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  1. #381
    Over 9000! PhaelixWW's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ophenia View Post
    The other sorceress in Agatha's flashback in Salem tried to do the same to her as far as I remember
    If you rewatch the scene, you'll notice that the flow of magic is going from the coven towards Agatha, even before she takes control and pulls their magic into her. That implies that they weren't trying to draw hers out, but rather that they were attacking her with some spell. Indeed, it appears as though she's being burned from the inside out, which makes a certain kind of sense, given the stake to which she was bound.

    Spoiler: 


    Quote Originally Posted by Ophenia View Post
    ...and Wanda has also "re-taken" her magic from Agatha in WandaVision's finale before obtaining the DarkHold, this one might be a different thing though
    Yeah. Notably, she only reclaims her own power, rather than stripping Agatha's from her (which would kill her, as it did the coven and would have done to America Chavez in the movie).


    Quote Originally Posted by Ophenia View Post
    I really don't think that Defender Strange had access to the DarkHold, it would have corrupted him otherwise, and he probably wouldn't look for the Book of Vishanti if he had it
    It's been shown that people can be saved from the DarkHold's corruption if they stop reading from it, though. The movie even gives us evidence that at least one other Strange has done so. Who's to say that Defender Strange wasn't in a similar situation in the past?


    Also, as an aside: rewatching the end of WandaVision just made me realize that they telegraphed her corruption even more than I had noticed. I mean, Agatha literally foreshadows what's going to happen:

    Spoiler: 





    And then the final line, with the illustration of the Scarlet Witch in the DarkHold making way to show Wanda in the background in the same spot.

    Spoiler: 



    Wanda tries to deny it at the time, but by the end of WandaVision, she's fully on that path, embracing her Scarlet Witch persona and reading from the DarkHold. And yet people still want to say: "We didn't see this corruption coming! How did this happen?!"


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  2. #382
    The movie is hitting Streaming and PVOD in the 45-day window. June 11th.

  3. #383
    Over 9000! PhaelixWW's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fencers View Post
    The movie is hitting Streaming and PVOD in the 45-day window. June 11th.
    Source? The only site I see with this date is just speculating. I have a hard time believing that they'd push it to streaming that quickly with a box office outcome so strong. Doing so with SC&L10R was one thing, but DS:MoM is over $700m worldwide in less than two weeks. Domestically, DS:MoM has done $297m in 11 days while SC&L10R only made $147m in the same time frame and didn't perform as well internationally, either.


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  4. #384
    I thoroughly enjoyed the movie today. Enjoyed the Raimi take on a Dr Strange movie and it seemed to fit him than other heroes they could've assigned him to.

    My sister and her family said they didn't enjoy it as it didn't remind them of the first Dr. Strange movie. Which is odd to me because this is shit Dr. Strange pretty much handles in the comics.
    Just don't reply to me. Please. If you can help it.

  5. #385
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    i think that it is the first horror movie? or atleast horror inspired film by marvel. I enjoyed myself but I did kinda expect a few or more characters to show up but hey I am just gonna wait for the directors cut.

  6. #386
    Quote Originally Posted by PhaelixWW View Post
    It's been shown that people can be saved from the DarkHold's corruption if they stop reading from it, though. The movie even gives us evidence that at least one other Strange has done so. Who's to say that Defender Strange wasn't in a similar situation in the past?


    Also, as an aside: rewatching the end of WandaVision just made me realize that they telegraphed her corruption even more than I had noticed. I mean, Agatha literally foreshadows what's going to happen:

    And then the final line, with the illustration of the Scarlet Witch in the DarkHold making way to show Wanda in the background in the same spot.

    Wanda tries to deny it at the time, but by the end of WandaVision, she's fully on that path, embracing her Scarlet Witch persona and reading from the DarkHold. And yet people still want to say: "We didn't see this corruption coming! How did this happen?!"
    For that point I'm 50/50. I fully agree that it was quite clear in WandaVision but I can understand that it wouldn't have cost a lot to put one scene or two at the beginning of Strange 2 just to emphasize this aspect instead of going raw, or to act as some sort of reminder for those who have not seen WV (at all or for a long time).
    The DarkHold's corruption is a great example of "show, not tell". It's the same for Strange : We see an already-corrupted Strange telling ours that the DarkHold corrupts, then our Strange uses it, and the next time we see him he's corrupted. Everything happened off screen, if something happened at all.

    I think another regular complaint about that Wanda Bad aspect is that Wanda has already gone this way during WandaVision and her arc was already quite well done. She has done bad things to many people so that she can have a happy life, went through the grief of losing Vision (twice!), and at the end she realized she couldn't do that. And literally a few days after she's bad again, ready to sacrifice trillions of lives so she can have her happiness back, all that for, at the end, going full loop back to "nooo I shouldn't do bad things".

    I'm completely on board with the critics who say they could have found another reason for Wanda to go rogue than an already explored one.

    In fact after the first few minutes of the movie I was sure they would use the same kind of criticism than Dr West has done to Strange during the wedding. Wanda could have had, through the DarkHold, revelations that giving the Time Stone to Thanos was not the only way for them to win, but maybe the only way for them to win without Strange to die, so Wanda could/should hold Strange responsible for Vision's death.

    I'm probably a bit biased on that as I would have preferred to see Vision and Photon being included in this movie instead of her kids, as this part was pretty uninteresting finally and it's weird to not have a single reference to Vision while MCU Wanda is like 100% linked to him.

  7. #387
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  8. #388
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    Quote Originally Posted by PhaelixWW View Post
    I mean... we do?

