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This is an analysis on the production elements of Wanda vision and how these components effect the plot and messaging of the episode. This is done through critically breaking down the episode.

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Transformation of character through wardrobe

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The Casual outfit of Wanda Making her more human

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Finale VS an earlier episode set ina different era of TV

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both Wanda and Vision are in a room painted like a modern family home, and dressed in modern neutral tone clothing.

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color scheme depicts modern times and gives off a real time feel

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WandaVision: Behind the Scenes Featurette

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Synopsis:Agatha attempts to take Wanda's chaos magic from her.

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Warning: This article contains full spoilers for WandaVision's finale!

WandaVision's final episode has arrived, and there's a lot to unpack. The series finale pits Wanda Maximoff against Agatha Harkness, and not every character is left standing when the dust clears and the Hex is dissolved.If the finale has you confused as to which character Evan Peters is actually playing and how all of this feeds into upcoming MCU movies like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Captain Marvel 2, fear not. Here's a full breakdown of the big reveals in the finale and why those two post-credits scenes are so significant.

The Fate of Vision and Wanda's Family
WandaVision is ultimately a show about confronting grief, and it's only fitting that Wanda's story ends on a very bittersweet note. She's able to beat Agatha at her own game and release her magical stranglehold on the residents of Westview, but she loses her entire family in the process. Given their unnatural origins, neither Vision nor their children can exist outside of the Hex. With the Hex gone, so is this echo of the original Vision and the two sons who were never fully real in the first place.

What Happened to White Vision?
None of this is to say we won't be seeing these characters in future MCU projects. For one thing, we know SWORD's rebuilt White Vision is still around. Wanda's recreation of Vision was able to unlock the dormant memories contained within his counterpart's mind. This Vision now remembers everything up to the point where he was killed in Avengers: Infinity War. But as we'll probably see, regaining those memories is only part of the equation. This Vision is a cold, emotionless being, much like the White Vision that was introduced in Marvel's comic book universe. As Wanda's Vision pointed out by referencing the Ship of Theseus thought experiment, White Vision isn't truly the original Vision because he lacks the humanity and emotional complexity that defines this unique synthezoid being. The physical molecules and memories are there, but the humanity is still missing. The question is whether White Vision can recover that lost humanity through time and experience.

Have you watched Marvel's WandaVision?

What About Billy and Tommy?
As for Billy and Tommy, it's widely speculated the two characters will return as teenagers in a future Young Avengers project (either a Disney+ series or a movie). In the comics, Wanda is also forced to give up her twin sons after learning they were created from aspects of the demon lord Mephisto. Only much later is it revealed their souls are freed and both are reincarnated in new human bodies. Though the finale seems to dispel any and all theories about Mephisto being the secret villain behind the events in Westview, it does seem safe to assume Billy and Tommy will undergo a similar transformation in the MCU. They'll probably return as Wiccan and Speed, joining up with the likes of Kate Bishop and Cassie Lang to from the Young Avengers.
Pietro Maximoff or Ralph Bohner?
Ever since Evan Peters appeared in the final scene of Episode 5, Marvel fans have been wondering one thing - is Peters actually playing the Quicksilver from Fox's X-Men universe, or is he some sort of impostor? More to the point - is Quicksilver a harbinger of more crossovers between the MCU and the X-verse?

Sadly, that doesn't appear to be the case. The finale reveals "Pietro" is the Ralph to whom Agnes has been alluding all along. His real name is Ralph Bohner (possibly a reference to the late Andrew Koenig's Richard "Boner" Stabone from Growing Pains). When Darcy said Wanda "recast" Pietro, she was right on the money. Ralph is literally an actor, one of many Westview residents unlucky enough to be drafted into Wanda's fake reality. The fact that Marvel cast Peters in the role seems to be more a red herring than a sign the boundaries between the MCU and the X-verse are breaking down.

In hindsight, the depiction of Ralph's speed powers seem to have been the telltale clue this isn't actually Fox's Quicksilver. He may look like that Quicksilver, but the blue speed trail is pure MCU Quicksilver. Wanda (or Agatha) imbued her neighbor with the powers of her late brother, and then Agatha manipulated Ralph for her own ends.

Will we see more of Ralph in the MCU? Probably not, but anything is possible. There's always a chance Marvel will pivot again and reveal Ralph is actually the Fox Quicksilver. Even if not, we may find out Ralph retained his speed powers after the collapse of the Hex. That would pave the way for Peters to play a Quicksilver in the MCU, even if it's not the same one from the X-Men movies.
Agatha's Future in the MCU
Agatha Harkness turned out to be the closest thing the series has to a main villain. But unlike most MCU villains, Agatha actually survives the final battle. She has a much worse fate in store. As the series ends, Agatha is the one person in Westview still trapped in Wanda's fake reality, doomed to live out her life as Agnes the nosy neighbor. Given that Agatha is basically a magical vampire who's been alive for centuries, we have no way of knowing how short or long that life may be.

