. For sure a lot of that. But, you know, I would say that the internet was beyond a buzz. People felt pretty sure that they knew who Joe Wach's character in Agatha was going to be, teen, yeah. And that is true, but it is still different from definitively knowing and not just definitively knowing, but knowing the how. I mean, we had, you know, if we think back to the experience of watching Agatha and the car crash and the blood and the sea and these little nuggets and what happened and what happened ultimately to William Kaplan and the essence and the porting of the, you know, one of my favorite memories of podding about Agatha was ever saying soul, shard and just not being able to like not talk about Mephisto, which obviously is like the plight of being an MCU fan and covering the MCU. It's just impossible to avoid. That's one of my ticks, you know, as you like to point out. But we know, you know, we know exactly how the reincarnation works because we know what happened with Billy. And so we have, and then we glimpsed, you know, the little crumb for Tommy. And so I think we will be, we'll be in a different place than the character because at least, like you said, we haven't seen Vision Quest. But just from the commercials, it seems like the show is mostly going to be about, you know, this is where we leave white vision at the end of WandaVision. Like, who am I, right? These are the questions. And it was where Vision was the entire season of WandaVision. What am I? Who am I? There are multiple, you know, overt conversations between Wanda and Vision about that very question. This is a show exploring, you know, identity and how that changes. Uh, depending on who you share your life with, what memories you maintain, et cetera. So a lot of Vision Quest, we are assuming, is going to be about Vision piecing together his sense of self. A lot of the cast is like other AI from across the MCU. So, you know, we know that that means a lot of things. Data, information, the ability to share context, et cetera. Did you say data or did you say dada? You know what I mean? Indeed, indeed, yeah. You know, so there's going to be like the, the who am I, but then also the, the who are you? Yeah. And that's going to be a really- And who are you to me? Yeah. Yeah. That just feels like it's, I don't know what the balance of that will be. I don't know how, I mean, it seems like Tommy's the third lead of the show, right? I, I think so. Um, I don't know. I don't know. I think so, uh, based on trailers and, and sort of credits, but I don't know. Um, and I don't know how quickly that becomes the case, if that's like something that happens like a couple episodes in or not. We haven't seen it. Let me just like big picture, just in case folks didn't rewatch WandaVision or Agatha, let's just like big picture and say, in, it, this is, it happens differently in the comics, but in the context of the MCU TV shows, Billy and Tommy, Wanda and Vision's twin children are sort of created out of Wanda's like grief and energy and ability to, to bend reality. Uh, she becomes suddenly alarmingly pregnant in episode two. The twins are born, born by episode three. They are aged up. To ten, uh, by episode four. And, um, and that's where they stay for a while. Those two actors who play the ten-year-olds are also in Multiverse of Madness. So that's sort of like where we left them inside of, inside of that story. They are powers and abilities. So Billy, aka Wiccan, who, uh, is, is the second lead of Agatha all along, has psychic ability, ability, chaos magic wielding ability, uh, can, can create reality. The way that his mother can, et cetera, et cetera. Spoilers for Agatha. You haven't seen it. Creates the, creates the entire witch's road, like out of his own magic and imagination and grief and angst. Um, and then Tommy. Like mother, like son. Exactly. Same tell. Tommy, aka Speed, uh, is a speedster, like his uncle. And so we get the manifestation of both of these kids' powers inside of WandaVision. Uh, we see the speed. We see the psychic connection, especially that Billy has, uh, with Vision. Um, inside of, inside of this season of television. Uh, the choice that Wanda has to make at the end of WandaVision is in order to not be the villain, at least until the movie, uh, to not be the villain, is to destroy the creative reality that she's made. And that means saying goodbye to Vision and saying goodbye to Billy and Tommy. Um, but she, so she undoes the creation of her children, but she says something in, in, in that final episode about sort of like, you know, once you're family, you will always remain family. And the post-credits scene in the WandaVision finale, one of, is Wanda thumbing through the dark hold ominously. And then she hears Billy and Tommy sort of elsewhere in the multiverse. So Multiverse of Madness is, uh, a movie I have a lot of issues with, but Wanda is in pursuit of her children and feels like she deserves, this Wanda of our reality feels like she deserves to be, with her children, even if it means, uh, destroying reality or stealing them from another reality. Billy, aged up, appears in Agatha All Along, as played by Joe Locke, because when the hex collapsed, his soul flew into the body of a 13-year-old named William Kaplan who had just died in a car accident. So 13-year-old boy named William Kaplan dies. Billy Maximoff's soul goes into his body. And a question that Billy has. Soul shard Mephisto. Yes. And a question that Billy has for, uh, a lot of Agatha is, am I Billy or am I William? Like, who am I? Which one am I? The answer is, uh, actually both, um, at the end of the day. And then at the end of Agatha All Along, um, Billy and Agatha in the Pendleton episode find, together, find Tommy's soul shard, if you prefer to call it that way, his essence. Which, like, the implication is kind of like he was actually, Billy was carrying Tommy with him. Sort of to, you know, it's just sort of like you're breathing with him. His heart is in your heart. It was just sort of like, was he literally carrying his soul essence in him or just, like, that connection? But anyway, he, he takes Tommy's soul essence, shard, Mephisto, whatever you prefer, and puts it in a drowning boy. Um, and so, like, a similar idea of, like, a boy who was dying or about to die, uh, now has Tommy's, Tommy Maximoff's soul inside of him. Um, something that Billy says when he does it, uh, to Agatha is he like, am I killing this boy so that my brother can live? Like, that's, that's a question he's asking. And then Agatha says her very song, sad, like, no boys die all the time. Billy, um, but, but something, uh, one key thing he says about when Billy is finding a body for Tommy's soul to go inside of, he says, it's a bad place. Uh, there's nobody there to love him. No people around him. No family. So whoever this Tommy is that we're about to meet in Vision Quest, he was not raised lovingly by the family. the Kaplans. He's had a different experience in life. So that is just something to know and, and, uh, learn. And I don't know how angry this Tommy is going to be, uh, you know, because of his circumstances or, or, um, something like that. So that is, I think all of the Billy Tommy, uh, stuff we know. I, it's a nice reminder too, that, you know, certainly we'll, we'll, we'll mine this more as we continue the pod today. Um, and I suspect that this will be present across the, the vision quest experience as well, but the, one of the things that was not just satisfying about Wanda vision, but interesting, you know, stimulating kind of like emotionally and mentally was that it, it was emotionally, um, and, and ethically and morally complex. You know, the, the example that you cited of that, um, that conversation between Billy and Agatha, like, we had, we had that conversation, right? We had conversations like, well, about the Kaplans and what they deserved to understand or know, like the, the shows, both the shows, Wanda vision and Agatha invited so many, um, real moments of reflection about those choices. And the consequence is not just on the individuals who they impact the most directly, but on, on everybody else, obviously that's an escapable across Wanda vision. And certainly at the end of it, um, in, in terms of the, the, the power sets, like I love, you know, it's really, it's fun. It kind of plays for a laugh and a chuckle when, when, when speeds powers manifest in, in Wanda vision and, you know, Fiatro fake Fiatro. Great, great. When Agatha coins Fiatro, um, is there like, Oh, a little bud dude, right. You know, when you zip it around, it's Halloween there, there's, there's smashing Jack the land. Like it's, it's fun. But then the delay of Billy's powers manifesting. And to your point about that connection with vision, You know, the fact that he can sense one is juggling a lot right there. Right. She's got a lot of, a lot of, a lot of little marionette strings to manage, but that Billy is the one who first senses, um, vision's peril. Not only is that like a fun thing for us to revisit ahead of this new show that we'll explore, you know, vision as, as father. Um, but also that's a great moment because it it's our first, you know, when vision is, is pushing his way through the hex and trying to, to understand he's. Suspicion has been mounting across the episodes. You know, obviously we have a moment, a moment like the harrowing, you know, he freeze norm, um, from Wanda's control and, and really starts to understand there's the moment with, I mean, he thinks it's Agnes it's Agatha all along, but we have all of these mounting moments for, for vision and eventually, you know, he'll confront Wanda. But when we see him try to push the hex and he starts to come apart, we are primed for what that calculus is going to be at the end, that they are born of not only Wanda's magic, but thus entwined to the, the, the hex. And, you know, the, the, the, um, the way that Agatha kind of weaponizes and mocks that idea that these things are tied, the family and the town is the tragedy of it, of course. And so that's just also brilliantly done inside of the show. You also have on the, on the power front, like a great, we talked about this a lot when we were covering Agatha, but that great little moment where Billy is sitting next to. Agatha on the couch and it's like, you're quiet, you're quiet, you know? And so what we will see through the kids and. And how startled Agatha is by that sort of like, you know, uncomfortable. Really, really just really great. And like, and just a reminder that these boys have been, you know, fighting since they were, I mean, they're not real, but if they're real since they were 10, I mean, also, I don't know, three days old, but also 10, um, listen, boys, your mother and I are, never really prepared you for this, but you were born for it. Billy and Tommy born of two, uh, two, two of these. And, and, and, uh, Dave Gonzales and I used to talk about this all the time, how like Wanda and vision were always such a problem once they were introduced to the MCU, because they're way overpowered compared to everyone else. Like when you have, so when you have something like the tarmac fight in civil war, you have to have Wanda and vision sort of on opposite sides and like occupying each other. All otherwise it's just over it's curtains. Like, you know what I mean? They're just like way, way, way too overpowered. So how do you like take them out of commission, make them the, the, the problem for Thanos. So, you know, because it was just sort of like Thanos fighting something else like Wanda and vision together, like surely should have been able to take him out. So. It's, it's fun to, to watch them here in this context, to have this moment in, in the Wanda vision finale where Wanda's like boys take care of the military. And just like leaves, like feeling sure that her 10 year olds can take care of the military and they do. So, you know, just something to think about Billy and Tommy. I have some parenting notes for Wanda on that one. And, uh, and obviously also some notes. Parenting notes for Wanda across the board. In general. Yeah. Uh, some notes for, for Hayward on, uh, uh, unloading a clip at two children, but thankfully, um, you know, thankfully Monica, Monica was there and, you know, Billy was, uh, doing his part as well. So. If Tyler Hayward didn't exist, this show would be better. That's how I feel. Okay. Yeah. You mentioned not a great character. You mentioned uncle Fiatro, um, Ralph Boner himself. Let's just dub like quickly dip our toe into, I would say two of the biggest. Barring the absence of Mephisto, which was never