    Don't get me wrong; the movie would probably have been better served to have at least some exposition towards this end, but I'm not entirely sure what it would look like.

    Regardless, the effects of the DarkHold is legitimately shown to us through Agatha. And then, having bested Agatha at her own game, the end of WandaVision clearly shows Wanda fall right into the same trap.
    See, what I got from Agatha's story was that she was corrupted by her own choices that she made long before she got the Darkhold. She's never said to have the book when she's on trial before her peers. We know she has the Darkhold by the time she encounters Wanda, but that's, what, 330 years later? She's had time to look.

    I think people get too caught up on the supposed act of contrition that Wanda shows to Monica Rambeau near the end of WandaVision. Literally minutes later, we see the post-credits scene which should inform the viewer about the real state of affairs at the end of WandaVision.
    Yeah, well, I didn't catch this because it wasn't made clear in Wandavision that the book itself corrupted everyone who encountered it. Okay, it's a scary-looking book. Witches are "scary." I didn't see anything "corrupting" about her using the book to understand who she is. There's no indication that she's wanting to hurt anyone else, because she went so far as to fuck off to the middle of nowhere to avoid hurting anyone else.

    The takeaway should be that Wanda, seeing how her grand experiment with Westview was beset by outside forces and forced into ruination, decides to hide away out of sight and pursue an alternate method. She's only pretending to be contrite and give up her plans because she also acknowledges that the Westview versions of Vision and her children weren't ultimately real enough. It just happens that the alernate method immediately starts to corrupt her and whisper to her in her children's voices, telling her that they're alive and need her to save them.
    You're free to see it from this point of view, but that is not what I got out of the end of Wandavision.

    Again, I think people vastly misinterpreted the end of WandaVision, for some unknown reason. What did you expect the effects of going full Scarlet Witch and reading the DarkHold were going to have on Wanda in between the end of WandaVision and DS:MoM?
    I had no expectations because Wandavision doesn't fully explain what the Darkhold is, nor does it indicate that the Darkhold itself corrupts anyone who encounters it. Yes, Agatha was corrupted, but was it because of the Darkhold, or was it because she was fucking sucking the life forces out of people for power?

    Everyone who reads the DarkHold gets corrupted by it, even if some later fight off the corruption and renounce the book. It shouldn't really have to be spelled out to people because the contextual clues are all there. The only reason I feel like a tiny bit of exposition might have been useful in the movie was because it was separate from the show.
    This is not explicitly stated or made clear until DS:MoM. Like, I'm sorry, some of us are coming into this without having read the comics and without having known all the history behind the Darkhold (although tbf, even with that I don't think I would make the full assumption because the movies don't always use elements in the same manner the comics do). Again, the contextual clues were not there for me. To me, it seems equally likely that Agatha was corrupted because Agatha was doing evil things for power.

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by PrimiOne View Post
    You saw it but you just didn't pay attention.

    It's the first scene after the destruction of the Utopian Parallel: we see Wanda playing with her kids and suddenly they vanish and Wanda wakes up.

    Later she tells Strange ( quoting roughly from memory) : " I see my kids. I see our life together. Every night I dream the same dream and every morning I wake up to this nightmare...again".

    She dreams with her kids every-single-night. That's the Darkhold, that's the corruption.....you are both shown and told how the corruption happens because since the end of Wandavision and her first contact with the Darkhold to the begining of MoM she is having these nightmares projected from the Darkhold and C'Thon.

    So I don't really know what "see how the corruption happens" means to you.....you need a CGI of C'Thon whispering Wanda in her ear and her eyes turning red or something? Is that more effective than showing us and telling us all the weeks/months from Westview to MoM is a recurring nightmare?
    Nope. But her language in that scene is not clear. Is she calling the waking world a "nightmare" because reality isn't what she wants it to be? Is she calling the waking world a "nightmare" because she is no longer sure whether reality is real?

    Referring to reality as a "nightmare" doesn't automatically indicate corruption. When I call the current version of the modern world a "capitalist hellscape," I have not been corrupted by a ooky book of magic. It's an allusion. It is not meant to be taken literally. This is a super common thing in English.

    Well I'm not gonna tell anyone what their opinion should be but I have one too and in mine Wanda and Elizabeth Olsen are of the few things the movie doesn't deserve criticism. Olsen is simply espectacular in the not so easy task of making believable such a huge transition of character ( that , again , is explained).The "Next time it won't be me...it will be the Scarlet Witch" could have been an incredible ridiculous moment in other actor and other character but in this actor and character...works, totally. You just believe it the character will be scary.
    I absolutely have no problem with Elizabeth Olsen in the movie, she did a fantastic job. I'm just not happy with how the movie treated her character. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Ophenia View Post
    I think another regular complaint about that Wanda Bad aspect is that Wanda has already gone this way during WandaVision and her arc was already quite well done. She has done bad things to many people so that she can have a happy life, went through the grief of losing Vision (twice!), and at the end she realized she couldn't do that. And literally a few days after she's bad again, ready to sacrifice trillions of lives so she can have her happiness back, all that for, at the end, going full loop back to "nooo I shouldn't do bad things".

    I'm completely on board with the critics who say they could have found another reason for Wanda to go rogue than an already explored one.
    Okay, yeah that might have something to do with my annoyance at how it played out. Like, "Okay Wanda isn't dense, but apparently she is because here we go again."

