Marvel and Disney+’s WandaVision is finally here (the first two episodes, anyway) and just as weird and out there as I wanted it to be, and I can’t wait to see where the show is going to go.
**MILD SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST TWO EPISODES OF WandaVision LIE WITHIN.**
Heading into WandaVision, I had one hope: that Wanda would get her time to shine, and that’s exactly what has happened so far. Despite the fact that the show is called WandaVision, Wanda is very much the star. At one point in the second episode, Kathryn Hahn’s Agnes even points out that fact, and each episode is littered with clues that Wanda is either trapped somewhere or controlling whatever this television experiment is. It’s wonderfully quirky and weird.
From her entrance into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Age of Ultron, Wanda has been a character whose full potential was never explored. I loved her because I knew what she could do and was biding my time. WandaVision has made the wait well worth it.
The first episode leans heavily into the sitcom vibe, pulling from The Dick Van Dyke Show and giving us a classic sitcom situation of Vision and Wanda having to handle a dinner with Vis’ boss. While the majority of the show completely stays in the sitcom style, there are small breaks in Wanda’s reality where she’s forced to hear things from the “real” world—a radio calling to her, noises, yelling—and it’s not until the end of the second episode that we see that Wanda is, for the most part, in control.
At the end of the first episode, we get a glimpse of someone writing in a notebook about Wanda and the “sitcom” they’re watching. They are sitting in front of a television and seemingly watching Wanda’s episodes unfold. In episode two, a “beekeeper” appears outside of Wanda and Vision’s home, and Wanda simply says, “No,” before rewinding time.
So what does this mean? Personally, I think it’s a mix of someone trying to explore Wanda’s powers and Wanda trying to unpack everything that happened to her. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: No one has suffered the way that Wanda Maximoff has. Whenever she found a glimpse of happiness, it was ripped from her in the worst possible way.
The show, so far, does an incredible job of poking fun at both itself and how the MCU has treated Wanda in the past, making jokes about Wanda being “European” despite her having a very American accent, and exploring how her relationship with Vision isn’t, exactly, traditional. Everything about this show feels like it’s forcing Wanda to question every aspect of her feelings while exploring her powers and, despite being a slow build, it feels like the final explosion is going to be worth it.
WandaVision is a fun new look at the MCU. For so long, we saw them stick their toes in the world of exploring genre, and this show feels like diving in head first, and I’m beyond excited to see where the show goes.
(image: Marvel Entertainment)
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