The finale hints Wanda will eventually return to Westview to consult with the much more magically knowledgeable Agatha. This suggests the dynamic between the two characters will eventually shift in a more comics-inspired direction. Normally, Agatha is depicted as Wanda's supernatural mentor. And if there's one takeaway from this episode, it's that Wanda is in desperate need of a teacher.

It's also interesting to note that Agatha describes herself as someone who takes power from those who don't deserve it. It's hard not to be reminded of Chiwetel Ejiofor's Karl Mordo from Doctor Strange. That movie ends with a disillusioned Mordo breaking away from his order and embarking on a quest to eliminate all the unworthy sorcerers in the world. We could easily see a scenario where Mordo finds a like-minded ally in Agatha. In exchange for freeing her from Wanda's prison, Agatha may agree to help Mordo eliminate their common enemies. That could be a key plot point in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. If Mordo wants to cull the world of unworthy magicians, he may see Wanda as the most unworthy of them all.
The Darkhold and Doctor Strange 2
Speaking of ties to the next Doctor Strange movie, we get some pretty big clues to how WandaVision sets up the events of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The finale confirms one running theory surrounding the series, as we learn Agatha is indeed in possession of the Darkhold. That supernatural tome also played a big part in Agents of SHIELD and Runaways, though it's unclear whether this is the same book or a copy. Or, for that matter, whether this is another nail in the coffin of the idea that those earlier Marvel TV projects are connected to the MCU in the first place. The book certainly doesn't look much like the other versions.

Regardless, we can almost certainly expect the Darkhold to play a big part in Doctor Strange 2. The end-credits sequence reveals the warring sides of Wanda Maximoff, with Wanda's physical form enjoying her peaceful solitude while her astral from feverishly studies the book for guidance on how to bring Billy and Tommy back to life. It's unclear whether those screams are figments of Wanda's tortured mind or if the souls of Billy and Tommy really are trapped in limbo somewhere. Hell? The Dream Dimension? The actual Limbo? All three are realms we could see in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

That psychic speedreading technique is similar to the one employed by Stephen Strange. Wanda may turn to Strange as the next step in her quest to better understand her powers and find the key to restoring her sons. Alternatively, Strange may be the one seeking her out. Surely the Sorcerer Supreme has caught wind of what went on in Westview, and he may realize Wanda is an extremely dangerous wild card if her powers aren't properly trained and focused.

We may well see Strange serve as the mentor Wanda so badly needs. But expect there to be plenty of friction in that relationship, particularly as Wanda tries to harness the power of the Darkhold and Strange urges her to respect the laws and norms of the magical world. Depending on how the movie unfolds, Wanda could wind up becoming the true villain of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Agatha did tell us the Scarlet Witch's power exceeds that of the Sorcerer Supreme...
Is WandaVision Setting Up Nightmare?
Again, WandaVision's final episode didn't give us the big mystery villain reveal many were expecting. It really was Agatha all along. That doesn't necessarily mean the series hasn't been setting up a major villain for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, however. Specifically, there's more reason to believe Nightmare is fast approaching.

Prior to the finale, there were only a few subtle clues that could be interpreted as teases for Nightmare. But the final episode wades a bit deeper into those waters, as we learn the residents of Westview were forced to endure Wanda's nightmares whenever they slept. They seem to have become a sort of buffer helping Wanda keep her grief at bay. That feels an awful lot like a hint of darker things to come. What happens when the most powerful magician in the world is forced to face her tormented dreams? What other villains might be drawn to her power when she's asleep and at her most vulnerable?

Previously, when Mephisto was the top candidate for being the series' main villain, we speculated he might have been affected by the sudden reversal of the Blip. Having access to all those fresh souls and then suddenly losing them would surely anger any demon. But that same idea can be applied to Nightmare. He's a powerful demon who draws strength from the dreams of mortals. Theoretically, Nightmare would have been severely weakened when half the living beings in the universe were blipped away. Now that his food source has been replenished, Nightmare may be looking to consolidate power, and Wanda could be the perfect vessel for his plans.

Prior to the debut of the final episode, speculation was running rampant that Nightmare would put in a small appearance, likely via a post-credits scene. One particular rumor claimed the role would be played by none other than Mark Hamill. Clearly, those rumors didn't pan out. But between the handful of clues on WandaVision, the "Multiverse of Madness" title and the fact that Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson revealed his desire to use Nightmare in the sequel (before he left the project), Nightmare seems very likely to make his MCU debut soon.
Jimmy Woo and Monica Rambeau: What's Next?
Marvel has been teasing a much more interconnected approach to its upcoming slate of movie and TV projects, and the inclusion of familiar faces like Randall Park's Jimmy Woo and Teyonah Parris as an adult Monica Rambeau. Both characters are clearly being set up for bigger things in the near future, even if their respective paths may not cross with Wanda's again.