    In fact after the first few minutes of the movie I was sure they would use the same kind of criticism than Dr West has done to Strange during the wedding. Wanda could have had, through the DarkHold, revelations that giving the Time Stone to Thanos was not the only way for them to win, but maybe the only way for them to win without Strange to die, so Wanda could/should hold Strange responsible for Vision's death.
    That would have been an interesting twist that calls into question Dr Strange's character. Because that may also mean he sacrificed Tony's life to save his own. Huh.

    I'm probably a bit biased on that as I would have preferred to see Vision and Photon being included in this movie instead of her kids, as this part was pretty uninteresting finally and it's weird to not have a single reference to Vision while MCU Wanda is like 100% linked to him.
    I didn't expect Photon to be in the movie, but I was somewhat surprised that Vision doesn't play into anything at all when so much of her grief is directly tied to him. It was like Wanda didn't even care about him, or that he had never existed. It was weird.
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  9. #389
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mehrunes View Post
    Is it still canon though? Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't anymore and it's also created by ABC.
    Early seasons of AoS are absolutely canon; they mention events from the movies pretty consistently.

  10. #390
    Legendary! TirielWoW's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PhaelixWW View Post
    Wanda tries to deny it at the time, but by the end of WandaVision, she's fully on that path, embracing her Scarlet Witch persona and reading from the DarkHold. And yet people still want to say: "We didn't see this corruption coming! How did this happen?!"
    So, the problem I have with this is that a lot (almost all, really) Agatha told her was truth mixed with lie. Telling someone it's their "destiny" to destroy the world doesn't mean it actually is, especially when it's coming from a major villain.
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  11. #391
    Legendary! TirielWoW's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vegas82 View Post
    So? Just because Agatha was manipulating doesn’t negate us seeing Wanda choose to go down a dark path.
    I'm not saying that it does. I'm saying that there's no reason to automatically believe that's where she's going based solely on what Agatha is saying. And that it's entirely possible to miss the suggestion because, frankly, everything Agatha tells Wanda is designed to tear her down and make her doubt herself. So I pretty much chalked up Agatha's warnings as bullshit.
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  12. #392
    Over 9000! PhaelixWW's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    See, what I got from Agatha's story was that she was corrupted by her own choices that she made long before she got the Darkhold.
    How do you know she hasn't had the DarkHold by that time?


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    Yeah, well, I didn't catch this because it wasn't made clear in Wandavision that the book itself corrupted everyone who encountered it. Okay, it's a scary-looking book. Witches are "scary."
    Leaving aside, for a moment, the fact that the DarkHold's corrupting powers have been explained in previous Marvel shows (AoS and Runaways), Agatha gives us a pretty quick and easy synopsis of it in WandaVision

    Spoiler: 



    If you didn't surmise that the "book of the damned" was bad news to whomever read it, then you have a curious lack of imagination. Besides, its corruption isn't really key to the story of WandaVision, except for the teaser for what's to come. And in DS:MoM, it's definitely explained when Strange says: "I know it's the Book of the Damned, and that it corrupts everything and everyone that it touches."

    So even if, somehow, you failed to realize what was happening at the end of WandaVision, then you should have had that moment in DS:MoM where you were like: "Oh, now I get it!"


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    I didn't see anything "corrupting" about her using the book to understand who she is.
    You mean aside from her making an illusory false front of the rustic life while she floats in her Scarlet Witch garb (the same Scarlet Witch that is destined in the DarkHold to destroy the world), while she reads the book of the damned with glowing red eyes?


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    There's no indication that she's wanting to hurt anyone else, because she went so far as to fuck off to the middle of nowhere to avoid hurting anyone else.
    And she still doesn't want to hurt anyone else when we catch up to her in DS:MoM. She even explains that she was trying to be reasonable and merciful by not taking a more direct approach. Her chaos demons were only after America, whom she saw as a necessary price to pay for her kids. They fought only Defender Strange and then Doctor Strange when they got in the way.

    It wasn't until Kamar Taj when she started killing more people. And again, it was only when people put themselves between her and her kids. This was all explained in the movie.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    You're free to see it from this point of view, but that is not what I got out of the end of Wandavision.
    Then you got it wrong, sorry. You're not alone, though, clearly. Regardless, this was explained in DS:MoM.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    This is not explicitly stated or made clear until DS:MoM. Like, I'm sorry, some of us are coming into this without having read the comics and without having known all the history behind the Darkhold (although tbf, even with that I don't think I would make the full assumption because the movies don't always use elements in the same manner the comics do). Again, the contextual clues were not there for me. To me, it seems equally likely that Agatha was corrupted because Agatha was doing evil things for power.
    If you were to watch some random movie about witches, and an evil witch was using a book, called it the "book of the damned", and said that it contained a chapter that described how the good witch was going to destroy the world by turning red, and then the good witch turns red and starts to read the book of the damned while hiding behind an illusion, what takeaway would you have?

    The problem is that you (and a lot of people) were suckered by Wanda's contrite explanation to Monica Rambeau before the credits and either didn't bother watching or didn't bother thinking through the ramification of the post-credits scene.

    Which is fine, really, because it's not really critical to enjoying WandaVision. And the explanation is given in DS:MoM, where that understanding is much more important. The bigger problem now is that, instead of saying "Aha, I get it!" some people are now just doubling down on their previous misconception without acknowledging that the clues really were there.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    Okay, yeah that might have something to do with my annoyance at how it played out. Like, "Okay Wanda isn't dense, but apparently she is because here we go again."
    Except... it's not the same thing. And the end of WandaVision clearly shows her hearing her kids while reading the DarkHold. What did you think was going to be the result of that? Of course she was going to be going after them in some way.

