Scarlet Witch’s Sokovia Memory Creates An Age of Ultron Plot Hole

Scarlet Witch’s trip down memory lane in WandaVision‘s penultimate episode revealed how her parents died and accidentally created an Avengers: Age of Ultron plot hole. After a slow-burn start, Marvel Studios has really ramped up the storytelling progression for the ongoing Disney+ series in the last few weeks. In its latest offering aptly titled “Previously On,” some of the show’s most pressing answers have been answered, and since WandaVision is all about Wanda’s grief, it tackled the biggest tragedies in her life that led to the Maximoff Anomaly.

Following the revelation that Agnes, a.k.a. Agatha Harkness, is the real villain of WandaVision, the witch forced Scarlet Witch to live through some of the most traumatic years of her life to figure out how Wanda was able to put up the Hex. It all started with the death of Wanda’s parents in Sokovia while she and Pietro were just 10 years old. The scene also explained her love of sitcoms and where she got the inspiration for the ideal suburban life she’s living in Westview. But as it answered those questions, it contradicted how the whole tragedy was previously established in the MCU.

In WandaVision, the Maximoff family were watching The Dick Van Dyke Show when the bombings began. The first strike immediately killed Wanda and Pietro’s parents, while the kids nervously waited for the second Stark missile to go off and spell their deaths as well. However, this isn’t exactly how Pietro recalled that night in Age of Ultron. During the twins first meeting with Ultron in Sokovia, he told the story of the same night, only in it, they were “having dinner, the four of us.” Wanda didn’t comment on what her brother was saying, implying that they both agree that it was what happened. Other than this particular moment during that traumatic night, everything else checked in with WandaVision‘s creative re-enactment of what happened. Technically, the WandaVision scene did show TV dinners on the trays next to them, but they’d already finished and and turned to watching the sitcoms.

The idea behind the “Previously On” episode was for Wanda to fully confront her suppressed trauma. Long before the death of Vision in Avengers: Infinity War, her life was already defined by tragedies with the death of her parents, and then Pietro. Her lover’s demise and the realization that he’s really gone after returning from being blipped was the last straw that led to her breakdown, creating the pocket reality in Westview. Given how integral the WandaVision‘s re-enactment scene was to understanding Scarlet Witch’s actions in the show, it’s curious if she remembered the scene playing out differently. As someone who has suppressed her trauma and not properly addressed it over the years, it’s still not out of the realm of possibility.

With only one episode left for WandaVision, chances are that this contradiction with what’s previously known from Avengers: Age of Ultron will not be clarified in the show, or at all. At this point, the only way to know what exactly happened is if the real Pietro could return and retell the story to Wanda, which would either make her realize she remembers it incorrectly or more convinced that she got the details right. Otherwise, this could just be chalked up to the several inconsistencies in MCU’s continuity and the oftentimes foggy memories of childhood.