WandaVision didn’t just birth a whole new phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe—the Disney Plus series resurrected appointment television, as viewers tuned in weekly, sometimes even briefly crashing the platform. Yet, while the series has overwhelmingly been praised, its goals and achievements remain a bit of a mystery. Was it really an exercise in form, or just a segue back to the big-screen version of the MCU?
Even those of us here at The A.V. Club have spent much of the season expressing disparate opinions, both on the site and in our Slack channels. So we gathered around the virtual watercooler to search our feelings—sorry, wrong Disney property—about the conclusion to WandaVision, “The Series Finale.” Were Wanda and Vision’s final moments together worth the nine-hour journey? Did the show’s substance match its enviable style? Why didn’t Debra Jo Rupp return? And what was the deal with Dottie?
Danette Chavez
WandaVision began as an impressive pastiche of classic TV tropes, but one capable of great subversion and pathos. A confluence of influences runs through “The Series Finale,” though it’s to decidedly weaker effect. In returning with gusto to the big-screen MCU for inspiration, WandaVision’s finale looked, at times, downright generic. As it hit some of its biggest emotional beats and action scenes, the episode just called to mind a variety of other comic book/superhero productions, from The Incredibles (when Vision wonders if they’ve prepared their kids for having superpowers) to The Crow (I half-expected Wanda to quote Eric Draven to Agatha while up in the sky) and Hellboy (Wanda’s mantle as the harbinger of the end of the world; the red horns that sprout up around her face when she “accepts” who she is).
Still, there’s no denying the powerful veins of grief that were mined so thoughtfully by Jac Schaeffer, Matt Shakman, Elizabeth Olsen, and Paul Bettany. That’s just one of the many themes that sparked chatter among the show’s viewers. What I appreciate most about WandaVision is all the discussion it stirred—maybe it’s just the editor in me, but as long as the discourse was respectful, I enjoyed watching fans and critics volley back and forth, poring over every new development, grafting meaning onto each narrative turn.
Sam Barsanti
Well, I was wrong about everything, huh? Like a lot of Marvel fans keeping up with WandaVision, I had fun picking through all of the mysteries and clues, trying to parse what the bigger picture was going to be, but I am a little disappointed in how it all worked out. In retrospect, it would’ve been kind of ridiculous for Magneto or the X-Men to appear in the MCU for the first time on a Disney Plus series, and I was never remotely convinced that Reed Richards was going to show his stretchy face here. But it did all feel like it was going somewhere more interesting than Wanda tossing CG superhero balls at Kathryn Hahn and every little tease turning out to be a red herring. (Not that I don’t love people tossing CG superhero balls at each other.) I mean, Marvel absolutely knew what it was doing when it cast Evan Peters as Pietro, and while the payoff didn’t have to be that he was literally the same version of the character that he played in the X-Men movies, it is a frustratingly cheap cop-out to just say, “Oh, he’s a random guy with no real relevance to the story who happens to look like this”—especially when Marvel Studios has historically been so savvy about knowing how to read its audience without seeming manipulative. I think I’ll probably like this finale more on a rewatch, as pretty much everything with Vision (the fight with the sleek Apple iVision, his “We’ve said goodbye before” line, the little tear) was fantastic, but I don’t think the series as a whole stuck the landing.
Saloni Gajjar
WandaVision, a series quite literally borne of the depths of Wanda’s grief, met with a fitting, if not heartbreaking, end. But that’s only if we look at it as it was intended (not what the Twitter discourse turned it into): a fascinating insight into how Wanda’s mind and powers work, and how she uses them to channel her loss. In that sense, the final episode didn’t lose sight of what made the show unique compared to its Marvel Cinematic Universe counterparts. Other big-name Avengers have gotten the opportunity to deal with their heartaches in films, but Wanda has been relatively underserved. I appreciate that “The Series Finale” didn’t tie everything up and set her off into the sunset (or somewhere in the mountains) with Vision, Billy, and Tommy until she’s needed again. Her story is only just beginning as she transforms into the Scarlet Witch, complete with a great costume and tousled hair.
WandaVision might not be the holy grail of exploring grief on TV: The Leftovers, This Is Us, and the Elizabeth Olsen-led Sorry For Your Loss are great examples of this theme. But I’m glad it took the time to dive into an iconic character, using a beloved comic book storyline while doing so. Paul Bettany had fun playing with Vision, including the Night King version, and Kathryn Hahn got to shine onscreen yet again. I can empathize with the idea of escaping into TV shows to find relief, and WandaVision had great fun with sitcoms while paying homage to the genre. In typical Marvel fashion, there were red herrings, teases, and hints of some Big Cameo. None of it paid off in the finale as expected, but they did the job of keeping the theorizing alive and well. Even if these nine episodes are simply a stepping stone to bigger forthcoming projects, WandaVision is quite a perfect start to Phase Four.
Patrick Gomez
Having grown up in the era of I Love Lucy and Dick Van Dyke Show marathons on Nick At Nite, I was not among those itching for WandaVision to move past the spectacular channeling of classic TV. That said, I still pored over every weighted phrase and possible hint of what was to come. The world Wanda created was fascinating, and the fact that she had no idea how she did it made for riveting storytelling—inside Westview, that is. I enjoy Josh Stamberg, but he was in a different show. Where the world of Westview’s sitcom imitations was exciting and new, Hayward’s mission felt like a stale rerun: setting the stage for Vision’s revival seemed somewhat unnecessary, and Monica Rambeau could’ve gotten her superhero origin story without a clichéd boss in the way. (I’d also add Monica’s long-touted mystery guest being a no-name agent to the manipulations list Sam started with Fake Pietro.)
Even in the moving finale, Hayward’s trucks and guns and obligatory “I’ll now explain my entire evil plan” speech felt disconnected from WandaVision’s emotional center. And what an emotional center it was: Wanda forced, yet again, to choose between love and the greater good, this time savoring love just a while longer. After an Emmy-worthy season, Kathryn Hahn was functional but constricted during the prolonged fight scene, and watching Vision fight Talcum Powder Vision didn’t really excite me. It was all worth it, though, for that family Avengers pose—and my heart broke watching Wanda tuck her boys in one final (?) time. Ultimately this denouement felt jarringly rapid after such a slow burn over the preceding eight episodes, but that’s more a comment on the strength of the first two acts of the season and less a critique of the finale. Solving a mystery like Westview is rarely going to be as exciting as exploring the possible answers.
William Hughes
Kudos are, I think, in order to Jac Schaeffer, Matt Shakman, and the rest of the WandaVision crew for resisting the MCU ethos—“There’s no problem so thoughtful or internal that you can’t work through it by firing a giant CGI laser at it”—for as long as they did. But every dream must come to an end, and WandaVision’s went out with a big, loud, emotionally simplified bang. As ever, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, and especially Kathryn Hahn do yeoman’s work elevating the more emotionally resonant parts of “The Series Finale”—Hahn, especially, has an utterly transfixing gift for keeping Agatha’s latent sympathy for Wanda shining in her eyes even as she embraces the show’s mandate to be its true “Wicked Witch.” But the show’s smaller, better impulses are consistently drowned out by its need to be a workable block in the Marvel Lego wall: Monica’s superhero origin story, the compulsive need for exposition, and especially whatever deranged part of the MCU formula insists two invincible beings must repeatedly punch each other while delivering quippy one-liners. There are beautiful moments here, beneath the din; Bettany and Olsen are never better than when basking in Wanda and Vision’s easy intimacy, and the resistance to giving Wanda an easy out for her sacrifice is to be commended. But as Vision himself points out, how can you tell an honest story about grief in a universe where nothing is ever truly allowed to die?
Gwen Ihnat
I watched WandaVision every week with my middle-school-aged son, an absolute gift since he’s at an age where he’s not dying to hang out with me exactly, but remains an Avengers addict. So I for one was grateful for the weekly format, because otherwise we would have binged it immediately, and our fun soon would have been over. He’s never seen an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show or Bewitched, yet he is so tied to the characters of Wanda and Vision that he was as riveted as I was, a testament to the show’s storytelling and spot-on period TV re-creations.
So, unsurprisingly, my main takeaway from the finale is a poignant understanding of Wanda Maximoff as a mom. When she told the angry Westview crowd, “I’ll fix it!” I started crying and didn’t stop until the end. Like many parents, Wanda had a vision of what her ideal domestic life could be like—but what we all eventually realize is that real life is a lot bumpier than a 30-minute sitcom. Still, we wouldn’t trade our families for the world. Obviously what Wanda did was over-the-top and hurt a lot of people, but like Monica, I get it: She got to clutch that perfect family for at least a little while (and judging from that final shot, may be planning on doing so again). So while the red and purple fireballs got repetitive and not all the teases panned out (was expecting more from Emma Caulfield Ford’s cameo), what will stick with me post-WandaVision is its spot-on depiction of motherhood—and Elizabeth Olsen’s amazing ability to interpret that. I’ll try to get my son to watch The Falcon And The Winter Soldier with me next, but I doubt it’ll have the same resonance.
Erik Adams
If we’re going to talk about underutilizing the WandaVision
cast, then I’m just going to launch into my biggest, nitpicking gripe
with the series: You’re going to hire sitcom ringers Kat Dennings and
Randall Park and then A) only send one of them into the Hex, and B) keep
her out of the highest of the rerun hijinks? Okay, so it turns out that
crossing that glowing red barrier is “dangerous” and may result in
irreversible genetic alterations that build the bridge to one’s very own
superhero sequel. But as much as I enjoyed having WandaVision around
as appointment viewing (its most successful channeling of ancient
television energies), I must admit that part of my anticipation for “On A
Very Special Episode,” “All-New Halloween Spooktacular!,” and “Breaking
The Fourth Wall” was wrapped up in the hope that Dennings might get to
show off her multi-cam chops, or that Park could revisit his uncanny
mimicry of Jim Halpert in the mockumentary episode. I suppose we’ll just
have to settle for the blast that Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany are
clearly having in the black-and-white early goings, flexing performance
muscles that years of big-screen MCU sequels never engaged—yet another
bit of TV metacommentary laced into a series that was nothing if not
clever.
Baraka Kaseko
I don’t have much to say on the topic of the fake-outs and red herrings, as I never delved too deep down the WandaVision theories rabbit hole. But I do find it hilarious that the big reveal surrounding Fake Pietro is that his real name is Ralph Bohner. Talk about trolling.
On the topic of the finale, and the series at large: I’m with you, Patrick. As much as I love Teyonah Parris, Randall Park, and Kat Dennings riffing in a room together, I was never completely sold on S.W.O.R.D. being a necessary part of Wanda and Vision’s story, and “The Series Finale’’ only underlined that. I wanted more period-accurate sitcom hijinks, and much less government agents in rooms assessing threat levels. Even as I write this, mere hours after watching the finale, I’m struggling to remember what the fuck Hayward wanted. (Obviously no disrespect intended toward Josh Stamberg or his performance. Like you said, Patrick: He was just on a different show.)
Unsurprisingly, what I do remember are the moments involving Wanda. Elizabeth Olsen’s has been fantastic throughout the series, and the finale was no different. In particular, her confrontation with the citizens of Westview as they pleaded to be released from her spell was gripping. Cinematic superhero stories don’t often burden themselves with the humanity of the “ground-level” characters in their universes, so it was an especially welcome move here. And of course, Wanda having to say goodbye to Billy, Tommy, and Vision left me heartbroken.
Alex McLevy
Agree to (partly) disagree, Sam: This is how you structure a finale. I’ve already seen both the praise and carping online about what people loved/hated, and I understand the disappointment in certain expectations not being met (sometimes a troll is just a troll), but I haven’t seen much of an appreciation for the basics—the fundamentals of storytelling that the show got right, and that are actually surprisingly uncommon, especially when it comes to superhero narratives onscreen.
I’m talking about things like having the final confrontation between Wanda and Agatha come down to a callback that had been set up effectively in advance, and involved actual strategy—instead of, say, a big magical hole in the sky that you just shoot at until it closes. (You know who you are, movies guilty of this.) Things like giving incidental characters real dialogue and identities, thereby making them actual people you can feel empathy for, instead of mindless cannon fodder who may as well be indistinguishable from gerbils. Things like having characters play to the top of their intelligence: There’s not many superhero showdowns that get resolved by having the two parties apply the Ship Of Theseus thought experiment to their situation until they come to a peaceful resolution. And things like not treating grief as a problem that’s resolved at the end, but rather an ongoing issue that will continue to have ramifications in someone’s life moving forward. These are essentials of building a smart and effective story, and I appreciate the show’s commitment to getting its foundation formed so properly. Was it perfect? Hell no. But it was solidly assembled and well-told, and that deserves credit. (Also, kudos to having Kat Dennings appear for exactly two seconds to deliver a great line: “Have fun in prison!”)
