Dr Strange 2: In the Multiverse of Madness (Spoilers)

[Hussar]

I think there's every sign that all the other Avengers considered him one.

And I probably would too.

But legally? Seriosly? You honestly think the MCU America, in the couple of years that Vision existed, would have enacted legal changes to make a sentient AI a full person under the law AND legalized marriage for him and Wanda, a terrorist in hiding at the time?

Good luck with that.

Sure, we, the audience and certainly Wanda, think of Vision as a full person and consider her marriage to be valid. No arguments from me about that. But, when SWORD takes the body and begins to try to reverse engineer it, they are 100% within the law to do so. Most people wouldn't even bat an eye at them doing this.

 

[Hussar]

And eventually she does acknowledge she needs to free the people in the hex, and she makes what I saw as a heroic sacrifice to do the right thing, albeit horribly late.

. . .

And then the next time we meet her, she's not struggling at all. She's not in denial. There's no glimmer that her original mind is somehow being controlled by the Darkhold.

Instead, Wanda has gone full, exultant villain.

The writers didn't do the work to make that transition compelling.

Whereas to me, I found it perfectly reasonable. She was perfectly willing to murder thousands of people just to be "happy" and left alone. Had no one forced her to see what she was doing, had no one intervened, she quite likely would have killed every single person in that town, just so she could be "left alone" with the family that only exists as something she fabricated out of her own delusions.

How is that not a villain? Kidnapping, torturing and then very likely murdering thousands of innocent people for no reason other than your own pleasure? And not having second thoughts about it until someone else steps in? That's psychotic at the very least.

A mea culpa at the end, where not only does she suffer zero consequences for her actions - she gets to go off to a nice cabin on her own to be away from people instead of stuck in the Raft where she belonged (or in the ground which was also a perfectly reasonable response) to stew in her own madness and then send monsters after America, murdering who knows how many other people in the process - just so she can eventually murder herself and take her place as the parent of children that are not her own.

At what point in this is she not the villain?

 

[Davies]

Whereas to me, I found it perfectly reasonable. She was perfectly willing to murder thousands of people just to be "happy" and left alone. Had no one forced her to see what she was doing, had no one intervened, she quite likely would have killed every single person in that town

So what? Why should I give a crap about them? It's not like they're real. You're much too invested in these fictional people.

You asked for it.

 

[Gradine]

 

[Thomas Shey]

Does this kind of thinking apply to the Joker?

There's an argument to be made that the Joker is mentally impaired, and thus not fully responsible for what he does; but he clearly does at least understand on some level what he's doing--and likes it that way.. Its abundantly clear for the first half of Wandavision, that she doesn't. It'd be like calling a super a villain for killing someone in their sleep.

 

[Thomas Shey]

In Wandavision Wanda is the protagonist, and an antagonist. She has to overcome her own delusions, and Agatha.

I'd absolutely buy that.

SWORD is a secondary antagonist, largely in opposition to secondary protagonists Monica and Darcy.

The meaning of antagonist and villain are quite different. It's quite possible to have a villain protagonist with a heroic antagonist. And that's before you get to anti-heroes and anti-villains.

Yup.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Are we using the term in the colloquial comics sense of "person who does a great deal of harm," or in the literary sense of "person who opposes the main character"?

I think as others have averred, you second usage there you're conflating "villain" with "antagonist". They may sometimes be used colloquially as synonomous, but they are as used in literature.

I think that, even as we're enjoying some light popcorn cinema, we should be attentive to the fact that morality isn't black and white, and that categorizing people into good and bad is a simplistic mindset that has led to many people permitting great harm to others.

Now, in nearly every story of the Joker, he's got a twisted sense of how the world should work, but he knows what he's doing is hurting people, and he almost never cares. He can be both ill from mental trauma and be intentional and callous in the harm he causes.

Wanda, at least in the MCU, had been presented in a different light. She's also been traumatized, but she never revels in hurting people. In Wanadavision she does, yes, seem to be in denial that what she's doing is hurting people, and tries to rationalize what she's doing.

She just wants to be left alone to be happy, and she's willfully oblivious to the harm she's causing. It honestly could have been tweaked a bit into a metaphor for consumerism selling a happy lie of a good life while ignoring the harm to society and the environment. But I digress.

I don't think for the first half of the show, there's anything particularly willful about it. She does not at all seem aware that she's not living in reality (she progressively resists things that tell her that she is, but that's a process, not the rest state.)

She nearly snaps out of it when Vision confronts her about it in the 80s episode, and she seems to be trying to parse the cognitive dissonance, but then Agatha sends Ralph to draw her back into a comforting delusion.

And eventually she does acknowledge she needs to free the people in the hex, and she makes what I saw as a heroic sacrifice to do the right thing, albeit horribly late.

Yup.

. . .

And then the next time we meet her, she's not struggling at all. She's not in denial. There's no glimmer that her original mind is somehow being controlled by the Darkhold.

Instead, Wanda has gone full, exultant villain.

The writers didn't do the work to make that transition compelling.

Eh. Only to the degree that we don't see the process. The Darkhold doesn't control, it corrupts. That's how it works in the comics, its how it worked in AoS, and its how it worked here (and that's very clear with the two alternate Strange's who got into bed with it).

 

[Thomas Shey]

And I probably would too.

But legally? Seriosly?

Are you under the impression the viewers are supposed to care, or that SWORD is supposed to be unaware of the ethical element here? Because I'm unable to follow you there.

You honestly think the MCU America, in the couple of years that Vision existed, would have enacted legal changes to make a sentient AI a full person under the law AND legalized marriage for him and Wanda, a terrorist in hiding at the time?

Good luck with that.

Sure, we, the audience and certainly Wanda, think of Vision as a full person and consider her marriage to be valid. No arguments from me about that. But, when SWORD takes the body and begins to try to reverse engineer it, they are 100% within the law to do so. Most people wouldn't even bat an eye at them doing this.

Again, I don't think where what they were doing was legal or not is even faintly relevant here.

 

[Davies]

But legally? Seriosly?

Individuals not recognized as persons do not normally file living wills, which are then referenced in regards to the disposal of their remains, last I checked.

 

[Hussar]

Individuals not recognized as persons do not normally file living wills, which are then referenced in regards to the disposal of their remains, last I checked.

What living will? Sorry, did Vision have a living will? I honestly missed that.

But, all this about body autonomy and all that, while great story telling, does rather miss the point that as far as the world would be concerned, Vision really wasn't a person. Which makes what happens to him horrifying. We're SUPPOSED to be horrified by what's being done to him. Of course we are. But, at the same time, it doesn't make the murder and torture of thousands of people somehow okay.

The only actually good characters in WandaVision are Vision, Monica Rambeau, Jimmy Woo and Darcy Lewis. Everyone else is various shades of bad. I just don't get the notion that Wanda is anything other than the villain here. Tragic villain? Oh, absolutely. Sympathetic? Again, totally agree. 100% think that. But, at no point in WandaVision or MoM is she anything other than the straight up villain.