WandaVision, the first new property in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in over a year, debuted like a breath of fresh air. It’s not just that it was the MCU TV debut for a post-Loeb world, finally leaving behind the moribund dourness of Daredevil and Iron Fist. The first couple episodes were charming and fascinating. The sitcom references felt like they went beyond pastiche. They dropped bits of eerie out-of-nowhere horror, reminiscent of Too Many Cooks, and left them un- (or at least under-)explained. But as the series progressed, its weaknesses became more evident. And those weaknesses are built into seemingly everything the MCU does.
Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience
Part of the ‘hook’ of the series is Wanda and Vision living in a broken sitcom world. The first three episodes track the couple over the course of three different decades of sitcom history. The pilot played on The Dick van Dyke Show. Later episodes pulled heavily from Modern Family, Bewitched, and other sitcom staples.
In each, Wanda and Vision lived as a married couple in a quiet suburb, hiding their powers from their neighbors and coworkers. The series combined wacky superpower hijinks with a lingering sense of dread, of wrongness. It was a potent and memorable combination. While comparisons to David Lynch were obviously overblown, it was nevertheless a striking creative decision that really resonated with people.
And it gave Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany a chance to stretch as actors in a way they never got to in the Avengers films. It turns out: They’re funny! Like, legit, laugh-out-loud funny, given the right material. “Don’t Touch That Dial,” the second episode, veered from charming (the neighborhood watch) to offputting (the planning committee) to hilarious (the magic show) and truly eerie (the beekeeper) in a single thirty minute episode, largely on the backs of Bettany and Olsen. With a structure intended to subvert sitcoms and a great cast, the first three episodes were excellent.
We Interrupt This Program
The problems start to overtake the show with episode four. In the previous episode, Teyoneh Parris had been ‘expelled’ from Westview. There we saw that what was happening here was not going unnoticed by the outside world. Wanda hadn’t created an alternate reality. She took over a small town in New Jersey. And so we track Teyoneh Parris’ Monica Rambeau from the finale of Avengers: Endgame to the end of WandaVision‘s third episode. She learns of her mother’s death. She tries to get her old job at SWORD back. And she begins to investigate… whatever, precisely, is happening in Westview.
The show gets… creaky here. Parris is a phenomenal actor, so she holds it together. Past MCU bit players like Kat Dennings and Randall Park return. But the MCU’s well-documented fetishization of the American military (and militarism in general) are a jarring counterpoint. Here we see the same sterile office buildings and briefing rooms we’ve seen a thousand times before in the MCU. The same archetypes recur, and the same kinds of scenarios.
As I watched the episode, I was struck by how… unnecessary it was. I didn’t particularly care about what was happening outside of Westview previously, and WandaVision did nothing to sell me on caring about it here. It was clear from the first three episodes that the series was about Wanda’s undealt-with trauma over Vision’s death. So why take the focus from that conflict? What do we learn about her from this?
Nothing. We just get an explanation.
Previously On
The explanations don’t end there. In WandaVision‘s eighth episode, it tries to explain… well, everything. Why the sitcoms? How did Wanda get so powerful? While there are moments of excellent writing and acting that finally make Wanda and Vision’s relationship more believable, overall… well, it’s answering questions that didn’t really need to be asked. Or at least, that wouldn’t need to be asked — if not for the ‘shared universe’ problem.
See, there’s a reason most MCU movies look the same. There’s a reason the style of action, lighting, and costuming doesn’t really change from film to film. That reason is the idea of a ‘shared cinematic universe,’ of a superfranchise in which spin-offs, sequels, prequels, and side projects all coexist and support one another. If WandaVision existed on its own, it could really explore the way we process trauma through pop culture. It wouldn’t need to have a section set in the ‘real world’ because the reality of the show would be the real world. To put it another way, Fringe didn’t regularly cut to a group of unrelated people watching the adventures of Olivia and Peter and reassuring us the show wasn’t real
But WandaVision does. Because otherwise, people might ask: How does this fit in with Avengers? It looks different.
Breaking the Fourth Wall
Even among superfranchises, the MCU (and the DCEU) have an extra problem: Fan expectation from comics.
Star Trek Into Darkness is a truly terrible film. It’s boring. It’s ugly. Most of all, it doesn’t really make sense. But one of the most widely mocked moments of the film came at the halfway point. Benedict Cumberbatch’s John Harrison is in space jail, and in a rage, he reveals his secret identity: He is Khan!
But… who the fuck is Khan? None of these characters have ever met him. He’s no one to them. And he hasn’t been established in these films, so he’s no one to us either. In a way, the character is making a reveal not to the other characters in the film, but to a presumed audience of superfans. He is breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the film’s ideal audience.
WandaVision has a similarly ugly moment in its worst episode, “Previously On.” In it, a newly revealed semi-villain is introduced in a truly nonsensical scene set in Salem before she takes us through Wanda’s history. This is where we get the ugly, shallow explanations about the now-abandoned sitcom hook. It’s also where the show gets its Khan moment.
Spoilers, sort of, for episode eight: Agatha Harkness reveals that Wanda is… the Scarlet Witch! Yes, her comic book superhero name is finally brought into the MCU!
Except, wait… what is that spoiling, exactly? If you read the comics, you had probably been calling her that since she first popped up in Age of Ultron. And if you haven’t read the comics, why would you care at all about that name? It’s meaningless. The show positions it as a dramatic reveal, as the stinger at the climax of the episode as Wanda confronts her tormentor. But… it’s dramatic gibberish.
And more importantly: What does that have to do with how Wanda is processing her trauma?
Finale
I don’t know how WandaVision will wrap up. They might nail the finale. Despite my negativity here, I actually think most of the show’s writers are quite good.
But the problem with WandaVision isn’t the writers, per se. It’s the superfranchise that forces every premise to bend to its will. Admittedly, some writers are better at bending with it. Shane Black’s Iron Man Three, lackluster action finale aside, is still very clearly a Shane Black movie, even as it works within the MCU framework. But Black is a Hollywood veteran with 30 years of career at his back. He can afford to fight. Most MCU creative staff aren’t in that position.
What I find more striking is how clearly the MCU damaged WandaVision, and how comparatively little it helped the show. Without the MCU, we wouldn’t have needed the deathly dull military side plot. Agatha could have (and should have!) stayed, but her reveal could have been more tied to Wanda and less tied to a mythos that has never come up before and will never be relevant again. It could have been a show about a woman, about the way we process (or fail to process) grief with the help of pop culture, instead of a show setting up the next entry in the superfranchise.
Hopefully the show will manage to pull those disparate threads together. I know that this article seems down on the series, but I’ve enjoyed every episode outside of “We Interrupt this Program” and “Previously On.” I really do want to acknowledge how well the show’s staff navigated a tricky premise in those early episodes.
But I think WandaVision, for all its strengths, is a perfect distillation of the MCU problem. Or: When everything is connected, can anything be allowed to be interesting on its own merits?
I grow increasingly worried that the answer is no.