fantastic_four

I think it's the exact opposite. I think everything within the hex is 100% real What's going on in the hex isn't what we see in Wandavision. What we see in Wandavision is edited. It's confusing because they're mixing both together. If you're seeing sitcom tropes, you're seeing the illusory broadcast of Wandavision.

I just mean we can't tell what in the Wandavision broadcast is and isn't real. I've outlined it time after time in previous posts, but there are dozens upon dozens of clues that either most or all of the broadcast is either completely fabricated illusion and/or altered by the hex from their true nature.

Interesting, I had no idea--I just thought that was the first time we saw the actual Jarvis Tony named his AI after. That suggests that either the book in the basement isn't the Darkhold, there's no book at all and it's all illusion, or there is a book there but its actual appearance is being masked by illusion.

The Marvel television shows have long been claimed to be part of the MCU. When they started, Ike Perlmutter was in charge of Marvel Entertainment and the shows, and Kevin Feige was in charge of the MCU and reported to Perlmutter. Feige had multiple schisms with Perlmutter interfering with MCU film decision-making and funding, and after Disney bought Marvel Feige was able to convince Bob Iger to re-structure Marvel Studios and Feige to no longer report to Perlmutter. The Marvel shows have contained dozens of references to events and characters from MCU films, but I have yet to see the MCU contain a single reference to the shows--if anyone has seen one please share it. Presumably the MCU doesn't refer to the Marvel television shows because Feige didn't like Perlmutter's decision-making process, which mostly came from what he called the "Marvel Creative Committee" comprised of multiple legendary Marvel creators including Brian Michael Bendis, Joe Quesada, Dan Buckley, Alan Fine, and others. That sounds like a great group of creators to me, but they butted heads with multiple directors--most famously Joss Whedon in "Age of Ultron" leading to his exit from Marvel, Jon Favreau on Iron Man 2 leading to his exit, James Gunn who blamed some issues in Guardians of the Galaxy on them, Patty Jenkins who left Thor 2, and Natalie Portman who was pissed about Patty Jenkins leaving due to conflicts with the committee. That probably seems like a non-sequitur, but here's why I pointed all of that out--the Darkhold appeared in Agents of SHIELD, and it doesn't look anything like the book we just saw in Wandavision. I didn't see the episodes it was in but I've seen the pictures of it from the show, and they're below. The first is an illustration of what it supposedly looks like, and the second is a picture of the book itself. The text on the front reads "Darkhold" in a weird font that I don't know much about, and it's an ambigram--which means that the text reads the same way even if you turn it upside-down. I don't know why the book looks different from the illustration to the actual book, but if anyone can clarify please do. The open question is will Feige maintain lore established in the Marvel television shows. If I were to guess I would say yes, but if this ends up being the Darkhold then I suppose the answer is no--unless like most things in Wandavision what we're seeing in the basement is illusion, in which case the actual Darkhold may look like the version from Agents of SHIELD. My guess is the book will end up either never being explained, or if it is that it will be identified as the Necrinomicon, but we'll probably find out soon enough.

I bought that off the stands and haven't looked at it since. Time to go dig it out and see how well I picked 'em and stored 'em back then.

My 5-year old daughter likes to put together puzzles, but my son hates it. A few weeks ago he was trying to help her with one, but after about five minutes of trying to fit pieces without matching any he got up and stormed away exclaiming "puzzles are DUMB!" Whoever created that "Mephisto! Mephisto! Mephisto!" meme reminds me of my son. You can't finish a puzzle if you don't have the patience to try the pieces, see if they fit, and fail dozens, hundreds, or thousands of times during the process, depending upon the size and complexity of the puzzle. More than anything Wandavision is a mystery-based story. You can't solve a mystery without running through the viability of a lot of failed hypotheses.

They easter egged it in the opener to episode 2 shown below, but the walking, talking cow shown in the second pic below being introduced does seem unlikely.

I know nothing about Chthon (it's pronounced key-thon from what I can find). His power set and comic ties seem to fit what we've seen upon initial review, but matching him back to the last seven episodes is a daunting task. Either way there are so many ties it's clear the screenwriters are sending us delving into the comics source material to an extent most of us lack the time or interest to pursue. Immortus's ties to Wanda, Harkness, and particularly the multiverse do seem to match enough elements to potentially be involved. But as you noted he doesn't have the power or usual motive to do everything we've seen, so if he's a part of the story it must be either somewhat peripheral or as the puppet-master as you note.

