“WandaVision” episodes 1 & 2 were written by Jac Schaeffer and Gretchen Enders and directed by Matt Shakman. After the events of “Avengers: Endgame,” Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) are living an everyday suburban life in the town of Westview, concealing their powers. As the couple begins to enter new decades, they suspect that something isn’t quite right.

Think back to 2008 with the release of “Iron Man.” Then, think about how 2021 has the very first streaming series to debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Over the years, Kevin Feige has given us 23 movies, and they have only scratched the surface of their full potential. A redundant formula can be seen that defines many of the films they delivered. However, “experimental” and “wacky” are incredible understatements for the first two episodes of “WandaVision.” What will soon be revealed as loosely based on the “House of M” storyline, Wanda has created a “virtual reality” world so she can spend more time with Vision than the world originally intended. Living “happily ever after,” as Vision said, is not going to be a viable option for the outcome of this series.

The first episode starts out in a black and white 1950’s setting and is supposed to be taking sitcom nods from “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “I Love Lucy.” Then, the second episode is in the 1960s and based on “Bewitched.” There is no setup whatsoever as to how they entered this world, Vision is simply alive somehow, and is now married to Wanda, but we all know what’s really going on behind the scenes. Neither of the episodes released this week gave us a glimpse of the bigger picture, but hang tight! I realize these two episodes were slow burns and have a low rewatchability factor. Olsen and Bettany’s performances are fantastic and the chemistry is through the roof, but I’m going to need some sort of fully developed story to go along with them. 

Wanda and Vision’s new nosy neighbor, Agnes (Kathryn Hahn) aka Agatha Harkness, stops by to pay them a visit and has a chat with Wanda while Vision is at work preparing for the dinner with his boss (Fred Melamed) and his wife (Debra Jo Rupp) later that night. I already love Hahn’s enthusiasm in this show, and she does seem much more aware of what is going on than many other characters that we run into. She also keeps talking about her husband, Ralph. Who could that be? The show doesn’t exactly clarify (yet) which characters are people from the real world who have their memory wiped courtesy of Wanda, or if they are only a figment of her imagination. Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris)  shows up in the sitcom world during episode two, although never referred to by that name. Who knows at this point if Wanda coincidentally created a duplicate of someone important we will eventually meet or if S.W.O.R.D. and Jimmy Woo (Randall Park) sent her in to secretly rescue Wanda? A S.W.O.R.D. (Sentient Weapon Observation Response Division) agent in a beekeeper uniform, possibly hinting at the Spider-Man villain Swarm, enters the world at the end of episode two. Wanda seems to figure out what is going on and rewinds time before the man can enter. Something big is going to go down at the end of this season because Wanda is going to great lengths to show that she doesn’t want to be bothered in the least. Wanda having a mental breakdown and ripping open the Multiverse is the least that could happen as this leads into “Spider-Man 3” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.”

Each episode even has “commercials,” which reference two organizations, HYDRA and Stark Industries. S.W.O.R.D. is the group trying to figure out who is doing this to Wanda, but little do they know that she is doing this to herself. S.W.O.R.D. is not the outer space division of S.H.I.E.L.D. as it is in the comics, here it is a replacement of it after HYDRA revealed themselves as moles in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” Could this be a race to who can get to Wanda first? At this point, HYDRA is still around, just in small clusters. If S.W.O.R.D. is also able to plant people in Wanda’s reality, then HYDRA should be able to do so as well. The commercial referencing them is for a watch called a Strucker, as in Baron Von Strucker (Thomas Kretschmann), the HYDRA thug who used the Mind Stone to experiment on Wanda and Pietro Maximoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), giving them their powers.

When you pay attention to the details during these episodes, it is confusing as to why Wanda is doing this to herself or if she is the only one pulling the strings. Both episodes consistently hint at “the children;” so someone eagerly wants Wanda to have kids, but it doesn’t seem like Wanda is that person. In the comics, Wiccan and Speed are the biological children of Scarlet Witch and Vision, but does an outside entity influencing Wanda know the type of children she could create? Consequently, Wanda is pregnant by the end of the episode. If not HYDRA, then this is where I believe Mephisto may come in and be the real “big bad” of the series, where “Agnes” is solely a pawn in the game.