6/21/2023 0 Comments Wandavision episode 9 white vision![]() ![]() Her sitcom life is perfect because her real life is anything but. In the first episode and subsequent homages to Bewitched and The Brady Bunch, the audience starts to piece together that what we’re seeing is Wanda coping. Her lipstick, her hair, the hem on her dress - it’s all perfectly in place. When we first meet her in the series, Wanda (who’s played brilliantly by Elizabeth Olsen) is a bubbly, smiling, and happy wife in a knockoff version of The Dick Van Dyke show. What makes WandaVision so special is that it shows how, despite her losses, Wanda survives. Captain America saw Peggy on her dying day in one timeline, and he time-jumped to be with her when given the opportunity. Thor was able to tell his mother he loved her. Pepper Potts got to have last words with Iron Man. Unlike her colleagues, Wanda never really had a chance to say goodbye. Wanda has faced as much loss, if not more, than any other Avenger: She’s lost her parents, her twin brother, and her synthezoid soulmate Vision. Who didn’t love seeing her lift the Mad Titan into the sky in Avengers: Endgame and crunching his armor and bones little by little?īut playing that role over and over again - before Thanos it was Ultron, and in between Ultron and Thanos it was Tony Stark’s Civil War team - flattened Wanda into an avenging, glass cannon. That singular note was visually kind of cool, as it usually involved Wanda getting mad and then subsequently using her crimson-hued telekinesis to beat up bad guys like Thanos. But my favorite thing about WandaVision is how it used all these moments and all of its Easter eggs to tell a deeper story about Wanda Maximoff - a character who, for all her appearances in Marvel’s movies, was previously relegated to a one-note role. The show was packed with some blockbuster moments like Agatha’s reveal, the fake Pietro (Fietro) cameo, and the arrival of Wanda’s twin boys - in the comic books, these boys will eventually become superheroes themselves. I wrote in my initial review of the series that I hoped the story would eventually give us a payoff that was equal to its style. Let’s get this out of the way: WandaVision was great. WandaVision showed the lengths humans take to cope with grief Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff in WandaVision. In doing so, WandaVision attempted to give us a hero to cheer for and, at the same time, ultimately deprived Wanda of the growth necessary to get there. But surprisingly, in its spectacle-driven finale, the show flexed emotional amnesia, trading away its exploration of humanity to complete its mission of (literally) empowering its heroine and laying the foundation for the next chapter of the MCU. So much of the series is focused on what it means to mourn, on how we persevere, and on the desperation humans feel to avoid the pain that accompanies grief. That WandaVision debuted after a year of social distancing and isolation made it even more emotionally resonant. ![]() In Wanda’s case, she manifests her grief through recreating the old television shows she once watched with her family. But most of all, it took a character who is so criminally minimized in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Wanda Maximoff, and gave her the space to tell a story about grief and loss, stasis and movement. It simultaneously existed within and pushed against the boundaries of the very rigid Marvel machine. ![]() I tuned in to WandaVision each week because I loved the way the show wanted to explore things like our relationship to television, the power of escapism, and the wonder that is Kathryn Hahn. But it’s mostly because I can’t stop thinking about WandaVision’s finale.Īnd the more I revisit that episode, the more I realize it’s because a show I really liked left me cold. Part of that is due to my fundamental belief that witchcraft is much sexier than two dudes wanting to save the world. But I can’t get my mind off of WandaVision. In a couple of weeks, Marvel will debut The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, its second Disney+ series. Spoilers follow for WandaVision episode nine, “The Series Finale.” ![]()
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