WandaVision is Great, and That's Why It's Frustrating
Marvel's first streaming series reminded me why I have mixed feelings about the MCU
WandaVision is over, and it was pretty great. The series brought a lot of the Marvel flair to a much different kind of story, and its tale of a woman grappling with her overwhelming grief had a touch more emotional heft than most other Marvel properties. The sitcom hook, taking us on an aesthetic tour through the decades of American television, turned out to be a fun device that played well to the tone shifts the show often employed to create tension and suspense. I certainly can't heap any more richly deserved praise on Kathyrn Hahn than she's already received. So much of it just worked so well.
And yet, I am the eternal Marvel pessimist who is never fully satisfied by anything they do, a state of affairs that hasn't changed. As much as I did genuinely like so much of what WandaVision did, a lot of it also left me feeling vaguely dissatisfied. There was something missing, something that confounded me and held it back from becoming something I could sit with and fully enjoy. The more I would pick at this niggling dissatisfaction though, the more it revealed itself to be a piece of a larger whole, an interconnected web of frustrations that reach far beyond WandaVision itself to the MCU as a whole.
Some of this is just the show being bad at the things the MCU has always been bad at. Plenty of people have criticized the final episode for devolving into a series of stand-offs where two people shoot CGI laser beams at each other. I don't want to completely write off the climactic showdown between Wanda and Agatha Harkness, as it does involve at least a little tactical cleverness that the worst CGI slugfests have been unable to muster. But it was a disappointingly conventional finish for a series that was often defined by its inventiveness.
Worse still was how the reveal that Kathryn Hahn's Agnes was actually a fellow witch manipulating things behind the scenes affected her character. The initial thrill of the reveal (and the absolute bop that was “Agatha All Along”) turned out to be just a vehicle for turning the show's most dynamic character into another bland Marvel villain spouting threatening cliches. Their villains are another frequent point of criticism, rarely rising to the level of charm that the MCU's heroes are so well-loved for, so on some level this is to be expected. Certainly the other main villain of the show, Director Hayward, fell into every one of those pitfalls. Yet the case of Agatha is especially egregious because until the moment of that reveal Agnes was a standout star that nearly everyone singled out for praise for being fun and charming and engaging. The fact that the second that character became a villain nearly all of that charm evaporated suggests there is a deeper problem with how they approach writing villains than just mostly not finding the right ones.
And you can't talk about the MCU's general problems without mentioning the...less than ideal way it often deploys its characters who are POC. With some notable exceptions, they are frequently relegated to supporting cast who get little interiority, instead sublimating their own struggles to help out the (usually white) main character with theirs. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a story focused mostly on the main character, but the fact that this has happened enough times to be a recognizable pattern is concerning.
In that context, Monica Rambeau is the latest in a long line. She starts strong, with an affecting scene showing her coming back from her five year Thanos-induced absence to discover her mom has passed away. But her own grief and emotional journey is fairly quickly discarded except in terms of how it helps her relate to Wanda and want to put her life and career on the line to help her. In the end, it feels like she mostly exists to have someone to validate Wanda's pain, and that's not great.
But while these problems, running throughout so much of the MCU as they do, are worth discussing, they're not the sources of my frustration that I find the most fascinating. In many ways, it's actually WandaVision's successes rather than its failures that truly stick in my mind as a point of contention. Not because those successes themselves were disappointing or compromised, but rather because they revealed such gaping holes in the MCU's usual way of operating that it became impossible not to think about them.
Take the penultimate episode of the series for example. This episode was mostly a gaze backward, with Agatha leading Wanda on a tour of some of the most pivotal moments of her life to figure out how she managed to create the spell over Westview. It also happened to be one of my favorite episodes of the series because of how well it humanized Wanda's struggles over the course of her time in the MCU. We see the joy of her life with her family, the despair as it gets torn apart by American imperialism, the grim determination that lead her to work with Hydra, the overwhelming grief of losing Pietro, and the tentative beginnings of her romance with Vision. They're all lovely little moments that add so much to Wanda's character and make us empathize with her...and it's the first time any of it has happened in the six years since she was introduced.
