How Jac Schaeffer made WandaVision inside the Marvel machine

WandaVision, the Disney + series that restored the Marvel franchise’s appeal after the pandemic put it on hold, has always been conceived as a hybrid. It was partly a superhero saga and partly a sitcom, partly a fun trip of nostalgia and partly the dramatic exploration of mourning in a comic book setting. So when Jac Schaeffer – a writer who contributed to Marvel film scripts, including Captain Marvel It is the next Black Widow – assumed the role of showrunner of the series, she approached a similar cross-pollination site. She hired writers with experience across multiple genres, drew inspiration from a variety of TV shows, and did the job of tying the story lines of the first Disney + Marvel TV series directly into past and future Marvel films, blurring yet another line pop-cultural: that between cinema and television.

While Marvel critics, and even fans of the Marvel cinematic universe, may see Marvel’s creative realm as something similar to a factory, given the amount of content ™ it produces, Schaeffer describes the creation process WandaVision as collaborative and inspiring. “It was a crazy mix of everything I love,” said Schaeffer during a recent phone call.

After the end of the series, Schaffer shared with Vulture the ways in which his vision informed WandaVision.

The basic premise for WandaVision was designed by Marvel’s creative director and MCU mentor Kevin Feige. He came up with the idea of ​​using the series to explore Wanda Maximoff’s pain, and with Wanda’s time travel (Elizabeth Olsen) and his synthetic love Vision (Paul Bettany) through classic sitcoms.

“They did an internal development on how that would be and how it would create the false reality,” says Schaeffer. “They downloaded that information for me, and I ruminated about it all and basically exposed what I thought for the season, breaking the episodes and what I saw as the essential arc of the series.”

The way WandaVision would tie into future future MCUs had also been basically mapped by Feige, but Schaeffer still had plenty of space to color between the lines. One approach she considered, and later abandoned, was to structure the penultimate episode, in which Wanda flashes back to her childhood in Sokovia, like a riff in CSI.

“As soon as we set up the writers ‘room and closely examined what the episodes would be like – and as you do in the writers’ room, everything is getting clearer, better and more adjusted – it became clear that the focus should be on the family and family, ”she says. “We wanted to be really bold in all of our influences and how we could consistently break the shape in a number of ways, but that required a measure of discipline so that it didn’t fly into outer space.”

Schaeffer’s previous experience was mainly on the cinema side, and she had never been a showrunner before. But given the fluid gender nature of WandaVision she wanted a mix of voices and points of view. Half of the writers were men and the other half were women, but counting on Schaeffer herself and producer Mary Livanos, she says the room was mostly female. The balance between Marvel’s obsessives and Marvel’s non-obsessives has also been divided equally.

“The writers in my office were all Marvel fans to varying degrees,” says Schaeffer. “Some people knew everything and leaned in that direction and others would be TV fans in general and just wanted to make an excellent show.”

As sitcoms were an important part of the series, she sought out people with experience writing for this type of program, as well as others.

“[I brought on] Bobak Esfarjani, who is a writer on Manifest, “She explains.“ Mackenzie Dohr was a writer for both The Mindy Project and Locke and Key. She has mythology work and a puzzle box, and she has sitcom work. Peter Cameron worked on Carnival Row. What I wanted more than anything was that if someone looked at everyone’s credits, they would have no idea what our show was about. That was a conscious choice. “

The pandemic caused some delays in the MCU’s launch schedule, particularly the postponement of Black Widowthe opening, which is now scheduled for May 7. This means that phase four of the MCU saga ended up being launched with WandaVision, which established that the Marvel Studios TV series will now have the same narrative weight as the films.

“What I feel is special about the MCU’s foray into television is that they are not approaching it with any distinction [between film and TV]”, Says Schaeffer. “It is just an opportunity to tell more than one story. They are applying the same amount of energy, dedication and budget to make the series and resources. “

The writing process, however, is not the same as that of cinema.

“It is an opportunity to tell an expanded story,” says Schaeffer. “For me, that translated into telling an emotionally expanded story, digging more with Wanda and Vision, and also seeing the mundane and relaxed moments, and not having a frenzy. That was very different. “

Just as Wanda manages to revisit the television that brought comfort as a child, Schaeffer’s work WandaVision allowed her to incorporate some of her favorite pop cultural influences, including programs like Lost, The Twilight Zone, and Incredible Stories and movies like Pleasantville, The Truman Show, Annihilationand, a really deep cut, the John Ritter comedy – Pam Dawber from 1992 Stay tuned, in which a couple is sucked into a version of hell, where they are forced to star in several nightmare TV shows.

“Throughout my life, I was also an avid sitcom observer,” she says. “The days of the week were defined by the programs that took place that night. Tuesday is Who is the boss and Growing PainsThursday is The Cosby Show – it was all very important to me. “

Schaeffer points to a key moment in the WandaVision finale as a specific nod to something that sitcoms usually do: “One of the tropes in the sitcom’s finale is to turn off the light – we’re leaving the house. In that final scene in which Vision turns on the light, that moment arises from those conversations about the farewell ”.

The sadness of the eventual final farewell between Wanda and Vision was foreshadowed in the penultimate episode. One particular line from that pre-final – “What is mourning but persistent love?” – caused quite a stir online. Like everything else in this project with a hybrid focus, the inspiration of the line came from several sources.

Although Laura Donney is the accredited writer for this episode, that specific stretch of the dialogue was not written until the cast and crew were preparing to film the scene where Wanda and Vision would have their grieving conversation.

“Paulo [Bettany] I kept talking about the line in Avengers: Age of Ultron, ‘Something is not beautiful because it lasts,’ ”recalls Schaeffer. “He went on to talk about how the Vision has the capacity, not being human, to make statements that define human experiences so eloquently. We were looking for, What is that? I wrote several versions of it and I still wasn’t getting it right. It was my assistant, who is also a very talented writer, who came up with the phrase “persevering” and it worked. I knew right away that this was it. It makes my heart swell with pride, because I think the line was born out of all the work that everyone did on this show. I didn’t expect you to be called. “

Schaeffer is aware that the line, and WandaVision as a whole, it may have touched a sore spot because so many people have suffered during the past year: for loved ones lost to COVID, for routines that have been destroyed, for the ability to see people in person and everything else, the pandemic has lifted. As the series was written in 2019 and mainly filmed before the virus shut things down – “We filmed about 75% of it before the pandemic,” says Schaeffer – it was a complete accident.

“A pandemic is not a gift. It is not something we want and nobody is happy with it ”, she says. “But there is a bizarre and beautiful symmetry and a serendipity in how the show debuted.”

And although she is very flattered by the people who praised WandaVision for his idiosyncratic approach to a Marvel story, his response to that compliment is, appropriately enough, to name another TV show.

“People say a lot of really wonderful things about our show and it’s so innovative and it’s so original and it breaks the rules,” she says. “My answer to that is: go and sit and watch I can destroy you. “

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