Spoilers Agatha All Along discussion and spoilers.

[JD]

Looks like we're at least starting out with Billy being a bit more antagonistic than I expected. I was going to say a villain, but technically Agatha is a villains so him being hostile towards her might not necessarily mean that he's a bad guy.
The fact that she called him Billy Maximoff instead of Billy Kaplan makes me think they must be making his backstory a bit more straightforward than it was in the comics.

 

[thribs]

So is that confirmation that it’s Wanda’s imaginary kid? I was only paying half attention to it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

So is that confirmation that it’s Wanda’s imaginary kid? I was only paying half attention to it.

Read the thread

 

[The Nth Doctor]

And watch the show.

 

[Commander Troi]

So is that confirmation that it’s Wanda’s imaginary kid? I was only paying half attention to it.

Yes.

 

[Turtletrekker]

The kids were never imaginary. They made a point of stating that in the show, if you were actually paying attention to or care what they were actually saying.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Looks like we're at least starting out with Billy being a bit more antagonistic than I expected. I was going to say a villain, but technically Agatha is a villains so him being hostile towards her might not necessarily mean that he's a bad guy.
The fact that she called him Billy Maximoff instead of Billy Kaplan makes me think they must be making his backstory a bit more straightforward than it was in the comics.

He already talked about his normal life back in episode 2, so unless they're saying the sigil was overwriting his memories, I think her calling him Maximoff doesn't mean anything other than she understands who his real mom is.

 

[theenglish]

I was kind of reeling a little bit at the end of this episode, and then I remembered that Agatha may be the protagonist of this series, but she's actually a villain in the MCU.

 

[Tuskin38]

I never thought we’d see Ralph Bohner again

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Heh, Bohner.

That was an unexpected surprise but a welcomed one. I love how he became a conspiracy nut...but he was right about one thing: One definitely should stay away from Agatha.

Now we know the full truth about Billy...and how he exists in the MCU. The question is Tommy out there, too, and in what form?

Curious how Wanda didn't know Billy existed in some form after the Anomaly collapsed. Was it because she was blinded by the Darkhold feeding on her own obsessions or was it because of the Sigil? Or a combination of both?

I love that the cover story (or at least the public perception of the Anomaly) is that it was an Avengers training exercise. But that begs the question: Who does the public thinks are in the Avengers at that point? The MCU has been deliberately vague on this point since Endgame so I find it interesting to hear their name drop now, especially after Jac Shaeffer said she was relieved to be free of the burden of MCU canon. But I'm probably overthinking this point.

 

[Christopher]

I really should've rewatched WandaVision before this. I didn't recognize Fake Pietro, then I thought briefly that it was him, then I convinced myself it wasn't.

I was just thinking how I'm not crazy about the trend to do a full flashback episode in the middle of a serialized season (though I can't remember what the recent example was that particularly annoyed me), so I was glad this one turned out to be only mostly flashback and then had some payoff in the present.

They found an interesting way to simplify the comics backstory about Billy and Tommy being reincarnated. Instead, Billy's soul just possessed William Kaplan at the moment of his death in proximity to the Westview dome. Something similar may well have happened to Tommy. Although it's unclear how Billy's soul entering a mortally injured body would heal its injuries well enough to make it viable again.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

They found an interesting way to simplify the comics backstory about Billy and Tommy being reincarnated. Instead, Billy's soul just possessed William Kaplan at the moment of his death in proximity to the Westview dome. Something similar may well have happened to Tommy. Although it's unclear how Billy's soul entering a mortally injured body would heal its injuries well enough to make it viable again.

The answer is obvious: Magic.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Got a kick out of "Agatha of Westview: Billy's Version"

 

[Jayson1]

Heh, Bohner.

That was an unexpected surprise but a welcomed one. I love how he became a conspiracy nut...but he was right about one thing: One definitely should stay away from Agatha.

Now we know the full truth about Billy...and how he exists in the MCU. The question is Tommy out there, too, and in what form?