Oh sure, we've gotten little moments with Wanda over the years, little check-ins to establish where she is or what's been happening with her. But this is the first time that any of the major life events she's experienced have any room to breathe. Even when those events were pivotal moments in the movies they took place during, little time was devoted to exploring the emotion behind them beyond the lightest suggestion. After all, this is the first time we've ever seen Wanda take a moment to really mourn Pietro, despite his death being a foundational moment both in her life and in the story of the Avengers. He's essentially been a forgotten footnote since that one tragic scene in Age of Ultron, rather than someone whose loss has been really felt.
This problem extends even further, to the very foundations of the show: Wanda and Vision's relationship. Before this show started, how much had we really seen that justified the enduring love we're told they have for each other? They have a cute scene or two in Civil War, although with the decidedly unromantic undertone of Vision effectively keeping her under house arrest. After that we never see them interact again until Infinity War, where we discover they've apparently been maintaining a secret relationship since then. Once again, after the bare minimum of interaction required to establish this information, very little is done to actually demonstrate the love and affection that supposedly exists between them.
This becomes a problem when you consider that the climactic moment in Infinity War is entirely premised on their relationship! The tragedy of Wanda killing Vision to stop Thanos from using the infinity stone embedded in his forehead is that she's being forced to kill the person she loves. Now most people aren't sociopaths, and if you tell them that's what's happening they will feel some measure of sympathy, so the scene does work as tragedy to some degree. But it's also a movie, and when you're watching a movie you can only feel so strongly about things you have no connection with. Tragedy like this hits so much harder when we've seen their love and affection grow, when we understand what draws them together, when they resonate with us on an emotional level. Otherwise you end up watching it from a remove: you understand that what's happening is sad, and it works in that moment, but you don't feel it in the way the best stories can make us feel.
It's easy to understand why so little time and attention was given to developing Wanda and Vision's relationship, of course. They're fairly minor characters in the MCU, ones who only show up in the larger scale team-ups bursting at the seams with new characters and plotlines that all need their own screentime. In that situation, it's understandable, and probably better for the individual movies, that we don't spend much of that precious screentime forging an emotional connection between these characters when you don't need to do that for this particular story. Yet that puts us in a situation where we're constantly putting it off because it's never strictly necessary, until it's six years later and we want to draw on that relationship for drama but we never actually put the effort in to make that work.
I'll admit this becomes a bit tangled, since I'm simultaneously criticizing WandaVision for the failures of the larger MCU while arguing for its own existence. After all, isn't that the point of a smaller project like this, to flesh out characters we normally don't get to spend too much time with? And the fact that it accomplishes that is part of what I liked so much about the series, so it's not like it's doing a poor job of it! And yet the mere fact of addressing the problem makes me feel frustrated because it reminds me of the problem in the first place! There's something a little unfair about that.
But I still think this is a legitimate vein of criticism, because this show does take it as a given that we already know and care about these characters. It does a good job demonstrating their love, yes, but it doesn't do much to establish who they are. Crucial plot points hinge on us already being familiar with their past. The show is meant to be a continuation of their story, not when we finally see the story of two little-regarded side characters, and so it's fair to be frustrated by how that story was so weak before now. WandaVision might be a wonderful castle of a story, but it was still built on a foundation of sand, and that can't help but weaken it.
The most frustrating part, though, reaches down even further into the fundamentals of the MCU. The first three episodes of the show were some of my favorite things they've done in a long time. The wacky sitcom antics were pulled off surprisingly well, faithfully recreating the rhythms of older TV shows while showing off what made them fun. And laced in that great comedic work were hints of something darker and more sinister, an alien and unknowable horror akin to something out of the mind of David Lynch. It was fun and intriguing and tickled my brain in a way I didn't think Marvel's crowdpleasing instincts could really deliver anymore.
