WandaVision Episode 4 Ending Explained

Contains major spoilers for WandaVision

Marvel Studios' WandaVision chugs along with yet another offering of surreal, confusing television that audiences clearly cannot get enough of. Currently boasting a 93 percent fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, this genre-blending Marvel Cinematic Universe addition continues to impress, no matter the era. The debut episodes took Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda "Scarlet Witch" Maximoff and her synthezoid husband Vision, portrayed by Paul Bettany, back to the 1950s and 60s, respectively. Following them up, the third installment featured a '70s aesthetic — so, with this pattern in mind, one would assume that a 1980s-inspired story was set up perfectly for the week of January 29, 2021.

However, that otherwise sound assessment couldn't be further from the case. The latest WandaVision episode, entitled "We Interrupt This Program," actually went in an entirely different direction that finally gave fans a glimpse of the world outside of the sitcom-esque Westview and how it's responding to its anomalous existence. The events of the story run concurrently to the first three episodes of WandaVision, providing answers to longstanding questions and presenting brand-new mysteries for viewers to contemplate and theorize on until next Friday rolls around. 

Let's take a look at where WandaVision episode 4 wraps up and the important plot points that got us there.

The fourth WandaVision episode opens with a flashback to the Avengers: Endgame moment when Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) snapped everyone back into existence — an event known as "the Blip" — from Monica Rambeau's perspective. She awakens in a hospital where her mom, Maria "Photon" Rambeau, received successful cancer treatment just before Thanos (Josh Brolin) eliminated half of all life in the universe. Frantic, Monica learns that five years have passed, and that her mother is long gone thanks to her cancer's return. Nevertheless, she presses on, returning to work at S.W.O.R.D. (an organization for which her mom served as director) in no time flat.

Monica's first assignment back takes her to Westview, New Jersey, where an FBI witness in the protection program went missing and has not returned. She arrives on the scene to meet with Agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park) of Ant-Man fame, and attempts to get a glimpse inside the town from a distance. Despite her best efforts, Monica soon finds herself sucked into its energy field and unwittingly adopts on the persona "Geraldine," as we've seen in previous episodes. 

By the time the credits roll, Wanda shoots Monica out of Westview (as she did at the end of WandaVision episode 3), but Monica appears to have all of her memories intact, thankfully. It'll be interesting to learn what she found in her time under Westview's influence, in addition to more details about her backstory in the coming episodes.

In past WandaVision installments, the show has dropped minor hints as to who's on the outside, attempting to break into this pocket reality. Given the organization's logo has appeared all over the program at this point, it should come as no surprise that S.W.O.R.D. is behind these various plans, although their success is middling at best. WandaVision episode 4 at the very least gives everyone a fresh and informative perspective as to where S.W.O.R.D.'s presence in Westview came from, and explains their desire to snap Wanda out of her trance.

First and foremost, when Monica arrives at the energy field surrounding Westview, she flies a miniature S.W.O.R.D. helicopter right into it. This is the same one that Wanda finds in her front yard early on in the second episode (albeit with a more dated appearance, to best fit its 1960s flavor). Later on, Jimmy Woo and the returning Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) try to communicate with Wanda via radio to no avail, just as the aforementioned episode depicted as well. Finally, there's the mysterious sewer dweller whose true identity is S.W.O.R.D. Agent Franklin. Under Westview's spell, his hazmat suit was swapped for a beekeeper outfit.

Considering their heavy military presence in the region, it's unlikely that S.W.O.R.D. will leave Wanda and her new home alone any time soon. Although, with her power levels hardly scratching the surface of their fullest potential, they would be wise to tread lightly.

While this WandaVision episode largely focuses on S.W.O.R.D.'s involvement in Wanda's sitcom world, it also explains quite a bit about the town of Westview and its residents. As revealed by Jimmy Woo early on, the odd town is somehow very stringent about who enters and who leaves. Not to mention, everyone around it seems to have collective amnesia about its existence, with an Eastview police officer denying it's a real place while standing next to its welcome sign. Thanks to Darcy's input, it's discovered that Westview gives off a television broadcast frequency entwined with Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (apparently a Big-Bang-like byproduct of the new pocket reality's creation), allowing them to observe it on an antique TV as if it's a classic television series.

