WandaVision (miniseries) (2021)

Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Kathryn Hahn, Teyonah Parris, Josh Stamberg, Randall Park, Kat Dennings, Evan Peters, Debra Jo Rupp, and Fred Melamed
Grade: C+

Casual Marvel fans may be pretty clueless walking into this show (and out of it) but more than likely, the only people watching this are superfans. Depending on what category you fall into, this may influence your decision on how much you will like or appreciate WandaVision.

Summary

Taking place in a mysterious setting resembling the neighborhood of a 1950s sitcom (complete with a black-and-white presentation), we see superheroes Wanda Maximoff (Olsen) and Vision (Bettany) trying to live a normal married life while concealing their real identities and abilities from neighbors, friends, and co-workers. Neighbor and bored housewife Agnes (Hahn) becomes an early confidant of Wanda and seems to always be in the area to make some cheesy joke about her own marriage. The first episode ends with someone in the current modern-day world watching the first episode of “WandaVision”.

More of the mystery unravels in each episode as to why they are in this setting, where exactly is this place, and why the people around them are acting like they are in a sitcom. Even Wanda and Vision seem clueless as to what is going on, though Wanda (as we find out) isn’t as innocent as she makes herself out to be.

At the conclusion of the second episode, “Don’t Touch That Dial“, we see more important things happening. Wanda becomes miraculously pregnant towards the end of the episode and after seeing a beekeeper appear from the sewer, Wanda says “No” aloud. Then, she changes the ending of the episode to a few minutes prior, officially turning the show to color as a result, giving us a happier, less mysterious ending. Also, during this episode, we hear the voice of someone on a radio, asking Wanda who is doing all of this. Thirdly, we are introduced to the character of Geraldine (Parris) who befriends Wanda during a committee meeting for the neighborhood’s talent show.

The mystery continues to unfold as each episode progresses, with the aesthetic of the episode changing to a new sitcom format to represent a change in the decade. Basically, each episode represents a decade of sitcom television. For example, the third episode (“Now in Color“) looks and feels like an episode of The Brady Bunch and has a 70s aesthetic, while in the sixth episode (“All-New Halloween Spooktacular!“), the show looks and feels like an episode of Malcolm in the Middle, complete with a 90s vibe to it.

In the episode “Now in Color“, Wanda’s pregnancy develops rapidly and moves from four months to six months to eventually being close to labor. At the end of that episode, Geraldine helps deliver Wanda’s twins in Wanda’s house, even though she initially came by to borrow a bucket because the pipes at her house burst, not realizing it was caused by Wanda’s powers during her contractions. Afterwards, Geraldine talks with Wanda, and she mentions her brother Pietro. Geraldine slips up and mentions how he was killed by Ultron years back, something she shouldn’t know. Wanda changes her tone once Geraldine tries to backtrack, but Wanda knows something is up. Wanda also notices the pendant Geraldine is wearing has the emblem of a sword on it. Eventually, Vision comes back into the house, with Wanda telling Geraldine to leave. At the end of the episode, we Geraldine back in the current, modern-day world where the government agency S.W.O.R.D. (Sentient Weapon Observation Response Division) picks her up. In the fourth episode, the aptly named “We Interrupt This Program“, we get some background on the “Geraldine” character in prequel-like fashion. She’s actually Captain Monica Rambeau, an agent of S.W.O.R.D. At the beginning of this episode, she returns from the infamous “Blip” caused by Thanos from “The Infinity Saga” and reappears in a hospital, only to find out that her mother, Maria “Photon” Rambeau from Captain Marvel, died three years ago.

Sometime later, she goes right back to work and heads straight to the S.W.O.R.D. facility to meet with acting director Tyler Hayward (Josh Stamberg). He sends her on a missing person’s case in Westview, New Jersey because she can only work terrestrial missions for the time being because of a rule put in place by her mother, who was the founder of S.W.O.R.D.

Rambeau meets up with the FBI Agent from Ant-Man and the Wasp, Jimmy Woo (Park), for the case. Woo introduces Rambeau to two local cops from the area where they claim Westview doesn’t exist and that they are both from “Eastview”. After sending a drone into the town, they watch as it disappears into thin air. So, Rambeau goes forward and notices there is some sort of energy field covering the town. She touches it and is sucked in, explaining how she became a “character” of sorts in the sitcom world Wanda and Vision are inhabiting. A day later, numerous experts in different fields are brought in, including Dr. Darcy Lewis (Dennings) from the Thor franchise. She discovers that CMBR (Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation) is covering the field, and it was mixed in with a broadcast frequency. With her equipment, she is able to get a visual of what’s going on in the sitcom town Wanda created. They hook everything up to an old TV, and Hayward comes over with Woo (who are both heading up the manhunt to find Rambeau) to observe Darcy’s findings. Additionally, an agent is sent into the sewer to sneak into Wanda’s sitcom town from under them. Now, the combined agencies have to figure out a way to save Rambeau, figure out what the endgame is of Wanda and Vision, and save all the people trapped in this town.

