This post contains spoilers for WandaVision.
Things just went from 100 to 1000 in the newest episode of WandaVision. The twins are twinning, the newly "recast" Pietro (Evan Peters) is stirring up trouble, and Vision (Paul Bettany) desperately wants out of all of it. Director Tyler Hayward (Josh Stamberg) has gone full-blown federal jackass. There is an endless amount of things to talk about and speculate, but I’m going to focus on what’s happening with Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) — it’s a huge deal and adds some reason to why Hayward had all the spiteful disrespect to give to her.
As we all know, Monica went through Wanda’s (Elizabeth Olsen) force field twice. In the last episode, we learned that things that go through the CMBR (Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation) of the Hex change. Monica’s Kevlar vest is turned into clothes from Good Times, courtesy of it. In the newest episode, All-New Halloween Spooktacular, we discover that her kevlar vest wasn’t the only thing that’s been rewritten.
In "On A Very Special Episode", Monica’s scans come back abnormal. Nothing is there but light. Monica dismisses it and the request for her to let the S.W.O.R.D. medical staff perform additional blood workups. What’s happened to her body since going through the CMBR field is faintly hinted at, but in "All-New Halloween Spooktacular", it’s quite apparent. It’s also why Hayward jumps at the first excuse to remove Monica from the S.W.O.R.D., the base set up just outside of the anomaly.
Jimmy (Randall Park) and Darcy (Kat Dennings) leave with Monica and then come back with her after she and Jimmy take out the soldiers who were sorry enough to escort them. Once they’re set up in a secure location, Darcy hacks into all of Hayward’s devices, and to no surprise, he has been withholding vital information. Hayward has a tracker on Vision, for starters. He also has Monica’s bloodwork, and it explains why her scans came back weird. The energy from the CMBR field has rewritten Monica’s cells on a molecular level. Darcy tells Monica that it’s changing her, and she’s right. We haven’t seen an outward manifestation of what’s happening to Monica yet but, thanks to the comics, we do have some idea of what we should expect.
Monica Rambeau’s power, per what we know of them from Marvel Comics, is the ability to change her body into any form of electromagnetic energy; she can turn into pure light and travel at the speed of it; she can turn into x-rays or radio frequencies; she could enter someone’s brain and explode it if she wanted; she can even turn into a gamma-ray laser beam — and has before. Kind of similar to Wanda’s force field in the way that no one can break it (yet). I’m getting ahead myself, so back to Monica’s powers and how they work.
When Monica smashed the energy disruptor in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #16, she got her powers. But there was no full explantation into how they worked exactly. It’s not until Marvel Team-Up #142 and #143 that we learn the true nature of her abilities. Dr. Paulson, a deranged global economist who is doing his best Thanos, wants to cut the world’s population in half by using a generator that uses the power of the Wind Stone. This stone focuses dimensional energy around the world. Monica and Spider-Man destroy it before anything can happen, but Monica is subsequently unable to revert into her physical form. Thankfully, Spider-Man is Peter Parker and can scientifically theorize what’s happening to his friend. Dr. Paulson’s generator is similar to the energy disruptor Monica destroyed and consequently got her powers from. Peter Parker concludes that Monica’s powers result from an affinity developed between her and another dimension. When she turns her body into energy, her physical body transfers to another dimension. Meaning that when Dr. Paulson’s generator overloaded, it caused interference that kept Monica from retrieving her physical body from the energy plane and subsequently removing her ability to revert.
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It’s soon discovered the generator went to another dimension, so the interference was still present. Spider-Man and Starfox go to there in hopes of finding the generator so they can fix Monica’s problem. The pair find it in use by the inhabitants of the other world as a means of protection against a group of deadly warriors. The generator allowed them to create a force field that only let people in and out who had a sun crystal in their possession. Anyone who enters the area without one disappears. Spider-Man and Firefox agree to take care of the warriors in exchange for the destruction of the generator. Once it’s destroyed, the dimension gap begins to close, and Monica can retrieve her physical body.
This is all relevant to WandaVision, and what’s going on with Monica. Although, we don’t fully know the true nature of Wanda’s force field other than it’s made up of CMBR, there is a good chance it works similarly to the energy generator that gave Monica her powers and interfered with them in the comics.
So, what does this mean? Well, it could mean a lot. Wanda may have tapped into some interdimensional power, and we’ve got multiverse stuff happening. It seems pretty likely given her involvement in the upcoming Multiverse of Magic. Regardless, so far as Monica's concerned, this is huge. No wonder Director Edgelord was so quick to get her out of the S.W.O.R.D. paint. Tyler Hayward is scared that he now has not one, but two powerful women to deal with. I, for one, hope he regrets and pays for taking such low blow shots at Monica’s empathy towards super-powered individuals and how she’s handled the passing of her mother. There are three episodes left of WandaVision, and I pray Monica’s powers to start to manifest because she may very well be the key to helping Wanda, Vision, all of Westview, and potentially the world.