I had heard it from Kevin Smith quoting Feige as saying the last few episodes were an hour long. He was assuming "few" might mean the last three, but it may mean the last two.

Which is why people tend not to enjoy puzzle-piece plots such as those in Lost, Prometheus, The Leftovers, the Matrix sequels, or Wandavision--it drives most people crazy. But the intent of that kind of story is that you do have to consider MANY different hypotheses and carry them out to conclusion. That's also how working puzzles works--you look at this piece and see if it fits into that one, over and over, until you find the right ones that fit in the right places. Not everyone likes puzzles, either, so yea, it's not for everyone, but if you don't try then the puzzle may stay unsolved. In the case of Lost, the puzzle stayed unsolved for everyone who hadn't already been working diligently to piece it together for years, and that's why such a large chunk of the fans hated the ending--they never got to see what it looked like fully pieced together. I expect with this show we'll mostly get it pieced together by the end. But probably not EVERY piece...there's too many pieces to explicitly show all of it in two episodes, even if they're double-length. I bet there will be hanging threads, some solvable now if you were working the puzzle, some that may be resolved in future MCU works.

It's not overthinking it for one simple reason--the majority of people involved in the production of this show knows EVERYTHING about television and film production, inside and out, so while I'm sure most fans will overlook this, it's not something any large production crew behind a camera would. Whoever is broadcasting Wandavision isn't just using a video camera, they're using multiple cameras from multiple angles, video editing equipment, and a broadcast tower at MINIMUM. And the commercials are insanely technical--the "Yo Magic" one uses stop-motion claymation, which requires an insanely vertical amount of expertise to produce. The only thing I can think of that explains all of that is either magic or illusion, in which case choosing the NTSC format isn't coincidence of available technology, it's intent. I don't see how we can assume Wandavision wasn't meant to be received within our dimension.

So why NTSC? Why not the PAL or SECAM analog formats used outside of the US? Or why ANY analog format that humans would have the slightest clue for how to identify? The fact that it's being broadcast in the exact analog format that SWORD would be able to more-easily identify and obtain equipment to decode screams that the broadcaster of the signal wanted the people just outside of Westview to pick up and watch the show for themselves.

Mephisto can't force people to do things against their will. That's his whole nature--he dangles something in front of you to trick you into trading your soul for whatever he's dangling in front of you, and if he can yank the rabbit you're chasing out from in front of your face, he will. That's the long-established modus operandi for Satan, and in the comics they've kept that parallel in everything I've seen from Mephisto, so if Agatha is doing Mephisto's bidding, she's got some reason for doing it. If we assume she's producing Wandavision and that she's doing it to appease Mephisto, and that all of the Wanda-taunting and sadism in the commercials is just to keep Mephisto satiated while she protects Wanda and/or the twins...hmm. Maybe. The part that doesn't make sense with Wandavision being for Mephisto in his own dimension is the broadcast signal. An analog television signal is geared towards a very specific device, a human-created technology encoded specifically to be decoded by the electronic machinery within old televisions. How would it be crossing dimensions, and why would Mephisto need to use that format? Mephisto is a cosmic being with access to advanced technology, so if he--or Agatha to appease him--is broadcasting in an analog NTSC signal format (which is even different than the ones broadcast in other places on Earth in the mid-20th century), they would need to have a VERY specific reason for doing so. Crossing dimensions shouldn't be that reason.

It's just a guess. It's nothing I thought watching the show, but it explains why someone within SWORD would be so openly flouting Heyward's authority. In the moment I wondered why she would risk court-martial just for the daughter of an old friend, but her being a Skrull makes far more sense.

I generally disagree that Kevin Feige changes the comics for "convenience." That's the modus operandi of most film producers of superhero films, but it absolutely isn't Feige's; his mantra all along is stick to the comics unless there's a great reason not to, so I don't think he'd just flip Agatha for the sake of a clever screenplay. So I can't disagree more strongly about Agatha Harkness being his ally. Certainly that's what we were just led to believe, no doubt, but we can't believe ANYTHING we see in the Wandavision broadcast, and what we saw at the end of this episode was Mephisto painting Agatha as the big bad just as yet another misdirection from the king of lies to further his goals.

