.The show starts on Disney+ this Friday, with the first two episodes.
Here’s an article revealing a little more about the show, including what sitcoms are homaged along the way.
Presumably the Malcolm in the Middle-inspired episode will introduce us to twins Tommy and Billy, thus introducing two more Young Avengers to the MCU.
Okay so I’m seeing some chatter related to Evan Peters… and here’s the thing, there is some creedence to it all, I have to admit.
Sooo, it IS possible it still might be Fox-men’s Quicksilver, given some stuff he has in his “man cave”, which reflects his personality in those movies… but also, he does laugh at his “name” Ralph Bohner… and of course, there is the question of the witsec person Woo was sent to look for. So when you add all of those elements, it could still be a universe-stranded Pietro and he could still come into play later on… of course, there’s the matter that it’s awfully convenient that an alt-universe Pietro would’ve been put in the same town the story unflods by the FBI, but hey, plot conveniences… 
Ot it was just a wink wink cameo that got out of hand… I guess we’ll see =P
I thought it was decent enough. It was the typical Marvel fare we’ve come to expect: Great production values and a midling story.
I will say that Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany gave probably some of the best performances in a Marvel project. Olsen really showed a fantastic range.
After a slow start of the first two episodes, it picked up. I was entertained. I doubt I’d rewatch it but I’m glad I did watch it.
It was a decent ending but obviously not as interesting or bold as the sitcom episodes or the amazing Agatha reveal. Performances solid throughout, and I really liked the Pietro scenes – “Do you like Steven Seagal?”.
The Vision/Vision fight was pretty cool, with some things we haven’t seen or seen often (two characters who can become intangible fighting each other), but there were certainly some minor scenes that looked really cheap (the low level shot of the townsfolk converging on Wanda stood out).
Quite harrowing too the bits where they pleaded with Wanda to let their kids leave their rooms or let them communicate with their spouses.
For those wondering my ‘source’ says that final post credits scene is meant to be in Sokovia.
So it was all Mephisto, right?
I kid, I kid. The speculation was all part of the fun. They focused the finale on Wanda coming to terms with her grief and that was absolutely the right decision. The story didn’t need a big bad villain and I’m not sure that it even had one.
Agent Mansplain was clearly meant to be seen as the bad guy but I wasn’t entirely convinced. He saw Wanda as someone who worked with an overseas terrorist organisation, was responsible for innocent deaths in Lagos, was acting unstable when she visited SWORD and was now holding an entire town captive, therefore she became a target to be taken down. He wasn’t trying to do any further harm to Vision but was trying to bring him back online, which is precisely what the US government would do with a piece of cutting edge technology (although shouldn’t all the tech be the property of Stark Industries?). I had seen him as a realist making unpopular decisions, trying to do the right thing but perhaps in the wrong way. Then all of a sudden he barges in and starts shooting at the children. Then apparently he’s going to jail because Kat Dennings said so? This whole part of the story fell apart badly at the end.
Really, they could have cut out almost all of the SWORD stuff and it would not have been missed. Darcy winds up driving a van around town and then disappears. Jimmy gets to call for back-up that was surely on the way regardless. Monica appears to forgive Wanda in an odd bit of dialogue (“I would have done the same thing, let’s just ignore all these traumatized people that were hurt by your actions”) and then buggers off to the story she’s meant to be in anyway. We never really got a handle on what her powers were, how she feels about having them, how she feels about Wanda being responsible for them, nothing to really establish her character. They didn’t succeed at drawing parallels between her grief for her mother and Wanda’s grief for her family if that was the intent.
I also can’t see Agatha as an outright villain. Maybe she was greedy and wanted more power but she was also trying to remove the power from Wanda, who was overwhelmed, unable to control it and therefore posing a serious threat to the world. Agatha never really hurt anybody other than putting some mind control on poor wee Ralph.
Speaking of Ralph, what was the deal there? She mentioned Ralph in the first episode, long before the Fietro fiasco. Did she just realise the guy bore a passing resemblance to Pietro so kept him lying in wait until the opportune moment? Or did she just enjoy having a young man locked up in the attic for her own pleasures? The mind boggles.
Anyway, the ending for Agatha was pretty weak. Westview and everyone in it is returned to normal with the exception of Agatha. So, everyone else in the town is going to be well aware of who she really is and living in continued fear of her remembering who she really is and causing them further harm. Not cool, Wanda.
On the plus side, finishing the battle between Hex Vision and Tipp-Ex Vision with a logic puzzle was fantastic. It might have been nice for Vision to have mentioned to Wanda “hey, I copied my memories into that other Vision, maybe you guys could meet for coffee, really, I’m cool with it” before disintegrating. Never mind.
