I am not an advocate of comic book movies and TV shows, especially Marvel’s. While they are fun, they can be a little empty and become tasteless over time. I planned never to watch another Marvel property again Avengers: Endgame, but then came WandaVision. I was intrigued.
For those familiar with the Marvel cinematic universe, the program’s premise and early episodes seem like an important starting point. Marvel has dedicated entire films to tell the story of the origin of a particular character, but it opens WandaVision putting two Avengers in a strange place and in the wrong decade without explanation. The films take superheroes on missions to dark corners of outer space, but the show is confined to a small town in New Jersey.
The films are action films full of explosions and battles. But in WandaVisionIn the first episode, viewers are presented with a 1950s sitcom starring Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany). Wait what? Wanda, a sorceress with superpowers, and Vision, an AI android whose body is made of vibranium, arrived at the MCU in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Later, they fell in love. But (spoiler alert!) Vision died on Endgame, so what is he doing alive and well in the 1950s with Wanda and boring office work?
At first, it seems that even Wanda and Vision are not sure. They fail in polite conversation when dinner guests ask benign questions about their past. They know they are different – Wanda shamelessly signals to Vision to transform from her android self into a human on her way out the door, and we see that even the superpowers cannot help her in the kitchen – but the first few episodes have none. context as to why they are living in a small town in the past, or why time keeps skipping.
The second episode takes place in the 1960s and, as time goes by, the illusion begins to falter. In her sadness, Wanda, in ways she doesn’t understand, has brought Vision back to life and turned a small town in New Jersey into an idyllic comedy setting where they can play house. But the viewer begins to understand that there is more to the series: strange objects and people appear, and we discover how closed the city of Westview is.
This is perhaps the most mature entry into the MCU canon, with Wanda’s grief and Wanda and Vision’s home life serving as the focus of the show, while some vague and recurring oddities eventually turn into a complete mystery. The show does away with the typical pitfalls of a superhero movie, avoiding even a basic model of heroes and villains – viewers do not learn the identity of “great evil” until the seventh episode of season nine. And while we must find Wanda likable, she is clearly no longer a hero: she somehow hijacked an entire city and is forcibly controlling the minds of its residents to make them play with her fantasy.
Although the show is fun and even attractive at times, it still gives way to the construction of the corporate world that came to define the MCU. There is an abundance of fan service and nods to the comics and, especially in later episodes, the show’s focus on its own storyline deviates.
There has been a lot of discussion about the “implications” of various creative decisions about the show, which serve to set up the Dr. Strange sequence: how a casting decision offers a peek into the Marvel multiverse, how a character apparently acquiring superpowers can be a prelude to his own possible films, as the focus on magic can mean that Marvel’s magical properties will join the MCU, as a subtle retcon is configuring the X-Men. WandaVision it cannot be a property in its own right, yet it must connect and pave the way for other Marvel properties.
While WandaVision it can be an intriguing program, but also deeply frustrating. It serves as a subtle reminder that pop culture can be more than what we have experienced in recent years and a not-so-subtle reminder of how franchising can pervert the art of cinema. If this were an independent show, where writers were not limited by the MCU’s past and forced to plan their future, how would the show have been different? It is a testament to the strength of the creative team members behind WandaVision that they make the show work as well as it does, even with Disney forcing them into a creative corner. I suspect that with more freedom the show would have been even better.
WandaVision shows that the audience can and appreciates the complexity of what they watch, that they don’t need a big show and emptiness CGI fight scenes to stay invested. Perhaps – I hope – the studios will begin to realize that such depth can be enjoyed without a superhero varnish.