promised to us in the first place, the two biggest actual controversies of Wanda vision, uh, which is Ralph Boner and the ending. Um, I think these are the two things that people bumped on the most. So let's start with our guy, Ralph Boner played by Evan Peters who did win an Emmy that year for mayor of Easttown. Um, but what a year for Evan Peters, honestly, but do you remember how we lost our mind when Evan Peters showed up? And so, so, uh, uh, context reminder, this was so fresh into the Fox Disney merger era. And so fresh into this idea that like the Fox universe of mutants could collide with the MCU. And so, you know, I remember I wrote a piece where I was like, it's happening. It's happened. Here it is. This is why this is so seismic. And like, uh, you know, that was up within like hours of him appearing or whatever. And that turned out to not be the case, but listen, uh, you know, I had every reason to believe, but it was like, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta, the content never sleeps. You gotta, you gotta react. So, um, I was like, here's why this changes everything. And Disney's like, it doesn't. Um, but later, you know, they, they would do it anyway. I, I always loved, um, Evan Peters in, in the X-Men movies and in general, I'm a huge Evan Peters fan. And so when he showed up, I just like absolutely lost my marbles about it. Um, and then we get the Ralph Boner reveal at the end of the, of the season. And then crucially for this conversation, we get the Ralph Boner follow-up and Agatha, which I had the pleasure of rewatching this morning. And, um, so my question for you, Mallory is like, do you remember your Ralph Boner feelings at the time? And then, yes, I, I know we talked about it when we covered Agatha, but like, how much does knowing about Ralph Boner's appearance and Agatha, uh, impact how he lands for you here, uh, in your rewatch? This is something that I have a different experience with now on a rewatch that genuinely, unlike actually the thing we'll, we'll, we'll talk about next. Um, I was in the same place as you. End of episode five, Evan Peters knocking on that door, the glimpse of Quicksilver's hair, we're cutting, we're on Wanda's face. Vision's like, who is that? All-time iconic Darcy. They recast, she recasts PH. Just, you know, amazing stuff. And, you know, like I, like I, like I said earlier, Jason and I were not covering WandaVision week to week on Binge Mode Marvel, but this was something where we're like, we, we, oh, we must. We simply must. They're here. The X-Men are here. Exactly, exactly what you're saying. Like, this was the reaction that people had. It was like this seismic, seismic thing. Um, and like you, I just share a, a great enthusiasm for Evan Peters as a performance. So it was, it felt massive for the MCU. It felt massive for, for, for comic book storytelling, um, for the Hollywood merger aspect of it. And it was just really fun and interesting and also kind of opened up all sorts of other, even outside of the X-Men stuff, possibilities and questions about what they could do inside of this altered mixed reality. It was a really, really, really fun, active moment on the internet. And then I think people felt betrayed, like betrayed, which. Like lied to, you know. Yes. Like led, actively led to feel stupid was how I think in real time people were like, this is how I feel. Yeah. Which I never felt quite that strongly about it. I, you know, enjoyed saying we got Ralph Boner just like everybody else. But I think, you know, I think if we're being like good faith recounters, there was a level of real, like what, whoa, what? Yeah. Um, like a real lament. I, I think I had some, wait, what just happened? Feelings in real time, but not quite to that fever pitch. We had the same reaction watching our guy Ralph Boner return in Agatha, which was not only, that was just great storytelling inside of that show, but it was so emblematic of the MCU at its best, which is let's actually continue to refine and improve the story that we're telling as we are telling it. to learn. Wrap our arms around something that is a perceived error. You know, let's not pretend we never bonered anyone, but let's just double down on the boner and make sure that everyone has a good time with the boner. Which we did. We had a great time. The boner campground like t-shirts. Pitch a tent. Yeah. Pitch a tent. The stealth meetings in the parking lot. It was such a great little way of, I don't know, I think it's probably overstating it to say it was an apology to the fans or something. I don't know. But it was an acknowledgement of how people felt about it to what you're saying. And I think the idea that the MCU is a living document is just undeniable. And so the ability to say something didn't quite land, something maybe didn't quite work, or even if it worked the way they creatively intended, it wasn't received the way that they hoped it had been. And so there's a little bit of an ability to adapt, refine, tweak, and redeem. To rehabilitate Ralph Boner. I think that what's important to note is that that is not the same as saying the MCU should or has to be constantly worried about, oh my God, if we're always just like, I remember we talked about this in real time. It's actually very dangerous for a creative hive mind to constantly be worried about pissing off the fans. That's how you end up with Rise of Skywalker, right? It's like we have to walk back or undo everything. I was literally about to say, what's the worst thing that could happen? Rise of Skywalker. Yeah, 100%. 100%. Exactly. And so that's very dangerous. Yeah. And so that's also, I think, one of the things that we really admired about the way this was handled was it was done in a way that felt like a recognition and an acknowledgement, but actually still made sense in this story and it continued the story's forward momentum. Yeah. Now when I rewatch WandaVision independent of, and look, I love Theory Corner on the internet, but kind of independent of the hex that that created around all of us in real time, that reality distortion, is to just watch the show. And I honestly think the Ralph Boner stuff is like great. It's really fun. Yeah. I've just had such, I've done such a 180 on this in a way that like kind of surprises me. Maybe I'm just more open-minded as I age. But yeah, I love it. The performance is great. It doesn't feel like, I don't have that lingering pull of like disappointment when we build toward the Monica Ralph addict scene in the finale. It's just all, I see clearly now and we understand what they were trying to do. And so I'm able to appreciate it. I'm able to appreciate it. I'm able to appreciate that as I watch it instead of feeling duped. So I like the Ralph Boner stuff now. What a twist. I agree. And I think, I mean, we're going to talk about theory stuff in the categories that we have today, but like, I guess, I mean, I'll, I'll, I don't think this is our answer, but like, I'll just potentially step on the fact that like when Monica's like my guy with a truck. That's my pick. We can talk about it later then, but it's just sort of like, I'm like, what classrooms were we on that we just like lost our minds about that. Like, it's just insane to watch. So, okay. Anyway, we'll, we'll talk about that later then. Yeah. I'm, I'm with you. Like the Ralph Boner stuff. I don't, I agree with you. I was not as outraged as some people were at the time. But I was still like, oh, this sucks. You know, there's like so many reveals inside of the show that like, it almost feels like they could have, you know, were they to do it again? Maybe they could have sort of like nodded to the show. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't the fact that something weird was going on to like give us a, like a kernel that like something else might be going on here, but I guess they kind of, anyway, whatever. Ralph Boner redeemed to a certain degree. Yes. I just don't feel that sense of deflation now revisiting it. I think that's the, that's the, the summation of it. And like, and I think it's always wild to rewatch things outside of the fever dream of, of, of Theory Corner. And I do think, you know, it was a less many shows, but I do think WandaVision is like a huge source of my hold your theories loosely, uh, sort of, you know, lecturing attitude that I take towards people because I'm just sort of like, why wind yourself up and set yourself up for, for disappointment when the show itself, you know, yes, it's trying to like be cheeky and fun, but it's never trying to like screw you over really at the end of the day. And so like, it's, it's really only we work ourselves up into a lather, uh, that, that leads to that. Kind of feeling. Do you know? Yeah, I think, I think that is often true. I think that for people who are really, really bummed out by this, it probably does still run afoul of that where it's like, maybe you can watch it through those eyes and see it's fun. It's cute. It's winky. It does actually kind of ultimately fit and abide by the rules of what we come to understand is happening. But there was a multi episode, like invitation to consider this could just be the Quicksilver in the MCU now. And what would that mean? So yeah, what a, what a, what a time that was in the internet. My goodness. Meanwhile, something we have not necessarily changed our minds about is the ending of WandaVision, which like, you know, and you acknowledged this earlier. I, there are things in the finale that are absolutely beautiful and, you know, and rewatching, um, you and I discussed about whether or not we were going to rewatch all of Agatha and I wound up rewatching basically like the back half of Agatha and then sort of like spot watch, spot watch some stuff in the beginning. But like the finale of Agatha is also not my favorite. And so like, I, you know, I think there's some misfire miscalibration of what is exactly wanted versus, you know, like the Loki, the Loki finale, which is like one, you know, an incredible episode of television. So I don't think a finale, a bummer of a finale, um, you know, leaves a bad taste in my mouth for a whole season of television. I don't personally feel that way. And there is enough, as you alluded to enough, like incredibly strong stuff, um, in the finale, Wanda and vision, vision and vision. Um, you know, it's just some of the, like, I actually think the penultimate is really, really strong. The sort of like walk back through Wanda's mind, um, episode. Um, it's just that the MCU was still in a place where they felt like people needed to like punch each other in order for, um, to feel like a conclusion of a story. And we weren't yet to like the Thunderbolts group hug, uh, you know, version of how to deescalate, uh, or even like, what we just talked about on the, on the Lanterns finale. And so, um, I was thinking about Lanterns a lot rewatching this finale because it's now, I guess I'll acknowledge that not every thematic personal conversation in this finale works either, which we'll hit in a second, but you know, that like, I think the, the punch him in the sky, uh, stuff in the finale here is just, it's bad, does not measure up to the I just, I, the Monica Wanda exchange, no matter how many times I revisit this show that I love will never sit right with me. It won't. I will actually add and say, I think the Monica stuff in general, and perhaps, you know, to, to the Ralph Boner point, like perhaps if Monica in, in Captain Marvel, like the Marvels and the way that had been deployed, like if, if Monica had been used, you know, we enjoyed the Marvels more than a lot of people enjoyed the Marvels, but like still, I would not say that as like the most successful character piece I've ever seen in my entire life. And so like, maybe if Monica had become a character that we were all just like really, really invested in, it would have retroactively helped some of this origin story that, but like, it almost, I'm just sort of like, we're doing a whole character's origin story of their powers inside of this, other story that we're telling. There was just like way too much on the plate. And unfortunately, like, I feel like Monica's story then gets like a short shrift. Like I really liked the performance a lot. Um, I like the, the section where, you know, she's, um, you know, coming back from the snap and, and all of that sort of stuff. Like that is, that is incredibly powerful. Um, and, and the stuff when we first meet her inside of the hex, like that stuff is really good, but like, I guess it's just a, it's just a, a factor of her being associated with, with