After doing initial research of finding out who the real people are that are cast as “characters” in Wanda’s “show”, they finally see the episode where “Geraldine” is introduced, revealing to them that Rambeau is alive and well. Then, we see that the agent that was sent into the sewer to infiltrate the place turns into a beekeeper once he unknowingly passes through the energy field (making sense of the mysterious “beekeeper” we saw appear at the end of “Don’t Touch That Dial“). At the same time, we see Woo and Darcy try to reach Wanda through radio (also from what we saw during that previous episode). Though Wanda stops in her tracks once she hears it, the show cuts the feed and goes back to normal like it never happened. Someone is censoring the broadcast, presumably it’s Wanda. The same thing happens when they watch the feed of when “Geraldine” mentions Ultron to Wanda. The feed is cut to the “ending” of that episode. However, what actually happened in Wanda’s sitcom town was Wanda literally throwing Rambeau out of her house and out of the energy field entirely, unmasking her as an outsider. This prequel-like episode brings us up to speed to set us up for the rest of the series, but it’s just the beginning. Things will get much crazier from here.

My Thoughts:

WandaVision is Marvel’s first foray into the miniseries game. I like this idea. There are a lot of characters with stories to tell that may not have gotten a lot of love in the ensemble films they’ve appeared in. On top of that, not everyone deserves a solo movie. With that being said, a show about them isn’t entirely unreasonable. If things succeed (and they have so far), we can see a lot of the lesser mainstream characters get chances to show modern audiences that there is much more to the Marvel Cinematic Universe than Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Captain America.

This show focuses on Wanda Maximoff and the Vision, two characters in the MCU that are somewhat important to the overall story arc but nobody’s favorite. Vision was big in Avengers: Age of Ultron and had moments in other Avengers movies where he did shine, despite all of the other stars alongside him. Unfortunately, Wanda has always been an afterthought. The biggest positive coming out of WandaVision was the character development of Wanda herself. Finally, after seeing this character for SEVEN YEARS, I actually gave a damn about her.

Yes, it took that long.

Seeing how important she is now (because of this show) has only made me realize how average of a job they did with her in all of the previous Avengers films. Here, they finally made Wanda a character worthy of the power we are told she possesses. In the process however, Vision becomes fairly unimportant, mainly serving as a plot device to make sense of Wanda’s psyche and mental breakdown. The reason I can’t knock off too many points for that reason is because despite this toned-down version of Vision, his character arc/story is essentially done. He’s more here to reinforce the storied love between the two, giving us a real romantic storyline that we haven’t seen in previous MCU productions up until this point. We have love interests in each movie that can be fun and cute at times, but WandaVision‘s focus is centered around their love. To see what I mean, check out the scene between Wanda and Vision in the Avengers compound during the “Previously On” episode. If you want to see love in its purest and understated form, this was it. Within the MCU, we haven’t seen romance done this well before. This is Vision’s purpose. More importantly though, he is used for Wanda’s development, as she tries to get over her former husband’s death (by bringing him back to life in a way). Yes, his name is in the title of the show, but this stretched out, nine-episode miniseries is showing why Wanda Maximoff has become the person she is regardless of her help against Thanos, where her character will go in the future, and why she is a big deal in the overall story of the MCU and Phase Four.

Vision is vital to the show because he’s very important to Wanda and why she does the things she does, but the character is considerably less important than what the title suggests. This is just a heads up for fans out there.

The style of the show is off-the-charts cool. The idea of having this show play out a sitcom-like scenario with two superheroes as the stars and actually making sense of it all is awesome, especially for us lovers of nostalgia. It really shows how creative Marvel can still be. Many have complained about how comic book films/shows have to follow the same format and that’s why they are starting to lose their luster, but WandaVision shows us how different stylistically a comic book adaptation can still be. The attention to detail was also first-rate. The series seamlessly plays homage to sitcoms through the years and perfectly recreates the setting they’re trying to emulate. We see this not only with the visuals, but the picture-perfect acting and writing too, really capturing how sitcoms used to be, all the way to today. This is what made the acting so impressive, especially with star Elizabeth Olsen. As we see her portray a Mary Tyler Moore-like character from The Dick Van Dyke Show-inspired first episode, “Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience“, we see the show pay homage to Bewitched in the second episode where she absolutely embodies Elizabeth Montogomery’s Samantha Stephens, a fellow witch no less. This is where I really started to notice Olsen’s incredible talent in recreating these characters and the style of acting WandaVision is trying to remind us of.

