Reality and memory and grief intrude into the Scarlet Witch’s fictional town of Westview in the third episode of WandaVision. After giving birth to twins, Wanda notes her brother Pietro was her twin, and starts singing a soft lullaby to Billy and Tommy in her native Sokovian.
Geraldine/Monica tells Wanda that Ultron killed Pietro, and she doesn’t take it well. The wacky ‘70s sitcom vibe ends and Wanda notices her friend wearing a necklace with the SWORD symbol. She casts Monica out of her delusion, and she lands in a modern-day field, surrounded by men with guns. The Monkees’ “Daydream Believer” plays, appropriately, because Wanda has come to believe in her own daydreams.
Pietro Maximoff (Quicksilver) had a very brief heroic career in the Marvel movies. Who is he in Marvel Comics? He was one of the earliest recruits of the Avengers, along with Wanda. While she was a core member of the team for decades, Quicksilver was more of a wanderer, much more a reservist than an active member. He married Crystal of the Inhumans (the same who appeared on the awful Inhumans TV show) and they had a daughter, Luna. Ironically, the daughter was a non-powered human despite being the offspring of a mutant and an Inhuman. The Inhumans originally lived in isolation in the hidden city of Attilan in the Himalayas, but after Earth’s pollution started killing them, Reed Richards helped move the city to the Blue Area of the Moon (which has gravity and an atmosphere). Quicksilver and Crystal eventually divorced. She joined the Avengers for a time without him and he was briefly associated with X-Factor. He’s always been around, teaming up with the Avengers on and off.
Wanda and Pietro have a well-established dynamic in the comics. Due to their traumatic beginning, he was always overprotective of his twin sister, despite the fact that she was more powerful. Eventually Wanda came into her own as a superhero, as many of the Marvel women created in the ‘60s came into their own. (And thank God they did. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created a lot of iconic women heroes but their powers were used in a sexist manner and they were too often damsels in distress. The Invisible Girl’s power was to disappear from view and she needed her teammates to rescue her. The Wasp was a ditzy socialite whose power was to shrink from view. Marvel Girl had low-level telekinesis and was considered the least powerful original X-Man. By the early ’80s, these women displayed their full potential. The Invisible Woman harnessed the full power of her invisible forcefields and became a force to be reckoned with. The Wasp served as Avengers chairwoman for years, capably leading such skilled warriors as Captain America and Thor. Marvel Girl single-handedly saved the universe as Phoenix and nearly destroyed it as Dark Phoenix.) Quicksilver also couldn’t stand the Vision, as he was appalled that his sister married an artificial man. They called a truce eventually but it felt like half the Avengers comics in the Bronze Age had a scene with the Vision and Scarlet Witch calling Quicksilver on the big video screen and Quicksilver giving a “No sister of mine” speech to Wanda before hanging up.
Anyway, the TV show. Putting the Brady Bunch stairs on the opposite side of the house was an effective way to convey that this thing we’re all familiar with has something very wrong with it. There’s also something very wrong with Wanda giving birth to the twins on such an accelerated timetable. (This reminds me of a story in Avengers #200, when Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers) goes through full-term pregnancy in a few days, with the child growing to adulthood at alarming speed. Carol didn’t know how she got pregnant, didn’t want the baby, and was disgusted by some of the other Avengers cooing over her. It turned out that a time traveler named Marcus Immortus abducted Carol into limbo and manipulated her into sleeping with him, so she could give birth to him and he could enter our world. After the child grew to adulthood, he manipulated Carol into going back to limbo to live with him. The Avengers just let them leave without finding out if Carol was doing it of her own free will. This story is still notorious 40 years later—it was a disrespectful way to write the powerful, independent Ms. Marvel out of comics. The reception from fans and creators was so bad that a year later, Chris Claremont wrote a response story that brought Carol back to the Marvel Universe and had her read the Avengers for filth for letting her leave while under the control of her rapist. It was a whole thing.)
Anyway, I keep getting distracted. I’m guessing that Wanda is manipulating reality and SWORD has some sort of perimeter around it to contain the damage. Maybe they sent Monica in to keep tabs on Wanda or bring her out of it. I don’t know if Monica has her Captain Marvel powers (converting her body to any form of energy) but if she does, she’s pretty powerful, so it was a big deal for the Scarlet Witch to cast her out. For the second time, Wanda has also been able to “rewind” what she doesn’t like (the Vision questioning the reality she built) so she is tapping into some dangerous power.
This has been Brian’s Weekly Tangent. Stop by next week to see what weird, sort-of relevant corner of Marvel history I delve into next.
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