So! We finally know what’s happening on WandaVision! Sort of! “We Interrupt This Program” fills us in on what’s been happening outside of the sitcom world Wanda and Vision occupy, and it’s fantastic.
RELATED: Catch our recap of the last WandaVision here!
The episode opens with our first real glimpse into what happened when everyone came back from Thanos’ snap — “The Blip.” When it actually happened in Endgame, we only saw birds after they’d returned and people who were back coming to join the fight against Thanos. And in Spider-Man: Far From Home, we just heard first-person accounts of people’s disorienting returns after five years away. WandaVision shows us that just as people blew away in ashes when Thanos snapped, they reformed in the reverse. And we see Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) take shape in a hospital in a chair next to a hospital bed.
Monica rushes into a hallway, where complete chaos has broken out as staff, patients and visitors who disappeared in The Blip are taking shape in physical spaces occupied by others. Monica is lucky, materializing in an empty chair in an empty room rather than on a gurney moving down a hallway or in an operating theater. She thinks minutes have passed since her mother was successfully operated on to remove some cancer, and she’s distraught to find her mother’s bed empty. She finds her mother’s physician in the hallway, and this is where she learns that she’s been gone for five years and that her mother has been dead for three.
Three weeks later, Monica reports for duty to SWORD, where her former colleague, Director Hayward (Josh Stamberg), has taken over her job during her absence. He tells her that her mother was so confident that she would return that she implemented a protocol for what to do in the event of disappeared staff members coming back, and that it involves being stuck on terrestrial missions only for a while. Fortunately, he has an interesting one for Monica to look into — an anomaly in New Jersey that the FBI has asked for help with.
Monica drives to Westview, New Jersey, where she finds FBI Agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park) and two police officers standing near the town sign at its border. Agent Woo explains that he was pursuing a missing persons case, when he noticed something wonky: none of the man’s friends or relatives had ever heard of him. He came to Westview to investigate, and discovered that nobody remembered — or could see — the town. The police officers with him cannot recall or register the town they are directly in front of.
Monica pulls a SHIELD drone from her car and flies it into Westview, and it disappears from sight and stops delivering data as soon as it enters the town limits. She follows it, noticing an energy field surrounding the town, which she reaches out to touch … and gets sucked through immediately.
Within 24 hours of Monica’s disappearance, a full encampment of all defense and military agencies has taken shape outside of Westview. Among the varied experts being called in to try to figure out what’s going on is Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings). Within minutes, Darcy identifies the frequencies the town is emitting as a television signal and has the lackeys on hand get her an old TV so she can tune in.
Darcy notices a transistor radio in multiple shots and dispatches Agent Woo to contact Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) using it. Although we, the audience, saw the full scene wherein Agent Woo’s voice came through while Wanda was talking with Dottie (Emma Caulfield Ford) after the Planning Committee meeting, the moments between the radio interruption and Dottie changing the subject to getting blood out of linen is missing from the feed Darcy sees.
Darcy records everything, and the collective team on hand starts identifying the supporting cast as town residents who are playing roles in this forced WandaVision sitcom. She and Agent Woo take point on watching and attempting to decipher what’s happening, as well as forming a nice little bond. When Wanda gives birth and Monica mentions Ultron, they’re watching as the subsequent confrontation between Wanda and Monica is cut from the feed. Since a dazed Monica appears outside the military installation a moment later, their focus shifts abruptly.
We, on the other hand, get to see an extended cut of the conversation between the two women, in which Wanda sends Monica hurling through walls and space before dropping her onto the ground outside the town, then repairs the affected structures before Vision (Paul Bettany) comes back in. When he does, he’s the gray Vision with dead eyes and a missing infinity stone that we saw at the end of Infinity War. Wanda is shaken by the sight of him and forces them back into sitcom mode, but Vision’s expression reveals to the audience that he’s not at ease.
Outside, as Monica comes to, she says aloud that “It’s all Wanda.”
RELATED: Follow our WandaVision season one recaps here!
Some important information comes forward in this episode. For one thing, we now know that the timeline is attached to The Blip. Vision died just before it, Wanda disappeared during it, and three weeks later Wanda turned Westview into a sitcom. When Monica disappears, 24 hours pass before Darcy arrives and gets the first clue as to what’s happening.
At this point, nobody knows why the episodes keep moving forward by decades, or why the SHIELD drone that first made it through was changed to a toy helicopter — except maybe for production design. We know that this transformation also affects a hazmat-suited soldier who sneaks in through the sewers and emerges from a maintenance hole as a beekeeper, and also to Monica, who is sucked in wearing jeans and a jacket and shot out in full ’70s apparel.
Can’t wait to see what’s next! Please share your theories about what’s going on in comments & on social!
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