Then came the fourth episode. As a self-contained story, I do think the tale of Monica Rambeau and how she came to be a part of Westview is a perfectly competent episode. But watching it was like watching the show take an ax to everything that made me so fond of it. No more strange framing device, no more dreamlike horror, no more sitcom shenanigans. Worst of all, it methodically dismantled every single mystery in the show, no matter how minor. It was like having someone barge in to the middle of a complicated murder mystery and explain, in detail, the history and motivation of each character present. It was, in short, incredibly deflating for someone who found the seemingly unknowable mystery of it all compelling.
When I talked to good friend Nando (who often versuses movies) about this, he suggested it was probably necessary, as casual fans of the MCU were likely becoming confused and disengaged by this point. I can admit that the Twin Peaks-esque qualities I described above are not for everybody, or even for most people. Not in a snobby, elitist sense; you just need to be wired a certain way to like being vaguely creeped out by something just beyond the edge of understanding. If WandaVision wanted to be a show any MCU fan could hop in and enjoy, it probably did need to make a move like that. What frustrates me, then, is not that it didn't accomplish its goal, it's that I don't know why that was its goal in the first place.
The MCU's greatest strength is undeniably its broad-based appeal, the way it manages to string together charming performances and fun action to create movies that are loved by huge swathes of the population. That is a difficult thing to do and takes a great deal of skill. But at this point, the MCU is going beyond just the occasional tentpole release into a cultural behemoth in its own right. It dominates movie theaters, televisions, streaming channels, you name it, looming so large as to be nearly synonymous with mainstream American entertainment. Others have written far more eloquently than I about the dangers this presents to the culture at large, and I've already gone on more than long enough, so I won't get into that here. I merely wish to ask: if that is going to be true anyway, does every single thing they make need to be for everybody?
We're talking about a side story TV show featuring a handful of characters that were always tangential at best, taking a bunch of actions that certainly seem like they will have little impact outside their own personal stories. One could argue that every single piece of the overarching narrative is important, but let's be honest with ourselves. If past is prologue, very little outside of the main thrust of the bigger movies will ever be truly, unmissably important to the MCU. It's very doubtful that those who missed out on WandaVision will ever be scratching their heads during the next Avengers movie, irretrievably lost about some minor plot point. This is not a criticism; if the MCU is going to be so large, then it's nice to see them expand into smaller and more personal stories that aren't of Earth-shaking importance.
But if their approach to those stories is going to be to stuff them into the same tidy boxes as those larger ones, then I have to wonder what the point really is. My frustration was that WandaVision, a show that often seemed to be straining against those boxes, trying to break free into something more strange and original, was constantly pulled back and confined to avoid breaking the mold too much. It was a show that seemed so scared of losing people that it couldn't muster any confidence in its choices, instead retreating to safe, familiar ground.
Maybe you literally can't afford to take that kind of risk with something of this scale. Every entry in the MCU takes unimaginable gobs of money to produce. Even a relatively smaller scale production like this likely cost over $100 million. Practically the only way to make back that kind of money is to appeal to as many people as humanly possible. Looked at in that light, you can understand why these choices were made. But it doesn't make it less frustrating, and it doesn't stop these questions from swirling in my head with every disheartening choice while I watch.
I suppose in the end it does all come back to the question of the MCU's position in our culture. There will always be smaller productions and independent creators with the artistic ambition (and financial feasibility) to make weirder stories for smaller audiences, and I'll happily champion those. But for a lot of people, these movies might be some of the only larger pieces of culture they intersect with in a given year. And representing the culture means you can be criticized for what about it you choose to represent. If the MCU is going to be one of, if not the, most dominant facet of mainstream American entertainment, don't we deserve a few more choices in tone than “slightly sillier buddy comedy action” and “slightly more serious buddy comedy action?”