“WandaVision,” Marvel’s first live-action series fully integrated into the interconnected and seamless stories from the Marvel Cinematic Universe films, has captivated audiences since its Disney + debut earlier this month. The series, starring Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany as Wanda Maximoff and Vision, respectively, is a tribute to classic comedies, with the two lovebirds moving through different decades in television history in each episode for reasons that viewers still don’t fully understand. . But we don’t need to know why the two seem to be starring in their own sitcom to appreciate the fact that the series is capable of doing what no film has ever done: exploring the characters, their romance and relationship in profound and meaningful ways.
While certain Marvel characters like Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) have had plenty of screen time in several films to explore the emotional baggage and development of their characters through deeply personal story arcs, the writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely were forced to develop the romance of Wanda and Vision in quiet and stolen moments between rounds of action and fighting sequences in “Captain America: Civil War” and “Avengers: Infinity War”. They did a job adequate enough that when Vision sacrificed himself to stop Thanos (Josh Brolin) at the end of the last film, his connection to Wanda lent a decent amount of emotion to the scene.
However, it was not as effective as Tony dying to save the universe or Cap traveling through time and having a happy ending. Fortunately, Wanda and Vision are now enjoying the sun. However, this is not the first Marvel series to develop supporting characters of vital importance, from films to television.
In January 2015, ABC released “Agent Carter”, a series of spies set in the 1940s starring Hayley Atwell as her character “Captain America: The First Avenger” Peggy Carter, and even “WandaVision”, was the best series from Marvel. (“Jessica Jones” deserves to be praised for her excellent first season, but the character and the series are ultimately too far removed from the MCU film stories to be comparable here.) The first season of eight episodes of “Agent Carter “was the first major project set in the Marvel cinematic universe to be headed by a woman – which was distressing for fans of Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, which was featured in 2010’s” Iron Man 2 “- but despite the series’s low audience, served as a proof of concept for the future.
Created by Markus and McFeely, the series, which aired during the mid-season hiatus for “Agents of SHIELD”, was set in 1946 after World War II and Steve’s apparent death at the end of “The First Avenger” . The premiere used archive footage of Evans from the film to set up his story, creating a direct link to the films that no other Marvel series, not even “Agents of SHIELD”, who resurrected Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg), was able to brag about it so far.
Showrunners Tara Butters, Michele Fazekas and Chris Dingess used the film’s plans and Marvel’s subsequent “Agent Carter” One-Shot to develop a complex, layered story that took full advantage of the extended viewing time provided by serialized television for reflect carefully explore not only Peggy as a person, including her persistent grief over Cap’s death, but also the challenges and triumphs she experienced during her career as the first female agent in the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR). In the hands of the writers and with eight 40-minute episodes at her disposal (18 if you include the second 10-episode season), Peggy has become a fully developed and competent woman who has excelled in a world dominated by inferior men. And she did it outside the context of her relationship with Captain America, erasing any lingering doubts that she could have been just a really exceptional, charming and intelligent love interest.
The series did all this by addressing several difficult but universally familiar topics, such as sexism in the workplace, which is still relevant in 2021, and the search for a purpose, especially after the war. The writers also never missed an opportunity to prove that the show’s namesake heroine was the most intelligent and capable person in the room. And while the series worked because of Atwell’s performance, the writers intelligently surrounded it with characters that were familiar to viewers, like the young Howard Stark of Dominic Cooper, or who would function as a support system without stealing the show, like James D’Arcy Edwin Jarvis, the man Tony Stark would later name his artificial intelligence, and Enver Gjokaj’s agent Daniel Sousa.
The links to the Marvel movies couldn’t be clearer, but fans ultimately didn’t appear for “Agent Carter” in the way they apparently did for “WandaVision”. It is easy to blame the fact that Marvel did not consider it on the same level as the films and therefore did not market it as such. But another explanation for the different reception is the disconnect between the events of the series and the films in progress, a consequence of its period scenario. While this could be seen as a strong point – it meant that the series could be seen as an extension of the MCU or an autonomous series, depending on the viewer, so knowledge of the MCU didn’t matter much – it also meant that viewers were not required to tune in every week.
And one of the reasons why the MCU has become so successful, in addition to its narrative, is because each new film (and now the TV show) is linked to other films in some way. Even “Agents of SHIELD” dealt with the aftermath of the events in the films, such as the big HIDRA reveal in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”. The show even had a few appearances by characters like Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) over the years to make it seem a little bit connected to the movie’s continuous arcs to get people tuning in. “Agent. Carter” naturally had a harder time doing this, so despite being connected to the movies in a number of main ways, it was not considered necessary – neither by the network, nor by Marvel, and therefore not even by the fans. And that’s a shame, because what the writers created was as vibrant and fun as Peggy herself.
Why bring this up now? Because “WandaVision” is essentially following the same formula and working in the same capacity as “Agent Carter” before. Although the series goes directly to the next “Doctor Strange in the Madness Multiverse” and Spider-Man’s third film, it can also stand on its own as a separate property. Viewers, at least so far, did not need additional knowledge of the MCU to enjoy the series, mainly because it is very different from what came before. Like “Agent Carter” and even “Jessica Jones” before him, the show is successful because it doesn’t look like a traditional Marvel superhero product. It’s mind-blowing and fun, playing with reality in ways that exploit television as a form of comfort, while Wanda apparently creates her own illusion of a happy life to survive the grief over Vision’s death in “War of Infinity”, which came on following losing his twin, Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), in “Age of Ultron”.
As any fan of comics can tell you, Wanda is one of the most powerful characters in the MCU, but as she has been forced to play a supporting role in the stories of other characters (white men) over the years, Marvel has not been able to, or simply has chosen not to explore the full scope of his skills so far. Much like the way “Agent Carter” successfully revealed the depths of Peggy Carter in the wake of the death of a loved one, “WandaVision” is also building and revealing the inherent strengths of its own female protagonist in the same way. It’s even bringing familiar faces from the MCU the way “Agent Carter” did. Kat Dennings’ Darcy Lewis and Randall Park’s agent Jimmy Woo appear, while new characters, like Kathryn Hahn’s Agnes, are expected to have lasting impacts on fans, if not the future of the extended universe. In a way, it looks like “WandaVision” is what “Agent Carter” could and should be all the time.
However, “WandaVision” also seems like a natural and necessary next step in the evolution of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is now in Phase 4. So, perhaps the most interesting thing about the show is what it means for Marvel to move on. The lines between television and cinema have become increasingly blurred over the years, a development that has launched a thousand wars on Twitter over what is considered TV and what is considered cinema. There is no real drama around “WandaVision” – it is an episodic television made for a streaming service, with each episode telling a serialized but independent story, but it is also inextricably linked to the MCU films, building on the events of previous movies and set up a few more. In doing so, the show is further obscuring the lines that were already quite confusing. And with several other Marvel series scheduled to debut on Disney + this year alone, it’s really just the beginning.
“WandaVision” releases new episodes on Fridays, while the full version of “Agent Carter” is available for broadcast, both on Disney +.