the sword stuff and the sword stuff I think in general is just like really rickety that, um, that, that Monica is just not well served by, I would have just rather her have a more dedicated origin story than just sort of like a C plot origin story inside of this, this, this larger show. So yeah, that, that stuff doesn't really work for me. Yeah, I agree. And I think like, this is kind of a tricky thing to parse and like a little bit of a difficult argument to even attempt to make. Because on the one hand, obviously it's undeniable that part of the, um, you know, purpose and, and mission of this show of this story is to find empathy for somebody who is going through something devastating and world shattering, right. To, to that is like what the show is about. So it's not like it is inherently invalid that Monica is a character who is able to show an uncommon degree of empathy to, to Wanda compared to some of the people around them in the story, because she has some sort of parallel, uh, loss, right. She is, has come, she's come, returned from the blip and she is, has found out that her mother died and she has this grief. And so she's like, I understand what that pain feels like. I would bring my mother back if I had the ability to do so like you had, right. At the end of the day, the, one of the things the show does well is like, you know, don't let him make you the villain. Maybe I already am. That's actually another Monica Wanda conversation from earlier about Hayward. Obviously, all of the Agatha Wanda stuff on this front is like really good. Not the shooting spells in the sky stuff, but the who are you, what are you, right? And why have you done these things? Because every moment that Vision and Wanda share about what is right, what you want and what you seek and what you need and why, but also what you have to let go of, all of that stuff that connects to that core interest is perfect. And what is real. And what is real. And what is real. And isn't it all real if you feel it, right? Like, that's all beautiful. That's why we love the show. Yeah. They'll never know what you sacrificed for them. Like, I get it literally. You said goodbye. You said goodbye to the kids and your husband and the house so that they could be freed of your mind control. But these, it's 3,000 people that Wanda canonically mind controlled and tortured. Right. And it just doesn't, it just, as one of the end notes on the season, it's like, it really, it does not work for me at all. Here's my defense of Wanda. And I, and I feel like, and I know, I know you're not, you're not saying this, but I, I, I just feel like, and it, a lot of this unravels with what happens with Multiverse of Madness, which I think is a. It's a huge misstep in terms of where we leave this character at the end of the show and then where we find her in Multiverse of Madness. Like, you know, we love Michael Waldron. We, we, we have a lot of admiration for the storytelling in general. But I think that movie did Wanda really dirty. And I think, you know, yes, she has this sort of, like, self-sacrificial, heroic, redemptive move at the end of that movie. But, like, her walking out of the movie. And it's in the text of the show that you could say, like, she didn't fully realize what she was doing. And then once she realizes it, that's when, you know, she wrestles with it a bit. But she ultimately makes the right decision when she really understands the consequences of her, her self-involved, selfish grief, grief spell. Like, like, versus an Agatha. And the argument I made at the time, and I would stand by it, again, Multiverse of Madness really undercuts me. But, like, in terms of, like, second chances and redemptions and all these things that characters are allowed to have, like, the red carpet that is rolled out for a character like Loki and the door that is slammed in the face of a character like Wanda, I'm just sort of like, the people we allow to have a redemption versus not is really patently obvious. And so I just remember the time. And people were just sort of like, she should have died or she should have, you know, she should be locked up or all this other stuff like that. And again, she breaks even further bad in the movie. So, like, maybe that just nullifies my entire argument. But I still maintain at the end of this show that, like, a redemption path is available to her. She doesn't get to necessarily get the pat on the back that she gets from Monica, which is what you're saying. And I agree with you. But I just think that, like, there, she doesn't do anything in this show that I watch and say there's no coming back from this. Agatha does. And Agatha does in her own show, which is why, spoilers for that show, she is a ghost now. Like, she doesn't get to live at the end of her show because she's irredeemable at the end of the day. You know, despite the self-sacrifice that she makes at the end of that show, she's already crossed the Rubicon. Wanda, there was still a turning back moment for her here. And then there wasn't. So, you know. I, the moments across, you know, the middle stretch of the season into the end where Wanda is, where the, I, as you said, initially she does not know what she has done, right? As her awareness is budding and building and she is saying, has these moments, these opportunities in real time, but does not take them and continues on with it, right? The casting out of, quote unquote, Geraldine of Monica, the active challenge to, you know, to sword when, when Vision tells her that he freed Norm and that he's in pain and she, they have that exchange about like, you know, Vision's like, you can't control them. Like, you can't control me like you control them. And she says, can't I? You know, we have, the point of that is that it is complex. I agree with you. Like, I never ended the series thinking Wanda was beyond redemption or that that was the point. Certainly it's not. I think that the complexity, you know, I, in that Monica exchange, like, I like Wanda's response, which is it wouldn't change how they see me, right? You know, when you have a moment, because in the finale, especially, she's really grappling with what this means, what she's done and agonizing over it. You have like Dottie, Sarah. I have a Caulfield. Unbelievable stuff. Anya, my queen. I did not recognize her at first. Adam had to tell me. I was like, wait, what? I just, it was amazing to realize that. And then you had texted me about it as well. The, that moment where Dottie is, is, uh, the, the spell lifts and Dottie, AKA Sarah begs Wanda to let her daughter out of her room is so harrowing. And those moments are in the show for a reason. Wanda and the viewer at home has to confront what has happened here. I don't think that the intention is for us to say, and thus she must die, be in prison, pay forever. I just think where Monica goes with it is too much of an instant hand wave. Like it's too, it's just too sweet. Too sweeping. And I think that for a show that is defined in its excellence by its nuance and its subtlety, it felt out of step with the really deft ability to weigh and, and hold in our hands at once our love and empathy and sympathy and desire to forgive and accept someone who has done something really grievous with our ability to identify that they have. Like that is what the show does at its best so many times. And so that moment with Monica and Wanda on the town square feels really outside of that, almost like it's from a different show. Yes. No, it's complicated. Leaving the door open for this opportunity. I believe Elizabeth Olsen has said, Hey, I kind of want to be done. Um, and you know, and she's out there saying like, she's excited to watch Vision Quest. Um, but that's something she would say anyway, uh, if she was in it. So like, do you expect her to be in it? Are we setting ourselves up for a Mephisto level disappointment if she's not? Do you want her in the story? Like, how do you, how do you feel about it? I think from the moment Multiverse of Madness ended, we were like, Wanda will be back at some point. And, and the thing you just noted, like Elizabeth Olsen sort of saying, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm good here. Like, I'm, I'm good here is the reason it has felt maybe really unlikely that she would return. That can change, obviously, like for a long time, Chris Evans was like, not for the same reasons, but was like, I'm, I'm, I'm done. You know, I played Cap for a while and I'm done. And that was, you know, not the case either. So nothing is, is forever. I think it would be, it would be lovely to see Wanda here in some capacity. I mean, I, I expect to see her in memories, basically, no matter what, as we like, as Vision unlocks, yeah, yeah, existent footage as, as Vision unlocks, um, you know, access to this, this life. But whether Wanda will return in the, the storyline and the timeline moving forward, I think the reason I'm most inclined to say no is the Elizabeth Olsen thing, but also that this feels like a, putting a bow on the Wanda vision, Wanda end vision, a slice of the MCU, like that this is the end of it. But then I don't, I kind of don't believe that anything is ever over in the MCU, honestly. And also like Billy and Speed are continuing on. Yeah. Robert Downey Jr., I know, not as Tony Stark, but Robert Downey Jr. being back, I'm just sort of like, everything's on the table at this point. So get peace of mind knowing your loved ones are protected with Progressive's accident response. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, limited availability in California. Reports due at 2, then meeting prep, then. Chronic migraine doesn't care about your to-do list. For people with chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting 4 hours or more, Botox, Onabotulinum Toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It is not approved for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. Botox prevents, on average, 8 to 9 headache days a month, versus 6 to 7 for placebo. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions. Reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia, and heart disease. agravus or Lambert-Eaton syndrome and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Ask your doctor. Visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. The secret society of semi-homemade? Listen up. Sam's Club has pre-made dishes for a Thanksgiving feast that's ready in two hours, all while tasting suspiciously homemade. Come join us. Sam's Club. Individual oven times may vary. Next is a section I'm calling You See the Vision in honor of WandaVision Vision Quest being two of the like most delightful play on word titles that we've gotten for TV shows ever. We're doing what we did with Stranger Things Rewatch or like a version-ish of what we do with our Buffy, which is we each picked a scene that we felt exemplified, specifically like the character of Vision, because that's what we're spinning forward with is we're going inside of Vision's mind and we're spending time with the great Paul Bettany. And so the character of Vision inside of this show, WandaVision, what is the scene that sort of best exemplifies what the character can be at its best and what we expect to explore going forward? We both agreed that there were really only two options, so we each picked one. And we're going to start with mine from episode eight. Because it can't all be sorrow, can it? I've always been alone, so I don't feel the lack. It's all I've ever known. I've never experienced loss because I've never had a loved one to lose. But what is grief if not love persevering? The most famous line to come out of this season of television, an incredible moment from the penultimate episode where we sort of go back to Civil War sort of timeline. I love this scene so much. And that clip cut off before for legal reasons of duration of clips we're allowed to have. But like, if I had enough time in the world, I would show you Agatha herself wiping away a little tear that I actually don't think is ironic. And her reaction to that scene. Here's why I think this is so important for the character of Vision. Is a storytelling opportunity that comes inside of sci-fi stories, and I'm saying sci-fi specifically, not sci-fi fantasy because of the nature of an android, is androids as storytelling devices to unlock exploration of human emotion. This sort of. Yeah. Outsider perspective, this childlike wonder inside of the mind of a hyper-intelligent, sophisticated, you know, creation that is an android's mind, allows again and again and again across literature and film and