Each of these episodes faces an interesting writing dilemma, both of them in a sense related to the notion of conflict in the story. Today, I'm going to look at 108. Tomorrow, 109.
108: THE PROBLEM OF THE REVEAL EPISODE: EXPOSITION HAS NO CONFLICT
And 108 is absolutely a case in point. We leave 107 with Wanda's kids having been kidnapped by the next door neighbor who it turns out is a villain so powerful that Wanda's reality-warping--which has been able to affect everyone and everything, does not affect her. These are potentially very high stakes, which are then amplified even more by the episode's opening reveal that Agatha's main power seems to be the ability to suck other magic users dry. If she were to start absorbing Wanda's powers, worse than killing Wanda, it would kill her family.
But then, instead of going in that direction, we in effect get a clip episode, what Agatha herself calls out as "reruns", in which Agatha and Wanda just revisit the pivotal moments of Wanda's life, trying to discover where her new powers have come from. The episode tries to justify this by saying Agatha needs to understand what's going on. But it's never explained why she needs that, why she doesn't just try to take Wanda's powers.
And that's because really it's not something her character needs--she's just going to try and steal the power next episode anyway--it's something the writers need, in order to build to this final reveal of The Scarlet Witch (who for some reason is actually more a Mustard?).
There are some great moments in there; the sequence of Wanda and Pietro with their parents, watching DICK VAN DYKE when suddenly the bomb goes off is absolutely devastating.
Except it's also not devastating, because it's just a memory, and because each of these moments is really only important as another breadcrumb toward the reveal.
(Still, it's a great sequence to study: In two minutes we have to meet Wanda's parents, see the family
dynamic, introduce and land the whole sitcom concept and love them all so much that we really feel it when they die. Donney does nice stuff in there to create
that immediate sense of intimacy.)
Consider how much more powerful that sequence and those that follow would have been if instead of conceived as CHRISTMAS CAROL walkthrough, somehow Wanda and Agatha actually got thrown into her past -- Agatha tries to suck out her power and somehow it backfires--and were actually experiencing it as though for the first time, with none of the security, the "It'll All Over Be Soon" of a memory.
The difference is this: that version has real stakes, and real conflict. Wanda has something she has to fight for and also against. Just like she has had every other episode.
Storytelling is all about conflict. When you take that away, even just for a scene, everything starts to sag.
A lot of the ep: Our hero and antagonist standing there watching.
Compare 108 to the sequence in 106 where Pietro gets Wanda talking about what she's doing. Every single moment of that scene feels fraught. She has never talked about any of this with anyone, and who knows what he might do with it or even just what acknowledging what she's doing might do to her.
As I said yesterday, for me it's one of the most exciting moments in the whole series--and it happens in the context of ongoing events, rather than hitting pause, which is really what 108 does, and what so many Reveal Episodes do.
If you're writing a mystery show, that's the challenge--to find a way to do your reveal without having to stop the bus.
TOMORROW: SUPERHERO SMACKDOWNS