In this episode, Olsen shows us through certain facial expressions, energy exuded, and responses both in her body language and spoken words that she plucked almost every trait needed straight from the classic sitcom to encapsulate the era they’re replicating. She did her homework and because of her nuanced and detailed performance throughout this show, she managed to really win me over for the first time since we were introduced to Wanda in 2015’s Age of Ultron. We’ve seen the 1950s housewife character being parodied before, and she nailed it without question. Nevertheless, seeing her move to each decade-centric show and immaculately recreating that type of energy/character she needed to represent the era of each episode was magnificent. By the time they’re doing a replica of Modern Family in the seventh episode, “Breaking the Fourth Wall“, I honestly couldn’t believe how we started and how we ended. Yes, this is a thought that comes up when you finish any television show, but this time around it meant so much more. This is because it feels like you go through sixty years of television in only seven of the nine episodes.

Olsen was also able to jump out of her sitcom “character” into the conflicted supernatural being that is Wanda Maximoff with ease. The transformation she endures, and how well Olsen handles it, is her most impressive work to date. She goes from being an innocent wife that wants her husband to be happy, to a loving and carrying mother willing to do anything for her family, to reverting to the superhero that helped the Avengers, and finally, to a supervillain (despite it not being her intention) that enslaved an entire town to live out her fantasy life. I know that last part sounded rough and irredeemable on paper, but it’s so much more than that. Technically yes, that last part is a villainous act because all of the people were forced into the situation and are being controlled like pawns in a game, but this is what makes this story so compelling. Wanda, a superhero suffering more loss than anyone, has not had enough time to cope with the amount of devastation in her life. Even in the MCU movies, very little time is devoted to her grieving. Though to be fair, they were at war and more important characters were focused on. Someone has to fall behind in character development and importance and she was one of them. Don’t worry though, they’re making up for it here.

During her childhood, her parents died because of a bombing in her home country of war-torn Sokovia. Her brother, the last bit of family she had left, was killed by Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron and her husband, Vision, was killed by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War. That is a lot of death in very little time. Plus, they were all killed in the most brutal ways possible. Suffering from this much loss and no one to talk to about it can take a toll on someone who’s dealt with hell since childhood. As we learn more and more about Wanda, it seems that the last time she felt truly happy (besides being with Vision in her adulthood) was when she was a child with her family. When you look back on it, marriage to the one you love is a beautiful thing but if we’re being honest, nothing is better than being a kid and being with your family when you felt like you had no real problems in life, mostly because your parents would deal with it. A theme touched on a lot in the show is to always cherish your family and never take it for granted, something many of us don’t do until it’s too late. In the “Previously On” episode, easily the best episode of the miniseries, we see Wanda and Agnes watch Wanda’s life live like a television show, going through specific traumatic events that have happened to her which shaped who she is. The moment that stands out the most was the scene of her childhood in Sokovia. Wanda stands in shock, knowing immediately that the downtrodden apartment they are in is her former home.

As we see her suppress tears of joy when she sees her parents and younger brother as a child again, you get goosebumps. It’s a delicate and emotional sequenced handled very well. Despite this being some broken-down apartment in some destroyed part of an Eastern European country where you can hear the shootings outside on the daily, this is a loving home, and you can feel it.

Wanda takes this opportunity to transform into her child-self to re-live this memory one last time, and you become entrenched in this beautiful moment, even though you know it will end in catastrophe. This is where we see that to practice their English, the family watches all of these sitcoms on bootleg DVDs, making sense as to why Wanda created a sitcom world to live in. It was the last time she felt happy and comfortable. That feeling of togetherness was centered around television. Television with her family was her “out” in life. It’s ironic that this scene is the least aesthetically pleasing setting in the show, but it’s still the most beautiful because of what it represents. It meant more than all of the superficial colors and imagery presented throughout the series. This real feeling of watching your own memory, being with your family the last time everyone was alive and in the same room together, is what made it so heartwarming and invigorating. This is where WandaVision grabs you in terms of emotion, something that only happens a handful of times in the series (these flashbacks with Wanda and Agnes, the opening return from the “Blip” with Rambeau, and the ending).

If you could do it, wouldn’t you?