television for these kinds of moments where you have, you know, whether it's in Blade Runner, iRobot, or, you know, all sorts of things just sort of like, what is it that makes a human a human? And why are you different from a human? And why are you different from me? And what is the essence of you? I was thinking about Claire and the Sun, a book that I know you love very much, Kazuo Ishiguro, about, which is about an artificial friend, this little helper girl trying to understand the humans around her. It's told from her point of view. So she's trying constantly to understand, like, what makes a human a human versus what makes me, me. And there's this exchange earlier in the book, do you believe in the human heart? I don't mean simply the organ, obviously. I'm speaking in the poetic sense. The human heart, do you think there's such a thing, something that makes each of us special and individual? And then at the end of the book, Clara talking about the girl she befriended, Josie, she says, there was something very special, but it wasn't inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her. And this is just like one of the one of the mic drops of the book is that idea. And so it's just like, as a storytelling device, you know, this is true, of data on Star Trek. This is true of Anya in Buffy, though she's not an android, she fulfills that sort of archetypal role of just sort of like one of the characters like Anya inside of an episode like the body on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You have this sort of like, I don't understand, or I'm trying to understand this human condition that we're all born into. And we're raised by adults who have gone through things and just sort of like, accept the status quo or don't closely examine some of these bigger issues. And so it's just like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't and emotions and feelings because I don't know, they're hard to examine or they've just always been around us. It's just sort of the the frog in the boiling pot of water that we've always just sort of come up in our lives. And and so it takes us outside our perspective, a vision to sit with Wanda in this moment of profound grief over the loss of Pietro in Ultron and and underscore something for her. And then he follows it up by just sort of like, noticing something that's happening on the television, then they laugh together about a sitcom and they just like sit there together and enjoy sitcom storytelling, which is canonically, we just found out earlier in the episode, this thing that she loved to do with her family. And and and as as she states overtly, this idea that like, shenanigans inside of a sitcom are just sort of these manageable issues that can be solved within the half an hour. And it's just a way to make big feelings feel small and manageable and accomplishable. And it's one of those things that people find comfort in either like procedural television or sitcoms or whatever the case may be. And so like, to go from this like big, profound, let's talk about these big emotions to like, let's share this small, simple human pleasure together is just a big part of like, why I think vision is such a wonderful character, his curiosity and interest and love for Wanda in the first place. This like troubled teenager, this troubled teen that he like, they just sort of yada yada over that. But like this troubled teen that he meets. And, and how, you know, his android heart is, is, you know, with love and respect to Peggy and Cap, like the most sort of romantic, I think, character, like, you know, in terms of like chivalric, romantic character we have inside of the MCU. And I just think it's a, it's so beautiful. And I just, I love the two of them together. I love this scene. I cry every time, just like Agatha. And, and I'm really, really excited to think about what this means for, you know, again, we haven't watched the show, but we've seen the trailers, like Vision trapped inside of his own mind, trying to figure out, and this will play into your scene pick, but like, what makes him, him, what makes, uh, versus a human, you know, and then how can he, you know, we're theorizing here. How can he have love for a Tommy? How can he have that kind of connection? Where does that kind of emotion come from, uh, in this newer version of Vision that we are to meet, um, in Vision Quest? Uh, do, what do you want to say about this scene or would you like to move to your scene instead? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, definitely want to talk about this one. Um, yeah, I love that scene too. One of my least favorite things that happened during the WandaVision run was the contingent of people who were like, touching and profound. You know, I, I, that was like such a bummer and there was definitely a string of this. Rob said it the other day and I almost kicked him off the Prestige TV podcast. I was like, get, get that line out of, your derision for that line out of your mouth, you know? You know, for a lot of reasons, but I think what, um, you know, what you were saying about just genre stories, right? And that's so much of the joy we find in them is the way that a moment, an idea, a line can unlock something about your real life inside of this world that is not yours, right? That's the beauty of it. So, you know, it's a, it's a, uh, a line that has, I think that it resonated in real time and has lasted, um, you know, for a reason and obviously means a lot to a lot of people. I think that that's obviously a beautiful Wanda scene. And in that moment with Agatha and Wanda, like parsing and trying to, Agatha's on the fact-finding mission of who, who exactly, what, what is this, this magic, right? But, you know, it's such a, a crucial kind of thesis statement for what the show is going to continue to explore and has been exploring. Um, you know, but to your point about what it tells us about vision, like I love the, uh, that I've always been alone, so I don't feel the lack and like thinking about vision in that moment, newly born, uh, versus, and this is a newly born vision of a different sort now. Um, but that, that that's not true anymore, right? That when the vision that Wanda created inside of this show, uh, converses with Wanda. Right. With himself in the scene we'll talk about next and touches, you know, the gem on his forehead and the dad is there and unearths it and brings it back. And then, um, the, the, the, the physical, you know, the corporeal vision that Hayward has befouled and restored, uh, starting to like recall who he was in the life he lived that, so that like, I've always been alone won't be true for him because it wasn't true for this vision, right? That he is going to rediscover the he has grief of his own now as a result, like, is such an interesting way to think about character evolution, um, especially given the different versions and realities in this world, but like what you were just beautifully saying about what a, like an android or a figure like that can do. I mean, listening to you talk about that in the Clara comp, which I of course love, like it, it just makes me think of that, that scene between, um, between vision and Ultron at the end of, of age of Ultron, not my favorite MCU movie, but I love that scene and that conversation, you know, it's the, it's the, the, the, the ha ha, like, well, I was born yesterday after the year, you know, unbearably naive, but the, it's the humans are odd vision moment, right? They think order and chaos are somehow opposites and try to control what won't be, but there is grace in their failings. I think you miss that. Like right away, that's how vision is thinking about humanity. Now, some of that is the necessary shorthand of why is this robot good and this robot bad? Why is this AI good and this AI bad? Like you kind of have to establish that for now, many MCU fans have an attachment to vision as a comics character already, but some won't. And so they have to understand why they can believe him basically. Right. Hopefully he lifts me on the air. And so the hammer does a lot of shorthand. Yeah. It really does a lot of that for us, but you know, that's also the great, like a thing isn't beautiful because it lasts sequence, which then we're thinking about when we're watching WandaVision. And now we will be thinking about after WandaVision. So it all feels, just across the story, really kind of amazingly connected. I think what you said earlier is definitely right about the potency and impact of the moments given the relative dearth of screen time, certainly before the TV show, but you know, even frankly after compared to the TRT that some characters have racked up across the MCU. So I ride for the, what is grief line? And I always will. And not everybody has to, and that's okay. But don't, my thing is always like, you know, that's just the way it is. And I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. I think people can critique something that they don't think is good. That's fine. I don't like when people makes other people feel bad for thinking something is meaningful. I don't like that. That's all. I feel like that was happening a lot in 2021 when we were all watching this. I think that, um, to your point about that solitude, again, we haven't watched Vision Quest, but like our understanding from closely watching the trailer, which I, I recall saying I watched like 15 times when it came out is like, he seems quite alone. He's like working in like a pub somewhere in the middle of nowhere. And we don't really like, and then we see him sort of like powered down in the storeroom. And so he has these like AIs inside of his head, but in terms of like, uh, I don't want to undercut the AI to AI connection and, and, uh, say it's not real, but like, there's that connection, but like what other connection will he be able to make in the world? And will that be Tommy or will that be a Billy or will it be both of them? I'm sure it will. Um, but yeah, just that sort of like he has gone from, and, and this happened to Wanda too at the, in, in the post finale, you know, or, or when we meet her in Multiverse of Madness, like to go from being surrounded by your husband and your kids or your wife and your kids in the case of Vision to I clean glasses in a pub in the middle of nowhere or I am in a cabin reading the dark hold. This is fine. This is fine. Don't worry about me. I'm fine. Like the pang of that loneliness after so much life and love and, and bustling around you is just, yeah, something I, that hurts my feelings to think about. Um, all right, let's, let's talk about your, your scene. Carlos, let's see the clip. The ship of Theseus is an artifact in the museum. Over time, its planks of wood rot and are replaced by new planks. When no original plank remains, is it still the ship of Theseus? Secondly, if those removed planks are restored and reassembled free of the rot, is that the ship of Theseus? Neither is the true ship. Both are the true ship. Well, then we are agreed. Incredible, incredible scene. This is one of the, not the only, but one of the things I was referring to earlier. Um, when I said the finale is not my favorite, but it has some of my, some of my favorite scenes. I mean, this is one of my favorite scenes in not just the series, but the MCU. It's amazing. Look, I mean, could it be on the, like, which stuff go from, from the beginning of the pod? Could it be more for us? We're Greek mythology nerds. We're philosophy nerds. We're TV nerds. This is basically like crack for us. One of the best, I mean, the Paul Bettany performance is wonderful across the board. This is just. To get to be doing two versions of the character, you know, part of what we love so much about Loki, obviously the idea of variance, different versions of yourself. There's some of that here and, um, that's really fun. But in terms of what is actually at the core of this discussion, it is what makes me who I am, right? And so Vision is interrogating that throughout the season with Wanda and it will come up again on the heels of that. With Darcy, yes, exactly. It'll come up at the end of the finale in a scene that'll be coming up in, um, in some of our superlatives. So we'll, we'll save it for, for, for then, but in a very emotional and intense moment, there's something interesting about being able to ask a version of yourself that question though, right? Who am I? What am I? What makes me me? The ship, using the ship of Theseus to ask this because it's like literally the question of, well, is it about the body? Who has the body? Is it about who has the memories or