WandaVision Episode 8 had a mid-credits scene, much like Episode 7. If you missed it, head back to Disney+ and give it a watch, because we’re getting into spoiler territory here. If you’ve already watched the episode in full, it will come as no surprise: we need to talk about what’s going on with Vision.
The scene shoots us back to SWORD, in one of their compounds just outside the Hex, where Director Hayward has hunkered down–but we quickly learn he’s not just twiddling his thumbs or patiently watching the Westview bubble for activity. No, it turns out that everything we’d been shown about Wanda’s break-in at SWORD HQ was fabricated. She did enter the building, and she was looking for Vision, but she left without his corpse. Also, whatever Darcy found by hacking Hayward’s files was likely doctored or misinterpreted as well–why would he have been tracking Vibranium within the Hex when he already had Vision’s Vibranium parts?
It turns out that SWORD had already secretly reconstructed Vision’s body–and given it a new white paint job in the process–and had actually been searching for a way to bring it back online without the Mind Stone. The residual energy from things crossing the HEX border–like the drone that Wanda ejected several episodes ago–was the key. The scene ends after Hayward gives the go-head to flip the switch, pulling energy from the drone and into Vision’s newly rebuilt body. We see him come back online–though the lifeless, cold look in his eyes definitely suggests this Vision isn’t going to be the same as the old one.
Fortunately, this moment is very overtly inspired by Marvel Comics–a few different ones, to be exact–so we can take a stab right now at explaining what’s going on, ahead of WandaVision’s impending finale.
Another Origin Story
Like most superheroes who have been around for more than a decade, Vision has gone through some pretty massive rough patches as creative teams pivoted around, editorial edicts shifted, and the cultural zeitgeist began to understand the characters in a more concrete fashion. Specifically, parts of Vision’s original origin story–he was a robot based on the original Human Torch (who was not a human at all, but a robot), given sentience by downloading the “brain patterns” of a dead Avenger called Wonder Man–needed some overhauling.
Especially because both the original robot Human Torch and Wonder Man were their own characters who, in true comics fashion, were occasionally resurrected and put to work in other stories, making Vision a bit of a paradox.
To help mitigate this issue, and to give Vision a spotlight story arc all his own, he was briefly turned into a “villain,” (read: he was driven robot-crazy and tried to take over the world’s computers and ensure peace for all mankind, terrifying every major government in the process) then made a target by those governments (secretly manipulated by Immortus–a version of Kang the Conqueror, who is coming to the next Ant-Man & The Wasp movie) and abducted. After his capture, Vision was dismantled and his hard drives and memory banks were destroyed in the name of protecting international secrets. His body was badly damaged in the process, but not beyond repair. Hank Pym was able to reconstruct him–at least physically.
Mostly.
The damage to Vision’s original parts was so intense that his original color scheme couldn’t be obtained. New Vision was stark white instead of red. Also, with his memory banks and hard drives destroyed, Vision lacked everything that made him a unique person–specifically the brain patterns of Wonder Man–and was left an emotionless shell.
Unsurprisingly, this began a massive breakdown in Wanda and Vision’s relationship, as well as Vision’s connections to the Avengers at large.
This wasn’t a permanent change, of course–though it did last for several years in publication. Eventually Vision found a new deceased human whose brain patterns he could download to restore his personality and those brain patterns began fusing with the brain patterns of Wonder Man that somehow were left over, creating an entirely new, unique consciousness for Vision to call his own.
As for the stark white skin–that’s where things might start to rev your theory engines a bit more. Vision’s color palette returned after that brand new consciousness was transferred into a new body which he got from a Vision from an alternate Earth in the multiverse.
So, where does that leave the show?
Despite Evan Peters’ arrival several episodes back, it’s still not entirely clear if WandaVision has started dealing with the multiverse and alternate Earths in full yet–we’ll likely need to wait until next week’s finale for confirmation of that. It would obviously make sense, however, given Wanda’s co-star status in the upcoming Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness movie.
That said, it may be a bit too early or a bit too much to have an alternate Earth Vision be dropped into Westview to fight against (and ultimately replace or merge with) the plain white Vision we’ll undoubtedly see conflict with in Episode 9. Still, let’s not count that one out altogether–stranger things have happened.
In addition to an alternate Vision showing up to fight emotionless Vision, there’s also the possibility of Shuri’s “backup” of Vision’s psyche coming back into play. In Avengers: Infinity War, Shuri was tasked with figuring out a way to construct Vision without the Mind Stone, and got partially through the process before Vision joined the fight. We have no idea just how much data she was able to copy, but there’s a good chance it could be used in a similar way to the “brain pattern” downloads Vision so often receives in the comics.
That still leaves the issue and question of how Wanda would be able to retrieve the data from Wakanda in the span of a single episode–but even if Pietro was a manipulation by Agatha, we do know that one of her kids is a speedster. Maybe he could help. That is, if they’re able to survive outside of the hex, which remains to be seen.
