WandaVision on Disney+

[DeathQuaker]

The boss choking in ep 1 was freaky. Someone pointed out that what Vision pulls out of him is a whole strawberry, and the show makes a point that there was only one strawberry. Interesting thing is Wanda seems to be the one who punishes him, but then once it settles into her mind what is happening, she makes Vision help him.

Come to think of it that's what happens to Dottie too. Wanda is upset, glass breaks, but then she is horrified and tries to help Dottie. Who seems to be somewhat aware Wanda is responsible and shrugs off her help. (Interestingly in the next scene she is not wearing a bandage.)

[Thomas Seitz]

Eh... I think it's more coincidence than proof Wanda is doing this.

I do think that the other characters/people in this show are being controlled to some extent...but at the same time I don't think their original personalities are being subsumed by what's going on. I guess we'll find out more tomorrow!

[Aberzombie]

I watched the first two episodes last week. There were entertaining, but I would have preferred a little deeper delve into the overarching story. So far I think this is one of the weakest of the MCU offerings. I'm hoping my opinion will change as we get deeper into the show.

The cast was great. Took me a few minutes to place the neighborhood "queen bee" chick, but she was Anya in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the series, not the movie).

[Mark Hoover 330]

It's only a 9 episode arc I think, so ep 1-3 is the beginning, 4-6 is the middle, 7-9 concludes the story. I figure they won't really start peeling back the veil until the end of tonight's ep.

I really do think Wanda is making all of this happen. Whether or not someone is in turn influencing/controlling her remains to be seen. I think it's pretty evident that Vision doesn't help his own choking boss until Wanda tells him; Wanda says "no" to the "beekeeper" and things rewind. She IS supposed to have "reality warping" abilities after all, right?

[DeathQuaker]

This is very TV nerdy, but I loved that they did the Davy Jones-sung-song for the newest episode that was Brady Bunch-referential. :)

Spoilers for Ep 3:

So looks like they're to some extent in a real place, that has been cordoned off by some kind of force field. And SWORD is parked at the edge of it.

Vision does appear to be a separate consciousness (not a part of Wanda's mind) as he is realizing something is wrong, and Wanda is trying to keep him from realizing it.

Trying to figure out what Ag(atha Hark)nes(s) is up to. She seemed to be influencing Wanda in earlier episodes (kept suggesting they should have kids and then Wanda is pregnant). But she then seemed to be trying to cue Vision in to the idea that something was wrong--although perhaps she was just trying to get rid of "Geraldine" as an interloper? Whatever it is she seems to know what's going on more than anyone else.

[Thomas Seitz]

Mark,

Indeed she does. Though in the comics, that comes a little later in her history after a fight with Morgan LeFay and the Twilight Sword (not to be confused with twilight the series)

Episode 3 for me is VERY creepy but also cool because we get to see my two favorite Young Avengers....sort of.

[Queen Abrogail Thrune I]

About Episode 3...... was that...

Spoiler:

Captain Marvel a.k.a. Monica Rambeau that Wanda just Force lightning'ed out of whatever parallel dimension they're in back into the real world??? oh snap!! YES!!!!!! YES IT IS!!! based on that, "The adult version of Rambeau appears in the Disney+ series WandaVision (2021) and will appear also in Captain Marvel 2 (2022) portrayed by Teyonah Parris in both."

[DeathQuaker]

Yes, that's her. I'm wondering if she will get her powers in this show.

So you know that soap commercial in epsiode 3? On Reddit, someone pointed out the odd (coincidental?) connection to another soap reference in the extended MCU.

[Queen Abrogail Thrune I]

Hopefully we find out that the entire Marvel Agents of SHIELD series was a blue HYDRA soap induced dream...

[Aberzombie]

Well, at least the last five minutes or so of that episode three were worth watching. Hopefully, we’ll see more of that and less of the homages to old TV shows.

I am interested in where they’re going with this. Hints of Scarlet Witch’s mental problems and her much more potent than previously shown abilities.

[DeathQuaker]

There's a LOT more than homages to old TV shows going on. Every second something happens, there's a hint to what's going on or a development that is critical. We just don't all know what it all means but there's a lot of juicy tidbits. Just because it's dressed in Wanda chasing a live stork around doesn't mean there's nothing happening (indeed, is that Wanda subconsciously creating the stork or is something else happening?). In fact I found all the dialogue between Wanda and Geraldine to be fascinating, not just the end bit.

Alternate theory to what's going on:

Spoiler:

Hydra built the trap, Wanda went in to rescue the people, and then got caught up in it. She was controlling the plot at first to protect people while finding out how to shut things down, but now doesn't want to leave because she can live out these fantasies. That's why someone on the outside is trying to reach her specifically, they know she went in and/or perhaps even sent her in.