the memories, the rot, you know, like in the conversation that continues? Um, it's just like a really kind of intellectually, really rigorous and rewarding way to have the character parse this. And it is much like Wanda is, uh, on a journey of asking who she is and wants to be and thinks she can be absent the person she loved most in the world. And now if he's gone and an ability to share her life with him, and if the kids that she created are gone and an ability to share her life with them, Vision's asking himself a version of that question, right? You know, I have not retained memories, but you do have the data. It's merely being kept from you. I love the, as that scene plays out, but certainly you are the true Vision for you believe yourself to be and how quickly we go from when white Vision comes in, we get the stinger, the Hayward, the stinger at the end of episode eight, and then white Vision just blasting his way into the scene, you know, putting his hands on Wanda's face in the finale and then trying to crush her skull. It's so disturbing right away. And then the Vision that Wanda created comes in and attacks himself. Like this is a fat kind of, fascinating from the word go there inside of the finale. My programming directive is to destroy the Vision. That is what Hayward's reconstituted Vision says to a version of himself. The version of himself that is, many MCU fans at home would be saying, more truly Vision because he does, though he, as he says to Wanda, I don't remember my life before this, but he's born out of Wanda's memories of the life that they shared, right? So there's something like truer and purer because it was his mind and heart and soul and experiences, even though he's not in possession of all those facts. And so that response to the shift from, I'm here to, my directive is to destroy the Vision to like, wait, who is the Vision? But certainly you are the true Vision for you believe yourself to be. And then our Vision, Wanda's Vision is a response to that by saying that was once the case, but upon meeting you, I have been disabused of that notion. So they're like shifting perspective in real time. And it's just kind of brilliant. And it positions us as such a fascinating because then white Vision, you know, we'll, we'll tap to the no longer the Mind Stone. Obviously there was some, some Thanos centric plot in there. A little gem plate that the Vision that Wanda created touches activates all of the data that's still inside. We see all these flashes, we hear all these moments. And then our guy just like shoots off through the skylight into a new show. So that's where we're, I mean, like you said, the books. Vision will return in 2026. Yeah. That's, uh, man. The line, the line that you alluded to, perhaps the rot is the memories, the wear and tear, the voyages, the wood touched by Theseus himself. Absolutely gorgeous writing. Um, I think something that I love rewatching this season and thinking about Vision Quest is like the detective vision aspect of it. The way that like Vision, a construct, created by Wanda is nonetheless like so vision himself that he is questioning the reality around him and investigating. And, you know, in the Halloween episode, especially just sort of like lying to Wanda and slipping off so that he can like get to the bottom of what's going on. Um, in that scene with, with Darcy, uh, you know, talking about his origins, right? In episode eight, he says, so if I understand correctly, my original code dates back to an AI called Jarvis, shout out Jarvis, but my corporeal form was born of Ultron's plan for global, global genocide. Darcy says, correcto. And he says, what am I now? And Darcy says, honestly, I'm a STEM type of lady. So I thought you just flipped a switch in your head and brought you back to life. But what I don't get is why you can't leave the hex. What do I, what I do know is I've been watching WandaVision for the past week and the love you two have is real. You belong together. So like, what is the most real thing about this fabricated, fabricated, uh, being his emotion, like his love? Uh, you know, there's just so many fun little like throwaway jokes inside of this, you know, like talking about, he talks about his nerves of steel. Wanda says like my husband is indestructible head. We get the whole like gum in the works, like all these reminders of like what a piece of machinery vision is. But at the end of the day, it is that emotion and that emotional appeal that he makes to himself when they have that, when the white vision and our vision, let's say, or Wanda's vision, let's say, have this conversation. And the white vision's like, like requests clarification. You know, they're having just this sort of like highly intellectual philosophical debate, but actually it progresses really quickly from my mission is to destroy you to I need to think about this or like, you know, I need to find a life of my own. And so visions. Inherent curiosity. And the fact that inside of these three mysterious mystery box sort of shows WandaVision, Agatha along Vision Quest, we presume Vision Quest, that there are like, there has to be detective figures, right? Like sword on the outside of the hex trying to figure out what's going on, but vision on the inside trying to figure out what's going on. Agatha and teen Billy both trying to figure out something about what's going on inside of that. And so for like vision, Agatha and teen Billy both trying to figure out something about Vision and Tommy inside of Vision Quest to be like, what's, what's the truth here? What's going on here? What's the reality? And then we as the viewer are along for the ride, but just vision as a detective and like Paul Bettany in his very like debonair British sort of way being, being the voice of that kind of detective figure is really animating and exciting. But the fact that like the biggest mystery that he has to solve is himself and his own nature is like, great. Love it. Joe, would you say that's the biggest mystery that he has to solve is himself and his own nature? Would you say that the best answer to a mystery as a person question is a person? Yeah. I would say the only thing worth writing about is conflict inside the Android heart at the end of the day. So, yeah. Oh man, just great shit. Um, I love there's that little, you know, an attempted zinger from Agatha. Oh no, like you're axing your boyfriend. Who are you going to choose? And the thing I love about it is not just that Agatha rules, but that it's uncomplicated initially, actually the answer to that question, even though the physical form of her love, her soulmate, a soulmate who we saw in the penultimate episode in the memories, just the heart wrenching moment where she, you know, she's infiltrated sword and then is standing above him. Maybe this will come up in another category, so I won't talk about it too much, but there he is. And it's no question the ex or the boyfriend, because the boyfriend is the vision who has a sense of, granted the one that she provided and only the one that she provided, but a sense of a life shared, right? The physical, the physical form does not have that. But the second that he does, even though he doesn't have that full, uh, context and full connection to, he just has the unearthed data. And now, as you know, the journey is to seek the rest of it. The second that changes, and he is in possession of those connections of that tether to Wanda and to that, to not only their history with each other, but our history to him, uh, with him, then like that chain, the math changes, then we would not know what we would no longer want anything to happen to him. We need him to escape. We need him to go into his own spinoff, into that detective journey and into hopefully that clarity that will allow him to be present. Um, hopefully for, for, you know, for Billy and Tommy and maybe Wanda, if she returns. I think what's devastating about, um, what's so devastating about that white vision, his hands on the side of her face, and then going from a loving caress to a crunching, uh, motion is like, so this idea of Wanda has created from her own grief and sorrow and heart and mind and chaos magic, uh, this vision shaped husband, uh, who loves her is asking questions now, but, but who fundamentally loves her and, and believes that she's good, believes in her goodness. Uh, cause this is something that Wanda has, you know, like in civil war, she's like locked up for her own good. And it's only like Hawkeye who's like, actually like come with me. This question of like, am I good has been at the core of Wanda's character from the moment we met her inside of the MCU. And so there's the vision that she created that is like, you're good, worthy. I love you. I want to marry you. I want to build a life with you. I want to have kids with you. So like, and then like, here's the quote unquote real vision and he shows up and he's like, you're a monster, do you know? And it's just sort of like, even though he is not in possession of all the facts or all the memories, what's true is that in some, by some definitions, he's the quote more real one. And he has identified her as the enemy and how heartbreaking and devastating that is. Um, I'm so excited for, uh, white vision to get close and closer to the vision that we know and love. I don't know how close he'll be when we find him in at the beginning of the show. Like, you know, it's been a while or has it, I don't know. We'll find out. We don't know the BBYs on this one yet. So yeah, that's right. We don't. Yeah. All right. Should we go to our categories? Yeah, these will be fun. We're calling these the Wanda wows. This has been made from our production team that, um, we set up these clips in the order that they are the doc, which means selfishly, I will always be going first. And it is not because I'm impolite, but because it is logistically easier. So we're going to start with best sexual innuendo and we're going to start with my clip. Play it, Carlos. You are incorrigible, darling. I know you don't have a secret thing for Mexican wrestlers. Oh, is that an innuendo? I don't know who's to say, but, uh, I just, uh, I remember actually, so yeah, it was, it was before I worked here. I made like a super cut of like all the horniest moments, uh, from Wanda vision and put it. So I like, I knew every single one of these was roadmatched because I am not built for video editing. And so it took me a million years to make this super cut. Um, but that's my, of all the darlings and there are many, yeah, that's my favorite. Cause it's like the most sort of like snarled. And, um, I just, you know, he's, he's actually in that moment kind of trying to distract her so that he can get out of there and like go do his detective work. Uh, but it still really works for me. They're in their dumb Halloween costumes, which is, you know, their canonical comic book costumes. And, um, I just, I just love that moment. So I want it in here. The comic accurate costumes. This is like a delightful little, little aspect of that episode. How horny those two are for each other. You know, there's the fun little, like, um, granted it's in a pretty active gaslighting stretch for, for Wanda toward vision. But when she's like, you know, vision, it's not, it's not Agnes's fault that she has an unusually active libido. And it's like these, you know, Wanda and vision, I mean, one of the great moments early in the season, the separate beds, you know, when we're in that decade and then the, uh, using the magic to, Oh, let's push those beds together. And then one cover. And then they just, uh, crawl under the covers and fuck. Cause they're horny for each other. It's great. In that, in that, uh, same episode with Agatha, when the babies are crying and he's like, uh, come on lads, I'm going to get my leg over, get my leg over, get your leg over is like one of my favorite British isms. But like, yeah, it was just sort of like, anyway, uh, what's your, what's your clip for this? It's so good. Uh, what are you wearing? What are you wearing? Also, also wonderful. I was, while there are no, no shortage of, of Wanda and vision horny moments to pick from, I felt pretty confident that you would pick a moment between those two. And I have gone in a radically different direction. Carlos, can we, uh, can we see my clip? Hey, care for a stick of big red? Oh, well, hold on there a second. Did you hear the man? He doesn't eat food. It's gum food. Well, my understanding is that it's purely for mastication. Oh, no, I don't do that. This is just a hysterical moment. The big red scene. The neighborhood