John Bernardy
In the final mid-credits scene of WandaVision, we zoom in on Wanda and a small cottage surrounded by mountains, nature, and a complete lack of drama. It is an isolated location where she can’t mind control anyone. Wanda is sitting on her porch and is mostly still. She goes inside and takes a tea kettle off the stove which is just beginning to steam. She is either oblivious to, or is at peace with the fact that, Scarlet Witch—in full costume, floating, eyes glowing, and surrounded by magical energies—is reading the Darkhold intently in the next room. While watching this Scarlet Witch we hear Wanda’s sons Tommy and Billy calling dramatically for their mom. Then we see a final flash of red magic cover over the screen as the Scarlet Witch either turns a page or closes the book. All of these details are what we saw, but there is no way to confirm where this location is, or even the relationship between these two Wandas. Is this Scarlet Witch the astral projection of the first Wanda at the tea kettle, an invader from another reality, something controlled by the Darkhold, or some combination of these factors?
Wanda’s motivation for isolating
Storytelling conventions imply that Wanda is self-isolating after the climactic events of her Westview’s final day. I’ve also seen fairly accepted theories that the Scarlet Witch reading the Darkhold is Wanda’s astral projection. There is a solid case to be made that Wanda is trying to research the Darkhold to learn more about her abilities, and she’s doing so in an out-of-the-way place so she doesn’t have to control a population of people against their will while achieving her goals.
Runes are clearly seen in the walls of this cottage as if the Scarlet Witch put them there to research uninterrupted. Is this a safehouse, protected by her runes, while she astral projects to learn about the Darkhold and herself, while her physical self stands guard at the porch? Are the two Wandas a unified front while she searches for a reality in the multiverse where her children survived? That’s going to depend if Billy and Tommy’s voices came from the book or the other room.
Where are Tommy and Billy?
The voices of Tommy and Billy could be coming from the Darkhold, from an alternate reality that Scarlet Witch is peering into, or from the other room with the first Wanda pouring tea.
If they are in the other room, or otherwise just off-camera as a part of the reality we’re shown here, it’s possible Wanda has segmented herself in two to cope with losing her children. The true Wanda could be diving further into the alluring Darkhold while she creates mom Wanda and the boys from herself, just like she created the Vision of Westview. With these subdivided Wandas, all her needs are met at once.
But if the boys’ voices are coming from another place, there are good odds that Wanda’s beginning her search through the multiverse, to use the Darkhold’s reality-altering powers to travel the multiverse until she finds a reality where her kids survived the barrier collapse, and then be with them.
Heading into the Multiverse
If Wanda is looking for her children in other realities, it’s possible this cottage already exists on a different number designation of Earth as the one where the rest of WandaVision occurred. Maybe Wanda, anchored to the new reality’s Wanda, didn’t find her kids, and took a rest stop to find another suitable reality. But whichever reality she is in here, that scarlet flash at the end after we hear Billy and Tommy calling for mom could be her leaving this reality in favor of the new one.
Based on Dr. Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness, Into the Spider-Verse, and Spider-Man: No Way Home all purportedly featuring the multiverse, it’s probable that Wanda is multiverse hunting, or is unstuck enough from realities that she could drop in and out of them at her choosing.
But if Wanda is looking for her kids in other realities, she hasn’t learned much. I mean, she knows that forcing people to do her bidding is wrong if it’s in her own reality. And with the lack of Vision in the runed cottage, she seems to understand that Vision died and it’s time to learn how to move on. But if she thinks finding a different reality to borrow kids from is a good idea, then she’s not considering what kind of damage she could be doing to that new-to-her reality. Is this more room for Wanda to overcome her grief, or is this possibly the seductive influence of the Darkhold? Or even of the Scarlet Witch itself?
The Darkhold
Is Scarlet Witch focused on absorbing the Darkhold’s information to learn about her powers, or is the Darkhold infiltrating Wanda to augment its own dark energies? Historically, the Darkhold corrupts its readers and is able to create worlds. In Agents of SHIELD, the book created a virtual world called the Framework. In Runaways, Morgan le Fay used the Darkhold to attempt to merge the Dark Dimension with Earth. This is right in line with what Wanda’s already done by creating her Westview. Technically, this final credits scene could be within that Dark Dimension, tailor-made to Wanda’s specifications. Now possessing the Darkhold, will Wanda use it to merge her ideal world with the main reality? Normally, I’d say no, but Wanda could be half brainwashed already. The Darkhold’s power could be using her for a doomsday scenario as prophesized, all while distracting her more Avengers-aligned side with her perfect scenario of being a mom with her kids. So Wanda won’t notice what a malevolent power is doing with her reality powers.
There’s a particular detail related to the Darkhold I need to mention that makes the credits scene more complicated than the Scarlet Witch being the first Wanda’s astral projection. In Agents of SHIELD, Lucy Bauer’s ghostly form couldn’t read the Darkhold because it can’t be read by beings in between the Hell Dimension (where the book was located) and the Earth Plane. If not taking place within the Darkhold, this would imply Wanda and her Scarlet Witch aspect may be more divided than simple astral projection.
The Scarlet Witch Force?
Has the Darkhold and Scarlet Witch unlocked something in each other? And are the two forces working together like a metaphysical chemical reaction that ends in the apocalypse that Agatha Harkness said could happen? It’s as likely as the Scarlet Witch being a force that is separate from Wanda in origin. After all, the silhouette of the fully-costumed Scarlet Witch appeared to descend onto Wanda in that Hydra facility flashback from Episode 8.
There’s a case to be made that the Scarlet Witch is a force that found the already-strong Wanda, and inhabited her in much the same way the Phoenix Force inhabited psychically strong mutant Jean Gray to become the entity known as Phoenix in issues of Uncanny X-Men.
Now that Wanda possesses the Darkhold, she may learn that the symbiotic bond between her and the Scarlet Witch may be more than she bargained for. It may give her a family, but at a cost way larger than anything she’s done to the residents of Westview.
The Dark Wanda Saga
Whatever comes of this, I still think Wanda is being set up as the sympathetic big bad of MCU’s Phase 4. Whether she’s journeying into the Darkhold or the multiverse, she’s dealing with a power that corrupts its user. All while dealing with the various traumas of her past.
I feel Wanda’s Phase 4 arc will involve her needing to be disengaged from the Darkhold and/or the Scarlet Witch itself, all while her children and multiple realities hang in the balance. It’s an Avengers-centric take on the Dark Phoenix Saga and I’m here for it.
The white Vision introduced in WandaVision will be the key to the dilemma where the Avengers will have to kill Wanda to save the universe from the Darkhold-prophesized apocalypse, or they can appeal to her humanity and she can shut it down from within at the last minute. Vision will grow into the memories Wanda’s Vision was able to unlock, and he’ll be the Scott to Wanda’s Jean.
So far, The X-Men Cinematic Universe has tried to tell the Dark Phoenix Saga twice, but both attempts tried to cram it into a single movie. The stakes couldn’t be ratcheted slowly until there was no other choice but all life hanging in the balance, but here there’s a whole slate of movies and TV shows ahead of us. It can work. Especially when told by the same company that already pulled off a telling of Infinity Gauntlet.
However big this story can get in scale, its root dilemma is the same as in this scene: There are two Wandas, but which one is the true Wanda Maximoff that will win in the end? Her human nature, or the side of her that plays with reality itself?
