It’s been quite a long wait for Marvel fans who have been waiting since the release of Spider-Man Far From Home in 2019 for the next chapter in the MCU saga. Of course 2020 was 2020 and everything got delayed, and we’ll still have longer to wait to get the likes of Black Widow, Loki and Falcon on the Winter Soldier.
But of all the Marvel projects in this next phase of the MCU, Wandavision has been something of a mystery and oddity all rolled into one. There have been trailers which showed us that this was going to be something different from everything else we’d experienced from the MCU, and now that Disney+ has launched these debut two episodes everyone around the world has been united in the response of ‘yup this is different’.
If you’re a huge Marvel fan you may go along for the ride no matter what they presented, and if you’re a fan of the comic books you will probably have a larger sense of what is going on in WandaVision than most of the casual fans. However, if you’re like a majority of the people who have added to the two billion dollars that Avengers Endgame brought in, because let’s face it, the majority of that money isn’t just from hardcore comic fans, you’ll be instantly confused as to what on earth is going on in WandaVision.
The first two episodes debuted to watch together, and for the purposes of this review I will talk about the offering of two episodes together. These episodes are radically different from anything that has been part of the MCU before with the most notable differences being that the episodes are in black and white and they feature a laugh track. Wanda and the Vision are presented as a married couple in a 1950s American setting, and if you didn’t know this was related to Marvel, you would just think these were old episodes of Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie.
The first episode primarily deals with Wanda and Vision dealing with cross wires of what a heart means marked on their calendar. Wanda assumes it’s their anniversary and plans a candle lit night of passion, whilst Vision discovers that the heart on the calendar refers to a dinner he and Wanda have to throw for his boss. This is a typical story type that would have come in something like Bewitched.
As a homage to this era of American sitcoms, WandaVision is really quite accurate. From the imposing neighbour to the overly stiff boss, most things are spot on with what they are trying to emulate, however here is where one of the concerns with this show lies. Personally I was a fan of Bewitched, and whilst this show is a much better remake of Bewitched than the Will Ferrell movie, I did have to ask myself whether I’d actually want to watch this if this was a straight up new take on I Dream of Jeannie, or if that would just be something I’d pass on watching nowadays. If you came here expecting this to fit into what we have been given so far from the MCU, this could easily be seen as a baffling disappointment.
Imagine a 10 year old who loves Hulk and Spider-Man is excited to see the new adventures of Scarlet Witch and it’s just about her struggling to cook dinner with her magical mutant powers. It’s easy to understand why some viewers have declared this a misfire. At the same time however, if this were The Simpsons or Family Guy which had taken their regular characters and presented an episode in black and white mimicking an old show we’d probably be far more accepting.
The problem with WandaVision, if you see it as such, is this whole 1950s sitcom thing is just a plot device which is blatantly a case of ‘more to it than it seems’. In fact of all the shows where there is more to it than it seems, this 1950s setting, black and white presentation and laughter track are so incredibly different it’s obvious that there has to be more to this than it seems. But this is where they have made a slight mistake. By things being so obviously not what it seems, the creators of the show have totally underplayed giving the audience clues to what may really be going on. When we watched the show Lost we would get wrapped up in the mysteries that the show constantly hinted at but refused to uncover. They got the level of tease right to get people hooked in working out what was really going on. WandaVision is a victim of playing it’s deception to well and I’ve spoken to at least one person I know who gave up during the first episode as they didn’t quite get that it was a sequel to the Avengers and just thought it was an old style sitcom about an alien.
I’m confident in the series that when we get further into it all that we’ll all be so into the unfolding mystery that we’ll go back and watch these first two episodes to see the clues that we’re hidden in plain sight and enjoy the episodes with extra layers of meaning. As it is though the clues in these episodes were few and far between and often subtle.
Wanda and the Vision both become aware that they don’t know how they met or how long they’ve been together giving them the sense that things are not right within the world they are in. They both do seem to just accept their superhuman abilities and Vision flips back and forth between looking like his usual red self and his human Paul Bettany form. We also see a few Pleasantville style glimpses of objects in colour. From a blinking red light which is literally blink and you’ll miss it to a more obvious red toy helicopter in episode 2 and some red blood we start to see that things are wrong in the world of Wanda and Vis.
The big elephant in the room for fans of the Avengers is that Vision was killed in The Avengers Infinity War…twice. First by Wanda herself as the only Avenger who could destroy the Soul stone lodged in Vision’s forehead, only for Vision to be brought back by Thanos using the Time stone to bring Vision and the stone back so he could literally rip it out of Vision’s head, killing him far more brutally. So if Vision died (twice) how can he still be alive?
The most obvious answer is that this whole scenario is in some way taking place in Wanda’s mind, but that wouldn’t explain why we see scenes where the focus is just on Vision. How can these be explained as part of Wanda’s thoughts if she is not present and seemingly unaware of what Vis has been up to?
The end of the first episode showed the show being watched on an old TV by someone who is in full colour and gave instant vibes of Dr Claw from inspector Gadget. The second episode which focused on Wanda and Vis taking part in a talent contest where a gum-drunk vision was acting oddly whilst they used their powers to wow the crowd ended with their world becoming in full colour. This change is a huge twist in what we’d seen in these first two episodes and is a sign that we can probably expect more changes as the world around Wanda and Vision continues to evolve and modernise.
This reveal of colour came after Wanda suddenly appeared pregnant and then we see a man dressed as a bee keeper coming out of a hatch (just like Lost all mystery shows need a hatch). How any of these elements fit together is still a total mystery, and it’ll be interesting to see what the answers the show runners have in store for us are. I do feel that if they were going for a Trueman or Matrix style artificial world that the main characters aren’t aware that they exist within, but it all starts to unfold around them, that after 1 hour of storytelling they should have done at least a little more to clue us in. But for what this is, for this reviewer I can say that I am willing to be fully on board with what the MCU has to offer as I trust this will work out and be something well worth my time investment.
Time will ultimately tell if this show is a hit or miss, and I’m willing to adjust my review score when we have the greater context of these episodes with what is coming to follow. For now though I give these a 3 out of 5. It’s good and enjoyable, but not spectacular, and if what is to follow doesn’t deliver our opinion of this unusual beginning may soon alter.
