Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic. WandaVision hasn’t changed my life, but it certainly has been helping me get through each week. The newest miniseries on Disney+, WandaVision, has viewers scrambling to unearth every hidden detail with a connection to the Marvel universe. The series features Marvel characters Wanda and Vision starring in their own sitcom (or are they?) as they go about their day-to-day, picture perfect lives together. However, if you’ve seen Avengers: Infinity War, you would know that Vision has long-since been killed by Thanos. So how is he back to life, performing a magic show for the residents of Westview in a black and white style 50s sitcom?
Wanda and Vision seem to span the decades in every new episode, so the most recent episode takes place within what feels reminiscent of a 90s family sitcom, like Full House. There’s even a cheesy intro song, featuring creepy baby photos of Vision as well as the rest of their family. However, amidst Wanda and Vision’s chipper and snappy dialogue, the viewers know that there is something unsettling going on behind the scenes; Wanda is controlling the town of Westview underneath a forcefield of radiation, and has all of its citizens under mind control so that she and Vision (who she has resurrected from the dead) can live the lives that they never were able to together after Thanos.
The whole concept of this show is so meta; it absolutely blew my mind when I discovered that WandaVision wasn’t going to be just a sitcom starring the two Marvel characters that I couldn’t seem to have gotten enough of in the Avengers movies. It’s a show within a show, but that “show” is an illusion that Wanda is in control of, and is therefore in control of me, the viewer, and now I’m starting to spiral because I’m thinking about it too hard. WandaVision is clever, artistic, captivating, and some of the best material Marvel has ever released. WandaVision integrates characters from all over the MCU, from the Avengers franchise to X-Men. I highly recommend that everyone watches this show, mostly so I can have more people to unpack every episode with.