This is a question asked of us numerous times throughout the series even if it wasn’t explicitly said, and it’s something we struggle with constantly during the duration of the show. In that specific flashback, most of us would do anything to re-live such a happy memory. In “The Series Finale“, Captain Rambeau admits she understands why Wanda did what she did because if she had the ability, she would’ve brought her mom back. It’s hard to fault Wanda for this because if we had a chance to bring our loved one’s back, a lot of us would, no matter the consequences. Dealing with grief in such a twisted and convoluted way is a tough one to get over with such an unsuspecting Marvel audience that probably thought they were walking into something entirely different when WandaVision was first announced, but they really do pull it off.

Unfortunately, it took FOREVER to get there.

As cool as it was to see the old sitcom format, they didn’t need to drag it out to do an entire episode. We get the point within the first ten minutes, but the first two episodes were just full episodes of this fake sitcom, and it dragged on. I don’t care about Vision’s fake job or the neighborhood talent show. The mystery of it all was interesting, but there was no need to drag it on for as long as they did just to give us a few moments where things seemed strange. I can appreciate a slow burn if handled well but to do that, more still needed to happen to warrant a half-hour episode. By the time the second episode was over, it felt like they were just showing off how well they recaptured the sitcom era they were doing. There was no plot development, only an ungodly amount of filler. This was evident. There was no need to stretch this out to nine episodes. They could’ve easily gotten this thing done in a swift five episodes that went a bit longer, or a two-hour Disney+ special. In its current format, it drags. It truly felt like nothing eventful happens until the fourth episode.

Is everything really interesting before this fourth episode? Definitely!

However, they only allude to certain things. Nothing comes of it, only giving us the payoff of all these small details in the latter half of the series. For instance, my eyes widened when we see the tonal change in Wanda’s expression and speech when “Geraldine” mentions Pietro in “Now in Color“. I was literally thinking, “Oh shit! Something wild is about to happen”, but we don’t actually see what happened to “Geraldine” until late in the next episode. The slow burn would be okay if more things happened to keep our interest, but nothing ever did. They would establish some characters, go through a full episode of some nonsensical, remarkably corny sitcom plot, and then something strange would happen. This is the formula for the first three episodes and unless you’re an absolute freak, it gets a little boring. Thankfully, Marvel has the “out” of being a part of Disney+ because if this was a regular show on TV, it might have gotten cancelled before the thing was over due to lack of interest. It picks up later on in the series, but it takes a long ass time.

I understand building up anticipation, but holy hell!

At some point, it just felt like they wanted to waste time to fill those nine episodes. Not once did I feel like it was truly necessary for the show to go on for that long, especially in the sitcom format. This is why I’d never rewatch WandaVision because it would be that unbearable. It was a cool idea to set the tone, but they needed to establish where the story was going quicker and not elongate things because they fell in love with their own concept. Also, were the commercials necessary? It made sense for the aesthetic in the first episode, but did we really need one for each episode? What did that exactly accomplish, other than giving super fans something to snicker at because some of the references were callbacks to things that happened in previous MCU endeavors?

There are also certain plot points that weren’t explained enough that still left me a bit confused. Wanda created this fake sitcom land and somehow Agnes got herself included, revealing to the audience she is actually a witch named Agatha Harkness. Some have said this was a big spoiler, but I disagree. You could tell she was going to have a major role from the first episode, so when it was revealed, I just nodded, “Yes, that makes sense”. I’m not sure why Twitter went nuts when it happened.

Anyway, why does she demand Wanda show her how she created the fake town? Clearly, Agatha is much more in-tune with her powers and has been pulling the strings up until this point, so why does it matter what Wanda went through in the past? Who gives a fuck as to why or how she is controlling the town if Agatha has this much power to begin with? How does Agatha benefit from this situation? All she does is help create the monster that is the Scarlet Witch. I understand she wants the “chaos magic” Wanda possesses, but she could’ve just taken that from her when she was rendered powerless in Agatha’s basement. Going through the whole “This is Your Life” segment was cool and everything in understanding Wanda, but I just don’t get why the villain needed to go this route. How could she not see that pissing off Wanda wasn’t going to get her what she wants? Also, even with Kathryn Hahn’s underrated performance, did anyone actually feel like Agatha was a threat? Even with the big climactic fight, there wasn’t a single moment where I felt Wanda was in any danger of losing.