I also read somewhere another theory that Westview is a prison, and the occupants are all dangerous in some way. Agatha is one of the prisoners and is hoping to manipulate Wanda to help her escape.

[Thomas Seitz]

DQ,

There's precedent in your theory. Back when Steve Rogers got aged up and Sam had to take over, SHIELD use a Cosmic cube to make a kind of "Pleasantville" for villains. So...it might be similar to that.

But I'm very much okay with the TV show homages. It's kind of neat. :)

[Vidmaster7]

I am thoroughly enjoying it so far.

[DeathQuaker]

Thomas Seitz wrote:

DQ,

There's precedent in your theory. Back when Steve Rogers got aged up and Sam had to take over, SHIELD use a Cosmic cube to make a kind of "Pleasantville" for villains. So...it might be similar to that.

But I'm very much okay with the TV show homages. It's kind of neat. :)

Now that you mention it... is it me, or does the Hydra Soap box at the end of the commercial look like a Cosmic Cube?

[Haladir]

And here I was just thinking it was a riff on the old "Calgon, take me away!" ads for Calgon bubble bath from the '70s & early '80s.

[Haladir]

Another thing I've noticed... the episodes 2 and 3 intro sequences featured scenes and events from the previous episode that don't appear in the episode itself...

The ep 2 "Bewitched" intro sequence references Vision's office, office mates, and boss, but they didn't appear in episode 2 itself.

The ep 3 "Brady Bunch" intro references the town gazebo, the public library, and Wentworth's department store, but none of those appear in the episode.

[Thomas Seitz]

DQ,

Some how I don't quite think that's the case but who the heck knows???

[Vidmaster7]

I think we are going to get hints of Mephisto.

[Haladir]

I re-watched the three episodes over the weekend, and I am really loving this show! It's a fascinating curveball for MCU storytelling. And while the whole "trapped in a TV show simulation" thing has been done many times in the past, I have been floored by the attention to period detail. Even the in-show special effects are period.

And as someone who grew up watching reruns of old sitcoms on UHF TV, including I Love Lucy, The Dick VanDyke Show, Bewitched, and The Brady Bunch, these loving homages hit my nostalgia buttons pretty hard.

But they aren't just homages... the creepiness really comes in when they make cinematic jumps between the trappings of multicam sitcoms of old and contemporary dramatic single-cam one-shot close-ups... and that's when the laugh track and period incidental music also falls away.

Plus, the laugh-track is ever-so-slightly off-kilter, and those out-of-period elements make uncomfortable shifts into suspense, providing an underlying feeling of dread. If that part hits TV nostalgia buttons, it's The Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

[I'm also a sucker for period throw-backs... I really liked the final season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and its homages to period media. I especially liked the episode filmed like an early 1950s film noir; the 1970s TV action series intro, and the episode that ran like an '80s scifi-action-horror film (e.g. Deadly Friend.]

[Mark Hoover 330]

So many theories:

Some folks have suggested that this is what Wanda was designed for all along by Baron Strucker and Hydra - she was meant to be the living embodiment of the Infinity Stones and has manifested Time, Power Mind and Reality on the show so far. There's also folks who like DQ's theory, that Hydra is merely taking advantage of Wanda's powers with a trap set in Westview. There is, of course, the Mephisto angle - the "devil in the details" that Agnes mentions in Ep 2. There's also a skrulls invasion theory where all the residents of Westview is part of an invasion force either meant to ferret out the kree on earth or meant to take over earth for resources against the kree. There's an even crazier tie into Agents of Shield - the villain Hive shows up in that show and there's bees and a hexagonal shape in the series, so maybe Wanda is being incorporated into some kind of hive mind alien evil.

I just love the building unease of the show. Rather than monsters and gore, I prefer horror elements that are just... unsettling. Like Dottie talking to her husband in a weird, robotic kind of way or the neighbor cutting through the fake cinderblock fence, smile firmly plastered on his face.

I wish Marvel's AoS didn't get as bad a rap as it does. I thought that was a good show and had some really great moments to it. Coulson alone is worth watching for. Maybe some of the plots got a tad off the rails but there was a lot of good, human drama in that show, portrayed with a nod to realism. Not every story had a happy ending, and the heroes didn't get the girl so to speak, at least, not every time. The relationships developed in the show felt earned by loss and pain and the shared hardships of being SHIELD agents through the WORST time to be SHIELD agents.

