*WANDAVISION SPOILERS AHEAD*
When WandaVision was originally announced as a new series for Disney+, fans were certainly confused. How and why would there be a sitcom going through the decades starring two Avengers. Now, almost three years after the original announcement, people are praising the show as one of Marvel’s best works.
The first episode starts off with a theme song talking about the newlywed Wanda and Vision moving to the town of Westview. It seems to be a 50’s tv show taped in front of a live studio audience in black and white. As the episode continues, you get to meet Agnes, the nosy next door neighbor, and other citizens of Westview who work with Vision. This episode is styled off of The Dick Van-Dyke Show. With slapstick humor and a little bit of magic with Wanda trying to make dinner for a night with Vision’s boss and his wife. You get a little hint that something is wrong, but things continue from there. This episode was very intriguing since we don’t seem to get comedies of this nature anymore.
Episode two is extremely similar with the black and white tones, but now taking place in the 60’s. In this episode, inspiration comes from the show, Bewitched. At the end of the episode, we see the show come to life with colors and magic, taking us to the 70s and to a pregnant Wanda. Wanda explains to Geraldine (her new friend in town) that she used to be a twin, referencing her brother Pietro Maximoff aka Quicksilver. Geraldine says as if waking from a trance, “He was killed by Ultron, wasn’t he?”, referencing back to his death in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Wanda throws her out of town and we discover that Geraldine is actually Monica Rambeau, the young girl from Captain Marvel.
As the episodes go on, we see that Wanda has crafted a hex (basically a wall that changes anything into that specific decade as it goes through) around the town of Westview and that SWORD (Sentient World Observation and Response Department) is watching from outside and trying to figure out how to rescue all of these members being held hostage. We also see Wanda break down with each episode and struggle with her perception of reality. It all leads up to a fantastic magical fight sequence.
The production of the show is truly miraculous. The interior design, costumes, hair, and makeup all change from week to week as we go through the decades, including a beautiful new costume for The Scarlet Witch.
Nowadays, it can be so easy to binge watch television shows in one sitting. WandaVision made fans sit and wait week to week, coming up with theories in the meantime. While some fans are disappointed that not all of their theories came true, at its center, this is a story about Wanda struggling with grief. She saw her parents, brother, and husband die. She has never known true happiness, and only felt close to it when she watched sitcoms growing up.
The entire cast was outstanding. Elizabeth Olsen gave such a beautiful diverse performance. She was able to adjust to each decade’s comedic acting style with ease, and also navigated heartbreak, loss, and grief to the point where I found myself sobbing by the last two episodes. This is the closest that the MCU has ever gotten to speaking about depression as a mental illness and it is so overdue.
Paul Bettany has gained so many new fans from this show. He perfectly channeled Dick Van-Dyke in the early episodes and made the audience fall in love with him when in reality, no one really cared too much about Vision in Age of Ultron, Civil War, or Infinity War.
Kathryn Hahn has always been a superb actress, but her work here proves it. Her nosy neighbor character, Agnes, is hilarious with one liners talking about her husband, Ralph. At the end of episode 7, we discover she is actually the powerful witch, Agatha Harkness. Once this is revealed, she gets her own theme song stating it was “Agatha All Along”. The song even went to the top of the iTunes chart when it first came out.
In episode five, we get a surprise appearance from Evan Peters as Wanda’s brother, Pietro. While he has never been in the MCU, fans will know him from his portrayal of Quicksilver in Fox’s adaptation of the X-Men movies. He bursts onto the scene as uncle Pietro and absolutely blows it away every scene that he is in.
The rest of the ensemble cast features Teyonah Parris (a grown-up Monica Rambeau), Kat Dennings (Darcy Lewis from the Thor movies), and Randall Park (Jimmy Woo from Ant-Man and the Wasp). They make up such a fun group, acting as the audience to Wanda’s television show and speaking what the actual audience at home is thinking.
I also need to bring attention to the fantastic duo, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. The duo is most known for their work on the soundtracks for Frozen and Frozen 2. This time around, they were tasked with creating theme songs for each episode of WandaVision. Each song draws inspiration from different theme songs from each decade. None of the songs are skips and you want to listen to them on repeat for forever.
The show blends comedy, drama, and action so seamlessly together that it is hard to think how any other show could ever do anything as unique as this again. It is rare for award shows to give accolades to Marvel projects, but this needs to be the one that they do. The Emmys, SAG Awards, and the Golden Globes better be paying attention to how different and exciting this show is.
Marvel has so many new Disney+ shows coming up like Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, Ms.Marvel, and Hawkeye. WandaVision has made me so excited for the future of the MCU and I am so excited to see more of Wanda’s story when she next appears in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.