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It’s hard to even fathom why anything that is happening on this show is happening at the moment. The Flash suits up every week to run around and get shown up by whomever he faces against, to the point that the viewers have lost all sense of power he truly has. This is the same Barry Allen who sped back in time to save literally everybody’s lives in the first big crossover event, similar to his Snyder Cut counterpart. Now, his only way to win, and I mean only way, is to resort to repeating the same cliched, talk-down lines you’ve ever heard in your life. And if he can’t do it alone, Iris is there, even over the coms this week, to provide some extra advice and be his ‘lightning rod.’ I’ve loved this show for years, and I’ve loved all the characters at some point or another. I used to think Iris got hate for no reason and even remember the weaker seasons being very engaging. Now all the hate is warranted because the show is leaning into the problems its always had and completely losing sight of what once made it great. There are still glimmers of hope between the madness and the actors are all great, but the writers and people behind the show need to realize that with only a small handful of seasons most likely remaining, they have to step up to the plate if they wanna be remembered as fondly as Arrow.

Omg, this episode is hilariously terrible. How is it possible to make something this terrible?
First of all, why the hell is Barry their father? Afaik their still themselves and "Nora" is the Speed force, a primordial force of nature who's been reborn, they even say that in the episode. So, again, why is he their father? Just because I create my dinner doesn't it's my child. Stop it, it's terribly cringe.
Second, how is Psych faster than Barry? He's literally a speedster supposedly faster than anyone, yet he's caught every damn episode, at this point you might as well take away his powers for good.
And third, why the f*ck does Barry need a stupid, sappy ass speech ever goddamn episode? God, just rehashing the same trash every episode, just do something different, just give us something good. The most exciting thing that's happened the last 4 seasons, apart from Barry meeting Justice League Barry was Frost vs Flash and him turning evil.
This episode was just so awful that I was laughing the entire time because of the stupidity of the episode with them being "family" even though they literally never met each other. I must say I did quite like Psych tho, he adds a much needed dynamic to the show other than the feel good, extremely nice characters of the show.
Honestly, if it wasn't for the Flash being one of my favorite superheroes of all time since I was a kid, I would've stopped watching this a long time ago. I sincerely hope this show ends for good at the end of this season, Grant is a great actor and deserves better than to waste away on this God awful show.

7 minutes going in I was comitted to the idea that this is going be an Astra standalone episode so it felt weird to jump to Sara's storyline, but overall I'm glad they tried to stick to the former as much as possible. And I definitely did not see the animation part coming, eventhough when I first saw candle Behrad I was like "oh, like in The Beauty and the Beast!". It was fun, episodes taking place in John's house seem to work well for some reason.

I'm a bit disappointed that magic is in the center again, I thought with the aliens they will tip to the sci-fi more, and was wondering how are they going to keep John interesting, so not really cheering for an umpteenth magical McGuffin artifact, but John losing his magic is something I want to see how much changes him - and that's a bit bigger and a more sudden developement compared to the minor disappointment that the series sticks to magic.

But actually, it's the Sara storyline that falls too far from the rest for me. Like it was good to learn a bit more about the Ava clones, but the villan looks like a discount Behrad ripoff, so I'm not into that. Let's hope they put Sara back with the rest of the team soon.

Possible spolier for the future: The way John looked at Astra as she was leaving the room, can it be that he is her father?

P.S: The Earp comment about the second season finding it's voice and the creators sticking to it made me smile more than it should have.

Dang these fracking allergies!!! Not quite "Ninja" level great, but pretty darn close. The writers deciding to channel Close Encounters of the Third Kind, was what IMO, gave the episode some much needed heart, while also introducing a new "squint", to the team. One of the unintended consequences of wormhole, or FTL travel possibly being that if and when you return home, everyone you knew and loved, will have either aged significantly, or, might even be long dead and gone.

Some genuinely touching concepts explored, in the idea that love can maintain a connection over time and space, possibly through shared (lucid?) dreams. They could have driven the point home a bit more if the Father had finished the Daughters sentence(s), but, Bryan's eyebrows would have to suffice.