And now we have SWORD. Because the films wiped SHIELD off the map. That also saddens me. I thought in the comics SWORD and SHIELD co-existed? It's like, if you just follow the movies, SHIELD was like some novelty that happened on the fringes of a couple films but REALLY it was just Nick Fury and a Helicarrier, then it was over, and now SWORD is where it's REALLY at!

Anyway, I know the show exists outside the control and planning of the Feigeverse. Hopefully as SWORD comes on they'll pay more homage to the SHIELD that preceded them.

[Haladir]

It had its ups and downs, but I thought Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was a fun and solid series throughout.

I don't think anyone is exactly sure how/where Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. fits into the overall MCU past season 3... there were some literal Earth-shattering events that happened in that series that would have absolutely drawn the attention of The Avengers if there hadn't been a creative split between the creatives in the movie and TV sides of the franchise.

But, assuming that AoS is more-or-less still part of the overall MCU, the series ended with a revived S.H.I.E.L.D. In one of the last scenes, we see Mac on the deck of a helicarrier.

[JoelF847]

Haladir wrote:

It had its ups and downs, but I thought Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was a fun and solid series throughout.

I don't think anyone is exactly sure how/where Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. fits into the overall MCU past season 3... there were some literal Earth-shattering events that happened in that series that would have absolutely drawn the attention of The Avengers if there hadn't been a creative split between the creatives in the movie and TV sides of the franchise.

But, assuming that AoS is more-or-less still part of the overall MCU, the series ended with a revived S.H.I.E.L.D. In one of the last scenes, we see Mac on the deck of a helicarrier.

And we see Quake and company in deep space, potentially working for SWORD, but they couldn't come out at quite say it was SWORD and not SHIELD at that point.

[Thomas Seitz]

There some interesting theories that I didn't see before. But I think as we get closer to the middle IE maybe by episode 6, we'll get a clearer idea of which one if any are correct.

[BigNorseWolf]

Epileptic trees:

We keep seeing a sword icon, so SWORD as opposed to Shield? Either shields reincarnation or Focused on extradimensional threats?

Something about the way the theme song goes off kilter seems to sound like

wanda vision wandavuion

one da vision one davision one

division one.

Is scarlet witch doing this to herself? She tried to bring vision back and she's strong, but he's still in a knot of the universe time looping on itself.

[BigNorseWolf]

Knocked right through the literal fourth wall...

[ericthecleric]

Episode 4 was interesting...

I'm not going to provide any spoilers though!

Looking forward to what people are going to say about it! :)

[Thomas Seitz]

Nordic Wolf,

You can say that again.

(also won't spoil this)

I will say there's some theories that might be going down now...

[Queen Abrogail Thrune I]

Ok. This show is good now. This is what a Marvel TV show should be.

[Aberzombie]

Now that was a much better episode. Far superior to the three that came before. Some of the highlights I enjoyed...

Spoiler:

Jimmy Woo - even though I saw him as kind of a d!@!+ead in Antman, here I liked him much better. And I loved the little bit with the sleight of hand magic.

Darcy!! Huzzah! I liked her in the Thor movies, and was hoping we'd see her out from under Jane's shadow.

Seemed like a slight nod to cosmic rays in there.

I noticed when they were doing the board of people identification, they didn't show Agnes. Very interesting.....

"Dead" Vision was really creepy. Which makes Wanda doing all this even more creepy.

Overall, I enjoyed this peek "behind the curtain" and back into the real world. Hopefully, they'll keep up this better work.

[BigNorseWolf]

The other stuff was setup for this stuff. I don't think you could have better without worse. I mean the rollercoaster can't be all drops you need that slow clank clank clank up the hill.

[Haladir]

My thoughts on ep 4...

Spoiler:

Well, we're back to standard contemporary storytelling in the MCU.

I thought those first three eps were brilliant, and this one was a bit of a stylistic let-down to me.

I'll be honest: I really missed the period sitcom pastiche in this ep. I wanted one or two more off-kilter sitcoms that got progressively more...wrong, with clues in the wrongness to what was really going on before they pulled back the curtain.

I had truly marveled at the craftsmanship of those period pieces: they got the look, feel, acting style, pacing, cinematography, and incidental music exactly right...until they deliberately broke the petiod trappings to underline the artificiality.

But then again, I'm a big fan of classic TV.

That said: This ep does really move the plot forward, and now we know a lot more of what's going on in the show: Wanda is creating an idyllic fantasy life for herself with the man she loves, informed by the stories America tells about itself through the magic of television.

I hope the next ep goes back to the sitcom format, at least in part.

[BigNorseWolf]

Thomas Seitz wrote:

Nordic Wolf,

You can say that again.