While Jimmy has been played mostly as a comic figure in both Ant-Man and the Wasp and WandaVision, the finale shows he has great leadership skills and is fully comfortable playing both the sneaky prisoner and the task-force leader. That's probably important, given his role in the Marvel Comics world. There, Jimmy is the leader of a secretive spy team known as the Agents of Atlas. The MCU's Jimmy seems a little ways off from becoming like his comic book counterpart, but the hope is that WandaVision is the first step along the road to an Agents of Atlas series.As for Monica, WandaVision seems to be directly setting the stage for her role in Captain Marvel 2. The mid-credits sequence shows her being approached by a Skrull agent working for Nick Fury. While we're not sure who this Skrull is, she could possibly be the daughter of Ben Mendelsohn's character Talos. That might create a sort of kinship between her and Monica in Captain Marvel 2, with both women being the adult daughters of great heroes from the first movie.

As we saw in Spider-Man: Far From Home, Fury has been busy working with the Skrulls to create some sort of space station. Fury was probably working alongside Monica's mother Maria, and now perhaps he wants Monica to finish what her mother started. Captain Marvel 2 may show SWORD's transition into the space-based agency it is in the comics, with the now superhuman Monica taking on a prominent role as Photon or Spectrum (two of her many codenames in the comics). And at that point, we may finally learn why Monica seems to be holding a grudge against Carol Danvers.

For more on WandaVision, check out IGN's review of the finale, see all the Marvel Easter eggs and sitcom references and learn why there's much more to come with Wanda's story in the MCU.Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

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WandaVision Ending Explained: How the Series Sets Up Doctor Strange 2 - IGN

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Warning: This article contains full spoilers for WandaVision's finale! WandaVision's final episode has arrived, and there's a lot to unpack.

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"The Scarlet Witch is not born, she is forged."

Through nine episodes of WandaVision, which concluded its first season on Friday, we watched as one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's most neglected characters took the spotlight and became its most powerful. We watched as Wanda Maximoff was forged into the Scarlet Witch.

"It was always the design with these shows that they feel like a run of a comic," showrunner Jac Schaeffer told The Hollywood Reporter in January-and after only nine issues, WandaVision has completed its run. Although there will likely be fans who are disappointed that the finale didn't bring in the likes of Reed Richards, Professor Xavier, Clea, Mephisto, or whoever else came up during weeks of constant theorizing, WandaVision neatly tied up the MCU's first Disney+ show by ending how it started: with Wanda and Vision. The series stirred up a chaotic discourse over its eight weeks, but ultimately stayed true to being a story about the love between a synthezoid and a grieving witch, while setting the standard for Marvel's many TV shows to come.

But while WandaVision may be over, the Scarlet Witch's story is only beginning. Wanda has confronted years of grief head-on (in a rather unhealthy way, but still) and now leaves Westview stronger than ever. Vision is alive yet again-well, sort of-and the twins have sadly vanished with the magic that was used to create them. But as Wanda and her Chaos Magic has proved: In the Marvel universe, death may not be the end.

For our final WandaVision recap, we'll break down what happened in Westview one last time before taking a look ahead at what's to come in the MCU.

What's Really Happening?

The finale wastes no time jumping into the action, picking up right where we left off last week, with Agatha dangling Wanda's children before her in the streets of Westview. In an instant, Wanda manages to overpower Agatha with her magic, allowing Billy and Tommy to speed away to safety-but it plays out as Agatha intended. The purple-clad witch tells Wanda that she "takes power from the undeserving," and just as she did to her coven back in Salem, Agatha absorbs Wanda's magic for herself. After Wanda launches her Buick Verano at Agatha (triggering a quick, if too on-the-nose, allusion to The Wizard of Oz), White Vision drops in ... and immediately tries to squeeze Wanda's head like a grape.

What follows is somehow WandaVision 's first full action sequence, as Vision swoops in to save his wife, and the two witches and synthezoids begin to fight each other in a classic MCU final battle. Director Hayward and Co. evidently programmed their weapon to kill Vision in addition to Wanda, and so the white synthezoid turns his focus toward eliminating his carbon copy. While the Visions are flying in the air, zapping and phasing in and out of each other, Wanda and Agatha head to the crowded town square, where Agatha takes a different approach.

