Summary
The third episode of the Disney+ series is a real whopper and will cause a few, “Whoa Nelly’s” to say the least.
This recap of Disney Plus’s WandaVision season 1, episode 3, contains spoilers.
The third episode has WandaVision entering the classic ‘70s sitcom style, with the credits a parody of The Brady Bunch. The cast is dressed in popular styles of the time– bell-bottom pants, maxi dresses, frayed jeans, midi skirts, but these are middle-class people after all; none of those hippy accessories like headbands, scarves, and jewelry made of wood, stones, feathers. The men have shaggy bottoms and some afros, while the ladies rocked the long-straight hair or the Dorothy Hamill. The longer the sideburns and thicker the stashes, the better.
Wanda and Vision bring in the local doctor to check on her pregnancy, which he estimates is four months along even though they know it has been a full 12 hours. The good doc shows Vision a trick, using fruit to help the little ladies along to count the months they are pregnant so it makes it simple for them. You know, at eight, a “honeydew!” Wanda then cleverly says that this was fruitless. Vision gets in on the jokes when the medicine man tells Vision every man has nerves when his first child is coming, he says, “Well, I have nerves of steel, so there goes your theory.”
When Vision walks the man out he then sees Herb (David Payton) cutting his hedges with an electric clipper. After the doctor tells Vision he will be away on a holiday in Bermuda, he turns and now sees Herb cutting through their concrete wall that separates their lawns. Vision, bewildered, makes a cheeky comment, “I think you’ve taken the hedge trimming a little too far there, old chum.” The crowd’s laughter ensues as Herb responds, “So I have. Thanks, good buddy.” Vision can’t walk away ask Herb keeps staring at him, like a Stepford wife, smiling straight at him, never taking his eyes off him while still cutting through that cement, cinder block wall.
Of course, when the father to be goes inside his ‘70s ranch-style house with the stained glass church windows, Wanda is now double in size. When Vision yells, “Whoa, Nelly! Have you gotten bigger?” She turns and comments she can’t tell from this angle, knocking over a bowl of fruit which her husband catches at the speed of sound. He picks up an odd-looking green piece of fruit, putting it next to his wife’s now six-month robust stomach, and comments, “I can’t wait to be a proud papa-paya.” Vision is getting a head start on the dad jokes and Wanda shakes her head smiling, and the live studio audience just can’t get enough.
The young couple starts to get to nesting in WandaVision season 1, episode 3, and playfully argue over if their child should be named Tommy or Billy, Wanda gets the room ready and Vision figures out the baby will come in three days. They practice changing diapers on a doll and then Wanda’s contraction causes the neighborhood to lose power. This all comes together for Vision: the power going out, outside with Herb, the dinner with the Harts. He comments, “Something is off here Wanda, isn’t it?” Wanda looks worried and almost terrified as if she knows a secret is about to come out, when all of the sudden, it jumps back a few seconds, and Vision tells Wanda that we are in uncharted waters, it must be their anxiety.
He then comforts his wife, creating an almost classic family moment, like comfort food for the soul. “If he is anything like his mother, then he will be perfect.” This then causes the typical aww’s from the studio audience.
Of course, we need some more comedy stylings. Wanda now has a real contraction and causes Vision to panic, floating in the air. Wanda has to practice Lamaze breathing with him to get him to come back down from cloud — in his case — ninety-nine. Then, her water breaks, the baby is clearly coming now, but this a superhero pregnancy; the water comes falling from inside the house. But that’s not all, as they go to commercial, a company called “Hydra Soak” has a commercial marketing bubble baths to stressed-out housewives to “Find the Goddess Within!” Don’t worry about the pattern of the “Red Skull” symbol on the package, because it’s made in the USA, of course—because of American work.
The pipes had burst in the house and most of the neighborhood. Vision goes to grab the good doctor and Geraldine stops by to borrow a bucket. For some reason, the stork Wanda painted in the nursery is now alive, running around the house. Of course, her stomach gets bigger while her friend is there, causing several comic hijinks of using several different coats, bowls, and couches to cover up her baby that is growing at a lightning pace. When the stork makes a noise, Geraldine is noticeably frightened, her mood has changed. She acts almost like she is a different person and drops an act, but maybe I am just being paranoid.
Though, it’s Wanda who drops the act. She goes into labor and Geraldine helps deliver the baby right before Vision gets back with the walking HMO. They deliver Tommy, but to everyone’s surprise, there is a second baby on the way—a daughter. Of course, when the doctor leaves, he comments they won’t be going to Bermuda after all because, you know, “small towns are so hard to escape.”
The last part of WandaVision season 1, episode 3 is a whopper and will cause a few, “Whoa Nelly’s” to say the least. Vision talks to Herb who has struck up a conversation with Agnes (Kathryn Hahn), who was passing by on her bike. Vision feels unsettled about it; they whisper just out of earshot. Before he walks away, Agnes says, “Is Geraldine inside with Wanda.” The shot then cuts back to Wanda who shares with Geraldine that she was a twin and had a brother named, Pietro. Wanda then breaks out into a Nursery song, in Russian, and her friend looks concerned and asks, shockingly, “He was killed by Ultron, wasn’t he?” Wanda and probably everyone watching, including myself, then ask, “What did you say?” She then sees her necklace she is wearing has a unique symbol—it’s the same one we saw at the end of the pilot episode when someone was watching the Visions on a television set taking copious notes and the back of the man wearing the Beekeepers protective suit.
Agnes tells Vision that Geraldine has no family and no home, but yet she is always in Westview. Herb desperately wants to tell Vision what he knows, telling him that, “She came here because we all…”, but Agnes stops him, in all dead seriousness, breaking her Ethel like character, and then turns back to Vision smiles, cracks a joke, then bikes away. Herb then leaves by telling him he will, “Catch him on the flip side.” Vision runs back into the house, but Geraldine is gone. He asks his wife where she went and Wanda replies that she left and had to rush home.
The dramatic music plays, a noticeable shift in the show’s three-episode run has changed, and the camera then cuts to a nighttime view of the welcome to Westview sign. The black sky then starts to pulsate, static crackling, almost like television with bad reception, and a body comes falling out of the sky that rolls into an empty field. It is Geraldine, disoriented, and is then surrounded by Humvees, helicopters, armed soldiers while Daydream Believer from The Monkees plays in the background.
As the camera pans out and the lyrics, “Oh, what can it mean” plays, we see an army camp facing the Welcome to Westview sign, and behind it, is a fenced-off area with tall stadium lights shining towards a fenced-off area that is protected from the outside world.
What did you think of WandaVision season 1, episode 3? What in the Truman Show is going on? Who is Geraldine really (if you paid attention to the trades, you know already)? What is the meaning of the symbol on Geraldine’s necklace? Could it be S.W.O.R.D.? Finally, does Wanda really know more than she is letting on?