Curious how Wanda didn't know Billy existed in some form after the Anomaly collapsed. Was it because she was blinded by the Darkhold feeding on her own obsessions or was it because of the Sigil? Or a combination of both?

I love that the cover story (or at least the public perception of the Anomaly) is that it was an Avengers training exercise. But that begs the question: Who does the public thinks are in the Avengers at that point? The MCU has been deliberately vague on this point since Endgame so I find it interesting to hear their name drop now, especially after Jac Shaeffer said she was relieved to be free of the burden of MCU canon. But I'm probably overthinking this point.

I think it would be

New Captain America
Hulk
Thor
Captain Marvel
Ms Marvel
War Machine
Ant Man
Doctor Strange
Shang-Chi
Spiderman

 

[Christopher]

I'm a bit disappointed that there was no clarification on whether she was having police-drama delusions all along. Fake Pietro seemed to say that she was just acting like a normal Westview resident since Wanda left, so if the delusions started 3 weeks before Billy arrived, there's still no explanation for why things suddenly changed at that specific time.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

I'm a bit disappointed that there was no clarification on whether she was having police-drama delusions all along. Fake Pietro seemed to say that she was just acting like a normal Westview resident since Wanda left, so if the delusions started 3 weeks before Billy arrived, there's still no explanation for why things suddenly changed at that specific time.

The other neighbors already said back in episode 1 that the police drama thing was recent. Herb mentioned a time-frame of only a few days since she 'got bit by the true crime bug'.

It's true we don't know why that change happened. I'm not sure if that's something that will really be explained. It could be Rio's doing, which would definitely still come up. But it could also be that changes of delusion happened more often and it was just 'normal' variation. Or that she was slowly fighting her way back and the first step was unconciously changing the delusion to better suit her. Or that deep inside, she'd finally given up completely and the spell got darker and more manic as a result.

 

[Starscream2112]

Curious how Wanda didn't know Billy existed in some form after the Anomaly collapsed. Was it because she was blinded by the Darkhold feeding on her own obsessions or was it because of the Sigil? Or a combination of both?

It was the Sigil. It hides you from witches.

 

[Christopher]

The other neighbors already said back in episode 1 that the police drama thing was recent. Herb mentioned a time-frame of only a few days since she 'got bit by the true crime'.

As I've pointed out before, that was ambiguous whether it was referring to any crime drama hallucination or just the specific one inspired by modern shows in the vein of True Detective. After all, the term "true crime" does not refer to detective fiction, but specifically to the nonfiction coverage of real-life crimes, in the vein of something like Unsolved Mysteries or modern true-crime podcasts (or the lurid true-crime pulp magazines and books that gave the genre its name, like the 1920s True Detective magazine that the HBO drama was presumably named after). That doesn't actually apply to Agatha's hallucination, which was based on fictional detective dramas, so it must have been an erroneous (on the character's part) reference to the particular style of modern dramas like True Detective, which leaves open the possibility that she's been having hallucinations of different period styles of TV detective drama all along, the same way Wanda's original spell moved through different period styles of TV sitcom. Since Agatha was still under one of Wanda's spells, it's logical that it would've given her TV hallucinations in the same vein, moving forward through the decades and ending up with a modern style.

And whether we can handwave a reason for the change 3 weeks ago is beside the point. Explaining plot points is supposed to be the writers' job. We shouldn't have to do it for them.

 

[Jayson1]

I wonder if she switched to the cop stuff as a subconscious desire to figure out why the world feels "off" to her. Not knowing she is under a spell but still being able to feel it on that subconscious level. I don't know if the timeline works but it could have started when Wanda died in the Dr Strange movie. The spell might not have been broken but weakened

 

[Tuskin38]

I was just thinking how I'm not crazy about the trend to do a full flashback episode in the middle of a serialized season (though I can't remember what the recent example was that particularly annoyed me)

The Acolyte?