296 Comments
Maybe it’s because I waited until the series was over and binged watched everything at once, so no endless speculation for me, but I found the finale perfectly fine. I took Evan Peters appearing as little more than a mythology gag, not that it actually was the X-Men film series version of Quicksilver.
I had thought/hoped that he was indeed that guy purposefully or accidentally yanked from another reality, but in the end he wasn’t, which was fine! They had repeatedly noted the “townspeople forced into roles” thing, and in the end he was one too (albeit a very meta joke by Marvel to have cast him). I cannot understand these people who are somehow mad or disappointed that their theories weren’t the correct ones. Mine weren’t either – get over it!
Hello DCU, and WB bosses… notice how folks talk about the MCU-connected shows days after the event? Are we going to take any notes?
Wanda, now The Scarlet Witch, carries the power
of all the Infinity Stones and displayed examples
of such all throughout WandaVision.
I mean, Marvel absolutely knew what it was doing when it cast Evan Peters as Pietro, and while the payoff didn’t have to be that he was literally the same version of the character that he played in the X-Men movies, it is a frustratingly cheap cop-out to just say, “Oh, he’s a random guy with no real relevance to the story who happens to look like this”—especially when Marvel Studios has historically been so savvy about knowing how to read its audience without seeming manipulative.They did something similar in Iron Man 3 with the Mandarin.
OK, I’ll be that commenter and ask: was The Mandalorian not appointment television?I found the series and the finale satisfying overall, and like any Marvel outing there are plenty of nits that could be picked while still enjoying the overall work. Would I have enjoyed more Jimmy and Darcy? Sure, but I was happy to get what we got, given that the focus was on Wanda. I’m still wondering how the MCU will grapple, if at all, with Wanda’s abuse of Vision and the West View denizens. Plus, Agatha gets a very severe punishment, the loss of her identity, when she did far less harm than Wanda (yes, I know, she killed Sparky. But still.)
The fact that they did not do the MCU standard thing and kill Agatha off suggests this is a plot point that will be coming back at a later date, maybe even as soon as in Multiverse of Madness.
They would be insane not to bring Hahn back as soon as possible, she’s the biggest breakout villain casting the MCU has had since… I don’t know, Michael B Jordan maybe?
What’s Tom Hiddleston, chopped liver?
…I said ‘since’, which implies chronology. Jordan’s casting occurred quite a bit of time after Hiddleston’s.
Okay….
She is set up to be the next Loki. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s actually Strange or Mordo that rescue her because Wanda has gotten out of control
I like that they will likely bring back Agatha and that they are bringing back Zemo…comic books are serials, this need to kill off the joker at the end of each movie is reductive (unless it’s Jared Leto)…go full soap opera and bring everybody back
this need to kill off the joker at the end of each movie is reductive (unless it’s Jared Leto)
To be fair, they didn’t kill off Heath Ledger’s Joker — he did that on his own.Too soon…?
oh snap
More than likely, this was the last straw for Wanda to live among “normal people.” Either she’ll live in isolation like she is now, or she’ll be jumping to another universe in Doctor Strange 2.
i imagine there will be one or two exceptionally coy and humorous lines in the next few films to handle those conundrums
The townsfolk never even got an apology for their months-long(?) living nightmare, which annoyed me.
I thought each episode of Wanda’s sitcom-a-rama equaled one day, which is still terrible.
Now that we know Wanda was keeping the town’s kids asleep until the
twins were born & everyone’s been sharing her nightmares, Westview’s
children may need even more therapy than their parents.
I think an apology from Wanda would have gone over as well as a postbellum plantation owner apologizing to his former slaves.“Um, sorry I got so hung up in my grief over my dead synthezoid boyfriend that I mentally enslaved you in a sitcom for a week! I did help defeat Thanos…”I kind of like how the series leaves it to your imagination that there’s now an entire town in the MCU who shares that horrifying, traumatic experience (coming right on the heels of the Blip!), and they’re just left out there as unseen collateral damage of Wanda’s personal growth. Spending more time with them would somehow lessen the impact of what Wanda did to them.
I did help defeat Thanos…Saving the world multiple times didn’t save the Avengers from the Sokovian Accords, so I doubt helping to restore/avenge half the universe is enough to give her a pass here.
Particularly because Wanda was snapped! She failed to protect the Mind Stone from Thanos, leading directly to the Snap itself, and then didn’t do anything to reverse the Snap on account of having turned to dust five years earlier. Her contribution to the Battle of Earth was mostly irrelevant since Thanos avoided her assault by calling in an air raid.
At this point Wanda has a really big rap sheet: she helped Ultron, she blew up that building full of Wakandans, she went rogue with Captain America, and now she’s held an entire town in psychological and physical captivity.
But on the flip side, people have forgiven Tony for endangering the world
multiple times (Ultron, Iron Patriot), Bruce Banner for Hulking out and
destroying several major cities, and Loki for trying to conquer the
world at least once, so you never know.
Don’t forget Bucky. He assassinated a number of important people over the decades (and assaulted more than a few policemen in Civil War) but apparently all is forgiven because Cap. Bruce Banner for Hulking out and destroying several major citiesTo be fair, part of that is Wanda’s fault, too.
I actually left Bucky out on purpose because I think Falcon and Winter Soldier is going to address how the rest of the world (and the superhero community) think of him.
He also has the brainwashing/mind control as an excuse, and since he was only taken out of cryogenic stasis occasionally for specific assassination missions the number of people he killed is probably somewhat limited. And the guy who has the most reason to hate him is now dead.But good shout on Wanda being responsible for Banner in Avengers II.
Neither of those characters was in control of their actions at the time, and that matters. Hell, it matters in court in the real world. Wanda’s involvement with Hydra and Ultron was willful even if misguided.
She blew up a building full of Nigerians. I think Tony is the most egregious, as he’s both presented as a hero and the most in control of his actions. People have reason to be scared of the Hulk, but people can also understand that Banner is desperate to control himself and the damage. Loki’s very popular, but he’s not presented as hero.
She blew up a building full of Nigerians.To save a street full of even more Nigerians. That whole scene was a trolley problem.
Oh, I get the context. I was just pointing out it wasn’t Wakandans, like the other comment said.
Ah, gotcha.
(IIRC, though, there were a few Wakandans in there; that’s why T’Chaka came to the Accords proceedings.)
That makes sense! I hadn’t realized that before.
Yeah, this whole series can kind of be summed up with: Maybe the Sokovia Accords were a good idea after all.
If you could subtract people like Thunderbolt Ross or Brian Hayward from the equation, sure. But with the likes of them in positions of authority over those to whom the Accords apply, the Accords are inherently tainted.
I’m not sure I’d put Ross on the same level as Hayward. At least half the Avengers sided with Ross. I’m not sure any of them would’ve sided with Hayward. Ross, at least the MCU version, was basically a bureaucrat frenemy. Hayward repeatedly tried to shoot two kids.
But yeah, people who wanted to push the Accords through would point to this as the example of why they were needed, even though they really just want to control superheros.
Ross is responsible for creating the Abomination, & he had the gall to ask “where’s Banner?” when everyone knows the answer to that question is always “as far away from you specifically as he can possibly get.”And his little hypothetical of “what if I misplaced a nuke?” was totally disingenuous, because he did misplace a nuke (Hive stole it) & then got appointed Secretary of State.
Saying she “blew up that building” implies she did it on purpose. It was either that or Crossbones explode in the crowd on the ground. It was a snap decision that, unfortunately, turned out badly.
Doesn’t mean they’re not owed one. When she was in the town, I thought for a moment that she was going to insensitively offer to erase their memories to make it all better, which would have turned them into a torch-wielding mob, the traditional enemy of the witch.
Whether intentional or not, it also leaves open the possibility this is essentially an origin story for some future villain to emerge from the troubled residents of Westview.
I think the situation was a month at most if you assume that Wanda started reality hacking as soon as she unsnapped. Monica was back on the job 3 weeks after the unsnap. That whole timeframe with SWORD surrounding Westview was like a week. Wanda having babies was like 12 hours long.
Well, as SOON as she was unsnapped, she jumped into a yellow circle thing, met up with her old buds and then nearly killed Thanos. Then there is Tony’s funeral and all that, so let’s give it a little bit.
Plus, she would have had to get ahold of Vision’s will to find his wishes and get the land deed he had purchased.
Then, let’s work backwards. Monica comes back after three weeks and her first gig is going to Westview. Jimmy and Monica seem to be the first people to discover the Hex and Monica gets pulled in during the 1960s Dick Van Dyke/Bewitched homage.
Woo calls in all hands and the troops arrive. It’s nighttime when Jimmy tries his radio trick, which interrupts Wanda during that same 1960s homage and they send in the beekeeper, who is sent back during that time.
So, she’s not very far in to her dance through the decades when the authorities are out there.
That’s what we know, and now I’m guessing.
Wanda was a show binger, especially in times of grief. One of the townies (I think it was the South Asian man) makes a comment about “When you let us sleep…”
My theory is that she is hitting Next Episode (or popping in the next DVD) fairly quickly.
It would not surprise me at all if she goes from sitting on the couch at the end of the Harts dinner party RIGHT to her and Vision in their twin beds at the beginning of the next and then we know that she is pregnant and showing that night and the babies come 12 hours later and are still infants (in the beginning) in Family Ties-land.
So, this may have been a week total. Maybe a little more.
How long was the town enslaved? We had three episodes of WandaVision when we find out S.W.O.R.D. was encamped outside the hex, but how long were they there? Were the episodes Darcy was watching on her old-style TV airing only weekly, like in our world, or did they run back-to-back? What was happening in Westview between episodes? Did Wanda’s changing the style of each show to a different decade FEEL like a decade to the town’s residents?
Darcy tells Vision that it’s been a week. That’s during the sixth and final sitcom era.Earlier Hayward tells everyone that Wanda stole Vision’s body 9 days previously. But apparently SWORD headquarters are in Florida, so it probably took 2 or 3 days to drive up to New Jersey.The hex was probably up for between 6 and 9 days in total.
I would think helping save half the universe from the blip would have given her a mulligan by the town.
As a blippee herself, she didn’t save anybody (though yes, she was crucial in preventing a reblipping). However, the horrible saga of Jimmy Saville, the British radio DJ and TV presenter who raised millions running marathons for hospital charities, and used that goodwill to molest the children in those hospitals while the staff knew but said nothing, shows why the Mulligan should never be a thing.Doing good doesn’t earn the right to do bad.
Exactly. Marvel pretty much told the audience we were supposed to hero worship Wanda like Monica did and that the townspeople were wrong to think of Wanda as bad (Monica basically said these words).Truly awful finale.
I thought that worked, actually. How do you even apologize for something like that? Having Wanda basically just avert her eyes and walk away kept her a flawed human being even as she’s becoming this godlike power.
I was thinking the same thing. There’s a pretty strong argument that Agatha did nothing wrong at all, and that if anyone should be trapped in a nightmare forever as punishment for their wrongdoing, it should 100% be Wanda.
Off topic, am I the only one that was expecting the ‘untethered’ folk of Westview to just straight up try and tear Wanda to pieces when they surrounded her in the plaza? Sure, they know she’s powerful, but she’s right there in the open, surely someone would — however ill-advised — try to kick her ass?
Agatha mind controlled people too – Ralph/Pietro was basically her puppet – and did so with malice a forethought unlike Wanda. Not to mention that she could have released the townsfolk from Wanda’s control at any point and didn’t. I’m genuinely confused by this “Agatha did nothing wrong” trend amongst some of the commenters here.
i imagine they would be torn between wanting to attack her, and having an intense fear of her.
Disney has sold you a TV show where the hero enslaves a town. LMAO
OK, I’ll be that commenter and ask: was The Mandalorian not appointment television?I mean, kind of? It certainly had a lot of people watching it, but it never generated the kind of theorizing and buzz that WandaVision did and it never had so many people tuning it (at 3AM!) that it crashed the platform.
But that just means WV was more popular (or more mysterious) appointment television, not that The Mandalorian wasn’t appointment television.
The Mandalorian was appointment TV for our nerdy family, but I think it had a slower build up to that “can’t miss” momentum WandaVision had from the jump. The early season 2 episodes in particular had to do a lot of thankless set up work.Been trying to figure out exactly how long the WestView anomaly went on. The last 3 episodes are one single day. Episode 4 is concurrent with the first 3, so … six days total? And Wanda seems as clueless as to what’s actually happening as the rest of them until the third day, at the earliest, and by that time the kids had shown up. So shutting it down didn’t just mean watching Vision die AGAIN, but losing her boys. Yeah, it took three days and some aggressive “past regression therapy” to do it, but as soon as she realized the extent to which she was actively hurting people, she did what needed to be done. I’ve known people who took longer than that to make end of life decisions for a single loved one, much less three.
