WandaVision: Is Vision Alive or Dead?

For WandaVision fans, while there are a lot of questions, there's a pretty big one that they've been trying to puzzle out: is Vision alive or dead. For Marvel Cinematic Universe fans, the answer to that seemed to be a straightforward dead thanks to the events of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, but last week's episode of WandaVision, "A Very Special Episode" cast some doubt on that. Now, we're trying to figure out what Vision's real state is by looking at a few different possibilities.

The first one is one that seems to pretty much be off the table at this point and that's Vision is one of Wanda's illusions. With the reality of Westview and its ever-changing sitcom setting all seemingly under Wanda's command, early on it felt like Vision was probably the same, something Wanda created as a projection of her grief and trauma. That idea was bolstered in "We Interrupt This Program" when she briefly saw Vision's damaged head from where the Mind Stone was torn from him. However, in last week's episode, viewers saw Vision seemingly break out of the world Wanda had created, using his powers to briefly free Norm from Wanda's mental control. If Vision were an illusion created by Wanda, it'd be pretty unlikely that he'd be, for lack of a better term, sentient.

If Vision isn't an illusion and is still in fact dead, that would suggest that he's actually been resurrected somehow. Given that Wanda has the ability to warp reality -- we've seen her do it with just the existence of Westview -- that would suggest that she has somehow been able to do so to the extent of bringing Vision back. After all, we know that she obtained his body from a S.W.O.R.D. facility. It's not a huge leap to consider that she's somehow found a way to put his broken parts back together with her powers. It wouldn't explain his powers necessarily -- as best we can tell he does not in fact have the Mind Stone -- but he could be being powered by Wanda's own abilities., something that would give him "life" and make it appear that he was just as before.

There's an argument to be made that this seems unlikely because Wanda suggests that bringing loved ones back from the dead isn't something she can or will do (when the boy's dog died, she tried to explain to them that bringing Sparky back just wasn't something they could do) but we should also remember that Vision isn't a "living" being. He's a Synthezoid. General resurrection protocol might not apply.

There's also the possibility that Vision, as he is in Westview, is a combination of things. He may have started as an illusion of sorts -- Wanda re-animating Vision's lifeless and damaged form -- but eventually began to regain his own sentience and abilities because of Wanda's continuation of the illusion. Given that Wanda's own powers came from experimentation on her with the Mind Stone (via Loki's scepter) when she was with HYDRA, it's not that much of a stretch. It would also somewhat account for Vision's steady development over the series thus far, going from a doting sitcom-style husband to starting to question what's really going on in Westview.

If that is the case and Vision was inadvertently resurrected in that sense, it might make for an interesting dynamic change between Vision and Wanda going forward. We'll just have to keep tuning in to see.

The first five episodes of WandaVision are now streaming on Disney+.