The 2 big reveals of WandaVision episode 7, explained

Kathryn Hahn as Agnes in WandaVision. | Marvel

As WandaVision ramps up toward its finale, the big reveals just keep on coming.

Spoilers follow for WandaVision episode seven, “Breaking the Fourth Wall.”

The question at the heart of Disney+’s buzzy TV series WandaVision, and all of the absolutely weird stuff happening in the town of Westview, is: Who’s doing this?

And now, with the bombshell at the end of episode seven, we finally have our answer.

It was Agatha all along. Well, sort of.

Agnes (Kathryn Hahn) reveals at the end of the episode that her real name is Agatha Harkness, and she has magic powers of her own. She’s been using illusions and maybe some light mind control to manipulate Wanda into creating the Westview anomaly. What Agatha wants with a town full of mind-controlled people and a reality-warping, enhanced Avenger named Wanda Maximoff, we don’t yet know. But it’s now clear that it isn’t just Wanda’s grief that’s driving her to create her own sitcom-inspired reality.

That was one of two huge reveals in this episode. Here’s a little more detail into its blockbuster twists, and what they mean as we begin as WandaVision’s nine-episode season begins to wrap up.

Agnes is revealed as Agatha Harkness, who might be WandaVision’s true villain

The big takeaway in episode seven is once again that everything we think we know about WandaVision isn’t what it seems. And this time that’s due to one character: Agnes, or shall I say, the one and only Agatha Harkness.

The popular theory prior to WandaVision’s debut was that Kathryn Hahn would be playing Agatha Harkness and that “Agnes” is a code for her full name. There was further evidence of Agnes being Agatha in episode two, where we learned that Agnes has a bunny named Señor Scratchy; in the comics, Agatha has a son named Nicholas Scratch.

At the tail end of episode seven, Agnes revealed her true identity and that she’s been manipulating some of the things happening in Westview all along.

A montage, complete with nifty theme song (“It was Ag-a-tha all along!”), shows how she “created” Pietro’s cameo at the end of episode five, tinkered with the magic show in episode two, and killed Wanda’s new dog Sparky, too. She’s also been simply pretending to be a mind-controlled resident of Westview this entire time.

We don’t know how powerful Agatha’s magic is, but we do know she’s found a way to maintain her own consciousness and, at the very least, that she’s pulled off some very real illusions.

In the comics, Harkness is a witch, the kind that uses spells and incantations and magic. She is actually one of Wanda’s mentors, and she plays a big role in helping Wanda realize her powers. She figures prominently in a story about Wanda’s children, and the resurrection of at least one dead Avenger.

Marvel

Agatha and Wanda in Vision and the Scarlet Witch no. 3.

Harkness also ties into Vision’s award-winning 2015–16 solo comic book series (written by Tom King and drawn by Gabriel Hernandez Walta), in which the android tries to live a happy suburban life. There are a lot of parallels between the comic book version of Agatha Harkness and what’s now happening on WandaVision.

However, while Agatha is an ally to Wanda in the comic books, she’s a lot more menacing and nefarious on the show — for starters, she has a very spooky basement, which she traps Wanda in at the end of episode seven.

At this point, there are a lot more questions than answers.

The very obvious question is, why is Agatha manipulating Wanda into maintaining the Westview anomaly? Further, what does she stand to gain from Wanda or Vision, or from Wanda’s mental breakdown? Is she responsible for the WandaVision broadcast? And how did she know about Wanda and Westview in the first place?

Also, for my own personal curiosity: Who is her husband Ralph? Does he even exist?

I have my guesses. But the more pertinent issue at hand, more important than Ralph anyway, is that outside of the hex, S.W.O.R.D. director Tyler Hayward (Is he Ralph?) is threatening to call a military strike on Wanda, Monica, Agatha, and all of the Westview residents. If she isn’t in cahoots with Hayward, the risk of being vaporized along with the rest of Westview’s residents is something Agatha might want to consider.

WandaVision seems to have officially given Monica Rambeau superpowers

In episode five, we knew that Monica’s medical scans were coming up abnormal after getting zapped out of Wanda’s Westview sitcom, possibly hinting that her DNA and cells have been altered. Episode six confirmed as much. Darcy, while hacking into the S.W.O.R.D. computer system, found Monica’s medical scans and learned that her cells were being rewritten at “a molecular level.” The reason, Darcy said, was that Monica passed through the Westview energy field twice — once when she walked into it and once when she was zapped back out — which ostensibly rewrote the cells in her body.

Now, in episode seven, Monica passes through the hex a third time when she decides to save Wanda. She barges her way in and we see, for the first time, specifically what happens when people enter the hex. As Monica trudges through the energy field, she relives poignant memories of her childhood, her mother, and Carol Danvers a.k.a. Captain Marvel. Not unlike Wanda with Vision, Monica felt immense grief when she learned that her mother had died of cancer while Monica was blipped by Thanos’s snap. And from what we know thanks to other entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Monica said goodbye to Carol as a kid and never saw her again growing up because Carol was off providing intergalactic assistance in universes far away.

As Monica gets through the energy field and into Westview, her eyes glow a bright green, signaling that her cells have been rewritten again. Then, when she confronts Wanda, her powers — which look to be electricity or light-based — protect her from one of Wanda’s attacks.

While we don’t know the full extent of her powers on the show, Marvel’s comics can give us a clue. Passing through Wanda’s hex field is not unlike a radioactive spider biting Peter Parker or gamma rays turning Bruce Banner into the Hulk. In the comics, Monica acquires powers after being exposed to and bombarded by cosmic energy:

John Romita/Marvel

Monica being zapped in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #16.

After absorbing this energy into her body, Monica has the power to transform herself into various energy forms. These energy forms allow her to shoot energy bolts, but they also allow her to zip along at superspeed, including light speed:

Kenneth Rocafort/Marvel

Monica Rambeau.

Acquiring powers that involve manipulating light and energy by appearing on Wanda’s television show (which in its very existence involves transmitting and broadcasting images and sound), and by passing through a hex field that is emitting cosmic microwave background radiation (“a colossal amount of CMBR” is how Darcy described it in episode four), conveniently aligns with the comics.

The nifty little loophole here is that, for now, Monica is the only character on WandaVision who has passed through the hex field multiple times. That would help explain why she would be the only Westview “resident” to end up with powers so far. That will likely remain the case so long as none of the others pass through the field again.

Monica’s powers seem to be setting up her presence in future Marvel movies. It’s already been confirmed that she’ll appear in the Captain Marvel sequel. We may even get to see her team up with Wanda Maximoff again, provided they safely make it away from the Westview anomaly and out of Agatha’s clutches.