In a startling revelation, it's deduced that some of the program's mainstays — Mr. Hart (Fred Melamed), Mrs. Hart (Debra Jo Rupp), Norm (Asif Ali), Phil Jones (David Lengel), Beverly (Jolene Purdy), and Herb (David Payton), to name a few — are living beings trapped inside this simulated reality. They all — except, apparently, for Agnes, which you can see in the image above — have true identities and lives away from Westview, details of which S.W.O.R.D. are able to uncover with relative ease. Whether or not they're aware of it or if they're under some kind of spell that makes them act accordingly remains to be unveiled, but one can only hope they'll make it out of Westview alive sooner rather than later.

Additionally, in the closing moments of the episode, we get a glimpse at what seems to be Vision's true form, and it's absolutely horrifying. He appears not as the vibrant, lively synthezoid we've seen him as previously, but rather as the colorless, Mind Stone-less husk Thanos reduced him to in Avengers: Infinity War. This seems to indicate that he's still very much deceased, with someone apparently puppeteering his body and altering his appearance to ease Wanda's heartbreak over his demise. It's cruel, twisted, and heartbreaking, but what would WandaVision be without such qualities?

In a shocking revelation at the end of the episode, Monica — now back on the outside of Westview and free of her Geraldine identity — alerts her fellow S.W.O.R.D. associates that "it's Wanda ... it's all Wanda." This statement manages to make it abundantly clear that not only is the powerful mutant aware that she's living in a fake world, but she's also the one controlling it. The people's inclusion, the colors, the vintage scenery, and even the jump-cuts every time S.W.O.R.D. tried to reach out to her were caused under her own volition, as far as Monica can tell.

To someone on the outside, it may appear as though Wanda is in complete control of this reality. After all, her abilities arguably have the most potential of the MCU's entire current roster, so such detail doesn't come out of left field. However, eagle-eyed fans of WandaVision continue to pick up hints that a larger, even more powerful entity could actually be behind Westview's creation and is deceiving Wanda into believing she's the one controlling things. For instance, during the planning committee scene in episode two, Dottie says, "The devil's in the details," to which Agnes says, under her breath, "That's not the only place he is."

That's certainly a decent enough laugh line for an old sitcom — after all, Dottie is seen as an unfriendly and "devilish" character by the other ladies on the committee at this point. However, plenty of MCU theorists have taken this as a clue that has huge implications for WandaVision's future – specifically that Agnes may be the MCU version of Marvel Comics character Agatha Harkness, a witch whose been involved in Wanda and Vision's lives in the past. Additionally, the arrival of Wanda and Vision's kids, Tommy and Billy, also seem to hint that the "devilish" Marvel Comics character Mephisto might not be too far behind either. Will either of these clues pay off in the next episode? Maybe!

By now, we've gotten more than a few glimpses behind the curtain — and Monica's explanation that "it's all Wanda" definitely fits with what we've seen. She's the one who rewound time when she saw the beekeeper in episode 2. She's the one who blasted Monica out of Westview. She seems to be the one who changes Vision's appearance at the end of episode 4, after we catch sight of his dead eyed face and gem-less forehead. After all, one of the most famous Marvel Comics storylines involving Wanda was House of M, in which she creates a new version of reality as a way of dealing with the trauma of her personal life — specifically in response to the lingering trauma of realizing her children, Tommy and Billy, aren't real, and they disappear from existence. And we've gotten other hints and references that seem to point to the House of M storyline, in the form of a wine bottle in episode 1 and the butterflies in episode 3.

It's not much of a stretch to surmise that she created Westview in a similar reaction to the trauma of losing Vision to Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War. Her reaction to seeing his dead face in this episode seems to prove that she's aware of Vision's true form and is doing everything in her power to deny that reality — and that may include creating and controlling Westview. And the ending of episode 4 — where we see Wanda forcefully smashing Monica through walls to maintain her sitcom-reality's illusion — contrasts pretty hard with the ending of episode 3, in which it's merely implied that Wanda simply ejected Monica out of Westview.

However, with more than half of the nine-episode series left to go, there's a decent enough bet that there's even more going on underneath the surface. We're meant to infer that Wanda is in control, and being told that "it's all Wanda" is certainly a good way to reinforce that idea. But then why are Agnes and Dottie some of the only residents of Westview not to be identified with real-world counterparts? Is there more to them than meets the eye...or are we just finding clues wherever we can, trying to stay one step ahead of WandaVision's showrunners? We'll at least have to wait to see episode 5 next week to find out.