watch episode two, uh, mastication masturbation. Oh no, I don't do that from her, but my guy herb hysterical, a lot of interesting and very compelling performances from the town folk and their roles. Herb is one of my favorites. Uh, Phil Jones, quite good. Bev. Is that how mirrors work? Cannot be denied hysterical, but Herb, Herb is just, I absolutely love him. And, uh, Oh no, I don't do that. Just hysterical kills me every time on this, uh, on this tack you've taken, which is the sort of like, I don't know, sort of, uh, sixth grade boy tack. I will, I will say, um, Ralph Boner saying Boner to his own name is a really top tier moment. Incredible stuff. He just like Boner had his own name. That's incredible. Uh, fun to think of how many times across his life he must have, Like every day, every day of his life, he's just sort of like, my name's Ralph Boner. on her head like what are you every hour maybe um that's a great one i'll on the runner up front i'll also toss out same in the same episode same scene same stretch from um my my clip episode two the neighborhood watch scene when uh vision says he he kind of fucks up for a second says he doesn't eat right and then he covers by saying i mean i don't eat between meal times at meal times i'm a regular eating machine i'm putting that in the innuendo category and i'm happy for wanda and you should and wanda deserves that yeah um all right favorite fake commercial this is one of the just kind of in general because we haven't talked about these yet this is just one of those little touches in the show that makes me love it so much it it not only kind of heightens that we're watching a sitcom we're watching a broadcast but obviously it connects to the it's a broadcast that is rooted in wanda's history and wanda's life right so the fact that like wanda's subconscious is fueling this and so you know the the stark industry's aspect of the the toast meat because of the stark bomb and sokovia or the the strucker watch because of the strucker the hydra sigil the experimentation with the scepter um the lagos brand towels all of it that's just it's just great it's like just a great idea whoever had that idea congrats to you it's wonderful my pick is the hydra soak from the strucker watch because of the strucker watch because of the strucker watch episode three uh we see these little scenes of chaos on the home front the spills the burnt food a dog pissing at the island in the kitchen tough tough stuff and then the voice do you need a break you read my mind come with me escape to a world on your own where your problems float away when you want to get away but you don't want to go anywhere hydra soak find the goddess within and better clues actually to like what westview is and what exactly is happening here and with that hydra tie to wanda's past and also i think we're just both very much in a like shout out um comforting bath spa vibes so absolutely yeah um mine comes from episode seven it is the nexus antidepressant commercial this is the episode so episode seven breaking fourth wall uh wanda is just completely you know direct addressing the camera talking about how she's unraveling and then we get like a classic antidepressant commercial um nexus because the world doesn't revolve around you or does it um and uh the joy of getting like that's one of those like comic book easter egg moments because you know wanda is a rare nexus being inside of the mcu and uh this idea that there's a version of her that exists in all realities uh or she can bend reality uh around her and all the sort of stuff like that uh but getting to explain to people what that means why what nexus why nexus is important why this is like a fun comic book illusion um i really like that one my runner-up for like best accurate commercial vibes i think the yo magic yogurt from episode six which is like a claymation shark uh sort of commercial a real sort of like juicy fruit kind of like fruit by the foot uh like real early 90s um aimed at children kind of commercial perfect vibes loved that one as well that's that one is so upsetting it's so good so good um all right best agatha ism this is a rich category mallory what have you chosen so can you define this for me exactly is this like one of her kind of like quirky turns of phrase or is it just an opportunity to honor anything about agatha like any agatha line is available to you okay okay so i mean we've already talked about it but just to say again any like agatha category it's got to go to the agatha all along song and reveal at the end of episode seven which is just historic unbelievable um but since we've already kind of covered that i oh my god like you said it's a rich text there are so many so many fields i want you to go first because i can't i can't quite pick i have like kind of comic contenders and then sort of like intense contenders and it's difficult this is kind of like a the equivalent of buffy where i'm kind of like i have like 10 finalists what do i do i actually think i only have five finalists i tried to show some restraint but it's really difficult here do you have a clear um i think and though this is um this is part of the agatha all along song and reveal at the end of i think and i killed sparky too as the sort of button on that song is maybe my pick it's either that or i actually did bite a kid once direct address to the camera um you know and all of and i will say for katherine hahn's performance is just utter perfection heaven on earth throughout this entire show obviously yeah but the episode episode seven where she gets to direct address she's just on another level good at it and um so all of her lines from from that sequence um but i i will give it to and i killed sparky too from agatha all along my top contenders are also from episode seven on the um more comic but also maybe like an agatha ism uh front like something that just feels particular to how she speaks in the show and this is like she she has come over um and found you know a very beleaguered wanda and offered to take over the show the twins and then we get the direct to camera i think i got here in the nick of time because she was one split end away from cutting her own fangs incredible agatha line just the way she says it i don't know i rewound that part so many times just be like what is it that katherine hahn does here that is so funny i don't know she's perfect it's absolutely incredible on the more intense harrowing front and we hear this line from the quote-unquote producer in that episode and we don't realize you know till later in the reveal i always have just let it go love this though do you think this is maybe what you deserve is just such a savage savage moment um a couple other runners up because one of the kind of through lines is referencing ralph and like alluding to this marriage that they share that is obviously fictitious i think my favorite on that front is from episode one the only way ralph would remember our anniversary is if there was a beer named june 2nd that's just hysterical that's just hysterical um i quite like in episode eight got close with fake pietro if you will it's like she's podcasting just amazing um and then i think the one where i'm always like this is just a fucking bar this character is instantly undeniable the performance is god dear also from episode eight uh wanda hears the twins goes outside and sees agatha kind of holding them on the magical leashes it's the you know you have no idea no idea how dangerous you are you're supposed to be a myth and being capable of spontaneous creation sequence but the you're supposed to be a myth and being capable of spontaneous creation sequence but the you're supposed to be a myth and being capable of spontaneous creation sequence but the for dinner unbelievable just withering and incredible i ride for breakfast for dinner let me just say that i love delicious for dinner it's a great one i'm gonna hit you with a couple more uh when she make when she's mocking one and she goes what are my children that accent really comes and goes doesn't it like making fun of the sokovian accent coming and going incredible stuff really good writing really well delivered my thoughts are not available to you toots uh the use of toots as like a through line but like my thoughts are not available to you is really good um that macrame is not gonna hitch itself yeah yeah really and then she like dings the bell on her bike really really good um his mother's cuckoo for cocoa puffs and then yeah the lavender line that you mentioned earlier but lavender is supposed to have a calming effect ralph sprays it on me every night but there's no taming this tiger which is like in head to toe lycra uh so funny really good agatha what an incredible creation um all right best classic tv reference this is also a rich text as far as i'm concerned but you know you go you go first here what uh what's your pick if i had to pick one thing here's one that i don't think i recognize at the time um but i believe to be true when she throws a car at wanda like uh when wanda and agatha are fighting and agatha reveals that she can like absorb wanda's powers so just hitting her with a blast of power is not gonna do one any good so instead she throws a car at her uh you know we get like a sort of classic wicked witch of the west like the boots are under the car something like that but the car goes into the house which is a plot line on full house so i choose to believe that this is a reference to the time that uh i believe it was stephanie drove a car into the tanner kitchen in full house that's what i choose to believe to believe that that's a reference to um um i have others but that's my my winner yeah they're really given buick their money's worth on the on the product placement endorsement front there with the the use of that car um so boy you know like you said just a a loaded field and a rich text here i i think more broadly just you know we've been kind of talking about this all pod but the how fulfilling it is when we get into the penultimate, the previous on episode and we go through the memories and we realize like the role that these sitcoms had in in wanda's life we you know we see that moment with like young pietro and always sitcom sitcom sitcom and we learn about like watching american tv and the family learning english and like the dick van dyke show in the hole in the wall like even outside of all of the other box sets in the briefcase like wanda's favorite kept in a special place and then obviously the scene we already talked about the grief scene with wanda and vision and you know she's watching in the hydra um uh the stretch before that she's watching uh brady bunch and then she's watching malcolm in the middle so like that's all great obviously all of the like um not just what decade is the the decade match inside of each episode and the shows that they're you know alluding to we've got episode one i love lucy dick van dyke episode two bewitched i dream of genie i found the bewitched one particularly satisfying post agatha actually given everything in agatha about like flying on broomsticks and like you know all that like it was kind of fun to have that come back up you : episode three the brady bunch all in the family etc um i want to shout out darcy for a second here because in episode four you know we're not getting another wanda sitcom vision we're kind of we're panning out and we're connecting the dots we're tying we're tying all these little strands together when darcy says the next time she's watching dishes because she's like there'll be a radio there right the next time she's washing dishes which by my count happens about once an episode barf just an incredible little dig and like the next time she's watching dishes is when she's the role of the homemaker in the old sitcoms, et cetera. We build toward episode five. We've got Growing Pace, Full House, Family Ties. How can I not shout it out? Because I am named after Mallory B. Keaton from Family Ties, so I've got to shout it out. Episode six, Malcolm in the Middle. We're getting into more of like the, I was actually never a Malcolm in the Middle watcher. Me neither. But ultimately my favorite in terms of just the structure of the episode of WandaVision and how it connects to the reference, the illusion, is the Modern Family. Episode seven. I just think that's the best. I really love the direct-to-camera confessionals of where we find Wanda, and as you noted, Agatha in that episode. So that's my pick, but it is just, I guess given what we learned about the Dick Van Dyke family history, that's like, that and the