The net is closing around Maddox and his double (triple) dealing. You can't serve TWO masters, as you will hate one and love the other, or vice-versa. Last scene though, shows something else may be afoot.

What's the over-under on Bryan spilling the beans to Fiona in the next couple episodes, or before Dad two point oh, shows up on MI6"s surveillance somewhere?

It seems the Nabob's reports of "Debris" eminent demise may have been exaggerated..... We shall see.

WandaVision's sitcom premises and tones have been tied to the emotions and mental state of Wanda since the beginning, so it makes sense that her at the lowest point yet things would start to become fractured and all over the place. And, as it turns out, the mockumentary style comedy of Modern Family and The Office turn out to be a great mix with these characters - the humor is far more subdued then before as well and much drier, fitting of this kind of show. The constant changing of the things around Wanda, her depressive mood - it's played very realistically, much more so then I expected, and the emotional beats hit hard.

But honestly what really sold this episode was everything around that - Elizabeth Olsen probably gives her best performance to date on the show here, and Paul Bettany's chemistry with Kat Dennings is surprisingly really great. Monica nearly steals the show here with a show stopping scene involving her gaining her powers, even if they haven't been shown yet, but Kathryn Hahn man. Her performance here is simply divine, and while I'm curious to see how this changes the show going forward (some explaining has to be done), if Hahn is having THIS much fun here I can't see why we can't.

[7.8/10] “Previously On” is the sort of episode that answers the questions fans have been asking from the beginning. Who caused the hex? (Wanda) What made her do it? (Cumulative trauma) Who’s controlling it? (Sort of Wanda, sort of not.) What’s the deal with Pietro? (Total fake). What about Vision? (Wanda recreated him.) What’s Agnes’s angle here? (A witch trying to attain more power a probably drain Wanda the same way she drained the rest of her coven.)

For a lesser show, these could be mechanical answers to mechanical questions. Instead, this episode answers those technical points while also getting at the why of all this. It confirms, once and for all, that WandaVision is a story about the slow accumulation of trauma, and the ways the shiny sitcom worlds on the television screens are an escape from it.

Agnes (or Agatha, depending on your preference), plays Ghost of Xmas Past with Wanda, forcing Wanda to guide her through major events of her history in an effort to uncover how she became this powerful. Rather than centering on incantations or magical artifacts (give or take an Infinity Stone), it hinges on the moments of both comfort and loss in Wanda’s life.

It’s a strong conceit, giving Elizabeth Olsen plenty of notes to play across the years and showing how Wanda has lost so much of the year. We start with a scene of serene domestic bliss, or what passes for it in a war-torn Eastern Bloc country, with Wanda and Pietro as children with their parents. Suddenly a bomb disrupts the peace of “TV night”, destroying the young kids’ lives amid a moment of happiness and depicting events described in Age of Ultron. \

That sets a pattern for these things, where each moment involves how Wanda copes with such losses. We see her becoming a freedom fighter (or terrorist, depending on your vantage point), out of an attempt to avenge her parents in a way. It leads her to connect with the mind stone (something that, alongside a shadowy figure, will no doubt be explored in more depth later). The experience heightened her powers, but was also a source of further trauma, of being experimented on and treated as disposable.

(Just my crazy theory: [spoiler]I predict that the shadowy figure Wanda saw in the Mind Stone will be Wanda herself, from the future, creating a stable time loop and deciding to set these events into motion, even knowing the hardships of where they lead, because it’s a way to let love persevere.[/spoilers].)

But then we get the best scene in the whole episode, where we jump to Wanda still grieving her brother’s loss, another unfathomable trauma, only to get some unexpected comfort from Vision. The writing and acting here is magnificent. The imagery of Wanda talking about grief as a series of waves, continually hitting her every time she tries to stand, is haunting and effective. But Vision’s retort, of not knowing what loss is given his origins, but appreciating the notion that it is love persevering, is just as beautiful a counterpoint. You can see the way the two of them are connected not just through the mind stone, but through their unique experiences of grappling with the human condition from opposite sides, of learning how to move forward together. The chemistry, easy rapport, and connection between them in those moments is off the charts.

