You might not want to hear how many episodes ‘WandaVision’ originally had, according to Jac Schaeffer
WandaVision remains one of the best things Marvel has ever done, in my opinion. It is a beautiful exploration of grief through a character I love deeply. And I think it is perfect. That being said, I would have loved to see the originally planned episode 10.
One of the beautiful things about WandaVision is that everyone had a different experience with the show. The way I viewed Wanda Maximoff’s (Elizabeth Olsen) journey might be different from someone else. Well…I know that I view Wanda differently than others but that’s not the point. What we’ve learned about what would have been the 10th episode of the series though is a little upsetting because a lot of our questions would have been answered.
At the end of the series, Westview was broken. When Wanda destroyed the Hex, it left many of the residents of the small town in New Jersey left with the pieces of her chaos magic. And she left them to rebuild without her, knowing that her involvement would not help. According to head writer Jac Schaeffer, there was originally a 10th episode but she did not specify herself what happened in it.
“WandaVision was originally ten [episodes], then, for logistical, budget, and creative reasons, we combined two episodes,” she said during an interview on The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith. This information isn’t new, director Matt Shakman has talked about it before.
“Things were constantly changing and getting rebroken,” Shakman told Kevin Smith. “The story was changing, especially a lot of the real-world stuff and the finale. There was a lot of experimentation going on and sort of trying different things out. We also at one point had 10 episodes planned and we ended up collapsing a couple, you know just to make the rhythm feel a little bit better.”
I just selfishly want more Wanda stories from Jac Schaeffer
I’m unapologetically a hater of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness because I think it took what WandaVision did and ruined it all to turn Wanda into the big bad of the film. It was messy, unclear, and it left room for the wrong interpretations of Wanda as a character. This take is born from years of frustration over how fans, particularly men, talk about the Scarlet Witch.
She is an anti-hero, not a villain, and Multiverse of Madness really threw all the work that WandaVision did out the window. Which is why I want Schaeffer to do more Wanda stories. She understands the nuance of Wanda and the witches of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and doesn’t turn them into the black and white villains that they could be in the wrong hands.
So as someone who loves all 9 episodes of WandaVision as they are, I do think that the show could have had 10 episodes. Why? Because I want more and Schaeffer has said in the past that she doesn’t do second seasons. But maybe, if I am a good little Wanda stan, Schaeffer will give me another Wanda story of some kind. And this time…it can be 10 episodes as a little treat for me.
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