In an attempt to show Wanda that she is the world-destroying force that was prophesied, Agatha severs Wanda's mind control over Westview's residents. One by one, Wanda's sitcom neighbors return to their natural states, and turn toward Wanda in anger and terror. Dottie remembers that she's actually Sarah, and begs Wanda to let her see her 8-year-old daughter again. Norm says that they all experience Wanda's nightmares when she lets them sleep, while Mrs. Hart adds that Wanda is poisoning them with her grief. As Wanda becomes suffocated by everyone circling her and pleading for their lives, she loses control and accidentally uses her magic to choke everyone. She immediately frees them from her hold, but at long last, Wanda sees her sitcom reality for what it truly is. "Heroes don't torture people," Agatha chirps from a distance.

In response, Wanda begins to remove her hex around Westview so the townspeople can escape-but there's a catch. Vision and the twins begin to disintegrate, just as Vision did when he tried to leave Westview. Agatha puts Wanda's choice in plain terms: "Save Westview or save your family." Wanda chooses her family, saving them before they perish but trapping the rest of the town once again, just as they'd finally been given hope of escaping. When S.W.O.R.D. arrives at the scene to add to the chaos, it becomes the Maximoff family against the world.

Meanwhile, Monica has been stuck on the sidelines at Agatha's house, with Fake Pietro holding her captive. Before long, though, Monica solves a mystery that lingered for most of the season: Agnes's missing husband, Ralph, was never a villain in waiting, but rather just some poor sap who happened to live in the house next door to Wanda's plot of land. Removing his bewitched necklace and freeing him from Agatha's hold, Monica makes her acquaintance with a lowly actor named Ralph ... Bohner. (I just have to say, what an incredible troll job by the WandaVision team here. Not only did Pietro have absolutely nothing to do with Evan Peters's Quicksilver from the X-Men universe, but Agnes's mysterious husband turned out to be some guy of zero consequence who basically boiled down to being a dick joke.)

Monica times her escape well. She enters the fray just as director Hayward, monster that he is, begins FIRING A GUN at Billy and Tommy. Using her recently acquired superpowers, Monica steps in front of the children and takes nearly every bullet in the chest, allowing each shell to harmlessly phase through her as if they're passing through a bowl of very thick Jell-O. As Hayward doubles down on his attempt to kill kids, hopping in a military truck to run them over, Darcy Lewis-still driving around her incredible funnel cake truck-rams into him, committing apparent vehicular manslaughter but also saving the day.

As all the action converges in the town square, the Visions take their fight to the library-both literally and figuratively. White Vision ceases his attack when his pink counterpart explains the flaw in his directive to "destroy the Vision." They begin to hover in a circle opposite one another and start chatting about identity metaphysics. Citing the " Ship of Theseus" thought experiment, Westview Vision helps his newly formed clone see that neither of them is actually the true Vision, but merely pieces of him. Westview Vision convinces White Vision to let him upload his original memories so he can experience them for himself, and that does the trick: White Vision sees their collective past-from flying in Sokovia to getting killed by Thanos-and accepts the fact that he, too, is Vision, if only a copy of him. With that, he simply flies off, never to be seen again. (Seriously, though, where the hell did this guy just go?! It's as if he suddenly remembered he had left the stove on, like, 10 MCU movies ago, and rushed to turn it off before burning down the Avengers tower.)

After Wanda plays one of her old mind games with Agatha to pull them back to 1693 for a brief (and very creepy) reunion with Agatha's coven in Salem, Wanda and Agatha take to the skies for one final duel. As Wanda hurls her magic at Agatha, letting her believe that she's absorbing all of Wanda's power, the student quickly becomes the master; just as Agatha taught her, Wanda's "misfires" were incantations placing runes around the hex, preventing Agatha from using any magic herself. Reabsorbing her power, along with some of Agatha's, Wanda transforms into the true Scarlet Witch:

With Agatha neutralized, Wanda chooses a fitting role for her as punishment: the nosy neighbor, Agnes. Wanda then begins the countdown on Westview, shuttering her hex around the town and finally putting a stop to all the pain and destruction she's caused. The Maximoff family returns to their Westview home one last time to say their goodbyes. For Wanda and Vision, this time, at least they can do it on their own terms. Vision asks his creator what he is, and Wanda replies: "You, Vision, are the piece of the Mind Stone that lives in me. You are a body of wires, and blood, and bone, that I created. You are my sadness and my hope. But mostly, you're my love."

"I have been a voice with no body," Vision says, referring to his past life as Tony Stark's virtual assistant. "A body, but not human. But now, a memory made real. Who knows what I might be next?"

The hex comes to a close, consuming the Maximoff household with it, and bringing Wanda back to where it all started: an empty plot of land where she and Vision had hoped to build a new life together. After a final goodbye to Monica (as well as a deserved sea of death stares from all the Westview residents), Wanda flies off into the sunset and the season concludes.

