WandaVision Episode 5 Confirms What We've Known All Along
Contains major spoilers for WandaVision
Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) may have a vivid imagination, but it looks like the reanimated version of Vision (Paul Bettany) isn't just some mental machination made in a moment of grief. Much like the other townsfolk who occupy her hunky dory home in Westview, New Jersey, his real-life body is in the bubble. But is he alive again? And if so, how?
In WandaVision episode 5, we learn the dark truth of what happened before Wanda took over Westview, and as it turns out, there is a reason Wanda saw that disturbing image of Vision's face, desiccated and gray without the Mind Stone in place: She got a close-up view of that exact visage when she stole his dead body from S.W.O.R.D.
After Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) objects to Director Hayward (Josh Stamberg) designating Wanda as a "terrorist" for holding the people of Westview hostage in her made-for-television dream bubble, he reveals surveillance footage of her storming their top-secret location which housed his body. Not only did she violate the Sokovia Accords with this body heist, but she also disobeyed Vision's own wishes because he had a living will to prevent his body from becoming a weapon. What the S.W.O.R.D. team doesn't know, though, is how she took his corpse and made it into the Vision that she's playing house with in her faux show.
Is Wanda playing coy about resurrection?
In episode 5, Tommy and Billy grow from babies to toddlers to 10-year-olds in a matter of minutes. The second supergrowth happens after the two find out they cannot keep the stray dog they found — which is named "Sparky" thanks to a suggestion by Agnes (Kathryn Hahn) — unless they're both 10, so they become 10. It's unclear whether this is their own volition, but Wanda indicates it is in their control because when the dog dies, Wanda warns them against growing up even more just to avoid the pain of their loss. In return, though, the boys tell their mom that they want her to use her powers to resurrect the pooch.
"You can fix anything, Mom. Fix the dead," Tommy says.
Even Agnes (Kathryn Hahn), who is more clued into what's happening than most (and even awkwardly asks if Wanda wants her to redo a certain comedic line earlier in the episode), is surprised by the suggestion and gasps, "You can do that?!" But Wanda demurs and tells the kids, "I am trying to tell you that there are rules in life. We can't rush aging just because it's convenient, and we can't reverse death, no matter how sad it makes us. OK? Some things are forever."
The boys still seem convinced that Wanda has the power to resurrect the dead, though, and unlike others in town, Vision does seem to have a certain amount of agency and independence that could support the theory that he really is alive and acting independently of her mind control.
What does Vision's existential crisis mean?
Near the end of episode 5, Vision engages Wanda in a tense standoff in which he reveals that he knows she is hurting the people of Westview by holding them hostage, and he wants answers from her about why she's doing it. Earlier, he'd received a strange transmission from S.W.O.R.D. on his work computer and removed the glamour from Norm (Asif Ali) long enough to discover just how much harm Wanda is causing by keeping people under her control.
Vision insists to Wanda that she cannot control him like she does the others, and the only thing she can do to prove otherwise is roll the credits and audience applause track for their latest "episode." Vision reveals that he wants to know what is outside of Westview and says he has no memory of life before their new reality began.
So while we don't know the details about how Wanda used Vision's recovered body to make the him that exists now, we do know his memory has been wiped and he retains some self-control that Wanda apparently cannot manipulate. (After all, we already know from a previous preview that Vision will continue to question his reality, and he will make way for the exit of Westview before it's all said and done on WandaVision, whether Wanda likes it or not.)
Meanwhile, the arrival of Quicksilver 2.0 (Evan Peters) — who Darcy (Kat Dennings) notes has been recast rather than resurrected — is a major curveball and opens up even more questions about what exactly Wanda is doing and how she is doing it.