Damn you, Disney Plus.
I held out as long as I could, I tried... and tried. But the combination of a fairly (let's not overstate it) reasonable add on offer from Hulu combined with...well, this program, finally did me in.
Whatever objections I may have to centralizing Disney's monopolistic hold on content, there's no denying the potency of the MCU, aka Marvel Cinematic Universe. And no single film or show underscores the possibilities of their creative potency like WandaVision.
Set in the aftermath of Avengers Infinity War and Endgame, we are confronted in this series by the grief of Wanda Maximoff, she being on of the Sokovian twins originally introduced in Age of Ultron. Wanda's mix of telekinetic powers and telepathy seemed incredibly strong, but WandaVision takes those powers to another level entirely. In her grief at losing Vision (the AI Jarvis made flesh in Ultron), Wanda puts a hazy bubble around a small New Jersey town and turns it into a sitcom haven where she can hide from reality.
This is the real genius of WandaVision: taking the television situation comedy genre of the second half of the twentieth century and using it as a leitmotif for drama, grief and so much more. Initially, we see little more than the literal sitcom Wanda wants to create; but with each episode's devolving iteration, cracks and tears in the fantasy begin to emerge. For one thing, Wanda's powers aren't strong enough or developed enough to sustain her total control. For another, since she's making things up as she goes, she runs into the limits of her own imaginations. But mostly, since she's mostly running on the pure emotion of grief, she's really not making thought out or rational choices.
In the context of the sitcoms, all of this is genius; from crossing The Dick Van Dyke Show with Bewitched to turning the move to color tv into a psychodrama to deconstructing the genre via Malcolm in the Middle and Modern Family... WandaVision crosses sitcom tropes with those momentary glimpses of real feeling, all with comic book twists. Meanwhile, outside Wanda's bubble, the real world is trying to figure out whether she's an uncontrolled danger or someone to be reasoned with. And all that's before we discover that a character within the bubble is much more than she appears to be.
Real Marvel junkies are also, of course, to a series that redefines "Easter Egg" - symbols, clues and visual cues abound. Even watching the Easter Egg dissection videos on YouTube (they are numerous, but I recommend Nerdist), you don't fully grasp the brilliance on display. Eminently watchable and rewatchable, WandaVision yields up fresh insights on repeated viewings, as only great art really can.
Much of what's here hangs on the considerable talents of the cast, as the show taps the skills of Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda and Paul Bettany's Vision in ways that the Avengers series just left on the table. Aided by tv veterans like Debra Jo Rupp and Emma Caulfield and Kat Dennings they can hardly go wrong. But there's also Kathryn Hahn burnishing her scene stealing rep and Teyonah Parris and Randall Park to remind us that the gift of the MCU is an incredibly deep bench. There just isn't a performance misstep in the cast. But the real credit for seeing all of this is Jac Schaeffer, series creator and head writer, ably abetted by Matt Shakman, the show's lead director and himself a veteran of sitcoms as a child actor.
At it's best - in this sense, as a cohesive, end to end well told story - WandaVision shows both what the MCU can do when allowed to open out in a thought through long form series, and a way of thinking differently about what comic book sensibilities bring to other media... much the same way, actually, Watchmen recently did for HBO. Both, too, are reminders that thinking differently about casting is as much about thinking about telling better stories in different ways as it is looking for fresh approaches to representation. From Regina King to Randall Park to Teyonah Paris and so many others in both shows - we will get better richer performances from every performer when they're challenged. Even just on the visceral level of delivering a wildly entertaining, captivating, leave em wanting more spectacle... WandaVision more than delivers. This is just a good compelling watch as much as anything. And it's remarkable how special and rare that actually is.
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