After the Credits Roll

Setting Up Captain Marvel 2

The first of two stingers focuses on Monica Rambeau. With Jimmy Woo and the FBI cleaning up the mess in Westview (including arresting Hayward for his terrible "Vision" pun), Monica is pulled aside by an agent who tells her that she's needed in the movie theater. But the theater is completely empty. "I was sent by an old friend of your mother's," the agent says as her face shape-shifts into its natural alien form. "He heard you've been grounded. He'd like to meet with you."

When Monica asks where, the Skrull simply points to the sky, earning a big smile from Rambeau in return.

While Monica's supposedly mundane task of chaperoning an imaging drone to New Jersey turned out to be just a bit more interesting than anticipated, the S.W.O.R.D. agent can now return to space like she originally wanted. She grew up around Skrulls in Captain Marvel, and now, either the Skrull leader Talos or Nick Fury wants to catch up with her.

All of this works toward setting up the events of Captain Marvel 2, and potentially the future Disney+ series Secret Invasion, which is set to star Samuel L. Jackson as Fury and Ben Mendelsohn as Talos. Now equipped with superpowers of her own, Monica will also reunite with Carol Danvers in Captain Marvel 2. Maybe then we'll find out what happened between Monica and her mother's best friend that seemed to cause such a rift in their relationship.

Into the Multiverse of Madness

Though Doctor Strange never made a guest appearance in WandaVision, the Sorcerer Supreme did receive a shout-out in the series finale. When Agatha is telling Wanda what it means to be the Scarlet Witch, she says: "Your power exceeds that of the Sorcerer Supreme. It's your destiny to destroy the world." This comes after Agatha explains that there's an entire chapter on the Scarlet Witch in the Darkhold, "the book of the damned," which glowed ominously when Wanda discovered it in Agatha's basement.

In the series' last post-credits scene, we find Wanda making herself some tea in a remote cabin tucked away in a beautiful snowy mountain range. But as the camera pans past Wanda as she walks toward a screaming kettle, the Scarlet Witch is simultaneously in the bedroom, parsing through the Darkhold in the astral plane-a level of multitasking only previously performed by Stephen Strange. Before the scene comes to a close, the twins' cries for help echo throughout the room.

As she promised Monica she would before leaving Westview, Wanda is learning more about her true powers, and she's doing so from the book of the damned itself. Seeing how she's already hopping into other dimensions, she's clearly picking it up quickly. Wanda may not have broken the multiverse during WandaVision, but now she is learning dark magic, and seemingly searching for a way to bring her children back to life.

With Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness a little more than a year away, Wanda may already be on her way to fulfilling that disastrous destiny, one that the Sorcerer Supreme will likely be tasked with preventing. "You have no idea what you've unleashed," Agatha warned Wanda as she emerged from their battle wearing her Scarlet Witch costume for the first time in the MCU. As Wanda continues to dive deeper into the dark magic of the Darkhold, she doesn't seem too concerned with Agatha's words, choosing to gain more knowledge and power just as Agatha did centuries ago.

Though the end-credit scenes may look ahead at Marvel's seemingly infinite future of films and, now, TV shows, WandaVision avoided any crowd-pleasing cameos from mutants, demons, or astrophysicists. Instead, it stayed its course to conclude a story of a deeply traumatized witch who lost her grip on reality. The show may have had its blemishes and hiccups while melding its quirky sitcom homages with traditional MCU fare. But led by Elizabeth Olsen's phenomenal performance, WandaVision highlighted a character who is neither hero nor villain, and allowed the MCU to reach exciting, new heights.

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The 'WandaVision' Finale Was All About Closure

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"The Scarlet Witch is not born, she is forged." Through nine episodes of WandaVision, which concluded its first season on Friday, we watched as one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's most neglected characters took the spotlight and became its most powerful. We watched as Wanda Maximoff was forged into the Scarlet Witch.

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Freedom is one of America's most cherished values. The cognitive scientist George Lakoff considers it the nation's "most important idea... at the center of all other important ideas." Likewise, in his studies of American values in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the social psychologist Milton Rokeach found that freedom was by far America's most important political value, ranked behind only world peace and familial security in the nation's hierarchy of values. Behind this commonplace agreement on the centrality of freedom in American life, however, lurk three fundamental questions.

First, how free do Americans actually perceive themselves to be and what factors affect their perceptions? Second, do Americans believe they are becoming more or less free? Finally, what are the potential threats to the realization of freedom in the United States? To answer these questions, we take a specifically empirical, sociologically based approach to the study of people's values and beliefs. In our analyses, we use data from the Freedom in America Survey, a nationally representative survey of 1,014 Americans we fielded in the summer of 2015.

The Income-Freedom Gradient

It is not our goal to assess the extent to which American political life measures up to some "objective" standard of freedom. Rather, we explore freedom as a value system, examining Americans' perceptions of how much of it they have and exploring the major factors underlying these perceptions. This is what we call, following the psychologist Ivan Steiner, perceived freedom.

