Disney drops a mid-season trailer for WandaVision's mind-bending back half
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After a trio of episodes that punctured parodies of bygone sitcoms with eerie nods to a dark force, WandaVision catapulted us back into the real world with last week’s “We Interrupt This Program.” We now know that whatever world Wanda and Vision are living in is an “anomaly” that’s likely a manifestation of Wanda’s grief over the loss of her other half, and that the souls of S.W.O.R.D. are trying to pierce the bubble. Ahead of the limited series’ fifth episode, Disney has shared a trailer for its remaining episodes.
There’s plenty to chew on here, including parodies of what looks to be Growing Pains and Modern Family. Vision, too, is starting to wonder what’s outside of Westview, a tickle of thought that’s bound to confront him with the truth about his own mortality. We can also expect more from Kathryn Hahn’s mysterious Agnes, who was, rather tellingly, not among the residents listed on last week’s episode.
WandaVision’s fifth episode arrives on Disney+ this Friday.
81 Comments
loving the campy queer elements, I know everyone wants answers, but I preferred the mystery of the first episodes and hope focus remains on Wanda. I don’t want all this build up of strangeness to suddenly be rushed so everyone can make sense of it.
oh my god, the first 3 episodes were the worst. They needed to be over that shit like, 2 episodes ago.
I loved it, I didn’t like the last episode that much, I was having fun in Wanda’s world.
Hmm I don’t know, I get some people liking those 2-3 episodes but ya knew it couldn’t sit in that area of being a corny sitcom when there were mysteries abound. Fans would have been clamoring for some substance on why this is happening. You might be one of the few who enjoyed the first two episodes.
Well I enjoyed the first episodes, but I also felt that if the show didn’t start dropping some context it was gonna go south really quickly. What we got in E4 was well-timed, in my opinion.
Y’all needed context? I heard the premise “Wanda and Vision in a sitcom,” and my mind immediately leapt to Wanda is using her reality-bending magic to create a world where Wanda and Vision can be happy. Maybe there’s a secret villain behind this that’s not Wanda. Maybe there’s not. But I don’t feel starved for an answer.
lol lol thank you for this.
Indeed – even as a non-comics-reader, nothing in e.4 was actually a surprise. The ‘mystery’ so far has just been exactly what any attentive viewer would have expected, so I don’t really understand the ‘it was too mysterious!!’ complaints some people have about the early episodes.I’d have like a few more episodes of development within Westview – at least one more. It felt as though the darkness progressed deliberately from ‘one or two hints’ in e1 to ‘explicit puzzle’ in e2, to ‘on the verge of everything breaking’ in e3. I felt we could have had 1-2 more episodes of the illusion actually breaking down from the insider.Unfortunately, while the sitcom world is distinctive and specific, with nuanced, lived-in central characters, the outside world seen in e4 is generic, riddled with clichés and populated by stock characters spouting entirely predictable lines – the only surprises were the repeated moments of unforgivable “no human would ever do this but it moves the plot along or gives a good line so what the hell” stupidity.[blindly assuming a digital keycard will still work five years later. Requiring a secret government agency to send an astronaut in order to… fly a remote-control helicopter with a camera on it. The SWORD agent not remotely briefed by the FBI agent (or her boss?) until she’s actualy on site. The highly-trained agent sticking her hand in a mysterious energy field. Officials refusing to brief the experts they bring in to a site on the exact things that the expert is going to be working on right away. Sending a human guinea pig to get eaten by an energy field that logically will almost certainly be there. Etc etc…]
well said, especially about the stock characters in episode 4. it’s a funny duality.
Sure, but just doing the sitcom thing with no other context to it is just wheel-spinning.
Nah, not really.
which is fair, I think it played into some of my queer sensibilities lol which is pretty much non-existent in Disney, so I was savouring every moment in Wanda’s world of camp.
It was campy to a degree but honestly, I don’t know how some people thought those jokes were funny? LOL Maybe as a kid and I watched reruns of Leave it to Beaver they were amusing, but now? Meh.
