"WandaVision" from the perspective of a filthy casual
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🚨 SPOILER ALARM: This post will include spoilers for the entire season of WandaVision. 🚨
Looking forward to each episode of WandaVision over the past couple of months is the most I’ve looked forward to anything in the past year. I had no idea how they were going to make a Marvel TV show that put two of its least-served characters front and centre in pastiches of popular sitcoms through the decades and actually make it good, but amazingly, they pulled it off (mostly).
That said, though, while I love the MCU, I have never read a Marvel comic in my life. And I think that may have helped my enjoyment, because there was nothing for me to theorize about. I couldn’t guess if some other Marvel comics characters were really behind everything because I just plain don’t know any other Marvel characters. I just had to take the growing mystery as it came, and then had to wait patiently for the next episode to come out.
And, ultimately, there weren’t many new Marvel characters introduced. We got Monica Rambeau, who we technically already met as a kid in Captain Marvel, and eventually we also got the “reveal” that Agnes was really Agatha Harkness, but everyone guessed that’s who she was from the beginning, to the point that even I knew that’s who she was. And I can see how those much more familiar with Marvel might have been frustrated with that, and so in this case, I’m grateful that I was ignorant of most of it. (Mephisto who?)
That said, the WandaVision writers certainly stoked the flames of the fan theories. Why have Monica mention a mysterious aerospace engineer if it just turned out to be… herself? Whyyyyy bring Evan Peters in to play Pietro if it was just gonna lead to a boner joke ultimately? I’m not saying that you can’t make a superhero story that’s a quiet-ish meditation on grief, but then you really gotta stay the course there.
All that said, overall, I thought this season of WandaVision was just excellent. Elizabeth Olsen is such an impressive actress, and I’ve loved Paul Bettany since A Knight’s Tale, and it’s about time Marvel gave them both the spotlight. They didn’t waste a moment of it.
And of course, huge shout-outs to Katherine Hahn (QUEEN) and Randall Park (love him), who both brought such great energies to this whole series. Hahn in particular had such a good grasp on the tone of every single one of the sitcoms they were mimicking.
I’m a big fan of ScreenRant’s “Pitch Meeting” video series that Canadian comedian Ryan George makes, and his WandaVision video made my day:
That’s all for me today, gorgeous! Talk to you soon.
Love,
Kat
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