WandaVision episode 4 recap: Marvel show gives us the answers we want – CNET [CNET]

WandaVision first three episodes jumped from decade to decade as Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) lived a lovely sitcom life together in the idyllic (and also incredibly strange) town of Westview. The fourth episode landed on Disney Plus Friday, and gave us a big dose of Marvel Cinematic Universe “reality.”

Last week’s episode left us with our biggest hint yet about Westview’s true nature when Wanda kicked “Geraldine” (Teyonah Parris) out of the lovely sitcom town for mentioning her twin brother Pietro and his killer Ultron (which, to be fair to Wanda, was a bit rude of Geraldine). The show hasn’t revealed Geraldine’s identity, but Marvel Studios didn’t exactly keep it a secret. 

Let’s jump into an idyllic town of SPOILERS.

Full disclosure: I was expecting this episode to push Wanda and Vision’s story into the ’80s and had a big spiel about how much I love the pop culture of that decade ready. Alas, things didn’t get as neon as I was hoping, so we’ll have to wait until next week to put on our leg warmers.

Instead, we get a super satisfying info dump about what the heck has been going on.  

Geraldine

We finally get on-screen confirmation that Geraldine is actually Monica Rambeau (AKA Lieutenant Trouble), previously seen as a child in the ’90s-set Captain Marvel. This episode gives us a flashback revealing that Monica vanished in Avengers: Infinity War’s Snap just after her mom Maria had (seemingly successful) surgery to remove cancer.

Monica was dusted by Thanos, shortly after her mom Maria had (seemingly successful) surgery to remove cancer. In the five years Monica was gone, Maria’s cancer came back and she died.

It’s the first time we’ve seen the chaos immediately following the unSnappening of Avengers: Endgame — Spider-Man: Far From Home took a jokey approach — and it is brutal. She woke up to find everyone panicking and discovered her mom had died, jeepers.

Unsheath your SWORD

After teasing us with the logo up to now, SWORD is revealed this episode. The Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division is a US intelligence agency set up by Monica to monitor threats and potential allies from space — except it shifted focus during Maria’s absence to  “robotics, nanotech, AI and sentient weapons.”

Darcy and Jimmy

The real stars of the episode are astrophysicist Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) and FBI agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park), last seen in Thor: The Dark World and Ant-Man and the Wasp respectively. This pair are basically the audience surrogates, since they try to figure out what’s going on as they watch Wanda and Vision’s sitcom existence.

Wanda has taken over the town of Westview, New Jersey, and locals have been forced to become “actors” in the show.

CNET’s Caitlin Petrakovitz contributed to this recap.

This article will be updated shortly.