Wanda having to let her kids go was a hard scene to watch. Not sure that undermining it with the post-credits scene was the way to go. If she’s able to find a way to get them and Vision back into her life then what did she really learn here? The brief scene with Dottie noting that her children had been shut away in their bedrooms without her, sharing Wanda’s nightmares when they slept, was horrific. A shame that the Dottie character didn’t turn out to be somewhat more important but I think that’s just me wanting more for Emma Caulfield to do.
Overall, though, this show was considerably more interesting and creative than I had imagined possible when I first heard about it. The first seven episodes of creepy sitcom sci-fi mysteries were a lot of fun. The last couple of episodes descended into something more akin to standard MCU fare but Olsen, Bettany and Hahn were a pleasure to watch and some of the character moments did hit hard. A very, very good job that sets the bar for future Disney+ Marvel shows.
Odds on that post-post-credits scene being the opening scene for Dr Strange 2? Has Sam Raimi ever directed something about creepy powers in a remote cabin before?
.
.
The end definitely wasn’t as strong as the rest of the series. Was kind of disappointed that they didn’t just have Wanda completely snap and be the next big bad for the MCU and maybe somehow tie whatever she did into the introduction of the X-Men a little down the line. A nice reverse “No More Mutants” moment. But still, it was a good departure from the standard Marvel fare for most of the show and Elizabeth Olsen finally got to do something with Wanda after however many movies of just kind of being there. This also might be the longest origin story for a superhero outside of Smallville. She was in like 5 Marvel movies and her own TV show over 7 or 8 years before she finally officially becomes the Scarlett Witch.
WandaVision that clearly goes into a feature film.”
geez, JR, sometimes your links are head scratching. Did that writer watch the series? West view was returned to normal, Vision and the kids disappeared. Monica is going to Secret Invasion and Wanda is going to Dr Strange 2. What is left? SMH
I liked it. it answered all the questions. The action scenes were great. VizvViz was great and White Vision has a lot to think about. Like I said Monica is going to Secret Invasion because the big guy upstairs is going to turn out to be Fury. Jimmy looks good being in charge. I’d love to see him in Quantumania facing off with Scott with this experience and confidence. I missed the line about where Darcy disappeared but Not going waste time going back and checking.
The only disappointment I have is that it is going to take Wanda about 15 months to read the Darkhold. (I don’t think that its appearance precludes the existence of AOS in MCU. they did so much time jumping is last few seasons that the Robbie Reyes Darkhold might be in a different time than current AoS)
Being isolated and hearing their screams may mean Wanda bring the kids back. Weren’t they stuck in Hell at one time? those screams may be real and not memories.
Bettany and Olsen did an amazing job(excluding Bettany’s bad cameo joke.).
It seems a remarkably dumb piece of writing. Wedded to ideas from a decade ago.
Hey it’s a ‘ratings’ hit, let’s re-up with another 9 episodes with more sitcoms to be homaged.
Some quality control on the articles needed I think.
I watched the making of documentary. Very interesting.
So fake-Vision has the power to push past memory blocks that the real Vision can’t? By magic, presumably.
Real vision was, at this point, just a programmed machine, whereas Wanda’s Vision arguably has (an imitation of?) free will. Sometimes all it needs is to start a program from the outside that isn’t within the machine’s power to start itself. I don’t see that as particularly hard to believe.
Also, it’s been generated from the mind stone, so that may have helped.
(How SWORD is supposed to have the savy to put in memory blocks in the first place is a different matter, but that’s the kind of shortcut these kinds of shows all take.)
Personally, I thought the final episode was fine. Didn’t to anything particularly surprising, but then I never thought it would. The two Visions were well handled, as was Wanda’s final decisions to give up WestView. Tommy and Billy are going to be back, but then we knew they would be. The battle with Agatha wasn’t very exciting, but her punishment was nice (and that was a great acting moment, how she went back into the role of cheery nosy neighbour but you could see all the pain and torment in her eyes).
The Scarlet Witch costume… well, they did the best they could with it, I suppose, but I still think it’s a bit daft.
Hayward really was the worst part of the whole show, and shows Marvel’s problem with villains once more. They could’ve found some way to make him more interesting, surely?
Loved the series as a whole; the last episode wraps it up nicely but was not particularly great in its own right.
It was a great ride overall, and I think I’m going to rewatch it at some point (which I almost never do with any TV stuff).
I watched the making of documentary. Very interesting.
Did Mephisto show up?
I watched the making of documentary. Very interesting.
