WARNING: The following contains spoilers for WandaVision episode 4, "We Interrupt This Program," now streaming on Disney+.
WandaVision's fourth episode takes a break from the weekly progression of new sitcom eras, but it's still a commentary on the media it takes inspiration from. Though the episode opens with the chilling fallout of Monica Rambeau's post-Blip return, a cathode-ray twist in Monica's visit to Westview moves the focus to FBI Agent Jimmy Woo and Dr. Darcy Lewis. Their role in unraveling the mystery of Wanda's television universe offers critical new details, but it's also a cheeky acknowledgement of fandom.
While pulling the cameras out of Wanda's TV neighborhood, the series goes a subtle step further and, metaphorically, turns them around on the audience. Jimmy and Darcy, as the slightly more ordinary members of the ad hoc military base set up outside the Westview bubble, become a modern Greek chorus. Darcy's skills as an astrophysicist reveal the secret hidden television show inside the CMBR radiation, but when she sits in front of an old TV with a bag of chips, she's also every theorist on Reddit looking for the clues hiding in the classic sitcom sets.
Alongside her is Agent Woo, who swings effectively into action and puts together a whiteboard and pin wall to organize information. It's standard protocol, highlighted in countless police procedurals and grimy thrillers. But when Woo stands next to the whiteboard loaded down with theories about how Vision can be present and why the bubble seems to be a hexagonal shape, he's also recognizable as every Marvel YouTuber breaking down viewer questions.
This is next-level metafiction, a good-natured commentary on the role an involved fandom has on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. An answer to the question of whether or not Darcy and Woo's role as audience surrogates in the episode is deliberate can be found in the career of WandaVision director, Matt Shakman. A long-time veteran of television sitcoms, Shakman also helmed a number of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episodes, including Season 4's "Sweet Dee Has a Heart Attack." The episode is the source of a famous meme of Charlie Day wildly gesticulating in front of a whiteboard, the frantic ying to Jimmy Woo's calmer yang.
The meta-joke doesn't stop there. The sequence from It's Always Sunny turns into an homage to the film A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe and Vision actor Paul Bettany. The film is about a mathematician whose link to reality has become tenuous, and in WandaVision, too, Bettany's character's presence is only a figment of another character's strained imagination. This metafictional link, which goes three story layers down and comes back up through reality, is now a part of the knowing joke WandaVision has set up.
While Dr. Lewis and Agent Woo untangle some of the questions bedeviling the audience by the end of this episode, they're still glued to the TV screen, waiting to see what happens next in Wanda's sitcom. It's a familiar feeling, and with five episodes in WandaVision left to go, it's one that fans are familiar with. The results of Darcy and Agent Woo's theories have only borne small fruit and set up new questions. But by doing the work of dedicated fans, they've managed to start to figure out Wanda's sitcom world in a way that may eventually lead to its downfall.
With Monica Rambeau expelled from Westview, S.W.O.R.D.'s reality and Wanda's fiction will begin to twine together more deeply. The glass screen between Wanda and her audience has become surprisingly thin. And with the newest phase of the MCU focusing on the complexities of an impossibly expanding multiverse, it's both cheeky and unsettling to realize that a franchise that's over a decade old is looking back at fans with a knowing wink.
Written by Jac Schaeffer and directed by Matt Shakman, WandaVision stars Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, Paul Bettany as Vision, Randall Park as Agent Jimmy Woo, Kat Dennings as Darcy Lewis, Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau and Kathryn Hahn as Agnes. New episodes air Fridays on Disney+.