The last place one would expect references to the 2021 hit Disney+ series WandaVision is a primetime police procedural, but last night’s episode of The Rookie on ABC did just that. The Nathon Fillion-led series never shies away from injecting a healthy amount of fun into the plot, along with various Easter Eggs from other projects on which Fillion has worked. Though he did not appear on WandaVision, Fillion is known for his love of comics and film/television adaptations, as he has lent his voice talents to Marvel and DC animated works (he can next be seen as Guy Gardner/Green Lantern in the DC’s Superman movie and Lanterns TV series).
Fillion’s love of comic culture shone in the latest episode of The Rookie entitled “A Deadly Secret,” with a location called Westview; a clear nod to the quaint town in New Jersey that Wanda Maximoff/The Scarlet Witch took control over in WandaVision. With references to mind control, hallucinations, and a single person behind everything, let’s see how Wanda’s chaos magic made its way into The Rookie.
A Police Procedural Meets the Reality-Warping Powers of the Scarlet Witch
In “A Deadly Secret,” the police force, of which Fillion is a member, finds themselves investigating a psychiatric hospital complex called Westview. While Westview contained more than one building, only one of them was abandoned and quickly became the subject of unexplained occurrences, prompting a response from the cops. Besides the presence of the officers, a documentary crew also was present on site, as well as a fantastic and fun cameo by Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej of Ghost Files and Buzzfeed Unsolved. Bergara and Madej were filming a fictitious episode of their series, Mystery Files, investigating the strange goings-on at Westview.
As the mystery of Westview unfolds, it is revealed that years ago, a doctor at the facility was part of the infamous government operation known as MK Ultra. MK Ultra was a very real CIA led psychological experiment that exposed human test subjects to various hallucinogen and psychedelic drugs in an attempt to control their minds in order to create operatives who could combat threats from the Soviet Union during the Cold War without questioning orders. By the end of the episode, all parties discover that, upon realizing the damage he had caused on fellow humans, the doctor behind the decades-old experiments in Westview brought down the entire program during a moment of clarity.
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RYAN BERGARA, NATHAN FILLION, LISSETH CHAVEZ, SHANE MADEJ
While the name Westview was enough to draw a connection to WandaVision, especially considering that ABC and Marvel are both Disney-owned companies, the story that unfolded throughout the episode honed in on how the town was very much like Wanda’s temporary home. Like Westview on The Rookie, Wanda’s Westview also was built on mind control due to her extraordinarily powerful chaos magic. Using her power as the Scarlet Witch, Wanda was able to section off Westview from the rest of the world and control the hundreds of residents who lived there; a feat that would have been impossible for any other magic wielder in the Marvel Universe.
Though there are hints that Wanda has some awareness of what she had done, her intense grief has her in a state of denial until Vision and Agatha Harkness force her to face the truth of her actions. When Wanda’s mental manipulation of the Westview citizens begins to slip, they beg her to release them from the painful mind control under which she has them. Realizing that she was unintentionally harming people while trying to live out her dream life, Wanda makes the decision to bring down her magical hex that essentially kept everyone prisoner. Wanda, distraught at the pain she’s caused, insists that she never intended to hurt anyone.
Wanda Maximoff and the doctor on The Rookie both realize the unethical extremes to which they have gone in their respective Westviews, ultimately destroying their own creations. The clever addition of MK Ultra to the storyline in The Rookie parallels Wanda’s chaos magic powers that allow her to manipulate minds, control others, and even induce vivid hallucinations.
Ultimately, the writers of The Rookie masterfully blended a subtle nod to the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a grounded exploration of real-world psychological manipulation, proving that even in the pursuit of justice, a touch of the Scarlet Witch’s uncanny reality warping powers can add a compelling layer to the narrative.
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