    And no, she's not dense. She accepts the Vision is gone, but the ending of WandaVision shows her that her kids are real.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    I was somewhat surprised that Vision doesn't play into anything at all when so much of her grief is directly tied to him. It was like Wanda didn't even care about him, or that he had never existed. It was weird.
    Nah. It's like you keep forgetting that Wanda was corrupted by the DarkHold and the pursuit of her kids was used to keep her hooked. Since she had already accepted the loss of Vision, there was much less there for the DarkHold to use against her.

    Also, there concept of a mother justifying her actions in order to save her kids is far easier to swallow than a woman trying to "save" one of the most powerful beings in the multiverse: Vision. It raises more questions that Wanda would be unable to answer, even under the influence of the DarkHold, like "What help does Vision need?"

    I mean, the "mama bear" instinct is a thing, far more than a "wife bear" or whatever. It's a much cleaner hook for the DarkHold's corruption to use. Any amount of her appearing to ignore Vision in DS:MoM can be very easily explained as the influence of the DarkHold drawing her focus to her kids. And for this we have evidence in the WandaVision post-credits scene, as well as her first scene in DS:MoM.

    I can clearly see that people are upset because their expectations weren't borne out. But that's a fault of the expectations, I'd say.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    I'm saying that there's no reason to automatically believe that's where she's going based solely on what Agatha is saying.
    But there's even less reason to be surprised when it does, in fact, happen.


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  13. #393
    Legendary! TirielWoW's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vegas82 View Post
    It’s based on what they show us happening, not what Agatha said. You did watch the epilogue right?
    I did watch the epilogue. I just didn't reach the same conclusions you obviously did.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by PhaelixWW View Post
    How do you know she hasn't had the DarkHold by that time?
    How do you know she has it? It's never mentioned or shown. So, truth is, there's no way to know either way, but there's also no reason to believe that a backwoods witch in Colonial Salem had somehow come into possession of a priceless magical artifact at, like, 18 or whatever.

    Leaving aside, for a moment, the fact that the DarkHold's corrupting powers have been explained in previous Marvel shows (AoS and Runaways), Agatha gives us a pretty quick and easy synopsis of it in WandaVision
    Neither of which are MCU, afaik. And, I didn't watch either one. And I'm fairly certain that many people who saw Wandavision never saw AoS or Runaways, and since neither one is MCU anyway, I don't really see your point here..

    If you didn't surmise that the "book of the damned" was bad news to whomever read it, then you have a curious lack of imagination. Besides, its corruption isn't really key to the story of WandaVision, except for the teaser for what's to come.
    So humans have a long, long history of labeling anything that they don't like as evil, bad, or "damned." It's actually kind of a trope in fantasy - is the damned object going to actually corrupt you, or is it all bullshit that was made up because someone powerful hated the person who made whatever thing it is? It's typically a toss-up. And when you add in the fact that Witchcraft has historically been portrayed as "evil" and "damning," naming a Witchraft book a "Book of the Damned" is not super out of the wheelhouse, as it were. So, to me, when they called it the "Book of the Damned," that tells me that it's probably dangerous, and almost certainly powerful.

    What it doesn't tell me is that anyone who touches or otherwise interacts with the book will automatically be corrupted, full stop, every time.

    And in DS:MoM, it's definitely explained when Strange says: "I know it's the Book of the Damned, and that it corrupts everything and everyone that it touches."
    Yes. Stephen Strange, the once-leader of an organization of magical users that is apparently (at least according to information dropped in Wandavision) not on great terms with Witches in general (there appears to be at least some sort of conflict between them) says that the book that belongs to the Witches corrupts everything and everyone it touches.

    Which is, I will add, the first time this is mentioned between Wandavision and Dr Strange.

    So even if, somehow, you failed to realize what was happening at the end of WandaVision, then you should have had that moment in DS:MoM where you were like: "Oh, now I get it!"
    I feel like my original issue has been lost in all of this, "You should have known this, you should have seen this, you should have watched these other non-MCU properties to find this out." My original point was, I would have liked to see the corruption rather than being told it occurred. For me, the jump between where we left Wanda at the end of Wandavision, and where she appears in DS:MoM was jarring.

    I'm not saying it has to be jarring for you. Some of us, however, don't watch every single Marvel property out there, and some of us weren't into the comics, so we're coming into these shows blind.

    For me, had Wanda started out working with Strange, helping America, and then, perhaps halfway through the movie, maybe going too far with the Darkhold and having her entire personality and moral compass shift, or even revealing that it was a doublecross the whole time - that would have been a lot more compelling for me. For me (and only me - I don't expect you to agree with me, I'm telling you my perspective), that would have made her arc a million times more compelling.

    You mean aside from her making an illusory false front of the rustic life while she floats in her Scarlet Witch garb (the same Scarlet Witch that is destined in the DarkHold to destroy the world), while she reads the book of the damned with glowing red eyes?
    You mean the Scarlet Witch garb she'd donned at the end of Wandavision when she made the conscious choice to free people she had no emotional connection with from torture she was inflicting on them at the cost of her own children and the love of her life? You mean the red glowing eyes she's always had when accessing her powers, from the very beginning of her role in the MCU? That have literally never meant anything other than that she is accessing her powers? You mean the Scarlet Witch that the person who was actively trying to strip Wanda of her powers and kill her said was destined to destroy the world? When she was actively attempting to emotionally manipulate Wanda into giving up?

    It's so weird how we're looking at this from completely different perspectives. Wild.