Malcolm in the Middle one feel so meaningful, I don't know. This is a spoiler for my pick for favorite episode, which we will talk about later, but episode one is actually my favorite because I was like, which is a weird choice, I think, but like I was so into the Dick Van Dyke show that to like watch something that was so beat for, that episode is the most beat for beat, let's recreate like a classic sitcom plot. And so to watch that was just so enjoyable to me. But yeah, the intro where he like carries her over the threshold through the chair as an illusion to like Dick Van Dyke show him like tripping over the ottoman is like so good. In the Bewitched episode, at one point when she's like irritated with Dottie, she like does this face where she sticks her tongue out, which is like a perfect match for Elizabeth Montgomery in Bewitched sticking her tongue out. The set deck, right? The like the Brady Bunch staircase being there, the Family Ties staircase being there. And in terms of like the opening credits or like the, or the evolution of TV that happens inside the episode. So like the twin bed to double bed transformation that you already talked about. Yeah. Like how sitcoms, you know, like Rob and Laura Petri who like have a child sleep in twin beds. It's so crazy. I think Lucy and Ricky were in twin beds and then later in the same bed, like as time went on. Or like something like Bewitched, which started in black and white and then became in color. So like the fact that that episode like ends with them transforming into color into episode three now in color is like really fun. But in terms of like the different opening credit sequences that they did, I have to shout it out to your namesake Family Ties. Because like that opening credits where we get like the, you know, the growing pains Family Ties as like photos of them when they were younger. So we get like baby vision, which is just so funny because of course there never was a baby vision, but vision dressed as Santa, the Easter bunny and a turkey while like holding the twins and looking exasperated is so funny. The lyrics, nothing can phase me because you're in my heart is like so good. And then it's just, like the hook of that song is we're making it up. Like it's just, it's so good. The show rules. I love it so much. Were you a big, I assume the answer. Not only do I assume the answer is yes, I feel like we must have talked about this and I just can't remember through my fog right now. Big Nick at night kid. You must have been. Yeah. Yeah. Same. Oh yeah. Same. Yeah. Donna Reed, Mr. Ed, you know, yeah, all of it. Dick Van Dyke. Yeah. Et cetera, et cetera. I loved, I loved Nick at night. The best. Same. Wildest slash favorite abandoned theory. You zagged. I took the obvious one. Carlos, will you play this clip please? The devil's in the details, Bev. That's not the only place he is. He couldn't get out one word, let alone a whole pitch. So I'm trying every trick in the book to help this poor man. I'm, I'm high. I don't understand what's happening. It's Mephisto. I would say specifically the stork is Mephisto, which was one of my favorite flavors of the Mephisto theories. But just how we were so Mephisto pilled that I believe I wrote and I like, there are many things that I'm embarrassed, have my byline on them. But one of my most embarrassing things is that I wrote, is like what I was theorizing, because I think Al Pacino took like a meeting with Kevin Feige. And so I was like, Pacino's playing Mephisto. Write it down in ink. It's happening. We're getting Pacino as Mephisto in this season of WandaVision. Don't worry. We got Sasha Baron Cohen, which is the same as Pacino as Mephisto. In a show that people definitely watched. Anyway, Molly Rubin, anything you want to say about Mephisto or you want to move on to your, your, your, I mean, you're right. Obviously that's the pick. I feel like Mephisto, the Mephisto theory of craze just feels to me like it extends into basically every MCU property until we finally got them. but like WandaVision was the disease, like origin, like origin because of the shards that are, you know, like Mephisto is tied to the WandaVision story. But like once it started there, we just like couldn't let it go. It was, we were crazed. No, it was right. The, the, the, the, the, the depth of, of comics canon. I felt like it like justified and supported the theorizing. Great clip mashup there. That was, that was just a really fun thing to be living through in real time. I, the reason that I picked as I teased earlier when you mentioned the, the Monica, the Monica lining question, the reason I picked the engineer is because this to me feels most reflective of, we just, we all went too far. We were way far ahead. We actually didn't like, yeah, it's, it's just like, what, why, why? Yeah. Um, so this is the, not just that the engineer was going to be Reed Richards, but also then the casting extension of that Krasinski was going to be playing him and would definitely be appearing in the final few episodes of WandaVision. So episode five, Monica wants to get back into town, get back through the hex and says, I know an aerospace engineer who'd be up for this challenge. And like the show doesn't actually go dun, dun, dun, but like kind of, like there's like a glint in the eye and felt like that in real time. It did feel like that, but looking, watching it back, I'm like, she just does it normally. I think, but this is like, this is the, this is the other reason I picked. This is like, I love the show. I think it's wonderful. Just that. What does that line there for in that fashion? Why? And then the episode six, Monica receives the text and says, just got to meet my guy over the bridge. You were like, it's happening. And then episode seven, they meet Monica's source. And it's not only not John Krasinski playing Reed Richards, which we'll get eventually. Yeah. It's major goodner. A friend of mine. And then, and then this like whole truck that she's built, which gets destroyed in two seconds. And I'm like, what are we even doing here, man? Space, space rover. That's the thing. Like the line could just have been. And I think, I think it is difficult at the end of the day to separate this from the Ralph Boner response. That's also why I picked it because I think there's like a, if the line had not been, I know an aerospace engineer would be up for the challenge. Do you feel like they were one of my mom's friends can help. Yeah. Sure. Good. Nerd. Yeah. I, I don't think they were trying to make us think Reed Richards is going to be there, but like, yeah, we lost our mind about it. Really? Truly. Yeah. A mania, but also let's bear in mind is 2021. And all of our, all of our sanity was holding on by a thread, you know, we were sure. This is going to be Reed Richards because of this one line. And obviously like there, you know, power sets and what was happening here. And like, it wasn't, it wasn't an indefensible line of theorizing. It's just like, obviously that is not only not what happened. It was not a character of consequence at all. So it was such a, like so weird. Well, yeah, and also, yeah, the stork was just a stork. Sometimes a stork is just a stork. historic and sometimes uh aerospace engineer is mayor good mayor major goodner so like don't even worry about it all right uh best fit slash fashion decade mallory what's your answer for this shocked myself with my pick here shocked myself because as you know i'm such a fan of like 60s and 70s fashion and i will say there's just some exceptional knit polo work from the gents at the neighborhood watch scene in episode two on that front um and the 80s is it's not my favorite fashion decade but i had to pick it specifically because the first couple outfits we see not my favorite when wanda comes out in the plaid button down like kind of cap sleeve with the high-waisted jeans and the suspenders and then vision comes into the kitchen and he's in this like knit sporty long sleeve polo thing and then agnes comes in in her jazzercise i'm just like we're cooking we're cooking with gas this is the best that wanda fit i think is my single favorite fit in the entire season it's just incredible very um very like uh uh material girl season three stranger things shopping mall montage vibes with that look in a way that like is very memorable high waist i can see it um yeah yeah so i just think that fit is iconic i love it what about you did you pick something i picked a different decade for each of our three main characters and i will say for vision i'm picking the 60s specifically the striped sweater that he wears in like the second episode um perhaps in that neighborhood watch uh scene um agnes's jazzercise in the 80s i don't think there's any beating it it's just perfection and then for wanda i'm going with the 70s the like pregnancy dress the boots and the long straight hair wig i just think that that is just an incredible fit and like the the sequence where she and vision are like back-to-back sort of like ready to to like fight you know and she just has like her like magic hands up in in that fit i just think is iconic from the show so yeah wanda in the 70s really really good stuff great stuff all of the hair journey across oh the wigs just perfection vision's wigs are a wild journey wanda's wigs are yes specifically so good favorite use of a minor mcu character i'm just gonna shout out darcy uh my babe looks great in her escape artist outfit looks great always is really fun jimmy it's fun to see you but i gotta give it to to darcy it's obviously darcy i will say i i want to honor darcy and jimmy as a pair as well because i think they're they're great together as we've noted the hayward sword stuff in general just not the strongest part of the show um but when we're with jimmy shout out close-up magic shout out flourish uh and when we're with jimmy and darcy together like i love in episode four for example as they're puzzling out what is going on um and they're watching they're watching the broadcast and jimmy says i can't believe wanda and vision are having a baby and darcy's like you want any yeah heck i thought about it for sure a little jimmy woo get him a tiny little fbi badge oh oh you mean the chips yeah sure it's just hysterical but yes on the darcy front from the second i love her she's like you know i love i just love her from the minute we meet her obviously and thor as you know um how space as you know is one of my favorite moments in dark worlds just kills me um so her's kind of the sass being right back there in that with that energy when uh she's coming in with all the other scientists and like trying to to puzzle out their specialties and then gets the guy like won't answer oh no one cares um right away she's like is there somewhere a lady can get a cup of coffee you guys look like you might get down with those little pod things terrible for the environment it's just so good and of course she's the one who put you she's the one who puts together like figures out okay the waves and the lines and there's something else here and i need a tv not one that's flat and it finds the broadcast and also just on the she recast pho front the fact that she's such a great avatar for us at home like trying to figure out what is happening and kind of like feeling that we're giving ourselves over to it even as our our minds are yeah racing it's just the best she's great she's the best so the next i will just say this so in the next category is favorite episode that's where i picked episode one the fact that episode one ends and like somebody's watching and you're like it's darcy like that's just that's just wild great stuff uh yeah i already mentioned why episode one's my favorite um i i don't know i just think one like an exquisite bonkers way to start a a tv series just like we're just gonna do an episode of the dick van dyke show and and i just something i think is underrated inside of this tv show is how good elizabeth olsen and paul bettany are at the various modes of sitcom acting and they're just like genuinely like so funny so charming and so capture the like the the first couple episodes is sort of like musical way she has of like reading all of her lines um i just i think they're extraordinary so i i gotta give it to episode one what's your what's your pick i i love it um i had an incredibly hard time with this category which obviously is a testament to the show i think there are a number of eligible episodes uh episode three is not my pick to be clear but just wanted to shout out because we we haven't hit it yet um the end of episode three you know that