WandaVision episode 9 recap: a muddled but emotionally satisfying final act

Spoilers for the final episode of WandaVision follow. Watch it first before reading this.

Agatha is holding Tommy and Billy with her magic string. They tell her to let them go. Wanda reminds Agatha that her powers work in the open, away from the runes. “I’m counting on it,” replies Agatha.

Agatha pulls the boys to the ground, so Wanda hits her with an energy blast. Wanda tells the boys to go to their room, as Agatha gets to her feet. Wanda blasts her again, but this time Agatha holds Wanda’s red magical energy in her hand: “I take power from the undeserving. It’s kind of my thing.” Wanda’s hand is strangely blackened.

Agatha suggests that Wanda should surrender her magic to someone “who knows what to do with it. And I’ll let you keep this pathetic corner of the world all to yourself.”

Wanda throws a car at Agatha, smashing her into the side of a house.

Hayward’s new White Vision lands behind Wanda – confused, she asks if it’s really him. He touches her tenderly on the face, but it soon turns into something more sinister as he picks her up by the head. “And I was told you were powerful,” he tells her as she screams in agony.

Wanda’s Vision swoops in, dragging White Vision along the ground at high speed before throwing him into an RV, which explodes.

Vision asks where the boys are. Wanda says they’re safe inside the house, and that she should have explained everything to him when she realized what she’d done. She says she can fix the world she’s created. “Can you?” he asks.

Agatha materializes over the house. “This is awkward,” she gloats. “Your ex and your boyfriend together at the same party. Who are you gonna choose, Wanda?” Wanda’s Vision flies up to take on White Vision while Wanda takes off to battle Agatha.

In an upstairs bedroom of Agnes’s house, Monica Rambeau looks on and shouts Wanda’s name. “Don’t waste your breath, babe,” says Pietro. “No one can hear you from in here.” She tries to escape, but is no match for Pietro’s super speed.

High above Westview, Vision asks his counterpart if they might be able to resolve this peacefully. “Wanda Maximoff must be neutralized,” White Vision replies. “You must be destroyed.”

Vision takes that as a no, and as White Vision tends to remove the Mind Stone from his forehead, he phases out of the way, before piledriving his adversary into a road. They continue their battle in the sky, as Hayward watches from outside the Hex field.

Agent Jimmy Woo is brought to Hayward in custody. He tells Hayward he’ll never be able to cover this up. “I won’t have to,” counters Hayward. “Wanda cancelled her show, so there’s no footage proving there was ever more than one Vision.” Woo argues that there must be a SWORD HQ security tape and evidence of tampering, but Hayward says that no one’s going to care once Wanda’s been eliminated – and they’ll believe that the Vision who emerges from the rubble is the one she illegally tried to bring back to life. He thinks they’ll thank him for recovering such a valuable asset – and Jimmy could be a part of it. “If only you had a little more… Vision.”

Woo sarcastically tells Hayward that he’s convinced by his plan but there’s a slight problem – his FBI friends from Quantico will arrive within the hour. Hayward thinks he’s bluffing. “Am I?” asks Jimmy.

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Thrown into a barn, Jimmy releases himself from his handcuffs, saying “Flourish”. He calls up an FBI colleague, Cliff, asking if he could get there inside the hour.

Wanda lands in Westview city centre and sees lots of familiar faces. “Don’t shoot, I’m just a messenger,” says the courier guy.

Agatha appears on the roof of Westview Appliance. She tells Wanda she’s never been up against another witch before, and that there’s an entire chapter devoted to her in the Darkhold – the “book of the damned”.

Agatha explains that, “the Scarlet Witch is not born, she is forged. She has no coven, no need for incantation.” Wanda says she’s not a witch, she doesn’t cast spells and no one taught her magic, but Agatha tells her her power exceeds that of the Sorcerer Supreme. “It’s your destiny to destroy the world.”

Agatha makes an incantation in Latin, and Dottie walks over to Wanda. She says her name is Sarah and she has an eight-year-old daughter – maybe she could be friends with Wanda’s boys: “If you like that storyline.” She pleads that if Wanda could let her daughter out of her room, she could at least hold her.