"Knocked right through the literal fourth wall..."

off kilter laugh track

[Thomas Seitz]

Indeed so Wolf person.

[Quark Blast]

Given that Ep 4 here explains all of the in-sitcom quirks from Eps 1-3, I'd say they aren't likely to emulate a 1980's sitcom next.

I would prefer that they do, but once the 4th wall has been breached there's markedly less creative room available to make it interesting. Something weird happens and I'll think, "Ah there's the curtain again", instead of "Whoa, need to file that for later reference".

[Haladir]

Quark Blast wrote:

Given that Ep 4 here explains all of the in-sitcom quirks from Eps 1-3, I'd say they aren't likely to emulate a 1980's sitcom next.

There's a promo photo of a big-haired Agnes [Kathryn Hahn] in 80s aerobics attire complete with leg warmers, so there's definitely going to be some sort of an 80s sitcom pastiche coming up...

How that's going to mesh with what's happening with SWORD outside the hexagon is a separate question.

[Quark Blast]

"Ah there's the curtain again" it is!
:D

[Thomas Seitz]

Yeah I don't think we won't get an 80s sitcom and I think we might even get a Modern Family type pastiche as well.

Regardless, I don't see the sitcom thing ending JUST yet.

[Haladir]

The WandaVision mid-season trailer hints at an 80s-style sitcom pastiche (see Wanda's and Agnes' very-80s big hair), a 90s-era sitcom (see Wanda hanging up laundry and possibly Vision in a Halloween costume version of his "real" costume), and an 00s-style "confessional" sitcom (see Wanda making comments directly into the camera).

And also some kind of big MCU-style climactic battle.

[Quark Blast]

Ughh! "Climatic battle". Nobody* dies in a comic unless it's the protagonist's parent/sibling/significant other, so the third act battle is always the most boring part of a movie or series as it can only turn out one way.

BBEG is:

Defeated!

How you get to the third act is the best part and I hate being spoon fed. Neo asking, "EMP?" in the Matrix yanked me right out of immersion the first time I saw it.

* I'm talking named character here.

[Thomas Seitz]

Quark,

I mean Thanos died.... Sooo...there's that.

Haladir, that's how I view it too.

[Quark Blast]

Thomas Seitz wrote:

Quark,

I mean Thanos died.... Sooo...there's that.

Did he? Really? Are you sure?

Did Superman die?

Hellboy?

They might for a time but the time will come when some studio exec declares the cash must flow and *POP!* there stands Thanos astride the multiverse threatening death like googolplex of black holes coming down on the 'Verse.

[Mark Hoover 330]

Is that all this show is to you, now that the "curtain" has been lifted QB? A bunch of comic book tropes and a cynical reminder of the very obvious plan of studio executives to increase profits?

When I get to the part in the Wizard of Oz when the man is revealed to be the wizard behind the curtain, I guess I don't throw my hands in the air and go "welp, I guess THIS movie's blown! Now it's just about the happy ending tropes and a series of parodies/homages as a cash grab by future studios!"

I watch with a tear in my eye as Dorothy wakes up in Kansas and a little girl realizes that sure, life might be black and white and boring, but there's no place like home. Maybe I'm naïve though; maybe my heart blots out my brain in such moments.

Anyway, I'm watching Wandavision for a similar reason. I'm not watching for super powers, tropes, or cynical confirmations of the Disney business model. I'm actually watching b/c the films portray Wanda as a woman who has lost EVERYTHING. Her family was gone as she was introduced, her brother dies, her true love dies twice, and even her country is a broken mess she can't return to until after the "blip" and maybe even still since she was technically in violation of the Sokovia Accords.

Wanda is in the grips of profound loss. Her portrayal by Elizabeth Olsen is maybe a tad overstated in the movies but in this show, all that loss bubbles up in a single tear and a heartbreaking lullaby. Vision's concern, some of the dialogue... it's the slow, burning reveal of the utter devastation that this woman is dealing with.

I'm watching this show for the same reason I read the comics - because despite being crazy-smart and physically powerful, Peter Parker still struggled with self-confidence and rent; because Daredevil once went crazy trying to cope with the women he loved all being taken away from him; because Scott Summers can save the world over and over again but has to avoid getting lynched for being different when trying to buy a cup of coffee.

Marvel makes some very HUMAN characters and stories. The MCU carries on that tradition. Do they also employ the obvious tropes and methods of their media? OF COURSE they do; they're rooted in an effort to entertain for money. But that doesn't detract from the fact that the work is touching, and heartfelt, and sincere.