ultron moment with monica geraldine and wanda and then casting geraldine out of the hex and when the trucks and the choppers and the lights and the modern tech bathe the scene and daydream believer kicks in i just remember so vividly watching that and being like this is amazing this show is amazing um so the ending of that one and as you know i think it's like a very memorable sequences um and i do think episode four overall is like really good actually but i it doesn't feel right to pick an episode that like isn't a primarily wanda edition episode so i have three contenders episode five episode seven and episode eight all of which are bangers just bangers episode five on a very special episode we've already talked about the uh appearance of f and peters at the end of that episode but that's also the twins right they're here they're aging up sparky you already mentioned um on the sparky front like i just really am always awed by the scene when the boys are grieving sparky and they ask wanda to bring him back and she is able to give them wisdom and counsel that she cannot heed herself don't age yourselves up the urge to run from this feeling is powerful i know it's too sad you can fix anything fix the dead what no you can do that i'm trying to tell you that because there are rules in life we can't rush aging just because it's convenient and we can't reverse death no matter how sad it makes us okay some things are forever and then there's the bring them back bring who back and the kids are talking about sparky but then vision walks up like that scene is just amazing and i love that it shows us that wanda understands that and has that clarity but that is not the same as being able to do it yourself right it's just great um and i think that's the thing that's so important to me because i think that's the thing that's so um this is also the episode episode five where wanda reveals herself to sword and that's just a really intense sequence and a really good one i have what i want no one will ever take it from me again and that's the stretch where vision vision's suspicion has been mounting but it really reaches a fever pitch there so that's a i just think that's a great episode like i don't know that it stands out quite as clearly in our minds as you know previously on or some of the others but it's really really strong um episode seven we've already talked about a lot the the only one the breaking the fourth wall the that's when you know we get that do you think this is maybe what you deserve line that's the you're quiet agnes on the inside line that's the don't let him make you the villain maybe i already am and that's agatha all along like we've talked about all the things that make that episode great it's really excellent that's probably my favorite one previously on we've already talked about a lot the memory episode it's just awesome like it's just awesome there's a way for an episode like that to really not work i feel like i feel like it is stagnating the the yeah halting the forward momentum and almost like okay well we had to all in one place kind of like fill in all these missing spaces and like make sure we had covered our bases and it just doesn't feel that way at all it feels not only inside of this show but something like the oh the mind stone didn't give wanda her power you know the the clarity like it the the line from agatha amplified what otherwise would have died on the vine obviously something comics fans have been talking about for years at that point there's a lot of just satisfying connective tissue there um so that's a great one yeah i five seven and eight are like basically neck and neck i i think i'll pick seven but it is close sorry it's tough guess what it's a great show really is um funniest moment what do you have i have a i have a a duo here but they're connected um i'll explain why though it'll probably be clear carlos you've already talked about one of them carlos can we see this what happened to your accent what happened to yours details are fuzzy man i got shot like a chump in the street for no reason at all and next thing i know i heard you call fallen me i knew you needed me where are my children where are my children oof that accent really comes and goes doesn't it so good sorry i'm so sorry that i stepped on that earlier no no it deserves to be celebrated as often as possible i am calling this the double ultron yeah i the gratitude i felt in both of these moments now to be fair during agatha we taught we've talked elsewhere about like actually wanda moving in and out of her sokovian accent there's like a really kind of heartfelt way to look at that but i i really got a kick out of the yeah the joke from agatha they're calling back to the sokovian accents the uh fiatro clip there also obviously connects to the accent stuff but i got shot like a chump in the street for no reason at all is to me one of the most important moments in the history of the mcu because as i have talked about for hours on fucking end on ringer podcasts pietro in age of ultron is one of the most baffling renderings of a character to me and i say that as as you know one of the leading aaron taylor johnson enthusiasts there is no way that that should have happened should aaron should aaron taylor johnson did you just say aaron rogers did you just say aaron taylor johnson aaron taylor johnson why did i hear you say aaron rogers in my head for some reason i know i knew who you were talking about obviously um uh will aaron taylor johnson get one more crack at playing a superhero and will it be good i support it okay i i are you implying that craven wasn't good yeah it's a perfect movie i don't accept it what could have been better nothing um i would just say that's that's my that's my double that's what i would just say everything everything that ralph does as pietro is really funny to me um so the the halloween episode i actually really really like and then um and then drunk drunk vision from episode two drunk because there's chewing gum in in the works i think is is really fun so yeah i love that i don't know why this stands out to me so much too but my runner-up is the um on the stork front shout out mephisto um not not specifically that entire sequence so that is obviously all like amusing it is when the stork comes back around and his beak reaches to just grab the fish on cheryl dean's pants yeah it is hysterical it's very good hysterical oh man all right to wrap up we have most emotional moments i'm gonna go you got first with something you started to talk about but then you saw maybe a look on my face and you stopped talking about it so let's watch it i can't feel you um just devastating just absolutely devastating guess what elizabeth olsen is a great actress uh she's very very good rules uh that's absolutely when she kind of does but doesn't break into sword she's like allowed to go back but then she just does it kind of dramatically so it looks bad on footage but um you know and then she's like tyler being a piece of shit and being like uh he doesn't belong to you he belongs to the government all sort of stuff like that anyway um yeah just just her her psychic abilities but not but there's nothing there's no there there inside of the pieces of the body of the person that she loved more than anything else devastating really bad yeah that is just so heart-wrenching i agree the performance there is is really beautiful and and of course like the the connection and the you know to the call back to those moments um in infinity where you know the i just don't know just feel you from the version that we got from both of them the edinburgh stretch the uh wanda kind of i just feel you you know the kind of calming nature and then the the grace and the forgiveness and the permission from vision in that fateful moment you know i just feel you and so to call to call back to that too kind of adds that extra real wallop to the gut if i had the opportunity to ask paul bettany anything i think i would ask him which of his vision deaths was his favorite because he's had so many um who's died the most in the mcu is it loki is it vision who who who's done it the most number of times i'm just gonna put that out there i don't know the answer but it might be vision oh trying to think back to like all of the different things we saw in like deadpool and wolverine even strange strange i don't know anyway uh what's what's your answer well i know what your answer is here give it to me i have a clip as well let's uh let's see it carlos but before i go i feel i must know what am i you vision are the piece of the mind stone that lives in me you are a body of wires and blood and bone that i created you are my sadness and my hope but mostly you're my love you are my sadness and my hope but mostly you're my love is so heart-wrenching and beautiful i'm going to start saying that to you whenever i can um that scene is gorgeous you already said that to me people might not know that at home but you just texted to me on the regular it's true but now they know now it's now it's canon the cat's on the back that's one of the like you know finale not my favorite but that scene is just gorgeous the battle's over vision has said i know you'll set everything right just not for us and wanda has said no not for us and we have this clarity and we're building toward it and they say goodbye tuck the boys in for bed she said that's a good idea the shire but not for them exactly exactly um boys thanks for choosing me to be your mom heart-wrenching and then we go down to the living room and wanda is turning off the lights and then vision turns one back on and he says just wanted to see you clearly and she says end like with you know because what what does it look like to see what does it mean to see wanda clearly right and there you are and then we get that exchange that we just saw and i loved how it called back to a version of that conversation that was so heated that was was was an argument in episode five before what i can't remember my life before west you i don't know who i am i'm scared and wanda said you are my husband you are tommy and billy's father isn't that enough and he was he was it's not that being in their family wasn't enough it's that he didn't have a sense of the truth right and so to be able to like call back to that with period of withholding and have this just be about a complete sense of truth and understanding and shared uh uh embrace uh it was so so so sad and then we build toward this is really you know heading into the new show obviously even even more wonderful to revisit i've been a voice with no body a body but not now a memory made real who knows what i might be next we've said goodbye before so it stands to reason we'll say hello again i mean that's maybe the answer to your question earlier about like it is i don't know that's a promise isn't it it's a re-watching that scene i was like they ha they don't have to let's hold it loosely let's hold it loosely nothing is promised liz's olsen might be like i don't want to do it but i'd really like it if we got a scene with if she shows up for the finale that would be great agreed um that is our tour back through wandavision i had a great time we were gonna watch it anyway to prepare for vision quest but now we got to celebrate it together um i'm really really really really really really hope it's good excited for vision quest uh so we will be starting our coverage of that show they're doing a funky little like two episode here and there drop um you know like the first two weeks yeah two two two one one one one interesting five weeks intriguing to spend with vision quest but we were really excited for that show so we will start our coverage of that next week hoppetsanddragons at gmail.com um thank you to our hex our the the the residents of our bubble it's carlos chirboga it's jacob cornett it's joe me a dinner on it's our juno roga powell it's you mallory rubin it's me joanna robinson i don't know i haven't seen scott lee today but perhaps scott lee will be working on this episode uh thank you to all of them and we will see you back inside vision's mind palace next week bye Progressive's accident response can contact emergency services if you're in a major accident. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates Limited Availability in California Driver is responsible for emergency and towing charges not covered by the policy. Listen up. Sam's Club has pre-made dishes for a Thanksgiving feast that's ready in two hours. All while tasting suspiciously homemade. Come join us. Sam's Club. Individual oven times may vary.