Yash Varma ’24
Contributor
Beginning Phase Four of the astounding Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), WandaVision offers fans a fun and emotional season of television. With tongue-in-cheek references to old sitcoms to exploring Wanda’s grief, this show offered a lot to casual viewers, and hardcore Marvel fans alike, kicking off a new era for Marvel. Spoilers ahead!
Let’s be honest, the show was confusing at first. Sitcoms? Vision is alive? In the third episode, however, Monica Rambeau, daughter of Maria Rambeau (first seen in Captain Marvel), was thrown out of Wanda’s reality to the SWORD retreat base. In the next episode, we get a better understanding of how Monica ended up in Wanda’s fake reality (AKA the Hex) as well as meeting some familiar faces: Jimmy Woo and Darcy Lewis.
With the passing of each episode, we get a better sense of how the Hex compares to the real world. At a point it seemed like Wanda was the villain; however, it was revealed the Hex was made solely out of Wanda’s grief about her traumatic life having seen the death of her family and her lover Vision. The sitcom stylings of her Hex-world were influenced by the types of shows she watched in her youth which created her vision of a perfect life. She lives this perfect, yet fabricated, life with her fabricated husband and fabricated children.
Each new episode represents a new decade of sitcoms and television, starting from the first episode set in the 1950s and finishing in the sixth episode being in the 2000s. The following episode focused on Wanda’s past as Agatha Harkness tried to discover how Wanda was able to use her power to make such a complex and unique reality. Harkness finishes the episode by branding Wanda ‘The Scarlet Witch’ (Wanda Maximoff’s alter ego in Marvel Comics), shortly before the episode concluded with that obnoxious “please stand by” screen.
With the exciting build-up spanning these seven episodes, fans were expecting so much from the last one. Unfortunately, it disappointed many. Key plot elements were either overlooked, altered, or ignored completely. In terms of horrible alterations, take Quicksilver. The most significant example of this was when the ambitious Evan Peters’s Quicksilver was turned into a vulgar joke, disregarding any potential plotline that could have been connected to the X-Men or the Multiverse.
Additionally, Darcy Lewis’s presence was also significantly lacking. The final episode of Wanda Vision was not awful, but disappointing to those who expected better. WandaVision, compared to another Disney Plus show’s season finale, The Mandalorian, failed in all the places that The Mandalorian succeeded.
Overall, this was an amazing show. It outlined that Wanda was indeed a hero, having released the citizens of her reality when she found out they were being tortured, making her give up the life she dreamed of. I am a little bummed out that it may only be receiving one season, but regardless, it was amazing. WandaVision certainly has made a mark on a new era of television, setting a precedent for years to come.
Photo Credit: Disney Studios
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