My understanding of Mephisto is that he can cross into our dimension whenever he wants, he just loses most of his powers in our dimension. I hadn't considered him not actually being in Westview...why wouldn't he be? Mephisto's entire goal is synonymous with Satan's--to collect souls. I really have no strong understanding for why he's broadcasting Wandavision, but my guess to date has been to draw more people into Westview so he has more potential souls to harvest. But that's just an educated guess with little to substantiate it...I just had no better guess, nor have I heard anyone else posit a better one so far. My main issue with your hypothesis here is that in the comics, Agatha Harkness isn't just a good guy, she's one of the best. And she has absolutely consistently been a mother figure to Wanda, guiding her in the use of her powers, helping her with her twins, and the list goes on. So if Agnes is producing Wandavision--including those commercials that taunt Wanda in insanely personal ways--they've flipped her so hard that it's difficult to absorb. EVERYTHING about Wandavision feels evil, twisted, and sadistic, and that spells Mephisto as the producer/director, not Agatha Harkness. I'm also having trouble pinning down whose souls he's after. The twins? Wanda? Agatha? Westview citizens? All of the above? I don't think I can adequately deduce why Mephisto is broadcasting the show without knowing what's in it for him with the whole endeavor.

Who is "General Goodner"? I googled "general goodner marvel" and found nothing.

I wondered the same thing and assumed it was the former.

One thing that was off-putting from the start is that Wanda has NEVER displayed one OUNCE of a sense of humor in any way before this series, and she's EXTREMELY harsh. Every time I re-watch the awesome Civil War airport battle and see her sternly tell Hawkeye "you're pulling your punches!" as he fought Widow I could feel the coldness in her voice. This all made sense until now given the extremely difficult upbringing they must have had in Sokovia to be radicalized by HYDRA at such a young age, so seeing her whisk around like Lucille Ball or Carol Brady has been bizarre. But when we see her exit the hex to confront Heyward she's back to her same cold, stern demeanor with the vague Eastern European accent. So if I do re-watch the Wandavision segments looking for what's real and what isn't...perhaps NONE of her with an American accent or a sitcom demeanor is real.

Yep. Best line by Hahn in the whole series is now "...and I killed Sparky, too!" Impossible to believe that's Agatha casting herself as the villain, so it suddenly smacked me in the face as obvious that Mephisto would be mixing illusion in with what's actually happening in Westview within the Wandavision show. So why do Wanda and Vision seem oblivious to the show at times, yet there they are cooperating with it fully with full sitcom tropes at others? Before now I was thinking it may be Mephisto altering Wanda's memories, but now I'm thinking it may be because the former is reality while the latter is illusion edited in. That also makes more sense for why Vision would be cooperating with the show since I can't just accept as a given that Mephisto could alter his memories, too. I suddenly need to go back and watch the Wandavision segments again to figure out what's likely to be actually happening within the hex and what is being falsely edited in.

Can't be Pacino...WAAAAY too Satanic for China.

I guess it could also be someone around Bettany's age who he viewed as a peer, most likely a British actor.

Yea, really. Paul Bettany is 49, so this is an actor he's longed to work with "all of his life"? Assuming he means his life as an actor he's been one either professionally or academically since he was a late teenager, so that would have to be someone likely to be 10 to 20 years older than him. That doesn't sound like Cumberbatch, but Oldman, Hopkins, or someone else 60 or older work.

I don't even see stereotypical Satanic elements in his first appearance drawn below by Buscema, so even from the start the character was only half-tied to elements we currently associate with Satan. They kept the red skin and demonic appearance but ditched the horns, pitchfork, and hooves, plus shortened the name Mephistopheles to Mephisto.

When I went looking for devil-like Disney characters a few days ago every one I found was prior to around 1940 to 1950. Chernabog was in Fantasia from 1940, and the devil versions of Pluto were well before 1940. Mao Zedong is who re-started the persecution of Christians, created the Communist party, and ushered in the era of censorship that Disney now wants to avoid, and that didn't fully kick in until the 1940s to 1950s. I'm not sure when Disney went fully global or got their first work banned in China, but I'm guessing it was in that timeframe and that's why all I can find are characters that are only vaguely being tied to religion in Disney's works after Mao and the Communist party came to power. I think the issue is purely the association with religion. I'm unfamiliar with Owl House but just googled some pictures of demons from it. I can't tie demons like the one below specifically to any given religion, so I wouldn't be surprised if China accepted them--although I have no idea if they air this show there or generally what airs in China in terms of television. I do know that Disney Plus isn't currently available in China, but I'm sure Disney wants it there eventually so they wouldn't approve characters they thought China would be likely to censor.