WandaVision viewers have reacted in surprise to a dramatic change of direction in its fourth episode.
Marvel’s Disney+ spin-off, which sees Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany reprise their roles from the Avengers films, had previously left its audience in the dark as to several of the show’s key plot points.
In WandaVision’s first three episodes, we see Wanda Maximoff (Olsen) and Vision (Bettany) seemingly living out marital bliss in a series of parodies of 20th-century US sitcoms.
However, episode four gave viewers their first proper look behind the curtain, at the world outside the show’s eerie sitcom reality.
We learn that Geraldine (Teyonah Parris), seen during last week’s episode, is in fact Monica Rambeau. The character is the daughter of ace pilot Maria Rambeau, who was Carol Danvers’s best friend in Captain Marvel. In an extended callback to the events of Avengers: Endgame, we are shown the immediate aftermath of the second reality-altering “snap”, in which Monica was willed back into existence, having been willed out five years previously by Thanos.
It is revealed that Maria died after her cancer returned, though Monica remains working at the Sword agency she established, and is currently part of a team trying to get to the bottom of the mysterious sitcom reality that has taken over the town of Westview.
Viewers reacted positively to the episode, with many praising the decision to revisit Endgame’s “reverse snap” moment in particular.
“THE SNAP THE SNAP THE SNAP LIKE OMG,” wrote one viewer on social media.
“IT WAS SO INTENSE,” wrote someone else. “It’s crazy seeing how it would’ve been after the snap.”
“The scene of Monica materializing after the snap was undone was so damn good, but then so heartbreaking learning Maria died while she was gone. Marvel is so sick and twisted for that,” wrote another Twitter user.
“The beginning of the ep? with everyone coming back from the snap?? has to be one of the most terrifying scenes marvel has ever done,” suggested a different viewer. “I literally had chills like I could feel the panic and the chaos through the screen.”
WandaVision returns Friday on Disney+.