Captain Monica Rambeau was an interesting supporting character and the opening sequence on “We Interrupt This Program” was a phenomenal way to wake us up, especially for those that are binge-watching. In Spider-Man: Far From Home, we see a comedic take on people returning from the infamous “Blip” but seeing it in a serious manner was riveting to watch unfold and a lot more realistic. We don’t know much about her but by the end of that sequence, we can see she’s a burgeoning star. They did a solid job in establishing her in the MCU, but her becoming a superhero out of nowhere felt forced, rushed, and nonsensical. She wasn’t even a factor in the climax either, so it felt more like a setup for future Marvel projects instead of making her an important part of WandaVision, which should’ve been the focus. Including Evan Peters to play Pietro/Quicksilver, who played the superior Quicksilver in the X-Men franchise over at Fox, was awesome to see as a fan. It opened up a world of possibilities and theories. Unfortunately, they picked the worst one, and it led to a boner joke after all that build up. I guess his inclusion served the purpose of the story they were doing but in doing so, it almost cheapened everything he did in the X-Men franchise as a result. With this decision, Disney basically told us that the multiverse isn’t going to go that far to include our favorite mutants. Even so, Peters is still a delight as Pietro.

The man is naturally funny and what he did here was showcase how it’s a damn shame he wasn’t the MCU’s Quicksilver in the first place. Then again, he would’ve died in the same movie he was introduced, so maybe we all got lucky he went to the X-Men franchise anyway. He was a major highlight of those later movies in the series. In WandaVision, his rapport with everyone was a lot of fun to watch. When Wanda questions where his Sokovian accent is and he responds with, “What happened to yours?”, I actually laughed. Where did her accent go? He was great and a perfect surprise casting choice for the show (and he played the perfect “fun” uncle). I’m sad his role’s payoff became a joke.

I did like the decision to bring back some supporting characters from previous MCU movies like Darcy Lewis and Jimmy Woo. If you got good enough actors in the smaller supporting roles, you should be able to use them again as the MCU continues to grow, especially if they’re available. The characters didn’t seem forced into the story either. It makes sense why they were needed. One thing that did stand out however was the scene in which the two try to contact Wanda in her world through radio. When Woo reaches her, Wanda visibly stops in her tracks, but the episode reverts back to normal, with Darcy coming to the conclusion that someone (Wanda) is censoring the broadcast. This begs the question as to why she is so quick to say they failed, and the mission is over. She saw Wanda reacted to the radio message, so why does she downplay the whole thing as “failing”? This mission was a success. Now, they have to build on it! Why does she act like it was no big deal and tells Woo to forget about it?

Oh, that’s right…they have nine episodes to fill.

If they realized this radio idea worked, they could cut out at least an episode to save everyone some time. It becomes harder and harder to enjoy the show because you know you’re just waiting for another big moment where they finally tell us what’s happening, something that doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should.

Ending on a positive note, the finale was beautiful and heart-wrenching. Acceptance is the hardest part about death and seeing Wanda reach that level in those final moments was poetic, capping off the best love story the MCU has ever told. You may argue it but once you watch WandaVision, you’ll be thinking the same thing when it’s all over. The annoying part is that the twist ending in the post-credits scene almost cheapened the meaning of the ENTIRE show just to set us up for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

WandaVision represented how we always attribute nostalgia to being happy. This is why we tend to remember our favorite shows from back in the day as being the greatest and how nothing now can measure up to it. Truthfully, the reason we like a lot of shows when we were younger was because we were happy at the time. The nostalgia escape is something else. Lately, we’ve seen countless revivals of old shows and sequels to movies made decades ago to try and recapture the days when all of us were happy. Nostalgia is at an all-time high for a reason. WandaVision came out at the perfect time to capitalize on it, and I have to give them credit for that. Seeing them recreate The Dick Van Dyke Show and Bewitched in black-and-white and then switching to color to recreate The Brady Bunch, Full House, Malcolm in the Middle, and even Modern Family (among many other shows) was a lot of fun to watch unfold. The aesthetics shaped the show and the mystery behind it all was something I wanted to know badly, but it just didn’t measure up to the extensive buildup.

I don’t think everything worked necessarily, but I still think the MCU should pursue this kind of creativity and outside-the-box thinking more often, in terms of style and story, to keep fans guessing and keep things fresh. The themes touched on in pursuit of making Wanda Maximoff a star was handled very well. Grief, trauma, family, death, and acceptance aren’t things usually focused on for a project like this, but it’s what makes WandaVision so different, other than the stylistic choices everyone will remember from it. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of major positives coming out of the show. The goal of making Wanda a character I actually enjoy seeing was accomplished. Sadly, there were so many missteps, confusing angles, forced points, baffling decisions, and dragged-out parts that bring the production down as a whole that I couldn’t let it go. For all the good coming out of it, you can’t help but feel like it was stretched out in the fashion it was just to give Disney+ more original content at a time when they needed it.

Being the MCU’s first endeavor into the streaming show category, WandaVision wasn’t going to be perfect. Nevertheless, the show has a lot of special moments that will be remembered fondly by Marvel fans for years to come. This is a promise.