It’s a minor miracle. Having lost everyone close to her, Wanda forges a connection with someone else, someone who helps fill that space. Only then, he’s taken from her too. The final flashback we see is Wanda barging into Sword and seeing Vision being torn apart. We see the man she expected to be waiting for her when she was un-blipped lying in pieces before her. She reaches down and can no longer feel her, the last thread of that connection severed.

It’s enough to send anyone sprialing. We witness the mechanics of what happens next -- a grief-stricken Wanda coming to Westview, uncovering what was meant to be the place where the rest of their lives together began, the ghost of a new chapter of domestic bliss that she was once again robbed of by chaotic forces.

So she snaps. She explodes in her grief, for her parents, for her brother, and for her love, each ripped away from her in the times she most needed comfort, most thought she could be safe and happy like those people on the television screens.

That’s the most piercing thread of “Previously On.” At each stage, Wanda watches these sitcoms as a form of relief, of escape, to have a glimpse of the life denied her by circumstance and tragedy. She’s watching The Dick Van Dyke Show and seeing a happy couple when her parents are killed. She’s watching The Brady Bunch and a couple of friendly but needling siblings when she and her brother are treated like lab rats. She sees the comical violence of Malcolm in the Middle where the father figure can endure large scale mishaps but come out unscathed because “it’s not that kind of show.”

The import is clear. The allure of these stories, this pristine or even hardscrabble sitcom worlds, is that even when the edges are rougher, tragedies rarely happen. Happy families get to persist, to flourish. They get to happen at all. It’s a world where the worst losses of the world are kept outside of the frame, made digestible and easily resolved, one half hour at a time. It is, a world where she can have the life that she dreamed of as a little girl, the life she and Vision imagined for themselves, back.

Who wouldn’t want to bury themselves in that world at a time when the universe has taken pound of flesh after pound of flesh from your body? Look, we’re talking about a famed Scarlet Witch using her “chaos magic” to rewrite reality for a small town in New Jersey. None of this is down-to-earth exactly. And yet there’s something that feels so relatable, even natural, to Wanda choosing (or instinctively reacting) to conjure the sort of place that’s bereft of the traumas she’s suffered again and again and again.

We know the ruddy details now: that Agnes wants power, that Hayward wants a Vision of his own, that Wanda is firmly the source of the Hex. But more importantly, we understand why it came to this. “Previously On” gives us all those stark moments of love and joy and happiness that Wanda was robbed of, and the comforting glow of a place where no such heart-wrenching thefts can occur. Whatever season-ending fireworks happen next week, no one can blame poor Wanda for retreating into her static-filled dream world, when so much of her life has been this crystal clear nightmare.

The beauty of WandaVision is how so far it's able to seamlessly transition from it's more MCU-esqe outside story to it's more experimental, trippy surreal horror and then to a more traditional sitcom, and this episode is easily the strongest yet in that regard. The way the episode moves the main plot along is stellar, giving us even more to chew on as the reality of what Wanda's powers are able to do grows. And the drama of the episode really hits it's climax with a final argument between Wanda and Vision that's among the best acting the two have done in the MCU. I can't also be more over the moon about that final scene, which is one of the biggest curveballs the franchise has ever done and changes the landscape of not just this show but the entire MCU as a whole.

And as always, the sitcom aesthetic is on point. We have hit the 80s, which is where the aesthetic of sitcoms becomes more similar to me as somebody who grew up in a household with stuff like Family Ties and Full House on in the background. It absolutely nails the feeling of a more "dramatic episode" of one these shows, in this case the death of a pet. Billy and Tommy are really likable as well, capturing the feeling of young sitcom kids wonderfully. Time will tell if they stick around to become Wiccan and Speed from the comics, but so far the show continues to really impress with it's quality.

[9.0/10] There’s so much to talk about in this one. X-Men’s Quicksilver as Avengers Quicksilver! Bulletproof hotpants! 1980s TV spoofs! Scarlet Witch’s stand-off with Sword!