Agatha gets a very severe punishment, the loss of her identity, when she did far less harm than Wanda (yes, I know, she killed Sparky. But still.)Well, she also kidnapped the kids and then tortured them in front of her, so there’s that.
Also, true! But still fewer terrorized children than Wanda. Not saying Agatha is any kind of hero, just less harm than Wanda.
Reprinted from the other thread:Wanda & Townsfolk = Reckless EndangermentAgatha & Wanda’s Kids, Ralph, etc. = Aggravated AssaultNow what would actually work for a sequel (and people have been joking about it, but let’s take it seriously for a second) … that Yeah, the Westview Townsfolk file a class action lawsuit against Wanda and Agatha. Wanda agrees to return to New Jersey to face the music. Wanda and Agatha (released from her “curse”) have to stand trial. Both are forced to deal with each other while stuck in jail awaiting trial. Because Wanda agrees to the process she forces Agatha to sit with her in the stir. There’s the first two episodes, spin it out from there.
In my house it was but I think since Wandavision had much more of a mystery element to it’s story, it felt more like a show you had to watch Friday so you could discuss with friends and family over the weekend zoom calls.
I have maintained since Friday that there is probably at least five minutes of scenes where the townspeople’s rage and grief get to breathe a bit more. I also have to believe there’s at least a few that were like, “My spouse re-married when I was Snapped and my kids have no idea what to say to me. I kind of liked it in Dick Van Dyke world”
Come to think of it, the townspeople did look like they had covid era spacing between them. Maybe there had been more shots of crowd rage planned that they just couldn’t film.
I swear, the MCU must have SO MANY different support groups.
There’s no “but still”, SHE KILLED A DOG. Im really suprised the internet hasnt gone nuts over that. But yeah-they couldnt even arrest her for anything, she didnt even break any laws. (Besides killing Sparky.)
I’m not saying she isn’t a bad person, just that she’s done less harm than Wanda.
Did no one else actually watch the series? She enslaved Bohner. She kidnapped kids. She seems to have actively prolonged the situation on several occasions and even offered to leave it all intact for Wanda if she could have her power, willing to leave everyone enslaved forever.
The Mandalorian, for as much as I enjoyed it, was not appointment-TV for the first half of the season; really up until Ahsoka showed up.
The ending is odd. It was clear they retooled things at the last minute due to covid. The showrunners even admitted that in an interview (I think it was with Kevin Smith).
Apparently they didn’t even finish post on the final episode until 2
weeks before air. There was apparently a scene with Ralph, Monica, and
the boys vs Agatha’s familiar that was cut due to not being able to
finish the VFX (and his arc didn’t just end on a joke), Darcy was cut
because the actress couldn’t make it for reshoots (she was filming her
Hulu series), and some stuff with the townsfolk got nixed cause of
reshoots/availability/safety protocols (hence no kids or families reunited in the final town square scene or them confronting her and instead that weak interaction with Monica).
I even think the Dr. Strange cameo got nixed because he couldn’t travel to set because of restrictions. I think he was originally supposed to take away Agatha but then they had to change it last minute. Her punishment makes no sense as she has no home in town (unless poor Ralph now has a “wife” he never asked for) and everyone in town along with the authorities should know she is a witch, unless Wanda screwed with their minds. It was kinda sloppy writing that just didn’t fit with the rest of the series/episode.
That explains a lot. I thought the townspeople looked spread out in the final confrontation scene. Too bad Dennings couldn’t return, but I’m glad she’s getting work.
The only thing that makes “appointment television” for me is fear of spoilers, so that’s a defacto yes for anything I can’t binge. Also, they imply Agatha has been doing evil crap for centuries.
did i miss something? (which is possible)-I didnt see any mention of what shes been doing between the 1600s and now. You can assume shes been up to no good but i dont remember them saying it.
I’m probably meeting the writer’s more than half way here, but I accepted she was a villain who spent her life thus far doing villainous things because of her origin.
yeah that was kind of murky to me, cause they just show us the aftermath. Again, we can assume a lot but they dont show much. We see her at the witch trial-or whatever you want to call it-but they show nothing that got her to that point-we just get her mother (who seems as evil as agatha, tbh) saying shes out of control/evil.
It seems like the biggest complain of the finale on other sites I read was exactly that Wanda really abused innocent people and that was not really a superhero/avengers thing to do and there was really no excuse for it. It has to come back sometime
I’ve felt compelled to watch WandaVision each week on Fri/Sat depending on my wife and my schedule. I just finished the first season of The Mandalorian over the course of 6 months or so, maybe longer. While I appreciate The Mandalorian doing “traditional” Star Wars style stuff on a smaller scale, I have pretty much zero investment in the plot or characters and it is just more “traditional” Star Wars. Its very pretty, though! WandaVision actually felt somewhat different from other MCU stuff and managed to stay that way until pretty much the last episode (at which point it became a checklist of MCU tropes, throwing energy balls and cars at each other, flying people punching each other, giant energy beam shooting into the sky, etc). I think WandaVision had its issues, and as whole I would say it was pretty good and not great, but it was more compelling weekly viewing.
I’m still processing the show, but for now: I liked the finale a lot, and only have a couple of qualms with it. (More Darcy! Why did Hayward think guns were going to be effective weapons against Wanda?)I still have some issues with the overall arc of the show: namely, that I think they fell so in love with the sitcom gimmick that they stretched it out too long, and that Agatha’s true identity was introduced far later in the show than it should have been, which undercut a lot of her impact. (Not Hahn’s performance, mind you, but Agatha as a character.) I really wanted to find the SWORD stuff interesting, but there’s a lot of vagueness to the background of that plotline (and especially Monica’s) that I think undermines its impact.
Kudos to all the actors (especially Olsen and Bettany, who prove over and over how great they are), and all the visuals: set design, costuming, effects. All top-notch. (The cinematography was mostly the same general kind we get from MCU films, but that doesn’t bother me.)My biggest complaint: The Agatha “reveal” at the end of episode 7 was kind of a dud. A lot of people (comic fans, mainly) had guessed in advance that Agnes was in fact Agatha Harkness, so the reveal just confirmed their suspicions; and for those of us who had never heard of her before, the reveal had no impact at all. (It almost reminded me of the “My name is… KHAN!” reveal from Star Trek Into Darkness.) I would like to have seen some of the time spent on delightful-at-first-but-eventually-repetitive sitcom shenanigans instead spent on showing Agatha trying to figure out what’s going on. I think her presence in the show would have been a lot stronger, and her counterpoint to Wanda’s grief, a lot more meaningful if we’d found out at the end of the first episode that “Agnes” wasn’t under Wanda’s control like everyone else, and found out no later than the third episode who Agatha really was. Then there would have been opportunities over the next several episodes for us to learn about Agatha’s character and motivations. Instead, Agatha’s entire storyline is crammed into the last two episodes, and we still don’t really even know much about her.
they fell so in love with the sitcom gimmick that they stretched it out too long…This was my biggest problem with the series. And it was right at the beginning so it really lost me from the first episode. We didn’t really need 24 minutes of Dick Van Dyke tribute and 10 seconds of hinting. They should have gotten the mystery going much sooner or woven it in much better. The sitcom tributes were overlong, boring and silly and overpowered the horror of Wanda mind controlling everyone. I wish they hadn’t hung their hat on that way of translating House of M to TV because it really wasn’t able to sustain the rest of the series. I’m also getting sort of tired of the MCU’s extremely loose way of explaining their superheroes’ powers. It’s been WAAY too plot driven lately. I was also annoyed that despite the awfulness of mind-controlling a whole town to ease her mind, in the end Agatha and SWORD were the villains and not a Wanda gone insane.
It’s not really an adaptation of House of M. It’s a pastiche primarily adapted from Steve Englehart’s Vision & The Scarlet Witch with some homages to John Byrne’s West Coast Avengers run and Tom King’s Vision limited series.
Admit it, you’re disappointed the Big Bad wasn’t Master Pandemonium, and Billy and Tommy didn’t become his hands.
Sort of
I’m pretty sure I bought at least a portion of this limited series when I was a kid, that cover looks really familiar. It will be something to dredge up the next time I visit my parents.
I agree-I hated the first 3 episodes, and everybody was like “its great, you just dont get it.” No, it was pretty obvious, there wasnt anything to “not get”. It was just fucking drawn out and boring.
In an ethical sense, if we accept that Wanda didn’t know what she was doing, then she lacks moral culpability the same way an insane person lacks it. But we don’t let dangerous insane people roam free; we put them in mental hospitals. I would have liked for at least a line or two of someone saying “Well we clearly are incapable of imprisoning or killing her, so, uh… maybe we can ask her nicely to exile herself?”
Eh, the sitcom gimmick was fine at first, when we were still in the “what’s going on here?” phase. In retrospect, it didn’t really provide much to the story by being so long. As an escape for Wanda, it makes sense, but after a couple of episodes, it was like, okay, we get it. If you consider the show a three-act story, the end of the first act (around ep 3) should have been revealing that Wanda is doing all this as a way to try to suppress her grief. Act 2 (eps 4-6) should have been people trying to convince Wanda to accept her grief, and her refusing (continuing the sitcom theming gimmick but not spending so much time actually in the sitcom), and act 3 (7-9) should have been Wanda realizing she has to push through in order to actually deal with her grief and accept that Vision is really gone.
I think even a non comics reader wouldve guessed something was up with her-she was SO fucking creepy from day one.
Oh for sure something was up with Agnes, but for someone who doesn’t know who Agatha is, “My name is Agatha Harkness!” still landed with a thud.
And as I mentioned at the time, there’s really no reason for Agatha to give herself a fake name, since there’s nobody in either Westview or SWORD who knows the name “Agatha Harkness”.
Good point. That pushes it even further into “My name is… KHAN!” territory.
my favorite part was when the three shield characters who were all the same character got kicked out and then snuck in ten seconds later back to the same exact spot so it didn’t matter at all
I am truly enjoying the move back to weekly shows. Some shows are fine for bingeing but I like waiting and marinating in the Disney sauce every week.
What would be Disney sauce? Something like duck sauce perhaps?
It’s something they’ve been synthesizing from Walt’s frozen corpse.
Probably not kosher.
Excellent comment/username synergy.
I generally agree, but I think this show would have been much the better for bingeing, because it was essentially a five-hour movie.
I hope Netflix can follow suit. The thing is, it’s hard to know if they have had a show that would be worthy of this. Just dumping it out in a weekend and all the viewers on different pages really stifles the chances of conversations/zeitgeist.
I’m usually one for weekly viewing, but I felt that one episode a week wasn’t enough for Wandavision. There just wasn’t enough happening week-to-week, a good portion of the middle episodes just felt like stalling. Maybe if they released 2 episodes a week? But then that would only give Disney+ about a month of content.
An interesting parallel is that in Endgame, Tony was not willing to turn back the clock 5 years – undoing the Snap entirely and preventing all of the deaths those five years inevitably caused and the devestation it’s still wrecking on the world – because he had a daughter he didn’t want to give up. Wanda, on the other hand, gave up her entire FAMILY to save one town.
To be fair, said family was basically her imaginary friends who had no existence in the real world, and the real Vision is still out there, maybe without all the empathy he had in his first “life” but now with his memories of their pre-Westview life, so maybe he’ll begin to “humanize” again and want to start a relationship with Wanda.
Just because she created them doesn’t mean they were imaginary; they were clearly real people with their own thoughts and feelings. That doesn’t justify Wanda’s actions, but it’s not like the family she gave up was pretend.
They were imaginary. If they had left the hex, they would completely disappear. And they seemed to be modeled after Pietro, herself, and the personalities of whatever sitcom she watched, so I wouldn’t say they had their own thoughts and feelings, but just whatever Wanda wanted them to be.
And they seemed to be modeled after Pietro, herselfTheir powers maybe, but I think it’s a bit of stretch to say that they had no personalities of their own.
I also said that they also seemed to be modeled after the personalities of kids from whatever sitcom was following, so not just after herself. They were sentient and self-aware, but that it didn’t seem that they had distinct personalities. The show didn’t really examine that too deeply.
Everyone in the hex was influenced by their fake sitcom personalities though, so that’s not enough to prove the kids weren’t real. The original Vision was artificially created and we still see him as “real.” They couldn’t live outside the hex, but they were still pretty clearly independent consciousnesses. Wanda said Vision was created by the piece of the mindstone inside her, and I have to assume the same is true of the kids; we have seen that the mindstone can create new consciousnesses such as Ultron, so it isn’t hard for me to accept any of them as real people.
Execpt that everyone in the hex were real people before Wanda turned them into her zombies. Vision was also a real thing before the hex too as she used a piece of something real and of him through the mind stone. Even Ultron was a software program that got personified into a physical thing. The kids were never real and were thought into existence from scratch, and again, they were her own impressions of what she thinks kids are like from the sitcoms and from her brother. They were sentient and self-aware spirits or and ghosts more than anything.