Perceived freedom entails, regardless of the actual conditions experienced by individuals, "antecedents and consequences that deserve attention." To measure perceived freedom in our 2015 survey, we asked Americans "How much freedom do you have today?" For simplicity of exposition, we categorized respondents as either having a high or a low level of perceived freedom. (Respondents who reported "Complete Freedom" or "A Great Deal of Freedom" were categorized as "high," while those who reported "A Moderate Degree of Freedom," "Not Much Freedom," or "No Freedom at All," were categorized as "low.")

Overall, we found that a majority of Americans reported a substantial degree of perceived freedom: about 59% reported a high level of freedom. One's own sense of freedom is closely related to the perceptions of the amount of freedom experienced by other Americans. Specifically, among those who say they have a low amount of freedom, 85% say that Americans in general have a low amount of freedom. Likewise, among those who say they have a high amount of freedom, 82% say that all Americans have a high amount of freedom. This reaffirms the general sociological claim that, when asked to evaluate the experience of others in their own social group, people tend to generalize from their own life experiences.

Perceived freedom varies only weakly, if at all, across a number of factors, including gender and racial or ethnic identity. There is, however, one factor that is by far the most important for explaining one's sense of freedom: those who feel the most free are, in general, those who have the most money. This relationship is so persistent that we call it the income-freedom gradient. The income-freedom gradient from our 2015 survey is shown in the figure above. The vertical axis gives the probability of reporting a high rather than low level of freedom, while the horizontal axis lists household income in U.S. dollars.

The perception of high levels of freedom is not a universal experience-its sociological realization is contingent upon one's material resources.

The implications of the income-freedom gradient are profound. The perception of high levels of freedom is not a universal experience-its sociological realization is contingent upon one's material resources. In a society such as the United States, with a relatively weak welfare state, more money means more control over one's life, which translates into a higher perception of freedom and, we suspect, more freedom measured in any "objective" terms. For a high-income person, especially one at the top end of the distribution, freedom is realized to a much greater extent than it is for those elsewhere on the distribution, in the form of limitless travel, boundless access to various goods and services, substantially reduced barriers to entering any number of social positions, superior legal representation and much lower sentences for similar crimes committed by the poor, and greater access to powerful political actors.

Another implication of the income-freedom gradient is that the reduction of poverty-or the guarantee of a "baseline" threshold of resources-will not necessarily result in the fulfillment of one's own freedom. Consider, for example, a married White male living in the Midwest with no children. If this person receives $20,000, then his probability of reporting a high level of freedom is .52. In contrast, his counterpart receiving $100,000 has a probability of .67 and his counterpart receiving $200,000 has a probability of .82.

Our data suggest that, regardless of one's income level, every additional dollar acquired increases the probability of having a high level of perceived freedom. Note, however, that the income range in our data is truncated at the top end; it is unresolved whether the income-freedom gradient flattens out at extremely high incomes.

The Obama Effect

Besides asking about their current level of freedom, we also asked respondents about perceived changes in their own freedom-what we call perceived relative freedom. Specifically, in our 2015 survey, we asked, "Do you personally now have more, less, or the same amount of freedom as in the past?" Overall, about 25% of Americans reported having less freedom, 54% the same, and 21% more. We found virtually no evidence of a relationship between income and perceived relative freedom. Instead, we found that perceived relative freedom varied substantially by political orientation and voting behavior.

Among all people who voted for Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for U.S. president in 2012, about one-quarter reported having more freedom than in the past. In contrast, just one-in-ten people who voted for Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate in 2012, reported having more freedom. We found a similar pattern when examining party identification, with Democrats reporting more freedom in their own lives than Republicans. This partisan divide in relative freedom held even after adjusting for a range of background variables, including income, gender, and racial or ethnic identity.

The data also reveal a substantial divide in perceived relative freedom between White and Black Americans. Among Black Americans aged 65 and older, over three-quarters said they had more freedom than in the past; none said they had less. This suggests that the Civil Rights Movement had a deep effect, lifting a generation of Black Americans into higher levels of freedom. However, perhaps surprisingly, our survey indicates that over 30% of White Americans reported having less freedom than in the past. Among White Americans who voted for Romney, the proportion was almost 40%.

To examine the role of the Obama presidency in more depth, we asked respondents directly how they felt the Obama presidency had affected the relative freedom of five different groups: Black people, White people, rich people, women, and the young. We find substantial evidence of an "Obama Effect." Overall, Americans felt the Obama presidency increased the freedom of rich people the most, followed by women, Black people, young people, and, finally, White people. These results, however, mask substantial differences in the evaluation of freedom in the Obama era across different groups.