I was grinning ear to ear 🙂
That’s the whole point, they’re not funny now. Comedy evolves. If they had put in current comedy-like jokes, it wouldn’t have felt right.
That’s true and I do get what you are saying. And I get the nostalgia they were going for with the first two episodes and for the rest of the series leading up to the documentary style of today.
it seems pretty straight down the middle to me. and then you’ve got people like me who’ve enjoyed all of it. definitely looking forward to them lampooning 10’s era single-camera stuff, i’m impressed they took the joke that far.i also think most of the outright disdain comes from the weekly release. if it had been dropped all at once it wouldn’t have mattered. certainly felt a little ‘that’s it?’ when an episode ended, but i think it’ll even out once the whole thing is done.
I am enjoying it as well, but at the end of every episode I feel like I need to see the next one. I know that’s how you’re supposed to feel with a good show, but I think there’s a difference here. This feels like a show that would be better to binge, because they’re not giving enough information in the first three episodes. It’s all just dumped on you in episode 4, and it’s a lot of stuff you’ve probably guessed by now. There needed to be small parts of the mystery revealed as it went along. It reminds me of how in season 1 of Westworld, everyone had already figured out the big twist. Everyone knows that Wanda is controlling this world (and possibly created it). When Darcy realizes this, a lot of the audience has known since episode 1. I think the Darcy and Woo parts of this episode should have been parcelled out over episodes 2 and 3. Maybe at the end of episode 2 we could have seen Darcy discover the TV signal. Then in episode 3 we see them putting names the supporting cast. Nothing was gained by holding all of these reveals until now.Episode 4 should still have begun with Agent Rambeau’s story. It was one mystery that could have waited until now to be revealed. We know about Woo and Darcy, but who is this Geraldine? And it would have been a new piece of information that would have been a satisfying escalation of what’s going on in the real world. They really needed to slowly reveal more of the real world episode by episode instead of doing it all at once.Balancing serialization with individual episodes feels like something that a lot of TV creators still haven’t figured out in the streaming era.
Disagree. The first three episodes, dangling a mystery without making things more clear while also imitating old sitcoms, were more enjoyable to me than most of what episode 4 brought to the table. Would have loved for sitcom send-offs with The Prisoner or Twin Peaks vibes.
if ep 4 wasnt what it was like i wouldve totally gave up on this show. Seriously. They dragged the set up out WAY too fuckin long. Theres setting up an atmosphere, and then theres just self indulgent and boring. Wandavision’s first THREE WHOLE EPISODES were definitely the latter. If i wanted parodies of old sitcoms id watch SNL.
You seem overly impatient.
Im not.
I think (hope?) that episode 4 set up more mystery for future episodes, not less. By giving us clarity on somethings, it opens up new areas to explore.
I’m thoroughly enjoying the pacing and really thought episode 4 was a perfect spot to start pulling back the curtain. I picture it keeping this ‘format’ a bit moving forward—a few more episodes in WandaWorld and then another reveal in time for the two worlds to meet in the last couple of episodes.I’m thinking Agnes and Dottie may have been the ones to set this in motion, since Agnes is a witch in the comics universe. Perhaps they ‘suspected’ something more about Wanda’s powers and started something they couldn’t contain?Really looking forward to the rest.
episode 4 was only necessary because of how slow the first 3 episodes were…now before some of you get all defensive…the slow part i am referring to is not the mystery, but rather all the needless sitcom gags from 60 years ago…we had about 90 minutes of episodes and at least 75 of those minutes were dedicated to sitcom gags…if they would have cut down on those gags by just a few minutes each episodes and instead interlaced a little of what was going on the outside world you would have much better pacing and very little complaints…
Oh I totally disagree. The second episode was a gas, particularly the drunken magic show.
omg the drunken magic show might be my fave marvel scene.
Counter-point – You are wrong and you should feel shameYou are a disgrace to the name Scott Summers!
Hey Cyclops may be a jerk, but he’s our jerk – Wolverine.