Anyway, that's why I don't care that, even though Tony Stark died and has remained that way for years in the MCU, they might bring him back to milk the cash cow again. Instead I'll focus on RDJ, struggling with the effort to simply snap his fingers while announcing defiantly "And I... am... IRON MAN"

[dirtypool]

Absolutely agree with your take Mark. Wanda's overwhelming loss looms over Olsen's performance in the series as does a sort of creeping dread that Wandavision's Vision is just Wanda's Vision. The in-world character is potentially still very much an empty robotic husk re-animated out of the profound grief that the unsnappening brought so many people back but it couldn't bring Pietro or Vision back to her.

[Mark Hoover 330]

I think that's kind of one of the reasons Quarkimus Prime's comments above caught me off guard. Yeah, in comics, lots of people come back from the dead, its a trope that Thor makes fun of in the MCU with his brother Loki, but the whole reason for Wandavision is in part BECAUSE death is final in the MCU.

At least, so far it is. Vision is gone for Wanda. Think about how that must hit her as she returns in the Blip. Everyone else got SOME kind of happy ending, except for Tony Stark; The Hulk learned to control his 2 sides and became a hero, Cap got to go back in time and have his date, Hawkeye got his family back even though Natasha is still gone for him.

Wanda is watching the whole world reunite with one another around her. Her parents are still dead; her extended family, dead; her brother, dead. The synthetic being known as the Vision, the person whom she'd come to love romantically... is still dead.

Now mind you, Wanda has JUST been through a fight where a bunch of glowing rocks re-wrote reality, sent people through time and space, and where whole legions of flying aliens with otherworldly tech that can create wyrmholes! And yet, despite ALL of that... Wanda walks away from all of this with nothing.

I don't know if a lot of people remember it, but there's a scene when Banner is telling Natasha that when HE hit rock bottom and couldn't deal with all he'd lost anymore, he tried to end himself, but the "other guy" just "spit the bullet out." I mention that only to illustrate that the MCU isn't above showing their characters at their... ABSOLUTE lowest, and showing that in those moments they aren't always "heroes."

Wanda had to have been at one of those points; likely still is under the pastiche of all the sitcoms she's living through. Can you imagine yourself in that moment? No family or man you love in the midst of a global celebration of love and rebirth. No family, no home, no job, no country, no money or life to really return back to... absolutely, nothing.

So somehow that the show has yet to fully explain, she literally MADE IT ALL UP!

She at some point entered a town that she completely remade as the "home" she wanted. She "brought back" her love, even created a family in Ep3. Wanda plastered over the great big black hole in the middle of her heart with this fake reality in the biggest moment of repression any therapist has ever seen.

And I felt the first, REAL pangs of that when she turned to "Geraldine" and said "Y'know... I was a twin..."

DANGIT, that line HAUNTS me! As much as it still haunts me when I hear Peter say "Mr Stark? I don't feel so good..." or when Yondu shouts "He may have been your father, but he wasn't 'cher daddy! I'm sorry I never done right by you boy..."

Its one of those MCU lines that just unloads SO MUCH on you.

Anyway... I hope the MCU gives Wanda Maximov a freaking break. So cool, she's got some OMEGA level powers, but does she need to be such a lonely god?

[Ed Reppert]

Quark Blast wrote:

Thomas Seitz wrote:

Quark,

I mean Thanos died.... Sooo...there's that.

Did he? Really? Are you sure?

Did Superman die?

Superman died when I was a kid. Committed suicide, iirc. That'd be probably 60 years ago or so.

[dirtypool]

Ed Reppert wrote:

Quark Blast wrote:

Thomas Seitz wrote:

Quark,

I mean Thanos died.... Sooo...there's that.

Did he? Really? Are you sure?

Did Superman die?

Superman died when I was a kid. Committed suicide, iirc. That'd be probably 60 years ago or so.

My Superman died seventeen years ago.

Comic book Superman on the other hand, didn't die at all. His Kryptonian cells depleted of solar energy and entered a dormant state that he could only be revived from with the help of Kryptonian technology at the Fortress of Solitude.

[Werthead]

That was excellent.

Spoiler:

Vision briefly freeing the other guy from the nightmare, Monica and Jimmy's debate about whether Scarlet Witch or Captain Marvel could have taken Thanos (and Monica's clear unresolved Issues with Captain Marvel flying off and never checking in with her mother again), and X-Men Universe Quicksilver showing up.

Unclear at the moment if:

Spoiler:

The Fox X-Men Universe exists in the MCU and is canon and SW tapped into it to find another Pietro, or this is a random guy who Wanda has reimagined as her brother and the casting is just an Easter Egg.