One afternoon, after a while of having shot Vision’s death scene in Avengers: Infinity War, actor Paul Bethany gets a call from the heads at Marvel Studios asking for a meeting. Of course, he thinks he’s being laid off, his contract is up, his character had just died, there is no other outcome, right? Well, he was wrong. The bosses at Marvel actually, in that meeting, pitched him the show WandaVison, a television series starring his character, Vision, and Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff also known as the Scarlet Witch.
WandaVision was partially shot before the pandemic started, in November 2019 and, after a break, finished shooting in November 2020. It finally came out in January 2021, after more than one year without any new Marvel content. This show starts Marvel Studios’ endeavours with Disney+. The studios’ plan so far includes over 10 shows that will follow the stories of different MCU characters, some we already know, like Loki or the Winter Soldier and some will be introduced this way such as She-Hulk and Ironheart. The unique part about these new Marvel shows is that they are still connected to the movies and will play important parts in setting up some stories and introducing new characters, like Ms. Marvel, for example, who will be introduced in her own tv show by the end of this year and will also star in the sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel.
“These will be major storylines, set in the MCU, with ramifications that will be felt both through the other Disney Plus series we’re producing and our features on the big screen,” said Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios.
Some of the shows we know about so far are: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which will come out right after WandaVision is done, on March 19, Loki, set to come out in May this year and Marvel’s first animated project, the show What If…?, which will explore different scenarios that could have happened if things were different in the MCU, such as “What if Peggy Carter was the one who became a super soldier?”
Now back to WandaVision. The show came out on January 15 with its first two episodes and the following seven episodes are coming out weekly. So far, we are on episode seven, and each week they seem to have a new surprise in store for us. It had been a while since I had followed a show weekly, and, wow, how it builds up the excitement! I don’t want to get too much into the plot right now, to not give away anything, but the interesting thing about this show is that we still don’t know what is going on, so each episode brings in new clues that help us piece together what is happening, which is why waiting a whole week for a new episode is so hard.
Let’s rewind and explore what the show is about. So, it is set right after the events of Avengers: Endgame and Wanda and Vision just got married and are living in a small town in New Jersey. Each episode is an homage to a decade of sitcoms, starting with the 1950s. They recreate the sets, outfits and even some plot lines. All of that is pretty odd considering they are both super-powerful beings and that Vision is dead. This is why we don’t know what is happening. As we watch the episodes we do learn some things, but I won’t spoil that for you right now!
What I can tell you is that this show is worth watching. Olsen and Bethany’s performances are amazing and it is so interesting to watch more of their story develop. Wanda is such a powerful superhero, the strongest Avenger, in my opinion, and in WandaVision we get to see her powers grow. The show also has nice cameos that will amuse any Marvel fans, such as FBI agent Jimmy Woo, from Ant-Man and the Wasp, Dr. Darcy Lewis, from Thor and Thor: The Dark World and Monica Rambeau, from Captain Marvel. Another great thing about the show is that it will most likely open the doors of the MCU to multiverses. Wanda is going to be part of Doctor Strange’s next film, called Doctor Strange in The Multiverse of Madness, which gives us a clue of what might happen. In WandaVision, we see Wanda warping and changing reality, and as the episodes go on and she becomes stronger and more confident, and also threatened, which makes us think that she might be the one responsible for starting opening the multiverses in the MCU.
If it seems like I didn’t tell you enough about what is happening, it’s because, in the beginning, we really don’t know what is going on, so everything that I might tell you could be a spoiler and I don’t want to ruin anyone’s experience. So I encourage you to go watch the show right now and try to figure out what is happening before it ends on March 5, when we will, hopefully, get all the answers.