Recap / WandaVision Episode 3 "Now in Color"

(Ba-ba-bah ba-ba-bah) WandaVision (2x)
We got something cookin', and it's looking good!
We got something cookin', and you knew we could!
All great expectations lead into complications
But it's groovy and fun, it's me and it's you
Together, 1 + 1 is more than 2

(Ba-ba-bah ba-ba-bah) WandaVision (2x)
Some sudden surprises
Come in all shapes and sizes
But it's rainbows and sun, it's you and it's me
Together, 1 + 1 is family!
WandaVision!

— Episode 3 Theme Tune

Having moved to the '70s, Wanda and Vision prepare for a pair of new arrivals to their home. But the reality around Westview becomes further undone as its inhabitants suggest they know more than they let on.

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Tropes:

• The '70s: In addition to the episode being all in color, many of the characters in this episode are dressed like they stepped out of this decade. In particular, Vision wears bell-bottom pants and sports a longer hairstyle, while Geraldine and Herb have large afros.
• Accent Slip-Up:
  • Wanda reverts to her Sokovian accent for the first time in the series when she mentions Pietro to Geraldine and sings a lullaby to Billy and Tommy in untranslated Sokovian.
  • Geraldine's jive is clearly a put-on and goes away whenever she slips out of her sitcom Token Black Friend role, such as when she hears the stork or when she's helping Wanda through childbirth.
• Ambiguously Evil: This episode brings to the forefront the question of how much Wanda is aware of what's going on and whether or not she's trying to keep things the way they are. First, when Vision brings up the discrepancies in their situation, it seems like she resets the scene and takes his mind off the subject to maintain the narrative. Circumstances contrive to keep Dr. Nielsen in town to deliver Wanda's baby, in spite of how desperate he seems for a vacation. Right after Geraldine brings up a painful fact of the real world, Wanda turns hostile; then Wanda tells Vision that Geraldine had to rush home. This is framed ominously not just because of the uncannily calm way she says this, but because the scene prior had Agnes and Herb nervously discuss Geraldine with clear anxiousness about openly addressing why she'd be a problem.
• Anachronism Stew: Oz the Great and Powerful, a film from 2013, is on the marquee of the local movie theater... In the 1970s.
• Arc Symbol:
  • The hexagons show up again during the opening credits with pictures of Wanda and Vision forming a Brady Bunch-style grid out of hexagons.
  • Geraldine has a necklace with the S.W.O.R.D. logo on it in this episode.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Within the sitcom, Geraldine appears to have been promoted to the wacky neighbour role, with Agnes only appearing in one scene. This is temporary, since Geraldine is promptly revealed to not be a neighbour at all; as Wanda says, she has to rush home and appears in the real world.
  • Herb now seems to have the role of the friendly next door neighbor to Vision as well.
• Aside Glance: When confiding in Wanda that he thinks something's wrong with their reality, Vision gives a quick glance to the camera behind her.
• Ask a Stupid Question...: Vision is mystified about his wife's sudden, mysterious pregnancy. Of course, the doctor doesn't really understand that (or can't admit that he does).
  Vision: It's just taken us by surprise, just kinda quite suddenly, wasn't it? Practically overnight. I mean... how did this happen?
  Doctor: You see, when a man and a woman love each other very much...
• Aspect Ratio Switch: The aspect ratio changes from traditional 4:3 to cinematic 2.35:1 as we see the world outside of Westview at the end of the episode.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: The story Geraldine tells Wanda ends with her being told to unpack her desk. Wanda thinks it means she was fired, but Geraldine reveals she was promoted.
• Beneath the Mask: Herb comes close to admitting that something's wrong with their town, and that's why S.W.O.R.D. is monitoring them, but Agnes tells him to shut up, looking worried and legitimately stressed.
• Berserk Button: Geraldine mentioning the fact that Ultron killed Pietro sets Wanda into Tranquil Fury mode.
• Bland-Name Product: As Wanda and Vision are preparing for the new baby, they buy a crib and large stuffed giraffe at "Wentworth's" (expy for Woolworths). It's a Quality Baby Crib. No wonder they're so happy about it. It's quality!
• Butt-Monkey: Phil's wife, Dottie, asks if her earrings make her look fat, but it's averted because Phil finally gets some good luck and Wanda's magical freakouts cause the electricity to go out for the whole block just in time for him not to have to answer.
  Phil: Oh thank god.
• Clean, Pretty Childbirth: Wanda's sons look clean and dry after they are born, and magically manifest baby blankets to boot. This is a sitcom, after all, and Wanda appears to have a significant influence over how events unfold.