Wanda thinks Agatha is making Dottie say this, but Agatha says she’s Wanda’s “meat puppet. I just cut her strings.”

Agatha casts another spell, freeing the rest of the Westview residents, who move to surround Wanda.

Back in Agnes’s house, Fake Pietro makes a smoothie. He says this is his man cave, “a place to chillax while the missus is stirring up trouble.” Monica looks at a bank statement addressed to a Ralph Bohner, 2804 Sherwood Drive, Westview. Pietro asks if she likes Steven Seagal movies, as Monica finds a photo of him – labelled Ralph Bohner. “Agnes doesn’t live here, you do,” she says. “You’re Ralph Bohner.”

“Boner,” he laughs, Beavis and Butthead-style.

Monica asks how she’s controlling him. He shapes up to box, asking if she wants to tussle again, but she throws him to the ground. Monica spots that Pietro’s necklace is glowing with Agatha’s purple magic, so she pulls it from his neck. “Oh god, please spare my life,” he says. “Nice to meet you, Ralph,” she replies.

Billy and Tommy watch the Visions fighting from outside their bedroom window. Billy sees a vision of her mother in the town square and tells Tommy they’ve got to go.

The town residents tell Wanda of their pain, that they no longer recognize themselves – that they used to resist but they can’t remember why. They’re exhausted and when they sleep they have Wanda’s nightmares. Wanda tries to assure them they’re fine, that she’s kept them safe and they feel at peace. They say that her grief is poisoning them.

Wanda screams out, unleashing a burst of magical energy that strangles the Westview residents. Realising what she’s done, Wanda apologizes and releases them, promising to let them go.

“What’s stopping you?” asks Agatha. “Heroes don’t torture people.”

Wanda sends a massive energy beam into the Hex field, and the town starts glitching through time periods. She tells the townspeople to run away.

Hayward sees a gap opening in the field and decides this is the opportunity to get inside.

“Now you’ll see,” Agatha laughs.

High in the sky, the Vision fight is interrupted when Wanda’s Vision starts to decay and falls to the ground. SWORD forces enter the town.

Wanda sees her Vision falling apart before her eyes, as the twins run into the town square – and also start to disintegrate.

“Now do you see?” taunts Agatha. “You tied your family to this twisted world, and now one can’t exist without the other. Save Westview or save your family.” Wanda pauses and the Hex field closes up again. The run together and embrace. Agatha attacks, so Wanda protects them all with a magical bubble. Agatha absorbs the energy, leaving both Wanda’s hands drained of color.

“How sweet,” says Agatha. The family are surrounded on all sides – Agatha on one, White Vision on another and SWORD on the third. They take an Avengers stance. “Listen, boys,” says Vision. “Your mother and I never really prepared you for this.”

“But you were born for it,” says Wanda.

Vision flies off to take on his evil doppelganger. They end up in the library, where Vision asks White Vision why he’s doing this. He says his programming directive is to destroy the Vision. Vision grabs White Vision by the neck and tells him, “I’m not the true Vision, only a conditional Vision.” 

“I request elaboration,” says White Vision.

Back in the town square, Agatha lifts the SWORD soldiers into the air. “Same story, different century,” she says. “There’ll always be torches and pitchforks for ladies like us, Wanda.” She drops the soldiers to the ground, but Wanda catches them before impact. She turns to Billy and Tommy and tells them to handle the military. “Mommy will be right back.”

Wanda flies off to take on Agatha, and disappears. Tommy and Billy use their super skills to take SWORD’s weapons. Hayward still has a gun. Monica spots him and tells him to stand down. As he fires, she moves in front of the boys and her body seems to absorb the bullets, pulsing with yellow energy. Billy uses his telekinetic powers to stop the bullet that gets past her. Hayward is out of bullets. “Nice tricks,” she says to Billy. “I like yours too,” he replies.

Hayward tries to drive away, but is stopped by a pretzel van. “Have fun in prison!” says Darcy.