    And she still doesn't want to hurt anyone else when we catch up to her in DS:MoM. She even explains that she was trying to be reasonable and merciful by not taking a more direct approach. Her chaos demons were only after America, whom she saw as a necessary price to pay for her kids. They fought only Defender Strange and then Doctor Strange when they got in the way.
    But she does want to hurt someone.

    She wants to hurt America.

    It wasn't until Kamar Taj when she started killing more people. And again, it was only when people put themselves between her and her kids. This was all explained in the movie.
    Except she was already planning to kill America. That was her goal from the beginning of the movie - to take America's powers, knowing it would kill her in the process.

    Then you got it wrong, sorry. You're not alone, though, clearly. Regardless, this was explained in DS:MoM.
    Again - and, I really don't know why you missed this in my posts, I never said it wasn't explained in DS:MoM. I said I would have preferred to see the corruption, rather than being told it happened. I would have preferred to see the fall from grace.

    If you were to watch some random movie about witches, and an evil witch was using a book, called it the "book of the damned", and said that it contained a chapter that described how the good witch was going to destroy the world by turning red, and then the good witch turns red and starts to read the book of the damned while hiding behind an illusion, what takeaway would you have?
    She's literally always turned red. Her powers have always been red. I never once associated that with evil. And you're ignoring the context in which Agatha was speaking to Wanda - Agatha was constantly mixing truth with lies designed to break Wanda down and destroy her will to resist Agatha. Everything she told Wanda was intended to facilitate Agatha taking Wanda's powers. She just fucked it up.

    The problem is that you (and a lot of people) were suckered by Wanda's contrite explanation to Monica Rambeau before the credits and either didn't bother watching or didn't bother thinking through the ramification of the post-credits scene.
    It's super cute how you think I either didn't watch the entire series plus endscenes, or that I was just too stupid to think through the "ramifications" because I came to a different conclusion than you did.

    Which is fine, really, because it's not really critical to enjoying WandaVision. And the explanation is given in DS:MoM, where that understanding is much more important. The bigger problem now is that, instead of saying "Aha, I get it!" some people are now just doubling down on their previous misconception without acknowledging that the clues really were there.
    Nope, not what's happening here. I'm simply saying, I didn't see the process of corruption. I really would have rather seen the process of corruption. I would have rather seen the choices she made that led her down the path instead of having left off with her trying to learn more about herself, and then coming back with her full-blown Evil Scarlet Witch. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    Except... it's not the same thing. And the end of WandaVision clearly shows her hearing her kids while reading the DarkHold. What did you think was going to be the result of that? Of course she was going to be going after them in some way.
    I actually thought - please do feel free to suggest I just wasn't paying attention or didn't think things through - that it was possible Wanda made actual souls for her children when she created the Hex, because she wanted them so badly, and that when the Hex dissolved, those souls had to go somewhere. And that the souls of her children may have been being imprisoned by some entity and that's why she was hearing that.

    And no, she's not dense. She accepts the Vision is gone, but the ending of WandaVision shows her that her kids are real.
    Sorry, didn't catch that from the ending. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    Nah. It's like you keep forgetting that Wanda was corrupted by the DarkHold and the pursuit of her kids was used to keep her hooked. Since she had already accepted the loss of Vision, there was much less there for the DarkHold to use against her.
    I'm not forgetting it. We literally came to different conclusions, and apparently this means that I'm forgetful and don't think.

    Also, there concept of a mother justifying her actions in order to save her kids is far easier to swallow than a woman trying to "save" one of the most powerful beings in the multiverse: Vision. It raises more questions that Wanda would be unable to answer, even under the influence of the DarkHold, like "What help does Vision need?"
    Speak for yourself. Saving those you love - whether it's someone you love romantically or someone you have filial love for - is equally valid. I don't see one as inherently more acceptable than the other. In either case, committing mass murder isn't acceptable. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    I mean, the "mama bear" instinct is a thing, far more than a "wife bear" or whatever. It's a much cleaner hook for the DarkHold's corruption to use. Any amount of her appearing to ignore Vision in DS:MoM can be very easily explained as the influence of the DarkHold drawing her focus to her kids. And for this we have evidence in the WandaVision post-credits scene, as well as her first scene in DS:MoM.
    Maybe for you. But fiction is rife with stories of both, because the instinct to save your beloved, and the instinct to save your children, are both extremely strong, and very validated in our culture.

    I still do not see the post-credits Wandavision scene the way you do. Sorry.

    But there's even less reason to be surprised when it does, in fact, happen.
    I'm not sure where you're getting off that I was surprised. I keep saying, and it keeps getting ignored - I found it jarring because I wanted to see the corruption. I don't know how else to put it other than that I despise Hamlet and adore Othello. I want my villains to be tragic, and I want to see how they fall. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ YMMV.
    Last edited by TirielWoW; 2022-05-20 at 06:22 AM.
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  14. #394
    I think @HeatherRae you just did not like the transition of the character and that makes it difficult for you to believe the way it's narrated wich is a really common behavior of our mind:" If I don't like it maybe it's because it wasn't explained properly".

    That's ok , I absolutely hated Marvel making Taskmaster the broken daughter of the Red Room director but I have no problem accepting the narrative that lead to it so it's imporant to not let one thing permeate into the other.