But here’s the thing that stands out to me, the thing that grabbed me the most while watching this “Very Special Episode” -- Vision confronting the woman he loves over what’s happening. That moment has extra oomph because of the effects. There’s something eerie about the two of them arguing over the end credits until they stop. There’s something scary about the two of them rising into the air at the same time they raise their voices to one another.

What stands out about it, though, is the emotional rawness in the moment. Vision isn’t just upset; he’s worried that he can no longer trust his wife, that she’s done something terrible to him, to everyone, and doing everything in her power to keep it from him. Wanda is trying to hold it together, feeling just as vulnerable and admitting she’s not even sure how this started. They are both just so messed up by what’s happening, so riven by it, but in ways that drive them apart over whether to tear this all down or do everything they can to continue propping it up.

The tenor of the scene is familiar to anyone who’s spoken with a loved one who’s unwell, who is not themselves, whether through grief or mental illness or some other trauma that jeopardizes their ability to process the world as it is. There’s an honesty to that scene, one that is frankly startling, and it’s the kind of place I never really expected an MCU project to go. It’s draped in reality-distorting fiction and the trappings of family sitcoms, but somehow that just makes it all the more disturbing and poignant when the truth of those moments bursts through those bracing layers of abstraction.

That’s bolstered by the second most stunning revelation of “On a Very Special Episode” -- that Wanda stole Vision’s corpse from Sword. More to the point, that he left a living will and wished never to be revived, not wanting to be anyone’s weapon. It’s plain that Wanda, either by herself or with the help of someone else, revivified him, and that he’s starting to reckon with the margins of what happened to him, if not the full picture.

He’s starting to see through the illusions and deceptions that Westview is made of. Again, the show does so well making the moments where it breaks the sitcom rhythms unnerving. Agnes’s “should I take it from the top” bit is eerie, and for once, Vision has a chance to realize it before Wanda resets things. Instead, she tries to play it off, tries to distract him with puppies and doorbells ringing and other head-fakes that Vision’s nevertheless noticing.

It comes through in the odd behavior of his coworkers, who respond to a Sword email by reading and laughing in unison. Vision briefly frees Norm, who is understandably frantic and undone and, most importantly, in pain over what’s being done to him. The secret truth of WandaVision is that it’s not a comedy show or sitcom homage or a superhero series. It’s a horror show, and Vision’s starting to realize that. He’s realizing that everything is wrong here, starting with him, what he can and can’t remember, and the mother of his children.

Meanwhile, there’s some more traditional but still cool developments on the outside. Monica Rambeau, Jimmy Woo, and Darcy Lewis are trying to save Wanda, trying to show her compassion despite what’s happening, while Sword Director Hayward thinks she’s just a terrorist who needs to be taken out. Meanwhile, our trio of familiar characters are finding solutions to the problem, realizing that 1980s tech can penetrate the Hex without being transformed by Scarlet Witch’s powers.

Of course, it doesn’t go unnoticed by Wanda, and she storms out of the Hex to threaten Heyward and everyone else when, unbeknownst to Monica, he tries to use their drone to eliminate her. It’s a scary moment, one only slightly cut by Elizabeth Olsen reverting to her dodgy Eastern European accent. We see definitively that Wanda has at least some control and awareness of her surroundings and what’s happening, enough to want to protect it from interlopers and those intruding on her surroundings.

It’s become increasingly clear why she’s so protective of her perfect bubble of happiness and what she is running from -- grief. The show channels that idea through 1980s sitcom pastiches in an amusing fashion, with Agnes as the friendly, albeit intrusive neighbor, kids growing up too fast, and dogs dying so that parents can give an important lesson about making peace with certain facts of life.

At the root of it, though, is a deep sense of loss and the artifacts of reckoning with death, something difficult whether you’re a child or an adult. Wanda says to her boys, and to herself, that she cannot reverse death, that they cannot turn away from it, because some things aren’t meant to be elided and some lines shouldn’t be crossed.

