Well, we were wrong in our guess about Episode 4 taking place in the 1980s--this week we broke the format entirely for some major expository bombshells and answers to questions. Sort of. Rather than return to the sitcom-flavored wackiness of Westview, Episode 4 took a more zoomed out approach dealing with the world outside the town's mysterious boundary.
This meant a whole slew of familiar MCU faces cropping back up for the first time in a long time. Both (Randall Park) and Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) made their returns to help SWORD try and sort the Westview mystery out. We also got to officially meet adult Monica Rambeau for the first time--as herself, rather than "Geraldine," that is--and check in with some Captain Marvel history in the process.
However, for all the answers this episode gave us, there are still some major questions at play, like how and why Vision is "alive" (if he even is alive at all), why the sitcoms are being broadcast out, and what's going on with characters like Agnes and the newborn twins?
So as we attempt to process through all of that, we've picked out 22 Easter Eggs, potential clues, and things to pay attention to as you craft your theories for next week's episode.
Surprise! WandaVision is the first entry into the MCU to explicitly deal with the moment the Reverse-Snap happened in the MCU--in one of the most high-stress scenarios possible: a hospital. Patients and doctors are re-materializing into chaos and among them is Monica Rambeau who was there waiting on news for her mother's surgery. It's unfortunately not great--but not for reason's you'd expect. Maria survived the surgery but died three years ago, in real-time, after having not been blipped.
As Monica returns to the real world after being blipped, you can hear some familiar voices echoing in her head--specifically, Captain Marvel affectionately calling her by her childhood nickname: Lieutenant Trouble.
Maria Rambeau, Carol Danvers' good friend from back in the '90s, sadly died during the post-Snap years due to cancer. It's a shame we have yet to see Carol's reaction to this news.
It stands for Sentient Weapon Observation Response Division, as opposed to its Marvel Comics definition where the SW stands for Sentient World--more ammunition for the theory that Wanda is being observed by SWORD because she's the one causing Westview's anomalies. She definitely qualifies as a sentient weapon--but so does Vision.
We learn from SWORD's acting director, a man named Tyler Hayward (who was invented for the MCU), that Maria played a role in building SWORD from the ground up, which may imply that SWORD has actually been working concurrently with SHIELD since the '90s after Maria was alerted to the existence of aliens and superheroes during the events of Captain Marvel. Maria was also the agency's director until her death, at which point Hayward stepped in.
This episode confirms that Westview is indeed a real town--or it was a real town, at least. Now, no one seems able to remember it existed, or that anyone in the town ever existed. It was home to someone in the FBI's witness protection program, but now only people without a personal connection (hypothetically) to the town can remember the person ever existed at all.
Scott Lang's hilarious sort-of-kind-of-friend (and parole officer) FBI Agent Jimmy Woo has returned, this time working with SWORD to help locate a missing person's case--a person who was in witness protection who has somehow dropped off the map.
Episode 2's mysterious toy helicopter now has an origin--it was a SWORD drone, changed by the energy around Westview into a harmless, useless model. We still don't know why it was colorized, though.
Fan-favorite supporting character from Thor and Thor: The Dark Realm, Darcy Lewis has made her return--and now she's a doctor of astrophysics, following in Jane's footsteps. She was the one watching the show in Episode 1, taking notes in her SWORD notebook. She also discovered the signal for the broadcast--though she's still got questions about why the sitcom theme seems to be running through decades, even though she's definitely having fun watching.
Episode 2's ominous beekeeper intruder has been identified as SWORD's Agent Franklin, who was sent in through Westview's sewers to try and investigate. The beekeeper uniform was the "sitcom" version of the hazmat suit he was wearing as he crawled through the tunnels. Interestingly, though the end of the episode confirms that Monica was ejected from Westview back into the real world relatively unharmed--we still have no idea what happened to Agent Franklin, who doesn't seem to have made it back in a similar fashion after being removed.
The WandaVision TV show got even more meta this week as we learned that it's literally being broadcast to the SWORD agents to view, or, as Darcy tries to explain, "the universe created a sitcom starring two Avengers." Exactly why this is happening is completely unclear--but being able to see the "episodes" roughly as they happen definitely helped the SWORD agents along.
We're not the only ones confused by Vision's existence in Westview--people know that Vision died, like, really died--not that he was blipped. Darcy explains as much when they see him in the show, and has no idea why he's around now to exist in the sitcom.
Being able to watch the show helped the SWORD agents figure out who some of Wanda and Visions' neighbors actually are. The Harts from Episode 1 are Todd and Sharon Davis--who aren't references to Marvel comics, but Sharon Davis is the name of the real-life supervising art director for the show.
Neighbor Herb is a man named Josh Collins.
Vision's co-worker Norm is actually Abhilash Tandon.
Jones, Dottie's put-upon husband, is actually a man named Harold Copter.
Wanda's friend Beverly is played by Isabel Matsueida.
Conspicuously missing from the line-up of characters and their real-world counterparts are Dottie and Agnes. However--Agnes has a dossier put up on the board of faces and "cast members," and is the only one missing a driver's license.
Agent Woo's whiteboard lists Skrulls as a possible cause of the Westview anomaly--though how and why shape-shifting aliens would stage an elaborate, high-tech recreation of American sitcoms in a New Jersey town is beyond us. Also, it's worth noting that SWORD was established by Maria Rambeau who, in Captain Marvel, had first hand experience with Skrulls and would know that they're actually on our side, so casting suspicion on them is a bit odd.
The voice on the radio at the pool club was actually Agent Woo--though the version of the call we actually saw in Episode 2 doesn't get transmitted exactly as we saw it happen in our version of the show. Someone is "censoring" the broadcast, as Darcy later explains.
Westview's energy field has the ability to "sitcom-ify" you as you cross it, rendering all your modern clothing and technology relevant to the current episode's era. Strangely, the same doesn't seem to be true in reverse--Monica is thrown out of Westview still in her full '70s garb.
Wanda hallucinates Vision's corpse from Avengers: Infinity War--or, his head at least, with the crushed-in space that used to hold the Mind Stone--after she ejects Monica from Westview. It's jarring to say the least--and possibly our first major look at the truth of Vision's "survival." It's very possible that he's just a projection like everything else in Westview seems to be.
Monica drops a bombshell as she comes too on the grass outside of Westview--"It's all Wanda." She's the one doing this to Westview and the people inside, using her reality-warping abilities to pick and choose what stays and what goes within her little suburban bubble. Of course, this doesn't explain the sitcoms or the fact that both Wanda and Vision seem just as confused and manipulated by the world around them as everyone else--but Wanda's powers are definitely in play here in a major way. And, considering how violently she forced Monica out, it's entirely possible that the confusion on Wanda's part is all just an act.