    ( just a little commentary on the Polite Quote Wars you are having )

  15. #395
    Over 9000! PhaelixWW's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    How do you know she has it? It's never mentioned or shown. So, truth is, there's no way to know either way, but there's also no reason to believe that a backwoods witch in Colonial Salem had somehow come into possession of a priceless magical artifact at, like, 18 or whatever.
    Maybe she did, maybe she didn't. Whether or not she did is largely irrelevant to the overall point, though. Even if, for the sake of argument, Agatha doesn't show the corruption of the DarkHold, it still doesn't eliminate all the other clues that it's an evil book that Wanda dives right into while hearing whispers of her kids in WV. And then its corruption is explicitly explained in DS:MoM. So there's no excuse for not knowing about it at that point, and very little excuse for not realizing that something was going wrong in the WV post-credits scene.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    Neither of which are MCU, afaik. And, I didn't watch either one. And I'm fairly certain that many people who saw Wandavision never saw AoS or Runaways, and since neither one is MCU anyway, I don't really see your point here.
    Lulz. That's because you completely ignored it. You literally focused on the "leaving aside..." phrase and conveniently didn't respond to the latter portion. Here, let me reiterate:
    Quote Originally Posted by PhaelixWW View Post
    Agatha gives us a pretty quick and easy synopsis of it in WandaVision

    Spoiler: 



    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    So humans have a long, long history of labeling anything that they don't like as evil, bad, or "damned." It's actually kind of a trope in fantasy - is the damned object going to actually corrupt you, or is it all bullshit that was made up because someone powerful hated the person who made whatever thing it is? It's typically a toss-up. And when you add in the fact that Witchcraft has historically been portrayed as "evil" and "damning," naming a Witchraft book a "Book of the Damned" is not super out of the wheelhouse, as it were. So, to me, when they called it the "Book of the Damned," that tells me that it's probably dangerous, and almost certainly powerful.

    What it doesn't tell me is that anyone who touches or otherwise interacts with the book will automatically be corrupted, full stop, every time.
    But it should set up your expectations, so that when the person whom you saw reading it appears to have "turned baddie", it's an easy: "Aw, yeah, shoulda seen that coming from that time she read the book of the damned, I guess."

    It shouldn't be a surprise, and you shouldn't be confused about why it's happening.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    Yes. Stephen Strange, the once-leader of an organization of magical users that is apparently (at least according to information dropped in Wandavision) not on great terms with Witches in general (there appears to be at least some sort of conflict between them) says that the book that belongs to the Witches corrupts everything and everyone it touches.

    Which is, I will add, the first time this is mentioned between Wandavision and Dr Strange.
    I mean, the writers have to have someone give us the exposition. If you're going to just go around and not believe anything anyone has to say ("Who says Agatha is telling us the truth? Who says the DarkHold is telling us the truth? Who says the sorcerers are telling us the truth?") then you're going to have a miserable experience in every movie ever made.

    Like, it's fine to put an asterisk next to some information, if you have reason to suspect that it's not true, but... damn. I mean, Agatha and Strange both agree that it's the book of the damned. You see Wanda reading it. Then the next time we see her, she's gone off the rails.

    Do you need a roadmap? Would you believe the roadmap if it were shown to you? You've been given a whole bunch of information that all lines up and you're second guessing all of it.

    You've got blinders on.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    I feel like my original issue has been lost in all of this, "You should have known this, you should have seen this, you should have watched these other non-MCU properties to find this out." My original point was, I would have liked to see the corruption rather than being told it occurred. For me, the jump between where we left Wanda at the end of Wandavision, and where she appears in DS:MoM was jarring.

    I'm not saying it has to be jarring for you. Some of us, however, don't watch every single Marvel property out there, and some of us weren't into the comics, so we're coming into these shows blind.
    And my point remains the same: the clues were there, even with just WV; you just chose not to pay attention to them. You got suckered by Wanda's pre-credits pretend contrition, and didn't bother reading the message that should have been clear in the post-credits rug pull. "I'm so sorry; it was wrong of me to do this! Now... let me just go hide away, read this book of the damned, and embrace my new Scarlet Witch persona!"


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    For me, had Wanda started out working with Strange, helping America, and then, perhaps halfway through the movie, maybe going too far with the Darkhold and having her entire personality and moral compass shift, or even revealing that it was a doublecross the whole time - that would have been a lot more compelling for me. For me (and only me - I don't expect you to agree with me, I'm telling you my perspective), that would have made her arc a million times more compelling.
    Hey, look, I don't necessarily disagree, though I would have gone the other way. I expected her to start off halfway corrupted by the DarkHold, come into initial conflict with Strange in pursuit of her kids, then see the error of her ways when another, even worse Wanda showed up to force her to do some external introspection, as it were. I made posts ITT in the weeks leading up to the release suggesting as much.

    But I was wrong. C'est la vie.

    That being said, I'm not so sure that we've seen the last of Wanda. I think there's a decent chance that she'll get a shot at redemption. Feige plays the long game.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    You mean the Scarlet Witch garb she'd donned at the end of Wandavision when she made the conscious choice to free people she had no emotional connection with from torture she was inflicting on them at the cost of her own children and the love of her life?
    Wanda was broken. She was happy in Westview only as long as she could fool herself into believing that it was all real. Once that illusion was well and truly shattered and she couldn't escape the fact that her kids weren't really real, she wasn't going to be truly happy with the shadows she'd created. Especially given that Agatha and SWORD showed up to fight her.

    And really, if the illusion of her kids was all it would take to make her happy, then it didn't matter if she released them, because she could always remake them somewhere else, even if there was no town. But that wasn't good enough for her anymore, so she dove into the reading of the DarkHold in search of even more power, only to hear whispers of her kids, telling her that they were, in fact, real... somewhere. And that they needed her to save them.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    It's so weird how we're looking at this from completely different perspectives. Wild.
    And yet only one of us was actually wrong. Wild.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    But she does want to hurt someone.

