Grief can make people take radically unhealthy actions. For Wanda Maximoff in WandaVision, Wanda has made some very troubling decisions over the death of the Vision in Avengers Infinity War. Spoilers ahead.
WandaVision takes place three weeks after the events of Avengers Endgame. We learned in the fourth episode “We Interrupt This Program,” that Wanda is the cause of the events in WestView. Adding the crimes of kidnapping a town, Wanda has reanimated Vision’s corpse. We see a glimpse of the body devoid of color and lifeless eyes with a chunk missing out of his forehead. If Vision were a human being, using magic to use a corpse like a puppet would be a clear issue of desecration. What is the answer when the corpse is a robot?
Desecration of a corpse in the second degree in New Jersey is when a person:
(1) Unlawfully disturbs, moves or conceals human remains;
(2) Unlawfully desecrates, damages or destroys human remains; or
(3) Commits an act of sexual penetration or sexual contact, as defined in N.J.S. 2C:14-1, upon human remains.
N.J. Stat. § 2C:22-1(a)(1), (2), and (3).
Human remains are defined as “the body of a deceased person or the dismembered part of a body of a living person but does not include cremated remains.” N.J. Stat. § 2C:22-1(c).
Wanda would be in significant legal trouble if Vision was considered “human,” because 1) Wanda had to recover Vision’s body from a SWORD facility. The act of moving the remains from the SWORD facility to WestView would meet the first prohibition of the law.
The second prohibition does not apply, because Wanda has not destroyed the Vision’s remains.
The third prohibition could have been met, but luckily we will never know, because Wanda has create G rated sitcoms from the 1950s to 70s (and PG rated from the 1980s and 2000s) as her reality. There is also reasonable doubt because Wanda’s pregnancy was caused by magic with her delivering twins within one episode.
The best argument for Wanda’s defense is that the Vision is not a human being, thus he did not have a corpse to desecrate. This also would go with the theme of arguing the Vision was not a human being in order to avoid a murder charge against Wanda for killing the Vision (the first time) by destroying the Mind Stone.
Even if Wanda can avoid conviction for desecrating the Vision’s corpse, what she is doing is radically unhealthy. Reanimating a body like a puppet for one’s delusion is not a good way to heal from loss; it is living in denial.
