Image via Disney+
Marvel Studios has owned the superhero genre since Iron Man was released in 2008. There have been formidable opponents, but the box office behemoth has turned Hollywood upside down when it comes to cinematic universes and the power of IP for over a decade now. For many, their foray into television with their Disney+ show WandaVision was met with skepticism. The slow-burn of a limited series, which kicked off with Avengers Wanda Maximoff and The Vision living out their lives in some time-warping sitcom dreamland, has started to kick into high gear, with many who were side-eyeing the sitcom premise seemingly fully on-board now.
With the back-half of this superhero tale set to begin on Feb. 12, it made sense that we took some time to admire the show that’s been laid out thus far, as well as attempting to use our comic book knowledge to guess where this show—which Paul Bettany (Vision) has said will have major MCU ramifications—will end up by Episode 9. Here’s our mid-season check-in on WandaVision.
[Ed Note: If you aren’t caught up on WandaVision, stop reading unless you want to be spoiled. You have been warned.]
Initial thoughts
William: khal, we’re slightly past the halfway mark of WandaVision, which is a good a reason as any to do a quick check-in on the series so far. How are you feeling so far? I know you and I were fairly aligned in our opinion of the first two episodes, but the show has covered a lot of ground since then. Are you still feeling the sitcom-vibes of the show as they begin to intersect with what we’ve come to expect from typical Marvel fare?
khal: I grew up watching sitcoms, especially during summer vacation, so the sitcom vibes in the series didn’t bother me nor turn me off like they seem to have done for others. Part of that might be because I knew that, at some point, we’d be getting to the real meat of what this series is supposed to do, and how it’d bridge into the MCU movies like the forthcoming Dr. Strange sequel. I also grew up reading Marvel Comics, so I’m used to off-the-wall premises being used to introduce a new layer to a character or title. Couple all of that with my overall love of television, and I guess this show feels tailor-made for me.
Did the first two-to-three episodes' sitcom heavy vibe weigh on me? Sure. I imagine it could’ve been accomplished in one 45-minute episode, but I think this premise—which we are still not 100 percent clear on why this is the device used to highlight how Wanda chose to cope with Vision’s death—works in softening the blow for what we’re getting, which is a pretty intriguing way to tell superhero tales, specifically MCU tales. I’m more amazed at how viewers have reacted to the moments in Episodes 4 and 5, specifically the opening of Episode 4. Of course Marvel Studios would be pulling the curtain back to highlight how WandaVision plays in the “real world”—that was ALWAYS bound to happen. Patting ourselves on the back or trumpeting that as some “glad we stuck around” moment rubs me the wrong way. But now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I wanna know your thoughts, William, on Episode 5 and where we think WandaVision could be going from here. There’s a LOT to dissect, honestly.
Pedal to the metal
William: Episode 4 was interesting because I don’t think I anticipated Marvel giving up the ghost quite so quickly. Sure, it’s an exposition-heavy episode, but I ultimately didn’t mind too much because it’s the first look we’ve gotten at the immediate aftermath of Endgame. Whereas Far From Home played the returned for a (solid!) gag, WandaVision leans into—dare I say—the horror of it all in an impactful way. I appreciate Monica (Teyonah Parris) being the audience surrogate as we learn both what happened to the world while also getting context on Maria’s post-Captain Marvel life. This kind of coloring inside the lines can often feel a little ham-fisted, but I think it’s a testament to Parris’ performance and my overall investment in Monica as a character that I found it all so compelling.
Heading into Episode 5’s “On a Very Special Episode…” I was curious to see if the show would keep its two-narrative halves separate a while longer—and was relieved to see they didn’t waste any time in merging the two. Other streaming shows tend to drag plot along for the sake of an episode count, so it’s refreshing to see WandaVision keep its foot on the gas pedal in its middle section instead of stalling out. I do wonder, to your point, if the show had stayed with its original six-episode count instead of nine, if the show might have avoided some of those early episode criticisms. Regardless, “On a Very Special Episode…” features Vision really coming to terms with the new reality he’s found himself in as we start to see Wanda’s perfect suburban life start to slip away. Khal, as a fan of Marvel Comics, did you ever think we’d get to a point where we’d see a version of Avengers: Disassembled or even parts of House of M? I know Elizabeth Olsen didn’t!
khal: I didn’t. When they announced that WandaVision would be bleeding into a Dr. Strange film, I figured anything was possible, but it wasn’t until Disney gobbled up 20th Century Fox that I figured Wanda’s comic book past could catch up to Marvel Studios’ present. Even though I know the remnants of Avengers: Disassembled and the groundbreaking House of M series are permeating throughout this series, I’m still leery on this being a full-fledged mutant-off, considering that Wanda (and Pietro, which I imagine we’ll get to in a minute) are not mutants in the MCU. Their powers came from an Infinity Stone. I’m also still uncertain how the multiverse will take shape—will Wanda rip a hole through the MCU’s timeline? This also plays into the next Spider-Man film, but that’s also Sony—who already dabbled in multiverse-mayhem via Into the Spider-Verse, but how that’ll tie into the world Wanda built for herself remains to be seen.
I will say, it feels like Wanda’s losing her grip. From early on in the series, we got the feel that, while she’s living life in this sitcom world, she’s also the showrunner. It wasn’t until this week, with doting neighbors asking if they need to “go again” during their opening “scene,” or being completely awakened to the nightmare she has them enduring, that we caught a glimpse of Wanda’s control starting to wane under the reality of the situation. Vision knows something is wrong, and Wanda is completely aware that S.W.O.R.D. is onto her. There’s something else afoot, though, and it plays a part in the comics deeper than I remember, William. Can you break down what could be happening next?