We confirm that she has brought the corpse of the man she loves back to life, presumably because she couldn’t deal with his absence and the tragedy of what happened to him. The commercial break this episode name-checks Lagos, the Nigerian city from Civil War where Scarlet Witch accidentally killed dozens of civilians when trying to redirect a blast, more mess than any paper towel could clean up. And she reflects, at her sons’ urging, on the loss of her own twin, Pietro, the only lifeline she had when she lost her parents at the same tender age Billy and Tommy are now.

So she does what she’s already done -- she brings him back, after a fashion. It’s an inspired bit of stunt-casting to bring in Evan Peters to quasi-reprise his role as Quicksilver. But beyond the jolt of the misdirect and reveal is a simple truth, that this whole thing is wrong. It is a coping mechanism, one meant to shield Wanda from yet another horrid demise marring her personal history.

So she, or some other force working with and through her, has constructed this place to evade that destabilizing realization. Vision is breaking out of it, shaking off the cobwebs of his violative rebirth and seeing through the comforting lies that Wanda is straining so hard to hold onto. It is difficult, hollowing, wounding to watch someone you care for undone by grief and trauma, dragging the world down with them. So much of what WandaVision does is clever or exciting or amusing. But what it does here is disquieting beyond words, and deeply, painfully true.

At first this episode might seem like a filler, but it serves as a good episode for the characters to breathe and immerse in the moment they just experienced.

One thing I liked from the episode is contrast.

On the cold Earth we get to see Amos and Clarissa walk through a forest the kids planted on field trip. Clarissa spoke of field trips, saying that her dad was one that donated his money to plant that much trees, and throwing references like "Schroedinger's parents", unaware of her upper class upbringing. Amos never went to field trip and didn't catch her reference. He asked instead, what does her dad get in return for planting those many trees? For Amos who grew up in the streets of Baltimore, the idea of charity field trips where people give something (plant a tree) for free is unimaginable. Clarissa then talked of her time with her distant father, and how a caretaker should be a good person. Amos rejected this idea: “There are ways that you can live a good life without being a good person.”

Other character arcs that weave the threads the plots in this episode similarly have that contrast. Avasarala struggles with uncertainty and seemingly loss of husband, as the acting secretary-general calls her for other duty. We get to see Holden aboard Rocinante, a place he would call home, but his home is manned by strangers, none of his families. In a way, Holden is alone in his home. Similarly, Filip asked Naomi how could she betray her family and if she doesn't think them as her family anymore. Naomi retorted shortly, "I guess I don't." He "family" is no longer them - but one of Rocinante crew.

Speaking of Naomi, her relatively sluggish plot line in previous episodes pays off decently in this episode. Drummer's coming to terms to temporarily ally with Marco, the one who killed two of her friends knits nicely with Naomi's story.

And there is of course Filip's story. All he has ever known in his life is the (delusional) grandeur of his dad: the swashbuckling rebel of OPA who fights for his people. Marco portrays himself a determined, righteous hero of the Belt, and his son knew no better. He never saw Marco as someone would do wrong, until Cyn - Marco's own crew - confronted him, trying to assert his duty as a supposedly foster father Naomi believed him to be. "I've never seen the two of you like that before," Filip, shaken, told Cyn. "Wouldn't be the first time," Cyn replied. And then there was the line when Filip was told that Naomi "saved everyone" during her time in Behemoth.

Filip was (is?) still a naive young boy, seeing the world only through the lens of his self-proclaimed hero of a father. He sees his father's quest as nothing but a struggle of one man to do things right where others failed. A firebrand agitator, Marco blamed everyone else as wrong, and he as right. It was the first time Filip sees the possibility that Marco himself might be as wrong. As Filip desired to know further, Marco snooped on Filip's conversation with Naomi in disgust, but unable to intervene as doing so would prove that Naomi does hold a grain of truth. And that seems to be why Filip might still worth saving - after previous episodes showing him as no better than a hard-headed boy - free from the clutch of his ambitious father.

All these are achieved with very good acting of every cast members. There were some minor slopes and disappointments, such as Clarissa's modded fight that was choreographed very poorly (they did it better in Season 3), and Bobbie and Alex's minor, relatively swiftly resolved win. But this is still a pretty decent episode, and one that has nice character development.