Spoiler alert: This analysis reveals details that may lessen a first-time viewer’s experience.

After nine long and anxious weeks, Marvel’s “WandaVision” came to an end last Friday, proving some fan theories while debunking others on how the finale was going to end. 

Wanda has been through so much in the Avengers movies and all I’ve been wanting is for something finally good to happen to her. Even though she did have to say goodbye to her kids, seeing her set up her place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe gives me all the clarity and hope that her storyline and family life is nowhere near finished. 

After the finale of “Avengers: Infinity War” in 2018, Wanda Maximoff was left alone after having to kill her significant other, Vision, to prevent Thanos from killing half of all life in the universe. She is then snapped away by Thanos when he reverses time, bringing Vision back to life, just to kill him again. 

In “Avengers: Endgame,” Wanda is brought back five years later when Hulk snaps everyone back after retrieving each infinity stone from the past. She joins the Avengers once again to finally beat Thanos since the Thanos from their time was murdered three weeks after snapping everyone away, and preventing another mass genocide. 

Sometime after finally defeating Thanos, Wanda seeks to retrieve Vision’s dead body. She walks into a S.W.O.R.D. lab to see members ripping Vision apart since he’s a “weapon.” Heartbroken, she goes to the small town of Westview, where she and Vision were going to have their first home, and where “WandaVision” takes place.

This concept of “the snap” where people are removed from existence for a period of time and then agelessly brought back is also discussed in episode four, “We Interrupt This Program” (the first non-sitcom episode that explains the world outside of WandaVision). Monica Rambeau, the now grown-up little girl character from Captain Marvel,  is “snapped back,” still sitting in the hospital chair she was sitting in when she left. She is then brought the bad news that her mother actually died two years after Monica was snapped away, even though Monica was sitting right next to her mom. To Monica, it felt like she was with her mom thirty seconds before, but to everyone else and reality, she had died three years ago.

Meanwhile, Wanda arrives in Westview and uses her magic to make a brand new Vision and place an entire town under a spell. She then creates her own sitcom, where she and Vision are the main characters. The first six episodes go decade by decade chronologically, starting with the fifties and ending with the 2000s, except for episode four which reveals what is actually going on. 

My biggest question about the show is how Marvel had so many people completely obsessed with a 21-minute sitcom episode. The show had viewers so invested that new theories were coming out after every single episode because one little detail was revealed. 

Yet all fans seemed to agree upon and appreciate the addition of Agatha Harkness. Agatha Harkness was known mostly to just comic book readers, but with all the social media platforms she was soon known to all. The theory that the minor character and “friendly” neighborhood friend Agnes was actually her took over the internet, even though the only evidence fans had was that Agnes wore similar colors to Agatha’s in the comics.

Agatha, once revealed to be the one and only, takes Wanda through her past to try and understand how Wanda acquired so much power. This trip to the past revealed so much about Wanda’s character and the reason for many of her actions. It shows her parents being murdered, her interactions with the mind stone, and Vision helping her after her brother died. 

Fans up until this point believed Wanda had actually gone bad, stealing Vision from S.W.O.R.D. headquarters. Wanda was completely innocent of this.

These details truly show how Wanda is not the bad guy, but rather that she is just broken. After her parents died, she and Pietro, her brother, joined Hydra to get revenge on Tony Stark, a.k.a Ironman, for killing their parents. After Pietro’s death, the only reason she did not turn evil again is because of Vision’s help. But without Vision, she was unable to control her emotions, so she made a new Vision to cope with her overwhelming grief. 

We are also introduced to a multiverse possibility when actor Evan Peters, who plays Peter Maximoff, a.k.a. Quicksilver in the X-Men series, shows up in episode five as Wanda’s brother, Pietro Maximoff. Because Disney bought 20th Century Fox, there will definitely be more about Peters’ version of Quicksilver in future Marvel releases, but until now the only snippet fans got was a joke a 14-year-old would make about Ralph Bohner (Evan Peters’ version of Pietro’s name outside of the hex–the force field surrounding the alternate reality Wanda has fabricated for her sitcom).

Evan Peters’ appearance was quite short-lived but his presence completely shocked the Marvel fan base and it even inspired X-Men fans to begin watching because of their love for Evan Peters. 

Throughout the show, multiple villains are revealed. Agatha Harkness ends up being trapped in a hex forever after being defeated by Wanda, but another villain is Agent Hayward. Hayward was the one who denied Wanda a funeral because they wanted to get rid of Vision, but actually, he wants to recreate Vision into a weapon again.

A very interesting aspect of “WandaVision” is the commercials included in all the sitcom episodes. Each of these commercials contains Easter eggs that Marvel loves to add to all their productions. 

One of these commercials contains a paper towel band called Lagos and a slogan that says, “For the messes you didn’t mean to make.” I think this Easter egg is extremely cool because it refers to the city of Lagos where Wanda accidentally destroyed an entire building, leading to the events in “Captain America: Civil War.” 

She also includes commercials about an antidepressant that makes you forget the world around you, and a toaster commercial that has a beep similar to the Stark bomb that almost murdered her and Pietro as kids.

Close to the series finale episode, Paul Bettany, the actor who plays Vision, revealed that there would be a special appearance by someone in the finale. Many fans rushed to social media to state their guesses. Among these guesses was Magneto (from the X-Men series), Doctor Strange, or even Hawkeye. Sadly, all these guesses were wrong because it was just another Vision played by Bettany. 

This new Vision is what Hayward had made to kill Wanda’s fabricated Vision. The appearance of a second Vision gave me hope for Wanda. The Vision that Wanda created pressed on the new Vision where an infinity stone would be, which unlocked all of the memories Vision had previously held before Thanos ended him. These memories included his deep love for Wanda. 

The unlocking of Vision’s memory gave the hope that Wanda could finally have a happy ending instead of being made a villain yet again. In the end, she had to sacrifice Vision and her children to release the prisoners she had kept in her new world.

Everything Wanda built for herself in this world was for the sake of happiness, but in the end, the only way for a moral happy ending was to once again remove her own source of it. 

Similar to how in “Joker” the viewers felt empathy for the Joker after seeing an entire backstory, “WandaVision” viewers just want to see a happy ending for Wanda. She had to erase her children and the love of her life from existence.

Although the ending to “WandaVision” was not one I was hoping for, it set up Wanda’s presence in the MCU very nicely. It was revealed in episode eight that she was the Scarlet Witch and destined to destroy the universe. 

This reveals that Wanda’s powers do not originate from Hydra’s experiments and fills the holes in X-Men since in the X-Men comics she and her twin were born with them, and in the X-Men movies, Peter was born with them as well. Since she is a witch that needs no spells, she is the “Scarlet Witch.” This will certainly transfer into later movies.

The satisfaction that Elizabeth Olsen’’s time in the MCU is nowhere near over has me over the moon in joy because Wanda is hands down my favorite character. In the final end credit scene, Wanda is seen in a seclusive cabin drinking coffee, while an out of body version of Wanda is studying an ancient spellbook showing that her storyline is just beginning. 

This series was just a bridge to the upcoming movie, “Doctor Strange: Inside The Multiverse.” The multiverse was clearly opened up when Evan Peters’ Quicksilver made an appearance. 

The next big Marvel release is “Falcon and The Winter Soldier” on March 19. Episodes will be available on Disney+.