I would tend to agree with you, save for the fact that Olsen is such an amazing actress. Watching her in those episodes was a clinic.
I think the reveal we got last episode was a) necessary and b) perfectly timed.There’s no reason for this to devolve into an Abramsesque mystery box.
That’s my opinion as well. It was the perfect amount of leading you along and then…EXPLANATION…sort of. 😉
My only complaint is instead of one long reveal episode, it would have worked better to have it happen over the first three episodes.
yeah, i was in the series from the beginning but my bf didn’t care until this episode finally gave some explanations.
Yeah, I was mostly in this for the sitcom pastiches. I hope they’ll still be substantial going forward, although I imagine they’ll be more like window dressing from here on out.
I think the focus will stay on Wanda. I liked the initial episodes, too, but if this is about Wanda’s journey, she can’t stay in happy sitcom land forever. Some answers are needed if she’s to have any kind of character arc.
yes for sure, I’m eager to watch it untether and for it to lean into the horror of living in the reality of denial which is a part of grieving and how our pain hurts others, I just don’t need too many clear cut answers that this is some massive tie in with the bigger marvel universe.
“I’m eager to watch it untether and for it to lean into the horror of living in the reality of denial which is a part of grieving and how our pain hurts others …” I totally co-sign to this. I guess we’ll see how cut and dried it winds up being. They might not answer too many questions if they want to save some mystery for the Dr Strange movie it will supposedly tie into.
I mean, barring some swerve out of left field, most people pretty correctly surmised that this is Wanda’s way of not being able to grieve the death of vision, the artifice is the entertaining bit but I’m guessing there’s going to be much more pathos ahead, especially with what appears to be a throwdown between Wanda and Vision where you’d have to guess Vision is fighting for his right to go back to being dead so that Wanda can move on.
Honestly I think the Netflix Marvel shows just ruined peoples expectations for what this show was going to be. This isn’t the “10 hour movie” format where every episode is a small piece of a larger story. Between this and Mandalorian I think it seems clear that D+ is doing things more like Buffy: start with self-contained episodes with only small hits of the larger story, and build up to a season arc that takes over in the last 1/3 or so. The only difference is that Buffy was monster of the week, Mando was western of the week, and WV is sitcom decade of the week. I can only hope this means Falcon and Winter Soldier is going to be mismatched buddies on an adventure of the week.
I watch because Avengers. I think the show is fine but is leaning on the dull side.
I agree that I really liked the idea of the first 3 episodes more than the idea of the 4th, but the execution was lacking. Mainly it was a writing thing – a given episode of Dick Van Dyke was a lot more clever than their parody/pastiche. It’s like they have most of the beats of these series down but without the clever dialogue. The “case of the Mondays” line, which does appear to be Modern Family-esque, is nowhere near Modern Family’s joke writing, and they’re probably relying on I suspect a dark context to make it funny rather than just writing a good sitcom joke – which would enhance the darkness and drama too.Four episodes in I don’t see the writing getting much better, but I’ll still give it a shot to see if they pull out a gem or two, since the much superior second episode (the only one I was really taken with) showed they have it in them.
Vision, too, is starting to wonder what’s outside of WestviewSilly Vision, there is no Westview. The cop said it himself while standing next to a Westview sign.Now move along, citizen.
i didnt get that…was the sign invisible to him for some reason? He was outside the bubble, he shouldve been able to see it.
Maybe it’s like the perception filter in Doctor Who; not so much invisible as unremarkable, and therefore unnoticed.
I always assumed that it was like the similarly named Westfield episode from Fringe, where it didn’t just affect everyone “in the bubble”, but everyone in proximity to it as well.
I thought it was rather interesting that we didn’t get to see which direction to cops drove away in… Was it right back into town or the direction Monica drove in from?
my impression was that they were Jersey cops but not from Westview, maybe from whatever’s next door. Eastview? I dunno. Cause noone gets out of the bubble unless Wanda throws them out.