It was 50% puff-piece, but I enjoyed the bit with the composers – although gutted that there was no mention of the Agatha All Along theme – but for me the most interesting part was Vision’s VFX. I thought Bettany must at least wear some prosthetics on his face, but nope… he’s just painted purple (or blue for the black and white episodes) and the rest is 100% VFX.
nm, started typing before mind kicked in, nothing to see here
If you ever feel stupid just remember the Vision tried choking a robot pic.twitter.com/97sdnA7tjg
— The Lunwi Show (@Lunwi88) March 17, 2021
That’s how you deal with Windows ME Vision.
Who knows… he feels pain, so there’s that… I don’t think he needs to breathe though. But more than that, trying to hold Vision in any manner is dumb anyways because he can just become intangible, like the showed in the episode mere moment before that… so… yeah
“You ARE the Scarlet Witch!” This is the approved concept design I did for the finale of #WandaVision Shout out to our fearless leaders: Matt Shakman, Jac Schaeffer, & @MarvelStudios leadership @Kevfeige @louisde2 Victoria Alonso & Mary Livanos #ScarletWitch pic.twitter.com/DAGNKwdg6n
— Andy Park (@andyparkart) March 15, 2021
A little late but…
The whole story reminded me of that X-men story of Kulan Gath who cast a spell over Manhattan with this huge bubble over it and everything inside was midieval.
Here is a link:
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Uncanny_X-Men_Vol_1_190
All in all it was nice. The actors got to do situation comedy. Olsen is very photogenic.
The ending was OK. It was good that the Vision fight wasn’t like Man of Steel destroying everything. As for that conversation, I was
so surprised that they got into philosophy. Here are some brief videos of it:
The Wanda/Harkness fight was… well… another light show like the first Wonder Woman movie. We have seen light show fights already as well as these huge brawls that devastate half a city.
How about something new?
Using the Ship of Theseus dialogue as the actual “fight” between the two Visions was a fantastic idea, and well-executed, I thought.
I think Dr Strange turning up to fix everything would have made for a very different ending, but not necessarily a better one. It is, as Feige suggests, a bit like the man turning up to sort out the problem the silly little woman made, which you can mask, but it would be in complete contrast to the theme of the evolution of the sitcom stuff, which is, discreetly, about female empowerment.
Strange also happens to be a doctor though, making him a reasonable figure to turn to when you have mental health problems.
He’s a neurosurgeon, not a psychologist. And his bedside manner was famously horrible.
Does it really somehow lessen a woman if she seeks help from a man? Is that what Feige is saying?
It really does lessen the show if Strange comes in and Mansplains why Wanda did bad things. That should have been addressed in the show but would be horrible if an outside source comes in and has to point out what’s wrong. And yes, it would be much worse if it’s a rich, white guy doing it.
He’s a neurosurgeon, not a psychologist. And his bedside manner was famously horrible.
And that’s part of the problem I have with Cumberbatch’s Strange. He did really well at making him seem like an arsehole before his accident, but there was no real kernel of likeability and compassion that was revealed by the end. He just continues to seem like an arsehole, only now magic. Whereas I could see comics Strange (under most writers) being able to be that comfort and help to Wanda.
.
.
And that’s part of the problem I have with Cumberbatch’s Strange. He did really well at making him seem like an arsehole before his accident, but there was no real kernel of likeability and compassion that was revealed by the end. He just continues to seem like an arsehole, only now magic. Whereas I could see comics Strange (under most writers) being able to be that comfort and help to Wanda.
Yeah, his solo film was pretty bad, mostly in the writing department. I think he’s worked much better as a guest-star in the other movies, particularly Thor, but obviously they haven’t really added to his character in any way – he’s mostly just used as an amusing/mysterious plot-device.
I’ll be there opening day for Multiverse of Madness, but my hopes aren’t very high with Sam Raimi at the helm. I just hope they have better writers this time.
It really does lessen the show if Strange comes in and Mansplains why Wanda did bad things. That should have been addressed in the show but would be horrible if an outside source comes in and has to point out what’s wrong.
As things stand the show still basically says that Wanda conforms to the “crazy woman” stereotype and the whole Westview catastrophe is down to her not being able to cope with her grief, and they didn’t get shit over that, so maybe Feige shouldn’t have worried.
Isn’t the point that Wanda’s magical abilities are getting too powerful for her to handle, therefore she is going to Strange, the (other) most powerful magical person on the planet, for assistance in learning how to control them? Therapy for mental health issues is rather a separate point. Hopefully she doesn’t turn to the weird therapist from the Punisher show.
None of that is what the argument is really about here though. The medical side of Strange is really a very minor aspect. It’s more the fact that he is the authority on magic for our planet.
But to answer your question, yes I have several friends in the medical profession and they are not all like Hugh Laurie in House.
Karamo from Queer Eye would make for a fabulous Dr Strange.
No, no. Billy Porter:
This is nonsense. Do you think surgeons are only trained in surgery from the very start of their medical education?
