What a strange trip it’s been. Spoilers herein.

The End

I find it best to look at the end and work my way back. And in this, Wanda comes to accept her role as the Scarlet Witch and rather clearly is going to be set up as a nemesis of sorts for Dr Strange in the Multiverse movie. Mr Feige had made this point clear multiple times, though I should say the in-episode link is simply a statement of “more powerful than the Sorcerer Supreme”. There’s no practical cliffhanger in that regard mind you.

Agnes is an expository villain, and the larger battle between her and Wanda is quite well done. In the end she gets stuck in Westport, and I’m pretty sure will come around to actually helping Wanda in the future. Given the material provided, I think this character was the strongest supporting character.

Vision has the oddest of arcs, and thankfully the most reflective of his personality. The mind stone version helps White Vision access his memory banks, and then the latter simply “wakes up”. The conversation that happens prior to this is a philosophical debate as to what it means to be. I enjoyed it, but I would think that this scene will go over many people’s heads. MCU has always had challenges with motivation in any setting, and this is certainly an attempt.

Monica Rambeau pretty much turns into Photon, in all but name. I dunno where that will lead, but certainly a lot to do with Captain Marvel 2.

The Dream

The concept that the entire world was created as a way for Wanda to manage her grief is pretty neat. It takes a long time for her to find any closure, really making a larger and larger set of poor decisions as the series went on. When she finally lets the people leave the town, you can see that she has a longer term plan in mind. And when she sees that her kids and Vision are part of the dream, it’s also quite clear that she makes a call then and there to end it all.

Her goodnights to the kids, understanding that she will never see them again, is underplayed compared to the goodbye to Vision. His final lines about continually saying goodbye only to come back again speaks enough to this particular relationship. I’d have to guess this means a way to get White Vision to “fully come back”, and then the above mentioned multiverse giving access to other versions of her children.

Overall

This is a really neat take on the MCU, with a much more interesting take on character development. It’s really not possible to watch this without having seen Avengers Ultron or Infinity Gauntlet – there’s too much context there that sets this one up.

Olsen and Bettany do an amazing job here, much better than I had honestly expected. I don’t see how there could be a season 2 here, or any way to have this model really apply to any other character. But the idea of vignettes, or shorts (like Thor had) certainly seem like a possibility.

I wouldn’t recommend binging on more than the first 2 episodes. The experience of a week to digest what was presented is part of the process, as there are so many references that it can be hard to keep track. Especially the last 3 episodes. Really well done.