It confused me at first too. I thought they were just being oddly nonchalant about the fact that a new town had been created that was never there before. What’s actually happening is that Westview was always there, with Eastview as the next town over. Wanda (and or whoever) has altered Westview and part of that is erasing the memory of the town and it’s residents from anyone who knew of them. While also preventing them from seeing it.Woo speculates that they aren’t effected because they didn’t know/care about the town before this.
Ehhhn, what do those homers over in Eastview know about anything.
Still hoping Nightmare is behind all this…years ago they announced him as the villain for Dr Strange 2 then never mentioned him again. And they said Wandavision was gonna lead into Dr Strange 2. I didnt hear shit about Mephisto except when the internet went nuts over that “devil is in the details” line in Wandavision.
I like the show. However, what about it is mind-bending? Save for not having solid clues about what is going on in the first three episodes, it’s become pretty clear in episode 4. Now the question is why.
It is “mind bending” because the AV Club deals solely in hyperbole. It can’t just be interesting or mysterious.
Heh. Fair point. Not a click-worthy headline otherwise.
I’ve said this before but I’m still hoping Billy and Tommy will give Master Pandemonium a hand…
Oh man I think everyone (who does and doesn’t know about this) would loose their shit! I hope it happens!
Oh man I think everyone (who does and doesn’t know about this) would loose their shit!Loose shit is the worst!
Lol whoops! Obviously meant “lose” but I can see how that would be the worst.
I’ve been keeping my fingers crossed for Master Pandemonium, I don’t think it will happen but goddamn would that be crazy and hilarious.
I said it somewhere else but I feel like its a huge miss that they gathered a group of random scientists and Doctor Peter Corbeau wasn’t one of them!
I would love to see Wonder Man, the tragic and cheesy comics Avengers staple.
IIRC, Nathan Fillion was supposed to cameo as him in GotG2.
That would be perfect.
Here he is:
Is that Monica’s boss at 1:05? or a new grey haired man?
No that’s someone else
Is WandaVision officially listed as a limited-series or just an exclusive series?
Limited. Just 9 episodes telling a complete story that leads into Doctor Strange 2(and rumors are maybe somehow also related to Spider-man 3)
So then there will be no need to figure out a way to being Vision back from the dead for seasons 2 – 5. Excellent. I was not looking forward to the narrative gyrations required for that.
Agnes was shown on the board with the others but not named. The info sheet was just out of frame but Agnes’s photo can be seen.
Given what this trailer shows, I’m still surprised that we haven’t been given any indication as to whether Monica Rambeau has “Photon” powers at this point (beyond the callback to her mother’s call-sign as a test pilot).
I think Monica will get her powers in the second Captain Marvel film. Here we’re getting the character build up, with some nice backstory.
Her outfit in episode 4 was a nice Adam Brashear/Blue Marvel easter egg, though.
Slowly but surely, this show is… winning me over?
Yes. It is.
Kat Dennings manages the unsettling performance of being as annoying in 10 seconds of trailer as she did on an entire episode of Broke Girls (something that, bafflingly, went on for seven seasons?)
Glad to see what appears to be an approximation of the Family Ties living room getting some love.
Am I getting too jaded or is this show basically just Legion for people who unironically call Winter Soldier a political thriller?
So far we’ve had three episodes consisting almost entirely of straight spoofs of decade old sitcoms, and now the big ‘mystery reveal’ episode felt mostly like twenty minutes of heavy-handed exposition that pretty much confirmed every reasonable guess.
As much as I like this show, I still love Legion so much more. If only the last part of season two hadn’t made its lead do something so utterly irredeemable. There had to be other ways they could give him a heel turn without what actually happened.
I still enjoyed the third season due to the style and the actors, but that version of that character was no longer someone that anyone could actually root for anymore.
Green Vision is the best Vision, amirite? He was always my favorite. I grew up with The Avengers comics in real time.
I was into the look of the all white outfit version after he was rebooted without emotions in West Coast Avengers, but storywise him losing his “humanity” was rather a depressing development.