Disney+ Review – WandaVision Episode 9

Contains spoilers.

After nine weeks, WandaVision comes to an end in the aptly named “Series Finale”.

Picking up from last week’s cliff hanger, episode 9 goes into full Marvel cinema mode with endless fight scenes. Wanda fights Agatha; Vision fights White Vision; Darcy, Monica and the kids fight Hayward and S.W.O.R.D.; the residents of West View try to fight Wanda. Wanda is told how powerful she is as “The Scarlet Witch” while Agatha tries to steal that power only to be defeated and permanently trapped in the role of the “Nosy Neighbour” of West View, clearly promising a return of the character in future MCU content.

After numerous multi-dimensional fights, Vision defeats White Vision by giving him back his memories and Darcy makes an excellent entrance by crashing into Hayward’s car. After the fighting, Wanda, in her new Scarlet Witch get-up, realises she must let the West View residents go, which also means destroying Vision and her children. After an emotional goodbye, Wanda flies away to a remote area in the mountains with the post-credit scene foreshadowing Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Meanwhile, Monica meets a skrull – also setting up for the next Captain Marvel movie.

Now I was very excited about this finale. I’ve been loving WandaVision and so far, they’d pretty much nailed every episode. But I it I’m a little disappointed by this finale. Resolving the conflicts through fights felt a bit of a let down after such intelligent and creative story telling – now I know the fights actually ended through outwitting the opponent yet the majority of the episode just involved casting spells or kicking each other through the chest. The emotional ending with Wanda and Vision saying goodbye to their kids and then to each other was impactful and worked, after all WandaVision did do the impossible and made me care about this couple, but so much else felt lacklustre.

Monica, for instance, did bare nothing. She was trapped by Evan Peter’s character, then she escaped, then she stopped some bullets. Her involvement was incidental and unimportant – after all that build-up. I know perhaps the build-up was for Captain Marvel but it felt disappointing nevertheless. Similarly the whole Hayward story really came to nothing – I guess White Vision was doing his bidding but once S.W.O.R.D. entered West View they lasted about two minutes before Hayward ran away. It was weird.

Also, there was the whole matter of Evan Peter’s character. I must it he was something of a highlight for me in this episode, carrying on the man-child stoner act which was very amusing but then we find out his real name is “Ralph Bohner”. So, I saw this and thought, oh well maybe that’s a disguise as well and there’ll be a hint of Quicksilver again in the post-credits. But nothing. Was he really just included for that one twist and not a hint towards the multiverse?

But what most disappointed me was no more sitcom content. In my previous reviews, I’ve said again and again that it’s the sitcom content that is so incredibly stand out and that there should be so much more. I thought, getting to about half way through the finale when the fighting had died down, we’d get one more sitcom moment – there is still a whole decade of sitcoms not referenced after all – but unfortunately it didn’t happen.

Now the finale wasn’t so bad that it ruined my opinion of the show, it wasn’t even bad. It’s just that there had been such a high standard up until now and the finale just dropped the ball slightly. Maybe there needed to be more episodes to resolve everything? Who knows. Regardless, many of the WandaVision episodes will be content I will return to again and again and overall this show has been a joy to watch. Incredibly creative and inspired – a solid way to kick off Phase 4.

Episode 9 | Disney+ | Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Kathryn Hahn, Kat Dennings, Teyonah Parris, Randall Park