Wandavision: What Happened?

 

 

        Wandavision has wrapped and left me with a lot of mixed feelings. I will say that I generally enjoy the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It of course has its ups and downs, which is unavoidable with something so large, but on the whole I look forward to their output. What gets under my skin about Wandavision is that it toes the line between the broadly fun middle of the pack MCU and its few great standouts, and in the end it just couldn’t break away to the top no matter how well it was set up.
        First of all, the good: no property from the MCU has been as interested in a character’s interiority as Wandavision. The sitcom recreations gently humming along in full denial or warping and cracking as problems crop up directly reflect Wanda’s own grief. The show within the show is a loving recreation/expansion of a historic long running media giant inside the MCU, a loving recreation/expansion of a historic long running media giant, and there’s a lot of meat on that bone. Making Wanda’s magic happen with real wirework and match cuts in her Dick Van Dyke era is not only fun, but helps communicate the carefully crafted sense of authenticity she’s trying so hard to create. It’s tense and mysterious and a great use of the weekly airing format since it unravels a little at a time in a way that makes every episode compelling (something that previous marvel shows struggle with). As the show within a show flies through the decades and its storytelling matures, we see Wanda on a collision course with reality. Not only do her kids grow and begin figuring things out, but the show is now imitating TV comedy that, at its best, makes space for more serious and reflective themes and complex emotional texture. Modern Family has silly dinner party episodes just like The Dick Van Dyke Show, but Wandavision’s riff on Modern Family was centered on Wanda’s depressive funk in Vision’s absence.
        The awkwardness begins around Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha. On the one hand, she’s emblematic of the show losing focus. The fact that a nasty manipulator woman was the architect of all of Wanda’s obstacles takes away a lot of Wanda’s culpability in the harm she’s caused. When Vision was un-mind-controlling people and Monica and Hayward were butting heads over how to deal with the hex, everyone was very concerned with the innocent people being kidnapped to be in the show. As soon as there was a bad witch to punch, though, they all apparently forget about this. On the other hand, Hahn as a wacky neighbor turned evil mastermind is perfect and she eats it up on screen in the best possible way. Even the cartoonishly cruel recap flashback episode worked with her at the helm. The show was always going to have a villain for Wanda to have a final showdown with and that’s not an intractable problem, but the way it’s implemented here is directly denying what the beginning of the show is telling us.
        Wandavision loses its nerve by the end and it can’t deliver on what it set out on. When Wanda ends the illusion and has to say goodbye to Vision and her kids the show rides out its last opportunity to be visually expressive in its carefully cordoned off experimental zone by looking exactly like every other action hero pained goodbye that’s been filmed in the MCU a dozen times now. It would be extremely natural to film their last moments like an accelerated, saccharine sitcom season finale but they punt this opportunity, despite having already moved into the more self-referential era of TV comedy. The Office’s last episode was able to dismount with its emotional core intact, and both audience and creator knew that it had been going on a bit too long and needed to wrap up, which would have been pitch perfect for the show within a show’s ending. “Maybe we’ll see each other again because we’re all cyber wizards” just doesn’t hold the same weight.
        Afterwards, Wanda switches over to weirdly aloof. She avoids eye contact with the townspeople in a way Monica, the one person who believed in helping Wanda, doesn’t even comment on. Wanda’s apology that obviously belongs to the people she captured goes to Monica, and Monica is just cool with that so Wanda flies away like Neo at the end of The Matrix and that’s the end. If the end of Wandavison is not about how she feels, and it’s not about the people Wanda put in danger, then what’s it about? Wanda outsmarting a bad witch with a cool trick she just learned? I assume it was some kind of imperative that Wanda become a magic studying hermit by the end to set up for Doctor Strange, but it feels so stilted and hollow. If Wandavision is supposed to be saying that grief is a difficult process that we should help each other with instead of punishing or taking advantage of each other, then how is this a victory?