MAJOR SPOILERS
William: Let’s talk Pietro. MAJOR SPOILERS if you’re somehow still reading this without having seen Episode 5, but it looks as if Wanda’s brother has now joined Vision as a member of the arisen dead—albeit with a very different face. Quicksilver’s death at the end of Age of Ultron seemed inevitable given the fact that Fox owned the rights to the X-Men characters back in 2015; Quicksilver couldn’t exist in both the MCU and the X-Men movies. But now that Disney owns Fox, it just as inevitable that mutants would eventually make their way into the MCU.
At first glance, Quicksilver’s return—specifically the Evan Peters version of the character we saw in Fox’s Days of Future Past, Apocalypse, and Dark Phoenix X-Men movies—seems to indicate the long-awaited debut of MCU mutants. I say “seems” because it feels a little odd to use WandaVision as a trojan horse for mutants; the show feels too focused on Wanda and Vision’s particular story to be a springboard for a whole other subset of beloved characters. Marvel loves to make splashy announcements, so it feels like we would have known already if WandaVision was planning on introducing mutants to the MCU writ large. After all, Fiege mentioned the show would tie-into Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, so why not talk mutants, too?
I don’t want to discount the possibility of mutants, but I do think there’s a more likely scenario at play, one that fits more with the Wanda-specific story the show is telling. In the second episode, we heard Dottie (Emma Caulfield) state that “the devil is in the details,” while Agnes (Kathyrn Hahn) snarkily replied, “that’s not the only place he’s in.” What feels like a throwaway bit of dialogue could prove to be a tease of a huge Marvel villain: Mephisto. To make this simple, Mephisto is Marvel’s version of the devil, responsible for a great number of evil deeds in the comics. Most notably, he broke up Peter Parker and Mary Jane’s marriage in the much-maligned event “One More Day.” It was recently revealed that he’s been the hidden catalyst behind major events in Marvel Comics—notably antagonizing both Apocalypse and the Hulk into battle with various Avengers.
Mephisto has a history with Wanda, too. In the West Coast Avengers series, a weakened Mephisto is searching for pieces of his shattered soul to return to full power. Somehow, two of those pieces took the form of Billy and Tommy, who Wanda had just given birth to before the series’s start. The West Coast Avengers and Scarlet Witch’s mentor, Agatha Harkness, eventually stopped Mephisto from returning—but it cost Billy and Tommy their lives in the process. Harkness erased Wanda’s mind, where the events remained buried until Wanda rediscovered them in Avengers Disassembled.
Even by comic book standards, Mephisto is a weird character, so I don’t know if we’ll get Mephisto in name. Considering Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is a horror movie, the MCU might give Mephisto’s powers and personality to the Doctor Strange villain Nightmare instead, bridging the two stories together in a more cohesive way. He’s an antagonist more fitting of the horror tones we’re expected to see in the Sam Raimi-directed sequel anyway.
All of this is a long way of saying that someone else is pulling strings behind Pietro’s return. Between her sincere proclamation that she wasn’t responsible for his return and her shocked look, it seems pretty plausible a larger villain has brought back Pietro or is pretending to be Pietro himself. I think casting Evan Peters in the role is Marvel’s way of (slightly) trolling both Wanda and the audience.
I know that’s a lot of info to drop, but what do you think, Khal? Have I joined Wanda in going off the deep end?
What lies ahead
khal: Two things: I’m glad we are in agreement that Wanda was being sincere at the end of Episode 5 when “Pietro” rang the doorbell, and I’d say Evan Peters-as-Pietro is more than a slight troll, but we’ll see. I think you’ve cooked up a pretty solid theory of Mephisto and/or Nightmare starting to eek his way into this haven that Wanda has constructed. There are too many parallels between the comic book canon of Wanda’s mental decline and what we’re seeing play out in WandaVision to be ignored. How this all ends is anyone’s guess; we have four episodes left and it’s hard to determine where we will turn next… but I like that.
All of this said, I think it’d make more sense for the mutants to come through in the Multiverse of Madness, likely with a Mephisto/Nightmare spin to make it all kinds of horrific. I can’t speculate that far into the future, but that’s what my gut is telling me. Not that it’s too soon for Marvel Studios to have cooked up the mutant race into the MCU, but it just feels like they’ve not laid down enough groundwork for that large of an ideological shift in how powers work in the MCU. It could happen, but it feels like we’d have to abandon the whole “science” aspect that they’ve stuck to thus far.
Five episodes in, I’m just glad that Marvel Studios seems to be nailing the right way to develop these characters in television form. They’ve not really embarked on a journey quite like this, and I’m glad we’re getting this much to chew over halfway into their first official series. All they need to do is stick the landing, and that Disney+ subscription money is there’s for a bit.
William: Your point about developing these characters for television is well-said, especially since WandaVision the first of six MCU shows (!) we’re going to get this year. While not every single series will likely have the massive impact WandaVision seems to have, it’s reassuring for fans of the MCU that Marvel hasn’t missed a beat in going from the silver screen to the streaming screen. Much like S.W.O.R.D., it’s clear we’re going to be stuck to our TVs for quite a while as all these adventures unfold.