In an attempt to explore creative storytelling with established superheroes, Marvel Studios presented us with WandaVision, a weekly program featuring Wanda and Vision, which take place three weeks after the events of Avengers: End Game. The action-packed program, streaming now on Disney Plus, launches what Marvel describes as Phase Four. The series pays homage to past sitcoms, with Wanda and Vision living in a reality that takes them through different decades of television tropes. In the process, while we are treated with a unique perspective of what it would be like if Wanda and Vision were the stars of Bewitched or The Brady Bunch Show, viewers can see through the black and white to understand something bigger is at play in the background.
Jac Schaeffer, having scripted Captain Marvel (2019) and the up-coming Black Widow (2021), hired eight writers for the series’ writers room, including four women and several people of color, because of her belief that “stories are better the more perspectives you have.” The finished product is a masterpiece of plotting and subterfuge and watching one episode per week is far better than binge watching in six hours because the audience will try to guess what happens next, to have a week speculating or re-watching and building to the satisfying climax.
Disney Plus cannot go wrong with their Marvel properties, thanks to oversight by Kevin Feige, who insists each program be a completely different story, ranging from comedic to political thriller format. Such six-hour long productions offer the studio an opportunity to tell stories they would not be able to tell in a two-hour motion-picture.
While embracing itself as a mini-series in episodic format, WandaVision was undeniably Marvel in the big screen sense with a huge budget and production details that provide easter eggs, inside references, and those with an eye for detail might catch the subtle references. From the music cues to filming on the backlot of Warner Bros. to replicate 1950s sitcoms filmed on studio backlots, fans of classic television will find dozens of trademarks of an American television sitcom.
The program does not disappoint. Plenty of action scenes, a maniacal villain (two of them, to be precises), superb cliffhangers that make you want to see what happens next, the introduction of a new superhero, and a few loose ends that make you wonder what is going to happen next in the coming months on other programs suggests the future introduction to X-Men and The Fantastic Four to the new Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The program explores how some people deal with grief in their own way, sometimes in a destructive manner, while providing heart in the center of the story. With a pilot episode that does not provide too much detail, unanswered questions such as what ever happened to White Vision and The Swarm, expanding on underdeveloped supporting characters, and thinking outside the box, WandaVision is a sure fire winner.
To give away more would be providing spoilers. The following is essential: there are post credits sequences in each of the last three episodes, two sequences for the final episode of the series. If anyone was on the fence subscribing to Disney Plus solely for the Marvel TV series, or bailed out after the first two episodes of the series, stick with this one. A sure fire winner.