White Vision asks if his counterpart is familiar with the thought experiment about the Ship of Theseus. The idea is that it’s an artifact in a museum. “Over time its planks of wood rot and are replaced with new planks. When no original plank remains, is it still the Ship of Theseus?”

“Secondly,” adds Wanda’s Vision, “if those removed planks are restored and reassembled, free of the rot, is that the ship of Theseus?”

White Vision says that neither is the true ship, and both are the true ship. They are in agreement, but White Vision doesn’t have the Mind Stone – and original Vision does not have “one ounce of original material”. He says that, “Perhaps the rot is the memories. The wear and tear are the voyages. The wood touched by Theseus himself.” White says he hasn’t retained any memories – “but you do have the data,” says his counterpart. “It is merely being kept from you.”

White Vision realizes it makes him a weapon more easily controlled, and acknowledges that Vision is the true Vision because he believes himself to be. “But on meeting you I have been disabused of that notion,” Wanda’s Vision counters. He points out that, as a carbon-based Synthezoid, White Vision’s memory is not easily wiped, and touches his head, reawakening a lifetime of memories from the MCU.

“I am Vision,” White Vision says, and flies away.

Real Vision returns to the square and embraces his sons. Wanda sneaks up behind Agatha and uses her magic to transport her back to the stake-burning in Salem centuries earlier. Wanda says that the difference between her and Agatha is that she did this on purpose.

The dead witches come back to life. “No! No! No!” screams Agatha – and suddenly stops.

The witches start chanting Wanda’s name, telling her she’s a witch – the Scarlet Witch. “So it is written, so it is foretold. Harbinger of chaos.”

Agatha tells Wanda she can’t win. “Power isn’t your problem,” says Agatha, “it’s knowledge.” A scarlet crown appears on Wanda’s head.

“Give me your power and I will correct the flaws in your original spell,” says Agatha. “And you and your family and the people of Westview can all live together in peace. And no one will ever have to feel this pain again. Not even you.”

Wanda blasts them back into the present and they take to the skies. “Take it,” says Wanda, bombarding Agatha with magic. “I don’t want it.” Vision flies up to her aid, but Wanda surrounds him in a forcefield. Agatha cackles, encouraging Wanda to embrace her fate. Woo and his FBI colleagues watch the disturbance unfold.

“There’s more, I want it all!” says Agatha, as Wanda gives her last ounce of magic. She hovers, drained of energy.

“About our deal,” says Agatha. “Once cast a spell can never be changed. This world you made will always be broken. Just like… you.”

As Agatha tries to send the killing blow, however, her magic deserts her. Wanda restores herself. Magical runes appear in the walls of the Hex field. “In a given space, only the witch who cast them can use her magic,” says Wanda. “Thanks for the lesson. But I don’t need you to tell me who I am.”

Wanda goes full Scarlet Witch, absorbing her energy back from Agatha, and taking the form Wanda saw in the Mind Stone.

“Oh god, you don’t know what you’ve done,” says Agatha.

They return to the town square. “So what now? You gonna lock me up somewhere?” asks Agatha. Not somewhere, says Wanda – here in Westview. “I’ll give you the role you chose. The nosy neighbor.”

As Agatha tells her she has no idea what she’s unleashed, that Wanda’s going to need her, but Wanda says she’ll know where to find her if she does. Wanda turns her back into sitcom form: “Hiya, hon,” she says cheerfully.

“You live here now,” says Wanda. “No one will ever bother you.”

The family are reunited. “So it would appear our dream home has been reduced to a fixer-upper,” says Vision. “I know you’ll set everything right. Just not for us.” “No, not for us,” she agrees.

They walk away, and Wanda and Monica acknowledge each other.
The Hex field shrinks, turning Westview back to normal. The family return to their home, Wanda and Vision returning to their sitcom forms. They tuck the kids in bed, and tell the boys they’re very proud of them both. “A family is forever,” says Wanda. “We could never truly leave each other, even if we tried.”

As they leave the room, Wanda adds, “Boys, thanks for choosing me to be your mom.”