    She wants to hurt America.

    Except she was already planning to kill America. That was her goal from the beginning of the movie - to take America's powers, knowing it would kill her in the process.
    I clearly said "anyone else"... aside from America, whom her corrupted thoughts considered an acceptable cost to protect her kids.

    The point is that she never sought to harm anyone. The only reason she harmed anyone was in an effort to protect her kids. She never once went "comically evil", as one person put it. In fact, she pleaded (in a way) for people to step aside and let her have America's power, because she was convinced she needed it to protect the lives of her children.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    Again - and, I really don't know why you missed this in my posts, I never said it wasn't explained in DS:MoM. I said I would have preferred to see the corruption, rather than being told it happened. I would have preferred to see the fall from grace.
    I mean... we do. We see her broken and the first half of her descent in WV. Then we see the start of the DarkHold's influence on her in the post-credits scene. Then we get a rundown of her state of mind when she has her initial exposition scene in the movie.

    I, too, would have preferred a little bit more of a bridge in the movie, specifically, but it was definitely shown overall. You're just confused about the fact that WV was that "fall from grace" because you took the pre-credits scene at face value despite the immediate rug pull. As I said before, though, I'm not exactly sure what form that additional exposition would have taken. Wanda, after all, thinks she's being reasonable. She's certainly not going to consider herself "corrupted", so she's not going to state as much.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    And you're ignoring the context in which Agatha was speaking to Wanda - Agatha was constantly mixing truth with lies designed to break Wanda down and destroy her will to resist Agatha. Everything she told Wanda was intended to facilitate Agatha taking Wanda's powers. She just fucked it up.
    You've vastly over-exaggerating how much Agatha lied to Wanda. Once she "outed" herself to Wanda, she mostly told the truth. In fact, her whole deal was making Wanda confront the truth, including the truth about her past. The penultimate episode of WV is basically one long truth-bomb from Agatha about Wanda.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    It's super cute how you think I either didn't watch the entire series plus endscenes, or that I was just too stupid to think through the "ramifications" because I came to a different conclusion than you did.
    I think it's super cute that you just keep ignoring the basic clues that were laid out for you, despite having them pointed out deliberately. It's one thing to miss them the first time around and come to a different conclusion, but it's another thing entirely to look back and, knowing that you were wrong about the outcome, still be unable to acknowledge those clues for what they were because you don't want to admit that you should have made the correct conclusion.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    Nope, not what's happening here. I'm simply saying, I didn't see the process of corruption. I really would have rather seen the process of corruption.
    But... you did. You heard the DarkHold whispering to her. You heard her talking about the nightmare of waking up after dreaming about her kids. Just because we're not treated to a montage of the process (which would be super boring, by the by) doesn't mean that we don't see and means by which the DarkHold got its hooks in Wanda. Again, the entire WV series is basically the process you wanted to see, where Wanda is broken down and primed to succumb to the temptation that the DarkHold's promise of power engenders.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    I would have rather seen the choices she made that led her down the path instead of having left off with her trying to learn more about herself, and then coming back with her full-blown Evil Scarlet Witch.
    It was just one choice: save her kids at any cost because they needed her. I don't know why you're making this corruption out to be some kind of complex process. It didn't have to convince her rational mind in small increments, it just twisted her thoughts and made her feel like she needed to use the DarkHold's magic. The more she used the DarkHold's magic, the more of a hold on her it had. It's like an addiction.

    And she was never "full-blown evil". Her motives in DS:MoM were largely the same as they were in WV; it was just that the focus had shifted to her kids instead of Vision



    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    I actually thought - please do feel free to suggest I just wasn't paying attention or didn't think things through - that it was possible Wanda made actual souls for her children when she created the Hex, because she wanted them so badly, and that when the Hex dissolved, those souls had to go somewhere. And that the souls of her children may have been being imprisoned by some entity and that's why she was hearing that.
    That's literally not a refutation of "Of course she was going to be going after them in some way."


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    Sorry, didn't catch that from the ending.
    My point was that Wanda was convinced that her kids were real, which you couldn't help but catch if you watched that scene.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    Speak for yourself. Saving those you love - whether it's someone you love romantically or someone you have filial love for - is equally valid. I don't see one as inherently more acceptable than the other.
    Except that Vision is far, far, far less likely to need "saving" than her kids. It's a far less believable premise, and the DarkHold's corruption would always take the path of least resistance. Convincing a mom that she needs to fight through a crowd to save her kids is definitely easier than convincing a wife that she needs to fight through a crowd to save her superhuman husband. The scenarios are not equal.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    In either case, committing mass murder isn't acceptable.
    To a rational mind, sure. To a mind twisted by corrupting magic... less so. It's clear that Wanda views fighting those in her way in the same way that normal people view fighting off attackers to save the life of a loved one.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    Maybe for you. But fiction is rife with stories of both, because the instinct to save your beloved, and the instinct to save your children, are both extremely strong, and very validated in our culture.
    No, lol, they're not the same. You're just reaching here. This isn't about culture, this is about instinct. The protection of one's children is far more instinctual than the protection of one's partner. That instinct is a hook that the DarkHold can use more easily.

    And again, she's already accepted the loss of Vision, whereas she didn't think that her kids were even real, until the DarkHold started its whispering. It can't really play that trick with Vision, because it would be far more obviously not "her" Vision.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    I still do not see the post-credits Wandavision scene the way you do. Sorry.
    Well, you demonstrably saw that scene incorrectly, as shown by the events of the movie.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    I found it jarring because I wanted to see the corruption. I don't know how else to put it other than that I despise Hamlet and adore Othello. I want my villains to be tragic, and I want to see how they fall.
    That just says to me that you have some issues reading subtext. Othello is just more active, while Hamlet is more emotive.