Most striking, one-third of White Americans claimed that Whites, overall, had less freedom due to the Obama presidency, while just under 4% of Black Americans thought the same. Likewise, nearly 38% of Whites thought Black Americans had more freedom under Obama, while about 28% of Black Americans agreed with this statement.

Although we found no substantial relationship between one's own perceived relative freedom and income, we uncovered evidence that richer Americans viewed the Obama administration as threatening to the freedom of richer Americans. Among those in the top quarter of the income distribution, about 23% believed Obama decreased the freedom of rich Americans, while just over 9% of respondents in the bottom quarter of the income distribution thought the same.

These findings raise an important puzzle: why do Whites, especially White conservatives, feel as though the Obama presidency decreased not only their own freedom but also the freedom of all White Americans? This is particularly vexing because income appears to have but a minor role in explaining this perceived decline. The income-freedom gradient implies that wealth redistribution will, in fact, decrease perceived levels of freedom among the richest Americans. Accordingly, one might be tempted to conclude that White conservatives would feel considerably less free due to the policies of the Obama administration, some of which, such as the Affordable Care Act, entailed a certain amount of wealth redistribution. However, among those who received more than $112,5000 annually (the 75th percentile in the income distribution in our data), about 34% said they felt less free in 2015. Yet surprisingly, among White Americans who voted for Romney and received less than $32,500 annually (the 25th percentile in the income distribution), over 30% reported feeling less free in 2015. In short, our study shows little evidence that income explains the perceived decline in relative freedom among White Americans.

The fact that White conservatives felt a decline in freedom is most clearly explained by the promotion of White identity politics by right-wing activists. For a particular group of White Americans, more freedom for Black Americans means, necessarily, less freedom for White Americans. Within months of Obama's inauguration, a massive reaction had set in, the most potent expression of which was the Tea Party movement. It was not by accident that the Tea Party chose one of America's most iconic symbols of freedom for its name. Freedom was its rallying cry. Backed by the Tea Party movement, a group of extremist, right-wing congressional members organized themselves in 2015 as "the House Freedom Caucus." Its members felt passionately that a catastrophe had taken place in their country and that the catastrophe was, most of all, an assault on America's freedom.

A central theme of the Tea Party Movement was that "their" presidency had been illegitimately captured by an "alien," a man supposedly not born in America and pushing a far-left political platform. (In fact, as Obama himself has noted, he was born in the United States and his policies were surprisingly centrist, in line with those put forth by Richard Nixon.) The reaction against Obama was not just the usual partisan political backlash against the party that last won the presidential vote, but a cultural movement and rebranding of the Republican Party. This represented a reactivation of a zero-sum view of freedom and its powerful association with Whiteness: to be free was to be White and not Black. Any positive change in the status of Blacks came to be seen as a loss in the precious freedom of being White.

The reaction against Obama was not just the usual partisan political backlash, but a cultural movement and rebranding of the Republican Party. This represented a reactivation of a zero-sum view of freedom and its powerful association with Whiteness.

The Surveillance State and American Plutocracy

We now turn to an examination of additional factors that pose a threat to perceived freedom in the United States, in particular, the rise of the surveillance state and the consolidation of American plutocracy. The 9/11 attacks resulted in major changes in the nation, notably the emergence of the seemingly endless "war on terror" which entailed important new constraints on Americans' civil liberties. Most significantly, it allowed the demand for greater security to be used as a political cover for an assault on a wide range of American liberties. The many abuses and threats are too well known to enumerate at length here, but some of the most egregious include the secret tapping of telephone conversations and probing of citizens' library usage, intelligence agencies' secret shift toward domestic spying, the by-passing of the Federal Judiciary and the use of extra-judicial organizations such as military commissions and detention centers, indefinite detention, the skirting of habeas corpus, the jailing of journalists and other attacks on the press, executive branch efforts to restrict Congressional access to information, the rejection of the Geneva Convention and the justification of the use of torture in the interrogations of enemy combatants and suspected enemies (who were sometimes innocent).

To address the potentially corrosive impact of this expansion of the surveillance state on perceived freedom, we asked respondents whether they agreed with the statement that "Americans must be willing to give up their privacy in order to be safe from terrorism." We found a strong, robust link with perceived level of freedom. Over 58% of those who strongly disagreed with this statement reported a low level of freedom, in contrast to about 37% of those who strongly agreed. Likewise, we asked respondents whether they agreed with the statement that "The government has taken away too many of our freedoms in the fight against terrorism." The data again suggest a corrosive effect of the war on terror on perceived levels of freedom. Among those who strongly agreed with this statement, over two-thirds reported a low level of freedom, while among those who strongly disagreed, under one-quarter said they had a low level of freedom. Finally, we asked respondents whether or not they agreed with the statement "The police are a threat to my freedom or rights." Again, we found a persistent relationship, with about 56% of those strongly agreeing reporting a low level of freedom and one-third of those strongly disagreeing reporting the same.