No but I live with a Consultant Clinical Psychologist. Surgeons think of psychology at best as theoretical science, at worst as complete quackery.
Karamo from Queer Eye would make for a fabulous Dr Strange.
No, no. Billy Porter:
Can we get Billy Porter to play Brother Voodoo?
It really does lessen the show if Strange comes in and Mansplains why Wanda did bad things. That should have been addressed in the show but would be horrible if an outside source comes in and has to point out what’s wrong.
As things stand the show still basically says that Wanda conforms to the “crazy woman” stereotype and the whole Westview catastrophe is down to her not being able to cope with her grief, and they didn’t get shit over that, so maybe Feige shouldn’t have worried.
“Look, Mr Cholmondley-Warner, this pretty little thing has tried her hand at magic and it didn’t end well.”
The sitcom eps of WandaVision worked really well, then it seems the writers suddenly realised where that was headed for Wanda so had to fudge it.
This is nonsense. Do you think surgeons are only trained in surgery from the very start of their medical education?
No but I live with a Consultant Clinical Psychologist. Surgeons think of psychology at best as theoretical science, at worst as complete quackery.
I think it might be a wee bit of a stretch to project that vague generalisation into exactly how a fictional super-sorceror-surgeon feels about mental health and why it clearly makes him completely unsuitable to assist a fellow magical superhero.
But it’s probably best to just leave it as “agree to disagree” at this point.
I agree with Ben, they fudged a lot of aspects in this series and didn’t seem to have any kind of decent, satisfying ending in mind for Wanda. Bringing in Strange could maybe have helped with that aspect but could equally have felt a bit out-of-nowhere.
Either way I think worrying over the optics of a mansplaining white guy is probably a secondary concern when they have bigger story problems to worry about that they weren’t able to fix. But fair play to Feige for spinning it all in his favour, it’s his job after all.
All of those lead characters from the earlier movies were already established as white males, though. Sure, they could have changed things up and had a non-white male version of Doctor Strange or whoever but then they would have faced a backlash from those who are opposed to changing those established characters. I certainly think they should have fit in a Black Widow movie as soon as possible after Winter Soldier but it is what it is. At this point they can only look forward. Not including Fantastic Four, since we know nothing about the casting yet, they have 10 movies lined up for Phase 4 and out of those only 3 are headlined just by a white male – Doctor Strange, Thor and Spider-Man. Out of those 3, we know that Wanda and Jane Foster play significant roles in them and are quite probably co-leads. The other 7 are either ensembles and/or are headlined by more than just a white male.
Oh, and there’s the next version of Captain America too, whether it be Phase 4 or beyond.
So, it would seem that these things are getting more diverse.
If they had the balls to portray the new Doctor Doom as a Donald Trump figure then I’m sold.
Not that much of a stretch.
At least Doctor Doom has not been kicked off Twitter yet.
I imagine he’s planning to launch his own social media platforms. Doombook! Victagram!
The accursed Richards is permabanned!
The used automobile trade in Latveria thrives on Doomtree.
It is interesting in that they are now somewhat constricted by their previous choices in terms of diversity.
The MCU went 18 movies straight before landing on the novel idea of having a lead who wasn’t a white male. The late course-correction with stuff like Black Panther and Captain Marvel is necessary, but when you take a longer-term look it actually makes the MCU look quite sluggish in terms of catching up to the 21st century. It’s laudable, but a bit late.
I think a lot of that had to do with Ike Perlmutter. By all indications, he wanted white make superheroes. Remember, he wouldn’t green light a Black Widow movie because he thought no one would go see a superhero movie with a female lead.
Once Kevin Feige took complete control, you saw things open up greatly.
Iron Man, the first MCU film, has James Rhodes and Nick Fury.
Iron Man, the first MCU film, has James Rhodes and Nick Fury.
Rhodes is a secondary character and Fury shows up for a few seconds in a post credit scene.
There are also plenty of female characters in supporting roles throughout the MCU.
We’re talking about leads though – the characters whose names are in the title.
Yup the ‘lead’ thing is very important and has been going in Hollywood for a while now. First they said people wouldn’t buy a black lead and then people like Eddie Murphy and later Will Smith blew that out of the water. Then for years they projected out and said a world market would reject it and then Black Panther pissed on that idea by making big bucks everywhere.
‘WandaVision’ Spinoff Starring Kathryn Hahn in the Works at Disney Plus (EXCLUSIVE)
https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/wandavision-spinoff-kathryn-hahn-1235082445/
Everyone gets a show! Except Daredevil.
Man, Agatha Harkness getting her TV series would blow the mind of anyone you told it to about two years ago. Props to Kathryn Hahn and Jac Schaeffer for it sounding like a good idea.