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  16. #396
    Legendary! TirielWoW's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PrimiOne View Post
    I think @HeatherRae you just did not like the transition of the character and that makes it difficult for you to believe the way it's narrated wich is a really common behavior of our mind:" If I don't like it maybe it's because it wasn't explained properly".

    That's ok , I absolutely hated Marvel making Taskmaster the broken daughter of the Red Room director but I have no problem accepting the narrative that lead to it so it's imporant to not let one thing permeate into the other.

    ( just a little commentary on the Polite Quote Wars you are having )
    Well, I mean, I think I made it pretty clear that I don't like how they narrated the transition, so sure?

    I'm not a fan of the transition at all, but I'd be a lot happier with it if I hadn't had to read so much into what was shown along the way, and instead was shown what was going on. To me, a lot of the things some people have said I "should have known" just weren't explicitly stated. And since I don't read the comics, and I don't watch non-MCU properties, I didn't have the expectation that the transition was going to go in the direction it did. So I guess had I expected it, I probably would have interpreted a host of things differently.
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  17. #397
    Over 9000! PhaelixWW's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    I'm not a fan of the transition at all, but I'd be a lot happier with it if I hadn't had to read so much into what was shown along the way, and instead was shown what was going on. To me, a lot of the things some people have said I "should have known" just weren't explicitly stated.
    But... yes they were. They weren't explicitly stated in the end of WandaVision, no, but even if you didn't properly interpret the clues that were left in that scene, it's laid out super explicitly in the beginning of the movie.

    Here's the transcript of that exposition scene between Strange and Wanda once she pulls back the curtain:
    Spoiler: 

    Strange: The DarkHold.
    Wanda: You're familiar with the DarkHold?
    Strange: I know it's the Book of the Damned, and that it corrupts everything and everyone that it touches. I wonder what it's done to you.
    Wanda: The DarkHold only showed me the truth. Everything I lost can be mine again.
    Strange: What do you want with America? What do you want with the Multiverse?
    Wanda: I'm going to leave this reality and go to one where I can be with my children.
    Strange: Wanda, your children aren't real. You created them using magic.
    Wanda: That's what every mother does. If you knew there was a universe where you were happy, wouldn't you wanna go there?
    Strange: I am happy.
    Wanda: I know better than most what self-deception looks like.
    Strange: What you're doing is a flagrant violation of every natural law. If you take that child's power she won't survive.
    Wanda: I don't relish hurting anyone, Stephen. But she's not a child; she's a supernatural being. Such raw power could wreak havoc on this and other worlds. Her sacrifice would be for the greater good.
    Strange: Well you can kiss the lunchbox goodbye because that's the kind of justification our enemies use.
    Wanda: Is it the one you used when you gave Thanos the Time Stone?
    Strange: That was war, and I did what I had to do.
    Wanda: You break the rules and become a hero; I do it and become the enemy. That doesn't seem fair.
    Strange: What happens now?
    Wanda: Return to Kamar-Taj and prepare to hand over America Chavez by sundown. Peacefully. After that... you'll never see me again.
    Strange: And if we don't?
    Wanda: Then it won't be Wanda that comes for her; it will be the Scarlet Witch.

    There's really nothing missing. The DarkHold's nature is revealed. Wanda is clearly in denial and under its influence, because she claims she doesn't want to hurt anybody, but justifies killing America for her power.

    It's all there.


    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    And since I don't read the comics, and I don't watch non-MCU properties, I didn't have the expectation that the transition was going to go in the direction it did. So I guess had I expected it, I probably would have interpreted a host of things differently.
    Again, these are all problems with your expectations, not with the content.


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  18. #398
    Quote Originally Posted by MrLachyG View Post
    Early seasons of AoS are absolutely canon; they mention events from the movies pretty consistently.
    Hate to be that guy, but none of the Marvel shows were ever canon aside from Agent Carter and the Netflix ones.

  19. #399
    Over 9000! PhaelixWW's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rawrajishxc View Post
    Hate to be that guy, but none of the Marvel shows were ever canon aside from Agent Carter and the Netflix ones.
    That's kinda backwards. The ABC shows (Agents of SHIELD, Agent Carter, Inhumans) were canon (at least AoS was until it wonked its timeline), but the Netflix shows were never canon. That's part of the reason they were all canceled when Marvel came under the Disney umbrella. That's also why people rejoiced when they pulled Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio as Daredevil and Kingpin into the MCU, because it was the first step of connecting those Netflix shows to the movie canon and maybe bringing more back.

    The status of the Hulu/Freeform shows is less certain, despite the fact that Disney owns Hulu now.
    Last edited by PhaelixWW; 2022-05-21 at 10:25 PM. Reason: Disney owns Hulu, not Netflix, duh


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  20. #400
    Quote Originally Posted by Vegas82 View Post
    Hate to be that guy, but you’re wrong. AoS was directly tied to the MCU in it’s early season. You did see Siff’s episode right? Fuck, see when Winter Soldier came out and Hydra being exposed on the show.
    The showrunners as well as the books say they're not. I understand it references the movies but that was because it was never not allowed(most of the Marvel shows do in some way). There's dozens of articles of them saying all this and I know It's some weird debate but if the creators say it isn't, fans can't magically make it so lol.

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