Grief can be seen in many different forms depending on the person. It can affect one in many ways including physically, mentally, and socially, but almost everyone experiences similar stages of the grieving process. In Marvel’s new television series, WandaVision, they depict Wanda Maximoff, also known as the “Scarlet Witch,” and her battle with grief after losing her loved one, Vision.
Wanda is no stranger to loss. As we know from Marvel’s movie Avengers: Age of Ultron, Wanda and her brother, Pietro lost their parents when they were very young. At the end of that movie, Pietro gave his life to save one of the other Avengers, leaving Wanda with no family. She was completely alone. Then Vision came along making her feel whole again. Of course, she then ended up losing Vision too, however, this time it was a much harder loss.
In Avengers: Endgame, Wanda had to kill Vision. Thanos, a villian who was trying to kill half the universe, needed six stones known as the infinity stones to complete his mission. These stones each controlled a different part of the universe: mind, power, time, reality, soul, and space. One of the stones, the mind stone, was what kept Vision alive. In an attempt to stop Thanos, Wanda had to rip the infinity stone from her loved one’s head and destroy it, killing Vision with it (I know, brutal). It was this whole five minute emotional scene between Wanda and Vision, their last words, and Wanda using all her strength to destroy the stone. Then, two seconds later, Thanos just uses the time stone to go back a few minutes before the stone was destroyed. This ended up undoing all the emotional distress she just went through. Ripping the stone out of Vision’s head, he then forces Wanda to watch her loved one die in front of her, again. All in the span of eight minutes or so.
WandaVision takes place after all this chaos, in a setting she created. In this show, Marvel depicts Wanda and her going through the five stages of grief.
Stage #1: Denial. Losing Vision broke her. As she visited the site of a house Vision and her were going to grow old in, she breaks completely. In this moment of weakness, power surges from her and she ends up creating a whole sit-com themed world of her own with Vision, taking an entire town captive under a protective force-field. Obviously, none of this is necessarily real, but to her and this town, it is. She refused to believe Vision was gone, pretended everything was alright, and raised a family with Vision in this small town of Westview, NJ.
Stage #2: Anger. In episode three, titled “Now in Color,” we see an agent from the outside, Monica Rambeau, help Wanda in her fictional storyline. Agent Rambeau then says something about Wanda’s brother, Pietro, being killed by Ultron, which only angers Wanda. She is furious because the mention of Ultron is a connection to reality. Furthermore, Vision starts questioning what is happening in Westview, NJ, which ignites tension between the two. Wanda is still in denial that the world she is living in is anything but reality, but we see her shifting to anger towards those disrupting her peace of mind.
Stage #3: Bargaining. Wanda doesn’t enter the bargaining stage until episode five. In this episode, those outside the force-field begin to look for ways to get on the inside. They use a drone, which Wanda later drags out and throws in front of them. She tells them, “This will be your only warning. Stay out of my home. You don’t bother me, I won’t bother you.” This is her way of bargaining with them. If they leave her alone, trapped in her perfect version of reality, then she, the most powerful Avenger, will do no harm to them. But of course, they can’t do that since she has a whole town captive.
Stage #4: Depression. As Vision and Wanda’s connection grows weaker, we see Wanda experiencing symptoms of depression. She is nothing like her usual self, and with Vision not at home, she struggles to pick herself back up. She sleeps in late, doesn’t get dressed, and disregards her children. She is starting to notice her surroundings and how off everything is. We also see everything around her glitching. For example, the milk she pulls out of the fridge glitches a few times from a glass bottle, to a carton, and back to a glass bottle. Wanda is having a really hard time grasping reality (and not her version of it), but she is at least starting to understand.
Stage #5: Acceptance. In the series finale, we see Wanda come to accept reality. She realized what she has done to the town and knows that in order to try and fix everything, she has to let Vision go. She puts her kids to bed, says goodbye to Vision, and lets down the protective barrier between Westview and reality.
Grief is something everyone goes through, even superheroes. The stages are how we cope and move on. No matter how strong you are, grief takes time to heal. But as we see in WandaVision, episode 8 titled “Previously On,” grief is not just sorrow. We are shown a flashback of Vision trying to comfort Wanda after the loss of her brother by listening to her explain how she feels.
“It’s just like this wave washing over me again and again. It knocks me down and when I try to stand up, it just comes for me again…It’s just gonna drown me.”
To which Vision responds…
“What is grief, if not love persevering?”