• Closed Circle: The episode implies people cannot leave Westview. If they try, circumstances contrive to stop them. Unless some force kicks them out.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The advertisement in the middle of the episode is about a blue bath powder by HYDRA. In the "Agents of HYDRA" storyline in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. which also took place in a fake reality, Coulson says that HYDRA produces a blue mind-controlling soap. Bonus points for the woman bathing in front of a tropical backdrop, à la Tahiti. It's a magical place! Additionally, the box is blue and cuboid, referencing HYDRA's experiments with the Tesseract.
  • After Wanda gives birth to Billy and Tommy, she briefly reminisces about her brother Pietro, whom she hasn't mentioned since Avengers: Age of Ultron. Geraldine also references his death at Ultron's hands in that film, which... bothers Wanda.
• Curse of The Ancients: When Wanda goes through false labor pains and the house goes haywire, Vision lets out a "What the dickens?!"
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • Dr. Neilsen makes a few sexist remarks that would have been normal for the times, such as dumbing down his pregnancy terminology when speaking to Wanda or telling Geraldine she'd "make a great nurse" (rather than a doctor) despite her delivering a baby on her own.
  • Subverted with Herb and Agnes. It initially seems like their suspicions of Geraldine are because she's unmarried. But then it turns out they're more suspicious of the fact that she doesn't actually have a home.
• Delivery Guy: Geraldine (who so far as anyone knows has no experience with this) delivers the first of Wanda's babies, and Vision somehow delivers the second one (while holding baby Tommy in one arm).
• Delivery Stork: Wanda paints one on the nursery wall, and when her powers go out of control, she accidentally brings the bird to life. This leads to a sequence of her trying to keep Geraldine from noticing the bird wandering around the living room.
• Does This Make Me Look Fat?: Dottie asks her husband this regarding her earrings. The power goes out in the house, meaning he's spared from having to answer her.
  Phil: [lights go out] Oh thank God.
• Double Meaning:
  • Dr. Neilsen remarks, "Small towns, you know. So hard to... escape." This weirds out Vision, who seems to pick up on the subtext.
  • Vision again alludes to the un-reality of Westview when he quotes As You Like It: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."
• Drop-In Character: The other characters have actually noticed that Geraldine has literally no existence outside of visiting Wanda, not even her own house.
• Express Delivery: Wanda goes through her entire pregnancy in less than a day before giving birth to the twins. She brushes it off, but Vision is openly concerned about how fast everything is moving.
  Vision: The baby is approximately nine months early!
• Feeling the Baby Kick: Soon after her doctor leaves, Wanda feels her babies kick. While Vision is happy, he is also worried since this means that the pregnancy is even further along than they thought.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: After Wanda has delivered her first baby, she's still visibly pregnant from the second one just before she goes into labor again and she and Vision realize she's having twins.
• Foreshadowing: A number regarding Geraldine's role in the episode:
  • While Geraldine claims the pipes in her house burst due to Wanda's Power Incontinence, she isn't shown to be affected like the other neighbors. Agnes and Herb later discuss how Geraldine is an anomaly in Westview due to not having a family or even a home.
  • Vision comments on how often their masquerade has nearly been broken over the last few episodes before the scene is rewound to skirt around the issue. Geraldine already knows more than that, and accidentally letting that slip costs her stay in Westview.
  • The theme song hints at the birth of the twins, twice, saying, first, "Together, one plus one is more than two" and at the end, "Together, one plus one is family".
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Subverted. Pietro Maximoff is directly mentioned for the first time since Avengers: Age of Ultron when Wanda tells Geraldine that she's a twin just like her new babies.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: During the opening credits, Wanda the witch is reading the magazine "Glamorous". This continues from the previous episode's talent show where Vision was the magician "Illusion" and Wanda was his lovely assistant, "Glamour".
• Get Out!: Upon hearing Geraldine bring up Pietro's death at the hands of Ultron, Wanda tells her to leave her house. She really means it.
• Hereditary Twinhood: Wanda is a twin and gives birth to twin sons when she had just been expecting one child. Remembering her twin brother while looking at her sons causes a slight mental glitch.
• Hiccup Hijinks: Geraldine's story about getting promoted at work involves her getting her boss through a bad case of hiccups at a pitch meeting; we don't hear all the details, but she tries the usual cures like Jump Scares and having him drink while upside down.
• Hide Your Pregnancy: In-Universe. When Geraldine visits, Wanda goes through the usual Hollywood tricks of wearing long, loose-fitting clothes and carrying props to hide her telltale belly.