But if they were real, why couldn’t they live outside her fantasy world? Clearly they weren’t actual physical matter.
The world wasn’t a fantasy, it was an altered reality generated by Wanda. The kids did things that Wanda expressly didn’t want; in the finale, they come to help her despite her telling them not to. Vision was also real; he operated independently of and in opposition to Wanda, although his existence was a result of her. Just because they weren’t physical matter doesn’t mean they aren’t real; this is a superhero show.
Wait, the real Vision didn’t even die at the end of this and is still out there somewhere?
Yeah, Wanda’s Vision showed him how to recover his memories from before he “died” and which caused him to stop fighting and fly off somewhere to have a think. So he is more than Sword’s puppet now, although maybe not quite the same “person” he was before.
Wait, the real Vision didn’t even die at the end of this and is still out there somewhere?That’s correct. But they weren’t really interested in that part of the story, so…
That isn’t how time travel works. There was a whole scene on it. Tony couldn’t fix anything, only bring relics from the past to now, including the snapped.
Time Travel <> The Snap.Time travel is a specific thing, the infinity stones are, basically, infinite wishes, and doesn’t suffer from the restrictions placed around MCU TT.
That isn’t stated. And since Hulk couldn’t bring Nat back, it isn’t shown.
Well, it’s clear there are different rules – otherwise, why do they discuss what to do with the snap? Also, Thanos’s resurrection of the Vision doesn’t fit the TT model.
They discuss it, but Banner still tries to bring Nat back and fails. So there is nothing showing that it could have all been rewritten.Thanos used the time stone to move back a few minutes, that was shown in Dr. Strange. It was also warned in that movie that the farther you went back, the more damage you could inadvertently cause. Like when Loki gets away in Endgame and creates a new timeline and for a moment, creates a new stone. Marvel is making a show on how that messes with the natural order and has to be fixed.
To be more accurate, Wanda gave up her fantasy life that she created out of whole cloth where she was imprisoning the entire town of people in a living nightmare. And she only did that after first refusing to do it when she realized it would destroy her fantasy simulacroms to do so. Wanda does not exactly come across as a hero in WandaVision.
You mean the town that she personally victimised? I’m not sure you get to take thousands of people hostage and then be praised as a selfless hero when you finally let them go.
I don’t think she’s supposed to be a hero here, just supposed to be understood and given some compassion for doing something that many others would do given the chance.
there are a lot of comments following the finale that basically boil down to just enthusiastically, desperately wanting Wanda (an understandably grieving woman) to suffer more and hate herself more. i don’t think she was ever meant to be a hero, so she doesn’t necessarily need to be praised as such, but… that’s a bad look, and miles away from simply admitting her actions weren’t entirely heroic.
totally fair, I think Disney tried to do something interesting with a real commentary on the power of grief and the unfair and tidy narrative sitcoms etc. perpetuate in dealing with ones grief, and instead the focus has turned into a simple good vs evil debate.
Actually i think the reverse. With the grief and Elizabeths portayel it was hard to see her actions as Villainous and bad which they were. Monica was wrong at the end but right in her sentiment that everybody would do the same thing if they had Wandas power. I certainly would. Haywerd and Agatha done far less damage but were punished accordingly. I suppose Wandas ‘punishment’ was losing her family again. Its a weird situastion i dont want to see Wanda get further hurt or punished but what justice do the townsfolk get. They got to look at Wanda angrily for a few seconds. Look how triggered we all got when Agatha was messing with Tommy and Billy. Wanda had a whole towns children separated from their parents and locked down. Unconsciously true but that is irrelevent to the residents.
no, it wasn’t hard to see Wanda’s actions as bad; even Wanda is very clearly aware. similar arguments have come up in the past re: leading women, but just like Daenerys never made a heel turn, and just like Jessica Jones was never presented as a perfect heroine to emulate, Wanda was never presented as a hero. understanding + empathizing is not the same as excusing. besides, she will carry the guilt and shame of this just like she has for other past actions (and there’s no telling what extra future consequences that are likely to come from her actions). it’s a real shame that so many commenters are out for “more blood” when it comes to Wanda, especially when that mimics the way some women are treated in real life. when is it enough?
Thats what happened lol.
I think what Tony was saying was that his condition for reversing the Snap was that they had to do it in their own timeline, so that he could spend the rest of his life in a timeline that included the Morgan he had already raised.
Had he merely found a way to travel back in time and reversed the Snap in 2018, he would have been abandoning the Prime timeline (and Morgan, and the rest of that world) to a post-Snap existence without any of the Avengers. Tony didn’t just want to solve the problem of going back in time, he wanted to be able to return to the present, by inventing a kind of timeline-GPS. When the Avengers fixed the Snap in the Prime timeline, that meant they had fixed Morgan’s timeline and not some branching reality (which would have included an alternate-timeline Morgan — since Pepper was already pregnant before the Snap — who never got to meet her father).
I’m sure in the entire world of now 3.5 billion people after Thano’s snap, Tony and Pepper were not the only couple to have children.
I’d like to see a version where Tony literally rewinds time to before the Snap, but now he also has all the Infinity Stones, and he and Thanos have a snap-off.
What, you mean like this?
“Dance-off, bro!”
“[H]e and Thanos have a snap-off.”Now I’m just seeing Tony dissing Thanos while behind him Steve snaps his fingers and says, “Oh, gurl!”
That is because for the entire run Tony was the biggest most selfish dick, right up until the end.
I do like that Tony’s actions have had a ton of consequences, and not just Ultron. Spider-Man far from home was perfect in having the villain be all people mad at him. I do wish that was told to Peter more though, it’s definitely a good thing he’s not like him. So hopefully a few Westview villains will emerge. Mordo definitely won’t take kindly to the news
Come on. Her “family” was two imaginary children and a dead robot. Not the same.
That’s just it they weren’t imaginary at all, Wanda created them, they were real. But like fish that can’t live outside water, so to her family, they just couldn’t live beyond the energy field.Sword was actually able to track Visions energy signature, if he was just an imagination this could not be so.
So theyre weird energy constructs-still not comparable to Tony and Pepper’s actual flesh and blood child. (Except maybe to wanda, but shes fuckin crazy.)
Perspective!
Yeah I gotta disagree that they were as real as a real child They’re basically sitcom characters who were made to grow fast. She had control over their will for most of the time
What is interesting in this comment thread is that it’s pretty easy to differentiate between people who have kids and people who don’t. Also, your first point is a bit off; Tony didn’t want to undo the last 5 years as much as he wanted to bring everyone Snapped back into the present, thus keeping his marriage with Pepper intact and Morgan alive.
Except that was never an option. The reason Endgame played out the way it did is because (in the MCU version of time travel – or at least the MCU version of time travel for now), made it clear you couldn’t just go back and change the past.
Tony began working on the problem that very day and had a solution a plan and his presence by the following day. ‘Save the town’ from what, her own spell? Wanda was also here for at least two weeks. Not to mention if Monica didn’t turn up when would Wanda have released the spell. Infact she doubled down after Monica was expelled and Haywerd the fool tried to attack her, then she also expanded it when Vision was dying. Wanda is a villain who kidnapped and held hostage an entire town. Haywerd is a piece of shit but how much more damage did Wanda do to innocents. Same with Agatha. The westview residents were made to look like the aggressors and Wanda some reluctant hero.I think Wanda is getting an unbelievable pass in all this. Which is partly testament to Elizabeths acting as her grief has been so well portrayed, no one can judge her and say they wouldn’t do what she did. The show was able to build up a fantastic character who very likely will be the villain in early phase 4. Even better because we dont really see her as a villain. She has all our sympathies, more than any other villain even Thanos and Killmonger who are my favourites.
They went to great pains in the movie to point out this could not be done.
Lol this is as awful as Monica’s dialogue to her for the same reason it’s the same dumb argument she made to make Wanda look like a selfless hero to the audience.
Also, Wanda didn’t give up her kids, she broke the hex. As the coda shows her looking for them in the Darkhold, she gave up less than Tony for a problem she was directly responsible for. Tony just said, “If I help, I don’t break up my family or any new ones that have formed in the last 5 years” Now those 2 guys can go on a second date. Maybe this time cry in joy.
“WandaVision began as an impressive pastiche of classic TV tropes, but one capable of great subversion and pathos.”AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Great short series and a very sympathetic take on an It Was A Good Day-style story.
The finale was a bit predictable, which is not necessarily bad.https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2021/03/05/does-wandavision-deserve-derision/It’s puzzling why Agatha is presented as an antagonist, especially
since she’s not villainous in the comics. Wanda is the one holding an
entire town hostage & mindcontrolling them, whereas Agatha’s been
undermining that spell. There’s plenty of unused supernatural foes they could’ve used, so Agatha could’ve been a benevolent supporting
character. Giving Wanda an evil counterpart to battle distracts from her
own accountability. My favorite part of “Series Finale” (which may be a misnomer) is the
dueling Visions resolving their differences by discussing “the ship of
Theseus.” Darcy T-bones Hayward with a funnel cake truck! That’s my second favorite bit of the climax. Wanda magically manifests a Scarlet Witch costume. It’s sadly inferior to her Halloween costume.Wanda
mumbles a half-hearted apology to Monica, who unilaterally accepts on
behalf of all the traumatized Westview citizens. Wanda doesn’t try to
make amends to them. So this is like the third time Wanda doesn’t atone
for her misdeeds. (Nobody remembers Wanda used her mind whammy on the
Hulk, which made him wreck an innocent African city.)The mystery identities of Dottie & the FBI’s missing person being dropped was infuriating.
1) They. Don’t. Have. To. Follow. The. Comics.
2) OK, so we know you want to see Olsen’s tits. Got it.
3) Monica doesn’t accept. She just is like, “Well, I understand.” And what was the solution? Put Wanda in cuffs? How was THAT going to work?
4) LOL… “infuriating”??? Dude, unclench.
The MCU stans have finally reached the level of the Cult of Snyder.
The only thing that made Agatha “evil” was her ridiculous attitude. She didnt cause the situation, she stumbled onto it-she tried to take advantage cause she thought the power is better suited for her-but the thing is, we dont know what she wouldve DONE with that power. Maybe she was evil, maybe the world wouldve been in horrible danger if Agatha won, but we have nothing to base that theory on except “haha, i killed a dog.” Even the way she used Pietro-its really not different from what Wanda did to the whole town.
But Sparky was obviously the FBI Witness that Jimmy was looking for. And the reason it was dropped was with Sparky killed by Agatha, there was nothing to do about it.
I could see the return of Dottie in a call back to Wanda’s own revenge against Tony Stark, similar reckonings.
Can Tony stay dead please
I really don’t need the next ten years of films to be about him as well.
I didn’t mean Tony comes back, just a parallel to Wanda being seen as a terrorist to the townspeople the same way she viewed Tony.
Wanda doesn’t try to make amends to them. Because she knows, and says as much, that they would never forgive her and any attempt to apologize would just make them angrier. So she just leaves.
Still seemed very odd that she didn’t even try. Very self-indulgent.
The mystery identities of Dottie & the FBI’s missing person being dropped was infuriating.It felt very JJ Abrams to me – it’s much easier to set up mystery boxes than to create a satisfying resolution. Or they just forgot, which seems almost as likely.
I never got the issue with Fake Pietro – it was clearly a nice joke for the audience. Did we suddenly think Cliff and Norm were going to turn up in The Good Place just because Ted Danson poured a beer?
An actor playing a different character in an unrelated television series is normal. It would be weird as fuck if Ted Danson turns up in the new Frasier series and he isn’t Sam Malone, though.
Those two universes aren’t related at all. Oscar Isaac is going to be playing Moon Knight.
eh…there are fewer these days but it’s still okay to pull a Star Trek and have the same actor come back as a different character (and Garret Dillahunt for the win). For example, Josh Brolin as Cable. I’d be happy if they case Lee Pace and Carrie Coon in other roles even if their main versions weren’t so CGI heavy.
Gemma Chan is playing some else already, who I’m guessing won’t be blue.
totes
They are both film/tv based on (broadly) the same source material. It’s simply not true that they “aren’t related”. It certainly would be have been *possible* for Marvel to pull some kind of “gate between these two universes” thing and make this the opening salvo (not to say they should have or had to).
WandaVision/X-Men films = unrelated.My point still stands – the bar-bit in The Good Place was a nice joke for the audience, and the audience got it. Fake Pietro, on the other hand, seems to have confused people.
Were people confused, or did they just want it to be something it wasn’t (more than a wink and a smile)?
My point still stands – the bar-bit in The Good Place was a nice joke for the audience, and the audience got it. Fake Pietro, on the other hand, seems to have confused people.I don’t know the cosmology of the Good Place, but if alternate universes aren’t part of it then the point falls apart pretty quickly.
