Heavy spoilers for all of the MCU within. I’ll be discussing the show solely in the context of the MCU. This means I won’t refer to organisations, characters or events which may give context but which you’d only know if you’ve read the comics.

Agent Jimmy Woo calls in the big guns after a SWORD agent goes missing…

Finally we see what’s going on outside of Westview. The episode follows Geraldine/Monica but intriguingly it doesn’t start from the point of her being ejected out of Wanda’s sitcom fantasy at the end of the third episode.

Instead, the show takes us elsewhere in the timeline and brings us up to the present during the course of the episode. We effectively get twenty minutes of establishing shot, presenting to us how, where and who is involved in this story from outside of Wanda’s world; her audience if you will.

We’re given a bittersweet little slice of continuity – seeing another version of the ‘blip’. It’s a lovely bit of scene setting which tells us exactly when this show is taking place.

It also features some nice ancillary characters from other areas of the MCU. They are fully aware of who Wanda and Vision are and it features heavily in their understanding of what’s going on.

We also get our first introduction in the MCU to SWORD, SHIELD’s counterpart. It’s an open question why SWORD is involved here rather than SHIELD and one we have no answer to yet within the context of the show (although if you know what you’re looking for the explanation is there).

What confuses me is how we’ve arrived at episode 4 for it to essentially be a wrap-around segment. Nothing new happens in the twenty minute run time, nothing we didn’t know already. There are a few pieces of ‘oh, so that’s how that got there,’ but nothing which moves us any further on. I’ve been thinking hard about whether it could have been structured any differently and I’m not sure. I think it might have worked better if we’d had elements of this episode interspersed throughout the first three in order to provide some kind of context for what was happening. Especially because we see the three episodes and their changing sitcom styles covered in their entirety in this one with many elements repeated. For me, it comes back to run time and the decision to drop only one episode a week.

If the first three episodes had been crammed together it would have been just the length of the first Daredevil entry. I’m not sure I would have batted an eyelid at the form in that case. The same if all episodes had been dropped at once. It’s not really about pacing but structure. I love the bravery of this and want more but this specific slice doesn’t quite work.

The episode was satisfying enough – it felt very “MCU”, yet it hasn’t moved us on and nor has it explained any more of what is going inside the world Wanda has created.

We’re heading into episode 5 as if the prologue is finally done and we’re finally ready for the main movement of the story.

I am glad Wanda knows what’s going on. I was also glad to see (clearly dead) Vision’s own awareness something is wrong and how he’s hiding it from Wanda. It’s as if he knows he’s trapped and suspects she’s the one behind it. Bettany’s brilliant delivery of this realisation made the episode for me.

There remains plenty of unanswered questions – such as is everyone accounted for in the town and do they know they’re being manipulated? Is it really just Wanda to blame? What or who are her babies and perhaps most interesting of all – are the references to HYDRA alluding to something darker?

Referring back to the entire household’s response to this (because hey, I’m a middle-aged man and there are many other view points available), we all agreed it was a much more enjoyable episode before we had a long conversation about what the point of the first three episodes was.

Verdict: On the strength of this instalment I’m holding onto the hope that in the last five episodes the tight writing, excellent talent and interesting set up will take us somewhere brilliant.

Rating? 7 babies out of 10

Stewart Hotston