• Immediate Sequel: Despite the opening credits having a montage of Wanda and Vision having exploits in the now '70s-themed Westview, Vision's dialogue reveals the events of the previous episode were just the day before.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Herb gets to do this as a visual gag In-Universe where the glamour breaks down and he saws into the garden wall without stopping even when Vision points it out. Later Agatha tells him to shut up while chatting over that same garden wall.
  • Vision gets to do it this time. He wants to name their son Billy, after William Shakespeare. Then he quotes As You Like It: "All the world's a stage..." ^note and all the men and women merely players.
• Loose Lips: Inverted and played straight with Agatha and Herb during the chat over the garden wall. We'll learn more over the course of the series.
• Maternity Crisis: Wanda goes into labor just as her doctor is about to go on vacation. Fortunately for her, the doctor's car breaks down, so he can't leave for it.
• Meaningful Name: The Doctor's name is Nielsen, after the most well-known media evaluation rating system. It's a running joke that major storylines, like pregnancies, are used to give TV sitcoms a ratings bump.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • Played for laughs after Tommy is born. Vision meets his son as himself, and the family has a tender moment... only for Wanda to start abruptly screaming with Vision following suit. Here comes Billy!
  • Played for drama when Wanda begins to recall Pietro and Geraldine asks if he was killed by Ultron. Suddenly, Wanda is menacing and Geraldine is terrified.
• My Car Hates Me: Dr. Nielsen's car just happens to break down as he and his wife plan on going on vacation, so he is available to help with the delivery.
• My Secret Pregnancy: In keeping with the series' theme of playing with television tropes, Wanda attempts to hide her pregnancy when Geraldine shows up while she's in labor. Wanda uses several of the standard Hide Your Pregnancy tricks such as wearing a big coat (even though it's warm outside), standing behind counters, and holding a bowl of fruit in front of her belly to try to hide it. Geraldine does eventually find out about Wanda's pregnancy, but she only has enough time to help her deliver Billy and Tommy before she has to "rush home".
• Mythology Gag:
  • The hexagons in the opening theme are blue and red. Billy, in the comics, has more or less the same power set as his mother, but the magic appears blue rather than her red. Vision appears to have Super-Speed for the first time in this episode, which also alludes to Tommy's power set.
  • While discussing the baby, Vision suggests naming him Billy, after William Shakespeare. Vin, his son from The Vision, was similarly fond of Shakespeare.
  • The fake commercial is for Hydra Soak, a blue bubble bath that transports you to paradise, referring to the Framework in the fourth season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., where Phil Coulson came up with a conspiracy theory that HYDRA was using blue soap to mind control people to make them compliant.
• Named After Someone Famous: Vision suggests giving Wanda's baby the name Billy, after the bard of Avon himself. He even quotes As You Like It to drive his point in.
• Never Trust a Trailer: One of the TV spots has Geraldine saying, "I don't know..." in response to Wanda asking "Who are you?" as if she had amnesia. In the episode as aired, Geraldine is clearly struggling with the Reality Warper Stepford Smiler Eldritch Location she's trapped in, so she just trails off after saying "I don't..."
• Nobody Here but Us Statues: There's an entire scene of Wanda desperately trying to keep Geraldine from noticing the stork brought to life from the nursery mural. When she finally looks directly at it, it's suddenly decided to freeze in the exact position of said mural so she doesn't notice it's come to life.
• No-Sell: Wanda tries several times to make the stork disappear, but her magic doesn't have any effect on it. The bird flaps its wings to dismiss the puffs of red smoke.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Geraldine's sassy black accent briefly slips when she hears the stork.
• Out Giving Birth, Back in Two Minutes: Because this show is intended to be an Affectionate Parody of a '60s/'70s sitcom, it avoids all the messy details that attend a real birth (blood, pooping, vomiting), but because it's going for wacky hijinks and a scared papa, it does give us a bit of Screaming Birth.
• Painting the Medium: During the Aspect Ratio Switch, Wanda spreads her hands at the exact same speed that the screen expands. It's a subtle gesture, ostensibly transitioning from fiddling with her hands together to holding the crib, but it implies that the screen is getting wider at her behest.
• Panicky Expectant Father: Vision understandably panics when Wanda goes into labor after such a short pregnancy. When he rushes to get her doctor, he stops attempting to blend in and runs at high speed.
• Pastiche:
  • While the previous episode was based on Bewitched, this one is heavily inspired by The Brady Bunch. The opening credits mirror the series' iconic opening credits but swaps the square grid for hexagons. The interior of the couple's home has changed again and now has a staircase just like the one in the Brady house. Vision practices diapering a baby on Cindy Brady's Kitty Karry-All doll.