I don’t think it would be. In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Jonah Hill played a waiter with a man-crush on Russell Brand’s rock star, Aldous Snow. In Get Him to the Greek, Brand reprised the role of Snow and co—starred with Hill who played a totally different character, even though both movies were in the same universe.
True, that has been the fashion of late. But it used to happen all the time decades ago — for example, Jeffrey Tambor played four completely different roles on Three’s Company in the 1980s.
Ever since Disney bought Fox the “Mutant question” has been in comic book nerds mind. I get it and have asked myself how they are going to add them. When fake P showed up it was an interesting twist. I had thought it meant more but the fact that I’d didn’t doesn’t bug me at all.
MCU Quicksilver was killed off in his first appearance in a pretty mediocre movie, which was upsetting to a lot of fans of the character. Introducing a new Quicksilver, played by the person who played a more popular version of that character, was pretty exciting for fans of that character; revealing that he was just a regular dude and not a return of Quicksilver was kind of disappointing. Not a huge deal, but kind of a whiff from Marvel imo.
I think Marvel is letting the world know once and for all that they are not beholden to a franchise that made less in 12 movies than Infinity War, Endgame and Black Panther combined; that took arguably the most popular character in comics and a likeable actor willing to play the role for as long as Jackman did and make seriously atrocious movies with him; that ruined one of the most famous comics sagas in history in Dark Phoenix.
Yeah, but who gives a shit about box office when Logan alone is easily far better film than anything the MCU have ever put out?
You sound like one of those people who thought Endgame deserved to be nominated for a handful of Oscars just because of ‘m-muh epic culmination of 23 movies’.
No, I didn’t think that.
I don’t expect my superhero movies to be anything except fun and not stupid. You know who gives a shit about box office? The people that make movies.
Logan was indeed great, but here’s the thing – There were four X-Men movies with Wolverine (not counting his First Class cameo) and two solo Wolverine movies before Logan.
They rank from very good in X2 and First Class to decent in X-Men to absolute shit in X3 and the two Wolverine solos.
You think Feige would take 17 years and six movies to figure out what to do with one of the two most popular characters in Marvel history?
Logan is a fine film but this is preposterous hyperbole. EASILY FAR BETTER. Nope.
It seems there are a number of people, including some writers here, who confuse “Easter egg” with “teaser.”
Heh. Yeah, for such an obvious and sweet joke, it went sort of crazy. X-Men, FF – hell, Batman for all I know – were all being ‘introduced’ via Fake Pietro or something.
FWIW my admittedly rather mundane guesses were both wrong:
1. Agatha was trying to help Wanda
2. Fake Vision would turn out to be the missing witness protection guyI can’t help but feel that Agatha the great and terrible was a mistake (although they left a touch of ambiguity), and as for 2, well, it was never really settled, but in retrospect having Vision ‘occupied’ by a terrified and tortured trapped human wouldn’t really have worked.
Yeah I never thought Fake Pietro was anything more than stunt casting. I was extremely dubious he was the linchpin to somehow introducing the X-Men into the MCU; I think when it does happen, Feige will want a clean slate wrt casting. Some of those X-Men actors have aged out of the roles and that franchise needs to cool a bit before we return to it.
I thought they might be using Peters as a way to indicate that the multiverse is leaking, or something. But it’s okay that it turned out to just be a gag. Like, I’m not super upset or angry at Marvel for it. It’s just like, “Aw, that would have been neat. But whatever.”
I still don’t understand why this can’t be Quicksilver. Was the assumption that Agatha gave him his powers? Because she sure didn’t seem powerful enough to do that. I’m gonna laugh when it turns out “Ralph Bohner” was the actual red herring.
Because it wasn’t clearly that. It felt like Disney/Marvel misjudged things, wanting it to be a tease and mystery and eventual red herring, but not take it too seriously. Something to chew on while they tried to make Agnes seem more innocent and not an antagonistic force.But they overplayed their hand, saving the reveal of who he was (nobody) until a perfunctory scene in the final episode, outright stated he was the Quicksilver from the X-Men films in the audio description, and yeah, playing innocent about it all for the most part.It was… well, designed to do exactly what it did, make people wonder and speculate and debate and, importantly, tune in for the next episode, and the episode after that and after that and after that… but like the article said, it felt too cloying and manipulative.
A question I think that should be part of the larger conversation is if the finale would be viewed differently if its intended follow-up, the Doctor Strange sequel, were going to come out a couple of months later as originally expected instead of a full year.
Debra Jo Rupp was absolutely in the finale. She was in the group of townspeople in the town square when they all regain their minds and turn on Wanda, and she’s there again in the same place at the end when Wanda’s walking through after the collapse.
Rupp had more screentime in the finale than Dennings, if you think about it. what’s up with that, seriously? Dennings wasn’t available for shooting that took place post-COVID, maybe?
Thank you for bringing this up, it’s something I’ve been wondering since watching the finale. Why only have Kat Dennings for a single line/scene? Why not reunite her with Jimmy and Monica in their final scene together? And so I was wondering how much COVID impacted the finale. I remember Falcon/Winter getting delayed a lot due to the pandemic, but what about WandaVision? It would absolutely explain why they couldn’t use her. A shame, but a reasonable explanation.
Dennings was stuck filming her Hulu series and couldn’t make the reshoots. A lot of the ending was rushed/retooled because of the covid delays and reshoots. Apparently, the final episode wasn’t done in post until 2 weeks before airing and they cut stuff cause they couldn’t finish the vfx.
A bit of a moot question, as the MCU is all about tedious comicbooky finales after enjoyable interactions and characterizations. Any movie enventually devolves into thirty minutes of the braindead pretentious kabooms that constitutes the essence of superhero comic books. That’s where they most look like comics pages, so it’s a sort of contractual duty, it’s what comics readers are supposedly awaiting (the release, the apotheosis, the “good stuff” as tarantino fans put it when the plot is ditched in favor of random shootouts), and it’s the sign that the movie already ended. It’s like james bond’s exploding base fight, or the old tv-series denouements where the baddie is unmasked and must be still punished in a fistfight (fortunately, the cunning detective is also the best at it). It’s just way more pronounced in MCU stuff. Half an hour of samey fighty imagery that essentially acts as end titles. When it starts, the story is done, you can yawn and stretch.So, proportionally, in a tv series, that means the story content is exhausted more or less two episodes before the end. It should not be a surprise. Wandavision ended with two non-episodes, that alleviated its gimmicky mystery in two sentences, and dragged it with pointless, uninformative flashbacks and pointless magical fights (oh no who will push their magical beam harder into the other guy’s magical beam ? oh no who will punch the other harder into the ground ? oh no who will explode unscathed again ? how arbitrarily long is it supposed to go ?).What I’m saying is : MCU. Boring, tedious finales are built in. They can’t surprise or even be reproached at this point. You accept them the moment you start watching.
Half an hour of samey fighty imagery that essentially acts as end titles. So, that’s every action movie then?
“(the release, the apotheosis, the “good stuff” as tarantino fans put it when the plot is ditched in favor of random shootouts)“
Have you ever-literally, honestly, EVER- seen a Tarantino movie?
It’s more-or-less the downfall of all action movies in the CG era. Once upon a time, the spectacle itself could make an impact. How big could they go? You could get an “oh, wow” with big explosions and thousands of extras, or the thrill of glow-y beams and carnage.
Now, though, that’s all old hat, and isn’t some triumph of budget and stunt coordination that only comes around once per decade. The spectacle doesn’t matter because it’s been done over and over. It takes something truly special and imaginative, something that doesn’t depend on BIGGER, GLOWY-ER, FASTER for it to not look like everything else.
At the same time, you can’t not have the big-boss battle at the end. Everything builds to it, if you leave it out the whole thing would feel flat. There has to be that big final confrontation.
Personally, I think Marvel has done a pretty good job at finding something different and imaginative in their “big finale” scenes, and have generally gotten better at it over the years. They either use the specific powers of the characters to have fun and do something unique (like the Ant-Man movies) or find a personal stake beyond “have to beat the bad guy” (like the Captain America movies). Even Thor: The Dark World managed to make something out of the big generic fight sequence with Mjolnir changing course and zipping around the cosmos as Thor went through all of those portals. (The worst was Black Panther, which was two nearly identical not-quite-finished rubbery CGI guys hitting each other for ten minutes.)
The problem is the less specific and limited the powers, the harder it is to do. WandaVision was always going to be hamstrung by that, in the same way you can only get so much mileage out of a Captain Marvel fight scene. I give them a lot of credit for realizing that, and making Wanda’s victory one where she out-thinks Agnes instead of somehow making her red balls of magic better than Agnes’ purple balls of magic (though the “shoot balls of light at each other” probably went on a few beats too long). Likewise, Vision talking albino-Vision into an existential crisis was excellent and perfectly fit the character.
I realize this is a strange way of seeing it, but the Marvel TM fight scene, which was fun action hero story fighting, felt tonally distinct and jarring after the much more subtle exploration and hints at Wanda’s grief. The shifting from one sitcom era to another, even with the shifts in style and spirit, it shared the connective tissue of the mystery, but once we ‘get’ the mystery, the show was ‘solved’ in a way that was not satisfactory, and took away the more subtle shading of Wanda’s grief through the prism of different sitcom genres.This is not to take away from the excellent performances from the whole cast, all of them did will.
I get what you’re saying, the show started as something truly singular and unique that subtlety shaded in the emotions of what was going on, and ended with a fairly paint-by-numbers whiz-bang magic battle. Thinking back, even if the story mechanics had been the same, it seems like there may have been a more inventive and conceptual way to frame that fight, (just off the top of my head, having Wanda and Agnes flipping through their TV personas instead of the Purple Witch of Westview vs Casual Friday Wanda. 80s Jazzercize Agnes vs 60s housewife Wanda would’ve been fun).
I still think the catharsis had to happen through that big external battle, though. I mean, there’s no way it could’ve just ended with Wanda releasing Westview and getting the number to a really good therapist. There needed to be something big enough to push Wanda into accepting what she had to do and moving beyond the trauma-magnet she’s been (because seriously, she’s just never gotten a win) and to embracing the Scarlet Witch.
Yeah, I suppose the constraints of the MCU are at play here, needing a climactic fight where the end seems plausible, and then things turn around. I will admit the Vision – White Vision fight reminded me – not visually – of the inventive Ant Man fight at the end of that movie. Not the best filmmaking or storytelling, but fun, inventive, and clever.Though, yes, if they’re beholden to MCU rules about the final battle, which has the hero turning things around at the eleventh hour, then I would’ve preferred a little visually inventive and clever like you mention above.I think smart, business-minded therapists will move to Westview to deal with the shrapnel that was Wanda rather than go help her out.
I’d also throw in the Dr. Strange finale, which I found more interesting than most MCU movies: you have the visuals of the damage in Hong Kong being undone, which is fun to look at. But then Strange actually wins by outsmarting the villain with a spell. Like he says, he just loses over and over until Dormammu gives up.
Yeah, it’s definitely a big plus when the heroes win through intelligence and cunning instead of, “I hit you harder than you hit me.”
It has some great moments in the middle but ended up being mostly bad.
Overall I enjoyed the series and the finale, but I can’t help feeling the story would be better served with a little more time. One more episode or a real epilogue attached to the end of the finale.This series did something I absolutely love in fantasy stories. It explained a rule about how magic works, and in the end the protagonist applied that rule in a clever way to resolve a major conflict.On the other hand, I don’t like how Wanda seemingly abdicates all responsibility in the end. Giving up her fantasy husband and children is absolutely a loss, but it felt less like a sacrifice and more like a reinstatement of the status quo, which has been a problem with the MCU for a while now. I also felt Monica got short changed in the climax. If you’re going to go through all this trouble to give her super powers you might as well have her really use them and not just stand around occasionally turning into a hologram.Real missed opportunity not doing an animated episode when the series caught up to the 90s. Heck, they could have even had some of the people responsible for The Simpsons, King of The Hill, and The Critic work on the animation to get the look just right.
I was disappointed but… I don’t think it was the show that was entirely at fault for it. It’s obvious Marvel planted things in the show to make the viewers come to certain conclusions as red herrings but then again… it was me that took the bait and wanted to see them. So on one hand I am upset over not getting Reed Richards or the X-Men or Dr Strange and so on. On the other hand, the conclusion stayed true to the core of the show (Wanda’s grief) and I also have to pat it on the back for openly trolling viewers.So… Thematically successful ending that made me angry for what I had built up in my head. This is probably the same emotions fans of “The Sopranos” had over the ending of the show.
Do we know how much COVID impacted the finale? I know Falcon/Winter Soldier was delayed a lot due to the pandemic, but what about the end of filming for WandaVision? This could explain why Kat Dennings had such a limited role in the finale.
