Let’s talk about Wandavision.
Let’s make something clear to start: I loved Wandavision, significantly more than I expected to. I might be inclined to call it one of my favorite pieces of content to come out of the MCU.
Ah, already, there it is, the MCU. I can’t get even two sentences into talking about Wandavision without that qualifier. This is the curse of everything that exists within the MCU - it can’t be evaluated on its own terms, only within the MCU. This has never been more painfully true until Wandavision.
Wandavision begins as a black and white retelling of the Dick Van Dyke Show starring Wanda Maximoff and Vision… wait what? That’s it? Yes that is it. For quite some time it is just that, a small-scale story where Wanda and Vision quaintly live out their lives together in a surreal Americana utopia. That doesn’t last--inevitably there is a showdown with a bunch of dudes in SWAT gear pointing around guns to demonstrate someone’s ability to render bullets useless. It’s also Full House. What?
If you hadn’t heard yet, Wandavision is about Wanda Maximoff grieving over the death(s) of Vision following the events of the latest Avengers movies. It’s the saddest the MCU has dared to be, and Elizabeth Olson for her part knocks it out of the park. Olson’s Wanda has in my opinion a stronger emotional arc than any character thus far in the MCU, and the nuance with which the show attempts to tackle such difficult themes as loss and trauma is completely foreign to all Marvel content that precedes it. By a long shot even, I might say (Jessica Jones notwithstanding, but less belabored). Add on top of that an absolutely spot-on journey through the history of 21st century U.S. television programming, and you’ve got something special.
Now we interrupt that message to bring you a shiny glass office building swarming with extras in earpieces. They’ve got a scheme--so does the FBI, let’s get them involved. How about a scientist spewing nonsensical sci-fi jumbo? Check. The Marvel police are here, and they need screen time, apparently lots of it. They have plans to tell the audience about, verbally. They are also interested in what is going on here, so don’t worry, they will explain it all to you.
This is the straightjacket any Marvel content must exist in. Even when the entire premise of the show is “look we are trapped in this little town,” it all collapses down ultimately into progressing the overarching Marvel Cinematic Universe from Phase 3.2c to 4.1a. And so we are left with what we can reasonably expect from the MCU: really good content, even occasionally excellent content, that at the end of the day is going to have a fixed ceiling from the Marvel-ness of it all.
Filmmakers (and now showrunners) are stuck in the catch-22 of having a blank check to make their creative vision however they want to, as long as it starts at point A and ends at point B. This is not entirely a bad thing! The overarching style and aesthetic at the core of the MCU (what little there is of it) is bad, almost inarguably bad. Wandavision makes this clearer than any Marvel content, since it is directly switching back and forth between genuinely incredible hyper-stylized period reenactments and some of the blandest government-guy-in-a-suit-wants-superweapon scenes this side of a Transformers movie. The MCU provides the freedom to make something as vivid and wild as Wandavision while using plot checkpoints to tie its brand together.
Wandavision at the end of the day is a devastating exploration of grief, told via a love letter to the history of television, while wearing a shock collar. Every time the show reaches to become something “greater” it is as rudely intruded upon by “Marvel” as Wanda is by the guys in Kevlar vests outside of Westview. The entire story of Wandavision feels like a meta-version of itself, constantly trying to hold off the siege of the MCU closing in on it. Wanda can’t escape it, nor can her show-within-the-show, nor can the entire eponymous show (produced and streamed by the Walt Disney Company). Maybe that’s the point.
I’m not convinced it is though. Having seen it, calling Wandavision a deconstruction of the MCU itself feels like a reach. I don’t think that’s what it set out to be. For what it is, particularly in the ways in which it creates an identity for itself that is not the MCU, it is a triumph. The greater universe in which it exists only holds it back. Wandavision is good in spite of the MCU, not because of the MCU. It’s a shame, but what would have been more of a shame is for it to not exist at all. It’s not fair to the show to call it just another Disney+ tentpole to sell subscriptions. It is so much more profound than that. But it’s not wrong to point out it is that as well. Now more than ever, the MCU feels like an unstoppable weight which cannot be transcended.
So where does that leave us for perhaps an even more beloved franchise than Marvel, Star Wars? As I alluded to before, the MCU seems to be progressing more and more towards the model of “your content can look and feel however you like, so long as this is the story it tells.” A best case scenario for Disney Star Wars could perhaps be the opposite: “tell any story you’d like, as long as it looks and feels like Star Wars.” Disney has certainly now heard its fair share of criticism for telling the same story twice, so maybe they will be more the wiser in the years to come. That could set up an interesting dichotomy over the next ten years: an MCU continuing to weave an ever-entangling web of complexity with a new look at every turm, versus the familiar galaxy far, far away venturing down into disparate rabbit holes. The language of the MCU is in the plot; the language of Star Wars is visual.