These findings highlight a potentially dangerous feedback effect for American democracy. Although those who are most poor feel the least free, they value freedom the most. Yet the rich, who are more likely to view freedom in terms of political participation, are more likely to be satisfied with the functioning of American democracy.

The other prevailing threat to perceived freedom is the consolidation of an American plutocracy. To address this issue, in our 2015 survey we asked respondents whether they agreed with the statement that "The very rich have too much influence on the government in the United States." There is near-universal agreement that the United States is, effectively, a plutocracy: 83% of Americans agreed with this statement. We also asked Americans whether they agreed that "The United States today is ruled or controlled by the very wealthy." Even with this more strongly worded question, the agreement was near-universal: 78% of Americans agreed with this second statement. We found substantial evidence that this perception of the United States as a plutocracy is linked to declines in one's perceived freedom. For example, among those who strongly agree that America is under the control of the very wealthy, just over half report a low level of perceived freedom; in contrast, among those who strongly disagree, the portion reporting a low level is only a little over 30%.

The consolidation of American plutocracy has important consequences for the income-freedom gradient. In the three-panel figure on p. 31, we examine the income-freedom gradient in relation to three different outcomes. In Panel A, we examine whether or not respondents report viewing freedom as a top-five value from a list of 19 fundamental values, including equality, wisdom, national security, and so forth. Our results show that the rich are less likely to value freedom, even after adjusting for a range of background factors. In Panel B, we show the relationship between income and the probability of defining freedom in terms of political participation (specifically, we asked whether respondents agreed that "Freedom is participating, in some way, in the elections and politics of my country"). After controlling for a variety of background factors, rich Americans were much more likely to view freedom in terms of political participation than the poor. Finally, in Panel C, we examine the probability of being satisfied with the state of U.S. democracy. Again, we find a striking income gradient, with the rich being more satisfied than the poor, even after controlling for background variables.

Together, these findings highlight a potentially dangerous feedback effect for American democracy. Although those who are most poor feel the least free, they value freedom the most. Yet the rich, who are more likely to view freedom in terms of political participation, are more likely to be satisfied with the functioning of American democracy.

Prospects and Perils

Focusing on perceived freedom, our findings reveal a substantial and persistent income-freedom gradient. In general, those who have more money feel more free. Further research is needed to determine the extent to which this pattern holds in other countries and economic systems. Our analysis also shows that a large proportion of Whites, particularly White conservatives, believe that their own freedom as well as the freedom of White Americans as a group declined during the Obama era. This finding reflects, in part, one of the most disturbing aspects of Americans' conception, and perceived level, of freedom, rooted in the nation's past of racial slavery, Jim Crow, and Northern racism: the identifi cation of freedom with Whiteness and the zero-sum conviction that progress and more freedom for Blacks necessarily entails a decline in social status and freedom for Whites. Further, the rise of the surveillance state and the consolidation of American plutocracy are twin threats to Americans' sense of freedom, making it increasingly likely that those who are poor and non-White will feel their freedom eroding in coming years.

Recommended Resources

Eric Foner. 1998. The Story of American Freedom. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. One of the best short histories of American freedom, a highly contested value shaped by competing political leaders, slaveholders, slaves and abolitionists, capitalists, union organizers, freedom riders, and feminists.

George Lakoff. 2006. Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Argues that conservatives have largely won the contest over the meaning of freedom and proposes ways progressives can reclaim the nation's most important social and political idea.

Orlando Patterson. 2001. "The American View of Freedom: What We Say, What We Mean," . Uses differences by class, race, and gender in his 2000 GSS freedom module and finds an uncoupling of freedom from democracy.

Richard C. Leone and Gregory Anrig, eds. 2007. Liberty Under Attack: Reclaiming Our Freedoms in an Age of Terror. New York: Public Affairs. Shows how, in the name of security, American liberties have been curtailed in the form of threats to the independence of the judiciary, press intimidation, and invasions of privacy-actions that are counterproductive in preventing future terrorism.

Andrew J. Perrin, Steven J. Tepper, Neal Caren, and Sally Morris. 2014. "Political and Cultural Dimensions of Tea Party Support, 2009-2012," Sociological Quarterly. Explores the demographic, political, and economic bases of Tea Party support using polling and other data.

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Stability and Change in Americans' Perception of Freedom

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Freedom is one of America's most cherished values. The cognitive scientist George Lakoff considers it the nation's "most important idea... at the center of all other important ideas." Likewise, in his studies of American values in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the social psychologist Milton Rokeach found that freedom was by far America's most important political value, ranked behind only world peace and familial security in the nation's hierarchy of values.