The longer I think on the finale, the more disappointed I get. I had said before that the showrunners didn’t promise us anything with the many red herrings, and they didn’t, but they did very enthusiastically invite the discourse. They were trolling us, and I do mean trolling.
“I’m mad I wasn’t given what I wasn’t promised”
No, I’m mad that they hinted at a bunch of stuff, and then laughed at us for making convoluted theories based on the hints that they made.Oh, and you’re a dick.
I’m sorry. I should have more sympathy. I mean, the Stormtroopers that Obi-Wan tricked into letting him pass probably felt real bad later.
Wow, you’re just really digging into that dickishness, aren’t you. I’m sure that you’re a joy IRL.
Which one of us is mad about a TV show again? That might give you a clue which one is the joy.
i mean, your problem is with the discourse, not the show, right? they’re two different things. they had already made the show before the discourse started…because you have to see the show to start talking about it and theorizing.
No, I’m mad at the fact that they set up the situation for the discourse, and then blamed us for getting into the discourse.
“THEY”“US”“THEY”“US”“THEY”“US”Repeat ad infinitum until your victim complex no longer knows bounds!
Where in the hell do you get the idea that they (and who are “they” here) are laughing at or blaming anyone?
so you’re mad at the show for…inviting fans to theorize and then being different than what was theorized?
No, I’m mad at the fact that they set up the situation for the discourse, and then blamed us for getting into the discourse.THIS. They were very clearly inviting speculation. Not our fault that they couldn’t create coherent resolutions for their mystery boxes.
(not what the Twitter discourse turned it into)As a non-Twitter user, I’ll bite…what nonsense are they saying about the show on Twitter?!?While we’re on the topic of the “discourse”, I get why the Fake Pietro thing might have felt like a troll, but I really don’t get why people expected the “aerospace engineer” Monica references would be anything but a no-name schlub (or that “Dottie” would be anyone significant, for that matter). It wasn’t teased as anything important on the show. Was it teased as such online? The MCU is dense with superheroes, but there are regular people in it, too.
Some of the fake outs (especially Fietro) felt cheap, and it felt like a waste to have Kathryn Hahn be such a one-note villain at the end of of episode 8 and throughout episode 9 given how fantastic she’d been previously, but overall I really like this show, not least because it tried to do something genuinely new and ambitious within the MCU. Also, Wanda and Vision saying goodnight to their children knowing they would never see them again absolutely broke me as a parent. I think my biggest takeaway from the entire show is that it made me actually care about these characters and their relationship, which is impressive because over the years whenever I’ve been reading through old Avengers comics and come across a story arc about Wanda and Vision’s relationship my reaction has usually been to groan and roll my eyes.
Someone in this thread commented that the “one note villain” thing about agatha was intentional, that she did that to make Wanda hate her more, to make her sloppy and easier to fight-I dont know if I agree. He might be doing what all the other fans are doing and reading more into something that isnt there.
I mean, that is very transparently the case.
As a parent, I also appreciated the “one last goodnight” thing, except that I also find it hard to believe that anyone would be as attached to children who have only existed for about three days (including gestation time) as someone who had spent nine months gestating and 8+ years raising them. I choked up a lot more when Vision had to go, because he was someone Wanda had actually spent a substantial amount of time with, had gotten to know, and had fallen in love with.
I think time moved a lot different in there.
Based on what?
just based on her emotional connection to the children. it was a love that can’t be measured by time, especially in a world where time moved in strange ways.
That’s fair – I think I was less putting myself in Wanda’s shoes and more imagining how devastating it would be for me to hug my kids at night knowing that I’d never see them again. I think it was an attempt at emotional manipulation from the writers and it worked a number on me!
I’m with Alex. I absolutely loved that the Wandavision finale involved resolving the two big fights with a clever callback to a previous episode, and a philosophical discussion. The reveal of the runes was fantastic, and I was so happy that it wasn’t some kind of “bigger fireball wins” copout. Wanda outsmarted Agatha at her own game. Same with Vision: he knows himself, and so he knew how to “outsmart” the other version of himself. I was definitely disappointed that there was not more Darcy to be had, but frankly, until there’s a show called “Just Darcy” I’ll probably keep being disappointed, so it’s not really Wandavision’s fault. All in all, I found the episode to be mostly satisfying, and very sad. When Wanda thanked the boys for choosing her to be their mom, my heart broke. I had a moment of hope that they would just keep the Hex around their own house, but that wouldn’t have worked for any substantial length of time, especially since I don’t think Wanda will be getting a get out of jail free card for this action. Her going off to live in isolation is probably the only way this could end.
Darcy and Jimmy need a spinoff. And Jessica Jones can come in and roll her eyes at them
I was definitely disappointed that there was not more Darcy to be had, but frankly, until there’s a show called “Just Darcy” I’ll probably keep being disappointed, so it’s not really Wandavision’s fault.Or have Darcy wears throwback waitress maid uniform from “2 Broke Girls!”Such missed opportunity there xD
I was so happy that it wasn’t some kind of “bigger fireball wins” copout.I enjoyed the finale overall and I realize this is an extremely dumb nit to pick, but I do wish the MCU could develop some kind of visual language to distinguish all these abilities beyond slightly different color beams.
Covid reshoots are why we had less Darcy; she was off filming another show and couldn’t make it.
And that’s the *real* tragedy of Covid./s, obv
It would have been much better if it was 3 hours instead of the 5+ that it was.
I just know i’m getting tired of reading complaints from people that this series about Wanda and Vision didn’t introduce the Fantastic Four and the X-men, or that Herb didn’t turn out to be the High Evolutionary or whatever. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned here about getting over-invested in online fan theories to the point where one can’t enjoy a show for what it is.
Maybe there is a lesson to be learned here about getting over-invested in online fan theories to the point where one can’t enjoy a show for what it is.I learned that lesson for myself about halfway through the series, and enjoyed the show a lot more after I learned it.
Theorizing is good clean fun. Getting mad because professional writers, producers and actors, not to mention executives in charge of an $11 billion and counting property, don’t use your fan-fic is toxic.
i think, psychologically, it’s very interesting when people invent a thing in their head, go ‘oh yeah that thing i made up would be cool’ and then get disappointed when that thing they invented wasn’t manifested. like, it’s obviously fun to be right and guess things, but that’s like going to a restaurant, reading half of the menu, ordering a dish you made up based on what you read, and then being mad they can’t serve it.
I think this is something that really picked up with Lost and is just gaining steam now that writers and marketers know how to tease out bits of information to snag people. I’ve always thought half the reason Game of Thrones’ ending was so poorly received (with the other half being extremely rushed storytelling and characterization, obviously) was because most people spent year coming up with theories, no matter how dumb and convoluted they were, and they didn’t play out.
Why are they even gonna have chicken on the menu if I can’t get hot wings?
I’m mostly getting tired of hearing people complaining about those complaints, because I haven’t actually seen a single person complain that their ridiculous pet theory didn’t work out. Maybe that’s happening on other websites?
most of the complaints i’ve seen are on cbr, marvelousnews, fwoosh… iow (generalizing here) fairly hardcore comic book fans
Well there’s your problem. 😉
I’ve noticed people posting on Instagram on Marvel fan pages have had pretty toxic complaints.
Ooh, first mistake: using Instagram. 😉
Sam Barsanti, from this very article: “But it did all feel like it was going somewhere more interesting”.While this may not be the strongest such complaint, it is one you cannot claim to have happened on another website.
Sam thinking it was going to be more interesting is not the same as “getting over-invested in online fan theories.”
Yeah, I didn’t dig into any of the conspiracies because I just generally prefer to watch stuff as it happens, and I always end up feeling a little spoiled if a conspiracy turns out to be correct. I really enjoyed the whole show, and I was so surprised at how many issues people had with it, especially since they mostly seem to be criticism of what it wasn’t, instead of reviewing it for what it was.
its interesting that we now have one group of people that are super-meticulous about avoiding spoilers, and another group that will watch lengthy in-depth analyses of an episode, largely to try and predict what’s coming next. Wonder how much overlap there is between the two groups
I think people’s expectations were a little scrambled by the unconventional setup that got progressively more straightforward as the series ran on.It started in media res with wacky sitcom pastiches that are punctuated with a creepy, foreboding mystery lurking underneath, so many of us were expecting some kind of freaky hybrid of Twin Peaks and The Truman Show. Then “A Very Special Episode” pretty much told us that TV is Wanda’s coping mechanism, and that her life is so damaged that the only way she can even conceptualize the idea of happiness is by thinking in terms of sitcoms. From then on it was a story about grief and family, albeit a very well-written and well-acted one.Personally I liked it very much, and I’m guessing a lot of the disappointment with the finale comes from people forgetting that this is a Disney/Marvel product and that CGI battles and straightforward endings both always come standard.
Honestly, the speculation around what it could all mean reached “Patton Oswalt Star Wars/Marvel/X-Men/Greek God crossover pitch” levels of unlikelihood.
Most criticism seems to stem from the un-realization of an assumption the viewer made, but wasn’t actually evidenced in the slightest.
I think the finale was a relative weak spot for the show, in that all of the clever meta/parody trappings were stripped away and too much of it was spent on another generic superhero CGI laser fest. Still, I was reminded in a lot of ways of the second Guardians of the Galaxy movie, where the big action climax was kind of interminable and didn’t do anything for me. But the movie stuck the landing with the heartfelt emotion of its actual ending. And that was the WandaVision finale — boring action climax, genuinely affecting and heartbreaking ending. Turns out I can watch Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen say tearful goodbyes to each other so many times.Plus, as Alex said, kudos to resolving the Vision fight with a philosophical discussion of the Ship of Theseus.
WandaVision was way better than it needed to be and gave me way more than I expected it would. I have had fun dissecting and criticizing, but in the end that’s what I’ll take away from it.
Small easter egg sorta thing: Dottie’s real name was revealed to be Sarah Proctor. Which I repeated to my husband a few times and he stared at me blankly — she was one of the women accused of witchcraft in the Salem Witch trials hysteria and is immortalized in The Crucible.
It just felt to me like they were too obvious in the ending being used to setup future stuff rather than satisfyingly end this story.
I don’t get the whining over the Emma Caulfield Ford thing. She had two key scenes. I rewatched the second episode (the second half of the two parter)
Her scenes with Wanda play so differently now.
“I truly mean no harm.”
“I… don’t… believe.. you.”
And then Jimmy’s radio broadcast comes in and I’m convinced Wanda’s concentration lapsed and Dottie/Sarah was able to come through.
Then, it is Sarah whose pleas, “Look, I’ll let your boys play with my daughter. Just LET me see my daughter” that hit Wanda the hardest and got her to crack.
Sometimes, an actor just takes a job. Just because she was on Buffy doesn’t mean she’s the Holy Grail of every fan theory forever.
I mean, they knew what they were doing when they cast her. They knew speculation would be flying, they were just playfully messing with the fans, a little bit.
I could see her returning as well, from my perspective I can feel compassion for Wanda, but I also understand if the townspeople think she deserves a reckoning.
I think a lot of people don’t realize that Caulfield was cast because she is an old friend of Jac Shaeffer, who helped her out at the start of her career by starring in her independent film Timer in 2009. Jac was just returning the favor, and trolling the audience at the same time, because “If Emma Caulfield is in it, it must mean something!”Also Caulfield was given a couple of really nice scenes, in episode 2, and in the finale. The one in the finale was no fruit punch monologue, but it was pretty good just the same.