  • The theme song is more along the lines of The Partridge Family.
  • The zooming rainbow title at the start is from The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
  • The bicycle that Wanda and Vision are seen riding in the opening credits calls to mind Three's Company.
• Power Incontinence: Wanda's pregnancy causes her powers to go absolutely nuts. The effects spread to her neighbors' homes as Dottie and her husband are seen experiencing a power cut at the same time.
• Pretty in Mink: During Geraldine's visit, while Vision is off fetching the doctor, Wanda tries to hide her pregnancy with a long, heavy coat. Her Power Incontinence causes it to switch from a pea coat to a rain coat to... a gorgeous fur coat. Wanda takes a moment to luxuriate in it before getting back to the typical sitcom freakout.
• Production Foreshadowing: As mentioned above, Oz the Great and Powerful is seen on the theater marquee. Oz was directed by Sam Raimi, director of the then-upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which connects directly to WandaVision.
• Pun: Both Wanda and Vision make fruit-based puns within a minute of the doctor explaining fetus-sizes in terms of fruit.
  Wanda: Well, I think this conversation is fruitless.
  Vision: I can't wait to be a proud papa-ya.
• Reset Button: When Vision tells Wanda that he thinks something is wrong, time is rewound a few seconds back. Unlike the previous episode, it's done so quickly and without fanfare that it could be mistaken for bad film splicing until Vision talks about a different subject the second time around.
• The Reveal: The final shot of the episode shows that Westview is a real town somewhere in America, surrounded by Some Kind of Force Field with a S.W.O.R.D. base camp set up around the perimeter.
• Screaming Birth: Wanda screams her way through delivering her twins. Vision joins her in screaming when he has to deliver the second baby.
• Shout-Out: The soap commercial is based on the 1970s "Calgon, take me away!" campaign.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Despite the episode's somewhat disturbing ending, "Daydream Believer" by The Monkees is what scores the final scene, as S.W.O.R.D agents come to a recently ejected Geraldine's aid.
• Stylistic Suck: In keeping with the episode's '70s aesthetic, the backdrop for all scenes taking place outside Wanda and Vision's house are very obvious matte paintings.
• Surprise Multiple Birth: Wanda has just given birth and Vision leans in for a congratulatory kiss, only for Wanda to start screaming as contractions start up again for the second baby.
• Sweet and Sour Grapes: Vision wanted to name their child Billy, but concedes to naming him Tommy for Wanda. Then she suddenly births a twin, allowing Vision to have a Billy too.
• Take a Third Option: Twofold; Vision wants to name their child Billy, for William Shakespeare, while Wanda wants the all-American name Tommy. She suggests they hope for a daughter since they can't choose between them. Subverted (double subverted?) when she ends up having twin boys, meaning they get to use both names.
• Three-Month-Old Newborn: Tommy and Billy are rather big when they are born. Justified twice, first since this is a parody of a sitcom and second because Wanda's whole pregnancy is extremely sped up.
• Tranquil Fury: Despite Wanda's suspicion and anger with Geraldine, her voice never rises above a calm, even tone.
• Tuckerization: The paint for the nursery is by a brand called "Simser". Jeremy Simser is a storyboard artist on the series.
• Unfazed Everyman: Subverted. Geraldine is clearly freaked out by the weird Reality Warper shit going on as Wanda goes into the final stages of labor, but she nevertheless powers through... and ultimately forgets all about it.
• Visual Pun:
  • Wanda's powers cause the pipes to break at the same time her water breaks.
  • While hiding her pregnancy from Geraldine after her water's broken, Wanda first dons a long pea coat, which her Power Incontinence transforms into a raincoat.
• Weirdness Censor: Lampshaded by Vision who starts to question how the people of Westview can just ignore all the weirdness that has started occurring since Wanda and Vision moved there. Then, the trope is invoked by Wanda rewinding time and making him ignore the weird stuff that he started to notice.
• Wham Line: After Wanda's twins are born, we get two Wham Lines in one, as things start getting real:
  Wanda: I'm a twin. I had a brother. His name was [slipping into her Sokovian accent] Pietro.
  Geraldine: He was killed by Ultron, wasn't he?
• Wham Shot:
  • Geraldine wears a necklace that, when seen up close, is the S.W.O.R.D. emblem. It's easy to miss before that, because it's very close in shape to the peace symbol, which would perfectly fit the time setting.
  • At the end of the episode, we get our first proper look at what the town looks like from the outside and the amount of force that has been deployed to handle it.
• Worst News Judgment Ever: The front page headline of a newspaper that Phil is reading is about two fire hydrants being installed on the street. The way he has the paper folded, it looks like it could also read HYDRA...

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