By *Contains Spoilers*
The lift gets lifted on (at least part of) the puzzle box in the latest episode of the Marvel Studios Disney+ show. Ditching the sitcom setups that have characterised the first three episodes, episode four is all about setting up the deeper links and details of what’s going around outside the cuddly sitcom environment of Westview, revealing just who is watching along with us.
In the last episode, new neighbour Geraldine (Teyonah Parris) was thrown out of the town and back into reality after dropping the name Ultron to Wanda, after the birth of her new twin boys. Geraldine, who is in actual fact Monica Rambeau, the daughter of Captain Marvel’s best friend Maria Rambeau, and agent of SWORD (a space version of SHIELD, basically), takes the initial focus on this episode. We’re taken back a few months to reveal Monica re-emerging from The Blip to find five years have passed, her mother has died and SWORD has moved on without her. Keen to get back to work, she takes an assignment helping out the FBI (Ant Man and The Wasp’s Randall Park) with a missing persons case in the town of Westview, where it quickly becomes apparent that something strange is going on.
When Monica gets pulled through the shimmering border that surrounds the town, agents of SWORD quickly descend to set up a perimeter to begin their investigation. Brought in to help is one Dr. Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings), who manages to find a way to tap into a mysterious broadcast that’s coming out from the town in the form of old-fashioned sitcom episodes starring Wanda and Vision.
Full review over at THN, originally published January 29th 2021.
Andrew Gaudion 