This ties a bit into something that I haven’t seen much addressed when discussing the finale: Everyone is treating this like a standalone movie/miniseries/unit of MCU, simply because Feige hasn’t confirmed a S2 or not yet. But as a whole, TV shows, unlike movies are generally designed to be ongoing, whose advantages are continuous stories and greater time for character exploration. Even the most lore-heavy sequel is usually designed to be more standalone/less dense than any given season of TV. This definitely made Wanda a great choice for a protagonist, as it gave her story the space to finally be done justice after an accumulation of trauma over the past 6 years of movies. Feige’s only said a potential S2 would be “dictated by the story;” if nothing else the finale made clear *this* story is about Wanda’s trauma and her acknowledging it/learning to cope healthily. By season’s end that story seems far from done; reckoning with this season’s events and what looks to be an emotionally intense in Dr. Strange 2 could result in a season’s worth of trauma/emotions to productively explore given where the character’s left.For me, I guess taking it as a potential season finale teeing up further character work (as opposed to a story terminus) makes it work much better and smooths over a lot of the “problems” of the show. Considering this season’s excursion into the work of the non-powered supporting cast, I could see a version of a S2 premiere centered around a Westveiw debrief that seriously reckons with the implications/fallout from Wanda’s hex, doing right by these characters we’re somewhat invested in while also further exploring Wanda’s psyche. After all, they might’ve hired ringers like Emma Caulfield Ford and Rupp for their potential to grow as characters anyway, and that kind of clear eyed-examination would subvert expectations (which is def in this show’s wheelhouse). Upthread, someone mentioned that Jimmy and Darcy need a spinoff; I see no indication that this show can’t/won’t become something of a “homebase” for those side characters now (seeing as Thor’s in space and Scott is both free and probably hanging round the quantum realm rn), and leadership positions just opened at SHEILD. It could provide a good opportunity to give these humans room to breathe, while still directly examining their relationship with a super. Overall, I think the biggest stumbling block for WandaVision critically might be its MCU status, as the production schedule/secrecy of the MCU makes it difficult to tell if/when another season will happen, and easy to believe it won’t. While I understand/feel the frustration, its not like we hold years-long gaps between seasons against creators like Publik or David if when watching through/judging their series as a whole. Right now, the world of WandaVision is very deliberately open-ended; years from now if it somehow ends up being a super’s four-season journey to going to therapy and getting healthy, that might be novel and good, with S1 as a necessary step! I mean, realistically, they’ve got no reason to not try to capitalize on a now-devoted viewership. But unfortunately, none of us have any way of knowing anything now. I feel like we might be looking down the barrel of a content/form issue here, compounded by production release schedules, which our current critical lexicon has been struggling with in real time while watching the show.
What you’re describing could be interesting. Honestly, if we were in the 80s, I’d say it would be a TV-movie called “Westview.” But, a four- to six-episode series could be interesting.
I am leery of giving in to fandom’s desire to have every I dotted and every T crossed, however. If it is trying to accommodate the same whining that came from “Wait, Sansa wasn’t THERE when Ramsey said he hadn’t been feeding the dogs!” (Answer: Jon told her off-screen. Move on) then I don’t think they should waste the time and money.
BUT… if you wanted to tell a story about Agnes slowly piecing together weird dreams from the 1700s and pulling herself out of the spell or Dottie/Sarah realizes that the name Sarah Proctor is a fucking weird coincidence, I’m in.
You could even redeem Heyward a bit by revealing someone was pulling his strings. I still say that the notion of someone saying, “Look, assholes! Some of us had to WORK for the last five years” has actually got potential.
Darcy and Jimmy can be involved, but why not have Wong work with a new character, some acolyte from the Sanctum? If you wanted to dip your toe into real mergers, have Quake or even Jessica Jones involved. Gulp, the most natural link may actually be Iron Fist – with his mystical shit.
You can bring Vision and Wanda back by exploring exactly how he picked that town in the first place. You can even get into my thing, which is the faction of people that were like, “Look, maybe she was messing around in our heads and I had to call my wife Mildred and she called me Herman, but at least the trash got picked up and the town square had businesses again!”
I , there’s potentially a lot more to explore that’s not necessarily dotting Is and crossing Ts. I feel like this show has done well at being an examination of grief, loss, and trauma, and how it ripples out and effects others/society. Given Wanda herself has a lot to unpack, and they’ve done well as broadly shading the secondary/tertiary characters as grappling with a lot of the same issues — this show might have a future if it continues to mine this specific emotional vein and keeps its thematic concerns tight. I think its resolute focus on Wanda right now has been to its benefit and credit, but if the show wants to expand its perspective on these themes, it could potentially grow into having the bones to support far-flung characters like Jessica Jones without it feeling hamfisted, given the right tack (ex: she’s nearby in NY, the specific of her experience w/ Killgrave triggers her concern, her investigation could provide Wanda perspective on the severity of her actions/a potential better mentor than Agnes).
I am leery of giving in to fandom’s desire to have every I dotted and every T crossed, however.The worst desire of fandom in general. Having everything explained to you is not engaging.
These are cool insights but… I feel like the last episode being titled “the SERIES finale” is probably why people are treating it as a series finale.
Sure, but the title “The Series Finale” is still just in line with this season’s titling conventions, which all describe the status of the “WandaVision” show-within-a-show during the episode (ie: EP4, “We Interrupt This Program” didn’t have any new broadcast of the WV show, indicating it is what the titles refer to, with the rest describing the aesthetic/trope of the given WV broadcast at hand). In this context, this episode is a definitive “series finale” of sorts regardless of the “WandaVision” sitcom world, since she frees all of the cast members, and her principal co-star, mind-Vision, dies when the town is reopened.
I will stan this show as the best thing the MCU has made so far except for MAYBE Infinite War (better than Endgame, come at me). I did have a small burst of grief/acceptance when they started diving back into the tried and true MCU stuff around episode 4, but I also allowed myself some excitement for seeing how the “usual” MCU gang (SWORD/SHIELD, the FBI, returning characters, etc.) tackle the whole “What the fuck is going on with Westview” thing.
Agatha Harkness not dying was big. It’s good that Marvel is learning when they have winners in villains and want to keep them around – this is what the comics do too, after all, and Hahn is clearly a prize. While part of her little arc seemed a little “Oh, okay, she was just…there, investigating? Without connection to another big-bad, that we know of?” i.e. a little too cute and perfect, it still worked, and the focus was always on Wanda and her grief and how that, along with nudges from others, served as a catalyst for greater change.I didn’t care about not seeing Mephisto or that Evan Peters was just a talking Easter egg. I think it would’ve been a disservice to the entire show to introduce the Fox universe through WandaVision. This is about Wanda. As SOON as you introduce Magneto, it’s the Magneto show, full stop. Don’t do that to the character, or to Olson, who deserves the spotlight. Also I’m probably in the minority but I’m, you know…just fine with the Fox universe never being used. It was mainly shit.
As for the finale – that scene where she’s saying goodbye to her Vision was just…I can’t get it out of my mind. Accepting the fact that she created him, and that he’d have to go. Him professing how lucky he’s been to be incarnated three times. Some folk I know think that dialogue was hokey. I just kept picturing it as three panels in a comic, old-school art, with the couple gently consoling each other.Sorry for the rant. I love this show.
I never thought theyd bring the xmen into it. A lot of fans did, just because Disney owns them now and COULD do it-but therye not going to do every thing that they COULD do.
the CONTENT had to connect with more CONTENT otherwise the audience may not CONSUME MORE CONTENTthis shit sucks, man. bland paste.
Six Feet Under is not part of the holy grail of TV grief exploration?IT IS THE HOLY GRAIL
I know Olsen and Bettany get a ton of praise, but really, can it ever be enough? They really nailed it, and their two “non-sitcom” scenes (the flashback to Vision giving Wanda a shoulder to cry on after the events of Age of Ultron, and their conversation at the end of the finale, after putting the boys to bed) packed some emotional weight that I didn’t expect to find in a superhero story.It seems like a lot of people read a little too much into the Easter eggs throughout the series. I never read any comics that had the Vision or Scarlet Witch in them, so I really didn’t catch a lot of them. I guess the closest I can come to faulting the writers is not having the S.W.O.R.D. I-D Emma Caufield-Ford as a Westview resident. A lot of people really went nuts over that for some reason.
whatever you thought of the avngers movies, those two were always great.
I enjoyed the series, but the Heyward plotline was nothing but clichés. Not to mention illogical — Heyward never needed to lie (Vision is a sentient weapon, and Heyward was right, you don’t bury 3 trillion dollars worth of vibranium), they just had him do that stuff to force him into a bad guy role. Nick Fury lied all the time, with a lot less justification than Heyward and a lot more harm to innocents (Project Insight), but Fury isn’t interpreted as a villain. Wanda had been snapped and gone for five years, she was a kidnapper and terrorist who refused to undo her actions and publicly threatened to murder Heyward, so killing her was a valid option, even a moral necessity. Everything the show did to make Heyward “evil” was faked and inorganic. Heyward was substantially in the right in most ways.
Main thing for me is that ghostly Vision and the Darkhold are both kicking around the official MCU now. Sweet!
Didnt anyone but me think Agnes/Agatha was just HORRIBLE? The wicked witch from “the wizard of oz” had more depth. i know they tried to give Agatha some, but it was too little, too late, and unconvincing. She was just so stupidly, cartoonishly evil-making fun of that (very weakly) didnt eliminate it as a problem.
I understand some people’s reservations, but this was all better than expected and at times, much deeper than anticipated. The Ship of Theseus ending to the Vision-Cataract fight was sublime.And there’s a lot of subtlety in this series that people are missing. Agatha, for example, who presents herself as a villain to Wanda in the final episodes precisely because she wants Wanda to attack her so she can drain all her magic. Hahn deliberately plays her throughout as more complicated than that, as someone who might be villainous and deliberately manipulative, but who might be more complicated. We do know she’s been around since Salem and she doesn’t seem to be ruling her own country; her comment about the Sorcerer Supreme suggests she’s part of that subcultural group and may have some guardianship in the realms of magic.The “Wanda didn’t apologize” thing seems a repeating refrain and I’m baffled by it. She tried to apologize the first time out, before learning that she had to choose between letting these people go and losing her family, which made her walk that back. But afterward, she does give up her sons and Vision in a heartbreaking scene, and while she may have learned about herself, she’s acquired MORE to grieve. What is she supposed to say to these people now? What five-minute interaction would “settle” the situation? “I’m sorry for your pain?” “I didn’t mean to do it?” Wanda’s ashamed to look at any of the people whose lives she took over, and her exchange with Monica is on the level of “I understand why you did it,” not “it’s OK you did it.” It isn’t OK.As for the “they’ll never understand” part of that conversation, while it was a bit compressed conceptually, Monica is imagining if she had the power to bring her mother back, in response to her own grief, and then had to let her go a second time. No apology could be adequate in these circumstances: Wanda apologized through her actions, giving up more than she’d even lost before in an attempt to put right what her actions had put wrong. She’s not in a place at the end where a conversation would be possible, and I’d wager she’d risk showing bitterness at the people whose lives she took away for awhile getting those lives back while her loss has been deepened.Maybe if more people in real life remedied the wrongs they committed through action and sacrifice, instead of a heartfelt public statement, the world would be a better place.
Am I the only person thinking a big part of the ending didnt make sense? We see her living out in the middle of nowhere at the end-why not just reconstruct her family and the energy field there? She didnt even have to stay in the US she can go anywhere on the planet.
Hopefully, it’s because she has learned/is learning to cope with all of her trauma and grief instead of living in a fantasy world.
But the teaser does certainly suggest that her kids still exist somewhere, so I expect saving/restoring them is pretty high on her to-do list.
Hopefully, it’s because she has learned/is learning to cope with all of her trauma and grief instead of living in a fantasy world.I don’t think that post-credit sequence was supposed to be setting Wanda up as being in a healthy place. Quite the opposite, actually.
It’s basically identical to the ending of “The Incredible Hulk,” where we see Norton!Bruce intentionally triggering a transformation into the Hulk. So I think Wanda’s powers will continue to be very Hulk-like: extremely dangerous and sometimes uncontrollable, but tempered by her desire to do good.
There’s a very real chance that they’ll do a whole Dark Phoenix thing with her – the comics did it, plenty of times. I’d just be disappointed if we spend a whole miniseries with her learning to cope with loss and trauma, only for her to end up losing control to the Dark Side of the Magic.
Wanda may be the new Hulk-like character, in the sense that moves through the movies like a force of nature.That end scene of her in the cabin studying the Darkhold struck me as a throw back to Ed Norton’s “days without incident-0” moment in the cabin at the end of Incredible Hulk.
My only real gripe is that I wish Marvel/Disney would be a bit more willing to cast shades of gray into a story.
Heywood, as an official in an agency tasked with protecting the planet from threats like Thanos, had perfectly good reasons to want to reactivate Vision and to want to kill Wanda while she is actively controlling the minds and bodies of everyone in a radius of several miles. Agatha might have had perfectly good reasons to want to make sure that an entirely untrained witch doesn’t continue to wield powers she doesn’t understand or comprehend. And Wanda can be a sympathetic figure without being completely absolved of all guilt for how her trauma manifested into a prison for a town full of random innocent people. (Or rather than being absolved, having that culpability just handwaved away instead of having it truly be addressed.)
I know superhero stories generally deal with very black-or-white morality, but I think there could have been a more nuanced version of those three characters’ stories that would have been a tad more satisfying. As it is, still really enjoyed it, and Wanda has shot to the top of my list for Marvel characters I’m excited to see again in another movie.
I mean…I don’t know what you specifically mean by “shades of gray”, but I think the show has created a lot of ambiguity around what role the Scarlet Witch might play in the MCU from now on. Like, given what we’ve seen here, I can imagine a lot of different functional roles she could play when she shows up in the next Spider-Man and Dr. Strange movies. Most particularly…I can imagine her being the Big Bad.