Wanda looks at the family photo and turns off the living room lights. Vision turns it back on, claiming he read somewhere that it’s bad luck saying goodbye in the dark. Wanda says he didn’t. He admits he made it up, but says he really wanted to see her properly. They look out of the window to watch the advancing Hex wall. Before he goes, Vision says he must know what he truly is. “You are the piece of the Mind Stone that lives in me,” she replies. “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.”

“I have been a voice with no body, a body but not human, and now… a memory made real,” he says. “Who knows what I might be next. We have said goodbye before, he says, so it stands to reason…” She finishes his sentence: “…we’ll say hello again.”        

The Hex field passes through them and Vision disintegrates. “So long, darling.”

Wanda is left in the foundations of the house in Westview, wearing the same clothes as when she arrived. She pulls up her hood and walks into town. She arrives in the town square, with all the townspeople glaring at her. She walks towards Monica, who says they’ll never know what she sacrificed for them. “It wouldn’t change how they see me,” says Wanda. “And you, you don’t hate me?”

“Given the chance and given your power, I’d bring my mom back, I know I would.”
Wanda says she’s sorry for all the pain she’s caused – Monica says she knows. Wanda says she doesn’t understand her power – but she will.

As sirens approach, Wanda turns into Scarlet Witch form and flies away. Monica wishes her good luck.

MID CREDITS SEQUENCE

Monica looks on as Woo manages the crime scene. “Authority looks good on you, Jimmy,” she says. He asks where Darcy is. Monica says Darcy believes that “debriefs are for the weak”, but that they can thank her for apprehending Hayward, who’s taken into custody by the FBI.

A previously unseen agent tells Captain Rambeau that they’re waiting for her in the theater. Once inside the agent says she was “sent by an old friend of your mother’s” – and transforms into Skrull form. “He heard you’d been grounded. He’d like to meet with you.”

Where, asks Monica. The Skrull points onwards. Monica smiles.

END OF CREDITS SEQUENCE

A remote, beautiful wilderness. Wanda sits on the veranda of a log cabin. As she goes inside to check on the kettle, the Scarlet Witch is imprisoned inside, using the Darkhold and seemingly casting spells. Billy and Tommy call for help as the Witch’s eyes glow red.

Verdict: 

How often do you watch a big Hollywood blockbuster and feel that it nails the action sequences, yet falls emotionally flat? WandaVision’s aptly titled ‘The Series Finale’ is the opposite. While it’s a muddle of convoluted plotting, predictable fight scenes, and rushed character arcs, it never loses sight of the human story at its core. Okay, correct that – the Synthezoid/all-powerful magical being story at its core.

Wanda, Vision and the kids coming together to fight numerous enemy forces is pure Incredibles stuff, a close-knit family looking out for each other ­– what a shame they don’t use their powers as inventively as Brad Bird’s super-team. Meanwhile, the decision to bid farewell to Billy and Tommy by tucking them up in bed before they’re consumed by nothingness is a masterstroke, that allows Wanda and Vision to share a suitably resonant farewell. Nobody could accuse WandaVision of engineering a fake happy ending.

But – with the possible exception of Vision and Vision’s metaphysical debates about their existence – everything else feels rushed and insubstantial. Even with (most of) the exposition dealt with last week, there are way too many story strands competing for attention – some really important characters are left short-changed as a result: Darcy Lewis is reduced to the briefest of comedic one-liners in a cameo that amounts to nothing more than taking out Hayward; Monica Rambeau, freshly set up as a superhero, gets barely any time to show what her powers can do; and Hayward himself has simply morphed into the two-dimensional, rent-a-bad guy. (Remember, this is a man who tries to shoot a pair of kids, so simply being arrested by the Feds feels like something of an anti-climax.)

Admittedly Kathryn Hahn has the time of her life as the power-hungry Agatha, but even her motives seem a little too by-the-numbers. Indeed, after that magnificent episode 7 reveal, we’d hoped for something a little cleverer than, “I want your powers, Wanda!” (Being sentenced to a lifetime in sitcom purgatory also makes little sense to the narrative – how would that even work?)