I have trouble imagining Wanda as a baddie. I can see her being a continued potential danger in the same way as the Hulk often was (“Scarlet Witch: Threat, or Menace?”) especially since the character’s roots in the comics as a mutant bring built-in suspicion to most stories she’s in. I guess all of her loss could push her into malice, but if that’s the case I don’t know why we went on this journey with her to come to terms with that loss. And I like the Dark Phoenix-style “lady with omnipotent power turns evil because she has omnipotent power” story even less.
That said, Wanda subjected a lot of people to a really traumatic experience for several days. She (albeit unconsciously) allowed them all to be kidnapped, tortured and enslaved. And the show ends with Monica framing the whole thing as Wanda making a sacrifice to free them, when it was solely her who trapped them to begin with. The citizens glaring at her isn’t really unfair persecution: she earned their distrust and anger pretty thoroughly, I’d say. In that respect, I think the show didn’t do enough to make her take responsibility for what she did, even if the whole thing was an accident. If the show wanted to make her as much a victim as them, then the Hex needed to have been triggered by Agatha or Heywood somehow, not just by her own feelings of loss.
Why didn’t Debra Jo Rupp return?
She did.
For now, I’ll just comment on how having week-to-week episodes are much better than dropping an entire season in your lap. Especially with a show you are dying to watch. I think you need time to “digest” an episode think about what has happened. Of course it leads to predictions and theories that don’t pan out so some are disappointed but the speculation is what keeps the interest.I do try to pace myself with an entire season dropped at once but I rarely can and usually finish the season in a few days. I think it’s easy to forget about things in a particular episode and the season ends up in a blur. I think sort of meeting in the middle might be a good way. Release 2 episodes a week. It’s enough to keep you satiated without blowing through the seasons all at once.
it was enjoyable but i wish it had a Alan Moore level of writing quality. the DVD reveal bummed me out. i wanted something more imagintive.plus the supporting cast were wasted. Anya from Buffy turned out to be no one.for an interesting concept, more imagination was required.
My WandaVision finale thoughts, in no particular order:1. Loved the Thanos homage at the end with Wanda sitting on the porch. Nice call back.2. The episode had a few different movie callbacks as well- Wizard of Oz, Incredibles (with the family standing ready for action) and another that I thought of but forgot.3. Enjoyed Vision reasoning with himself to end his fight.4. I didn’t enjoy what apparently was constant trolling by the stars and the studio of the fans. Why did Feige have to approve Emma Caulfield Ford’s casting? Where was the major Luke Skywalker level cameo that Olsen pimped? Bettany’s garbage about a super secret actor he’s always wanted to work with. Bleh. I’m fine doing some teasing IN the show, but don’t get people’s hopes up with fake announcements to the press/fanbase.5. Hayward was totally wasted and could a have been a character with some decent motivations. Why not have EVERY interested party here doing the wrong thing for the right reasons? Agatha, Hayward, and Wanda. Nah instead it sure looks like Hayward and Agatha became 2d stereotypes by the end, which neither of them needed to be and really would not have required much effort or additional screen time to avoid. Also how dumb was his “final move” to try and run over the kids? He knew that EVERYONE he was facing had powers, including super speed. Man alive.6. Agatha could have been a very interesting mentor to Wanda. Just like Wanda her powers developed early, were a bit out of control, she accidentally killed people, but she then spent centuries learning to use them (to whatever ends! she could still be at best neutral or neutral-evil!). Why not have her inadvertently trapped in the hex and working to figure it all out and realizing Wanda is a time bomb that she can teach (and/or corrupt) rather than just the hacky “ill steal your powers too!” thing?7. For me, at times, the finale felt like two teams of writers wrote different parts and then just put sort of filmed it all and spliced it together. Just didn’t seem to mesh with the rest of the series like I would have thought.8. I admit I really wanted Dr. Stephen Strange to show up, even if it was after the fight was over and Wanda was gone. Not to save the day or intervene in the fight or the story but to look into what was going on and offer some help to those people. Surely the Sorcerer Supreme could sense THAT kind of magical energy being used if Agatha could?9. With the Darkhold now in the MCU, I sure hope we get a Midnight Sons movie or TV show at some point. I’d love to see Strange team up with Ghost Rider, Johnny Blaze, Werewolf by Night etc!10. I know some of my points were a bit negative, but I really dug pretty much this entire show. Should have known that Feige and the gang would know how to put together TV. Well done and I think the product only gets better from here!
I’m struggling to remember what the fuck Hayward wanted. I kind of wish they’d lampshaded that by having someone with powers like Wanda, Agatha or Monica* “fast-forward” him through the details as a complete troll of Pointless Baddie’s Pointlessly-Elaborate Plan. When he’s finished and realizes they didn’t bother to listen, demanding “What did you do to me?”, Whoever Did It says, “I fast-forwarded you — nobody cares about the details, Hayward!”“The Fans Do!”“Well, they know how to find out, don’t they…?”
We’re all just going to gloss over the most emotional line of the series (“Boys, thank you for choosing me to be your mom.”)!?!?!
I have one question that I haven’t been able to answer from
watching the episodes.
What happened to
the SWORD guy whose clothes turned into beekeeper clothes? Did he become part of the town or just
disappear?
Just because I haven’t seen it acknowledged anywhere yet: we all know that “Agatha All Along” is a clear shout-out to the theme song from The Munsters, right?
*groan* at Sam Bersanti’s take. Although I agree Evan Peters involvement was manipulative.
What I wanted since the beginning was a good story for Wanda and Vision and we did get that. Some people just need the world handed to them.
The last three episodes work much better as a binge, they balance that way. I’m not saying they should have been released that way, the cliffhanger suspense was nuts week to week over the run of the show. But that was a one time thing. Unless Disney puts it “back in the vault” it will forever now-on be a show to binge at your leisure.
I forget who… the click-bait jerks at Screen Rant maybe, claim that Wanda Vision just made all other Marvel TV shows irrelevant. Raspberries to that!Front of mind for me while watching the WV finale unfold was all the shit the long-suffering Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D went through in dealing with the Darkhold. Season Four of AoS is Marvel at the Top of their Game. Spoilerish hints:Not to mention Mack losing a loved one in a very similar fashion to WV.Stretching it further: Not to mention Enoch’s Season Seven last scene is in everyway as big a gut-punch as Vision’s is here. In fact, as Season Three is a sort of an AoS reset, Heck! (I say “Heck” to you) Just start watching AoS with Season Four and go through the Season Seven finale. If you love it like I do, then go back and watch S1 – 3. You won’t be lost.Reductively speaking – S1 to 3: Hydra Betrayal, Quake gets her powers, (you do get the Bill Paxton, Kyle MacLachlan, and Adrianne Palecki seasons) the team gets demoted; hard break. S4 to 7: Ghost Rider, Darkhold, Framework, Madame Hydra, Space & Time Travel pt 1, Gravitonium, Sarge & the Shrike, Time Travel pt 2, and then one of the best (maybe still the best) two part wrap up in the MCU TV-verse to date.
I think it’s a little premature to assume Evan Peters is just “some random dude”. Unless I missed it and his character was supposed to be an actor, who just keeps random headshots of themselves with their name in Big Bold Type at the bottom lying around? 10-1 says we see more of him.
This had one of the best soundtracks to the MCU too. Maybe not a high bar, but they got way over the top on that one.
I personally really enjoyed it all, even though the end might have been a little hackneyed, just because I didn’t expect that much. I called Evan Peters as stunt casting the minute it was announced, for example. It seems that people let down by it had a lot of wild expectations (X-Men! Reed Richards! Dr. Strange!) that never paid off. I just think people need to slow down and remember that not every movie (or project) is gonna be another Infinity War/Endgame, chock full of cameos and all your favorites.
I’ve heard some people say that WandaVision is an argument for why week-to-week releases are bad and that Disney (and Amazon and others) should go back to the Netflix “drop a season at once” model, and I’m torn. Personally I like the week-to-week model (largely because I don’t have the time to commit to watching whole multi-hour shows in only a couple of days like some of my friends seem to) but I can see where this argument is solid, for the Marvel stuff at least. If people didn’t have time to get so amped up and so absolutely positive that this was gonna be a backdoor introduction to the X-Men, then maybe there wouldn’t be so much disappointment? But honestly I’m not sure that’s a fix. In the lead up to the show, there were still tons of people dissecting every trailer and every casting choice to find some hint of a cameo or plot twist.It makes me wonder what kind of Pandora’s box the Mandalorian opened with that Luke Skywalker cameo at the end of the last season of that show. Are fans now gonna want big cameos in every subsequent season, or for that matter every future D+ Star Wars show? Are we gonna see angry posts if a de-aged Harrison Ford doesn’t show up on the Lando show or if Chewbacca doesn’t poke his furry head up somewhere?
I appreciate that they didn’t absolve Wanda of what she did to the people of Westview, but didn’t like that they didn’t get any sort of catharsis at the end beyond giving her side eye as she flew off.
I recently did a revisiting of most Marvel film properties, and WandaVision is super similar to most Marvel properties – they’re relatively entertaining while watching, relatively forgettable afterwards, and bolstered by incredible casting and performances. The two Marvel movies that stood out upon rewatch were Winter Soldier and, weirdly, Iron Man 3, which is legitimately funny, personal, and doesn’t worry itself with setting up other movies. I thought WandaVision was actually the most disappointing Marvel entity, because it proved Marvel’s only going to go so far outside the box. They could’ve either made the pastiches really, really funny, or very unsettling in a David Lynch/Tim and Eric/Too Many Cooks way (not that I’d be expecting them to go super far in those styles, but just in tone), and instead they seemed to get caught in the middle. The pastiches were…fine? But outside of Bewitched, they didn’t really stand on their own, they were unevenly distributed (we don’t get a full Modern Family pastiche, which would’ve been great, but do get a full Dick Van Dyke parody, which was underwhelming), and they ended up more as a plot point than anything else.Also, with a season that was explicitly about TV, it was strange to me that the finale totally eschewed the TV conceit, even at the very end, in order to be more like a Marvel movie. For so much talk about grief and love and the power of TV to help us shape our own narratives, escape from our misery, etc., it could’ve been powerful to have them tie the season together with a TV conceit – I saw someone on Twitter suggest that once the Hex was breaking it would’ve been fun to see Agatha and Wanda’s final fight move from one TV era to another. It feels like by the end they just didn’t really know what to do with the TV conceit, so they just got rid of it, which was super disappointing.
Honestly I would’ve liked a version that kept it entirely within the neighborhood, and I think this is in large part because the more Marvel-traditional SWORD elements were rife with the usual lazy plotlines (this G-man sucks! This G-man rules) and bullshit masquerading as science.
*Wanda brainwashes and tortures a whole town for a week or two**Recently cured townspeople justifiably glares at her, those who didn’t die at least, who knows what happened to the kids she locked in without food lmao*Monica: These people don’t know what you sacrificed for them (you effectively created sentient lives to serve your emotional needs and killed them later). I would totally do the same to bring my mum back! These people sure are judgmental of superheroes, gosh.Wanda: I am a hero :(. *Flies off, zero repercussions to her action and even approval to the good authority figure, Monica*Jesus, what a garbage finale. Marvel can’t commit to a modicum of interesting character work without going back to superhero worship in the end. It’s hilarious that we are made to think Agatha is a villain when what she did was miniscule compared to Wanda’s actual villainy. I had thought this was the intention of the show but it never paid off, Marvel really pointed at Wanda and Agatha and said these are the hero and villain respectively.
I think the idea of Wanda going through successive periods of TV sitcoms as a way of avoiding her grief was really interesting, because it was doomed from the start. She might have been able to escape reality in the father-knows-best sitcom worlds of the fifties, but as the years went buy even the cheesiest of these shows started dealing with more difficult issues: grandma dies and the kids don’t know how to deal with it; Becky shoplifts because she can’t afford the cool clothes all her friends have; Uncle Pete has a drinking problem. By the time you get into the 90s, you have depictions of families that seem to actively hate each other, and if you follow the trend long enough you get to shows where depression and trauma are baked into the premise, like ‘Crazy Ex Girlfriend’. Wanda’s just delaying the inevitable, and by the time we get to this finale we can see that: no more TV tropes, just the consequences of everything she’s done.
I really enjoyed the show but I felt that all of the discussions, guessing, and searching for clues was very similar to Qanon. Not that I am comparing any MCU fan to a them bit both have very similar tracks.
I was duped into thinking it was a show, not a limited series, and into thinking it would be it’s own story and not A TRAILER FOR THE AVENGERS.
Don’t forget, though, that this show was never meant to be the first foray into Phase 4. It was supposed to come AFTER Black Widow, Falcon and Winter Soldier, and Eternals. It got moved up due to the pandemic. So I do think some of the decisions that may seem weird now, *might* have made more sense had it all been done in order (like the casting of Evan Peters or some of the dropped hints about Reed Richards, etc).