It’s perhaps ironic that a show that’s revelled in pushing the boundaries of what a superhero story can do should be dragged down by genre clichés – and those of the MCU. It’s now a key part of the Marvel formula that there’ll be a few loose ends to be picked up in later adventures. But WandaVision’s finale skirts perilously close to the sort of Iron Man 2/Avengers: Age of Ultron territory where setting up future instalments is just as important as telling a satisfying story. 

And in hindsight, there’s a sense the writers went overboard on Easter eggs that never came to fruition. That Rambeau’s “engineer” was nobody we’d ever come across before, or that Evan Peters’ Pietro had no connection to the X-Men movies – he was just a Westview resident who happened to look familiar – feels like a cruel tease.

Still, there’s no shame in making a brilliant show with a slightly disappointing final chapter. Turns out that Marvel Studios are just as good at TV as they are at movies.

Marvel-ous facts

• No commercial break this week, but a billboard ad for Squeaky Shine multi-surface cleaner did take a prominent role in the episode. That “using the power of the Earth” slogan is probably a reference to the source of all those witchy powers.
• We never did find out the real-world identity of the man and woman who kept turning up in the commercials.
• When Jimmy Woo says “Flourish!” after freeing himself from his handcuffs, it’s a nod to a magic word Vision uses in his stage act in episode 2.
• It suddenly feels very appropriate that Westview’s cinema is the Coronet Theater, seeing as a crown is now part of Scarlet Witch’s outfit.
• We thought Agnes’s husband Ralph was destined to be one of those sitcom characters who never appear on screen, but it’s revealed to be the real identity of Fake Pietro.
• The movies showing at the cinema are a mixture of real and fake, and most have obvious connections to the WandaVision story arc. Oz: The Great and Powerful is Sam Raimi’s Wizard of Oz prequel – like WandaVision, it features feuding witches. Big Red is a 1962 Disney movie – Wanda must be the ‘big red’ in question. ‘Kidnapped’ is an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel – no prizes for guessing it refers to the residents of Westview. Putting the Fun in Dysfunction is not a real movie, but its meaning is clear in WandaVision’s sitcom setting. Tannhauser Gate is a reference to Blade Runner – in Roy Batty’s famous “time to die” speech, he recalls watching “C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate”. Presumably this is referring to the unavoidable death of key characters.
• The Ship of Theseus thought experiment dates back to Greek legend, though UK viewers may think of it as “Trigger’s broom” from Only Fools and Horses.
• How will Agnes live as a sitcom character surrounded by real people? Surely the rest of Westview will find her annoyingly perky? And presumably Ralph won’t want to keep her as a house mate after everything she’s done.
• The mid-credits sequence is a blatant set-up for Captain Marvel 2. We’re assuming the “old friend of your mother’s” the Skrull agent is talking about is Nick Fury, last seen in orbit at the end of Spider-Man: Far from Home.
• We’ve had several mid-credits sequences, but this episode contains WandaVision’s first end credits sting.
• The walls of Wanda’s log cabin are decorated with runes – making sure no one else can cast magic inside is probably a sensible move.
• In the Marvel comics, the Darkhold is also known as the Book of Sins and the Book of Sins – as well as the Book of the Damned, as Agatha acknowledges. It’s made of dark matter from the Hell Dimension. Don’t be surprised if it crops up again in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness – especially now that Agatha has told Wanda she’s more powerful than the Sorcerer Supreme himself.
• In the comics, Tommy and Billy are resurrected by magical means. Is Wanda experimenting with the incarcerated Scarlet Witch and the Darkhold to find a way to bring them back to life? Do those pained screams suggest they’re trapped in another dimension?
• A full-on family reunion could be on the cards now that White Vision has had his memories restored. Will he become the man Wanda loved – or an entirely different version of the character?
• Vision actor Paul Bettany had been hinting at a big-name Marvel star cameoing at the end of the season. Turns out he was talking about himself in his White Vision role.
• The ‘Agatha All Along’ song from episode 7 has gone on to top the iTunes charts.
• Missing WandaVision already? Check out Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show parody with guest Elizabeth Olsen.

Every episode of WandaVision is now available to view on Disney Plus.