Review: Wandavision – s01e1-2

Set after the events of ‘Avengers: Endgame’, and with Vision seemingly alive, Wandavision takes us into a mysterious black and white world of domestic bliss.  *Warning: Spoilers Lie Ahead!*

Going into Wandavision there is no real context and it is presented as a traditional half-hour comedy in the style of ‘Bewitched’, ‘I Dream of Jeannie’, or ‘I Love Lucy’, replete with canned laughter.  The same touches and style are in evidence and the pastiche goes on far longer than you would expect before something is raised that seems totally jarring.

The first episode sets up the show with Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) moving into the small town of Westview as a young married couple in a middle class neighbourhood.  While Wanda is the suburban housewife, Vision works at Computational Services Inc., doing a job whose purpose isn’t entirely clear.  Much of the plot deals with the comedic farce premise of a date marked on the calendar neither of them can remember the details of, but which neither wants to admit not knowing about.

This running plot introduces the helpful, yet nosy neighbour Agnes (Kathryn Hahn – Transparent, We’re the Millers, Bad Moms), who is a classic sitcom staple and foil for Wanda.  Hahn plays this perfectly and is no doubt going to be a highlight of the series as it continues.  Similarly, the rest of the cast is exceptionally good, with Fred Melamed (numerous Woody Allen films) and Debra Jo Rupp (Friends, Better With You, The Ranch) as Vision’s boss and his wife.

It turns out that the date on the calendar is a dinner with Vision’s boss, and it’s here that things start to take a sinister and mysterious turn, revealing something else going on.  Up until this point it has kept the pastiche going, including an advert for the ‘Toast-o-matic’ toaster from Stark Industries half way through the episode.  The abrupt and strange interjection, coming after both Wanda and Vision discover they can’t recall some basic information, pulls Wandavision off kilter, before suddenly righting itself, leaving the audience guessing.  The façade is kept up right until the end, until as the credits roll, the camera pans out to reveal some kind of lab.

Episode two takes a similar approach, but moves into introducing odd events and objects more quickly, interweaving the pastiche with leftfield elements.  Strange noises and the appearance of a full colour toy helicopter in the bushes leave Wanda confused, but she keeps it to herself.  Later, having to deal with a local talent show run by the neighborhood ‘Queen’, Dottie (Emma Caulfield – Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Once Upon a Time), she hears voices through the radio, which disturbs her as well as Dottie.

All this culminates in the oddest sight yet, a beekeeper emerging from the drains at the end of the episode, which Wanda refuses to see, so ‘rewinds’ the show back to just before that point.  This alters things somewhat though, and Wanda is suddenly pregnant and able to turn everything into colour, which doesn’t concern them, but instead they find amazing.  As the episode ends, the voice from the radio can be heard asking “Wanda, who’s doing this to you Wanda?”.

So far, Wandavision has opened up with a grand mystery, but unlike ‘Lost’ for instance, has managed to make things intriguing and not annoying.  ‘Lost’ quickly found itself asking too many questions and not giving enough answers, but here we are getting small clues and some answers from behind the curtain, even if we don’t understand them fully yet.  The show has the feel of an extended ‘Twilight Zone’ story about it, and mixes in numerous ideas from The Truman Show, Pleasantville, Persons Unknown (which coincidentally had Chadwick Boseman in the cast), as well as many sci-fi novels from over the years.

There is clearly an ‘inner world’ and an ‘outer world’ and it will be interesting to see how they balance that going forward, without making terrible dramatic choices.  It is unlikely that Wandavision would survive a full season without revealing what the ‘outer world’ is at some point, and then dealing with that in a creative way.  Like ‘The Good Place’ successfully transitioned from one perception to another, this needs to be able to withstand some smaller reveals, and not try to run for 5 seasons before making one big one.  The best shows are inventive and develop, and from what we’ve seen so far, there is enough creativity and knowledge of the medium to make this delicate balancing act a success.

If you went back a few years and said that Disney would be involved in producing some of the best sci-fi, fantasy, and superhero tv and film around, you would have been derided, but strangely that’s where we are right now.  With The Mandalorian, the MCU, and now Wandavision, there are some risks being taken and they’re paying off.  Wandavision doesn’t have the markings of a quick cash-in or silly show with no depth, but looks like it will be happy to tackle difficult storylines inside a mysterious saccharine shell, and we are all better off for it.

It is also fantastic that we will get to see some character development from some of the lesser used MCU characters and find out more about their backstories.  In addition, this doesn’t seem like it is going to be done as part of someone else’s story either, but purely focused on the characters at hand.  For instance, the intelligence at work here is clearly Wanda’s, and in fact Vision comes across as a befuddled, secondary character to Wanda’s driving force.  She is at the centre of everything, and what we are seeing is her manifestation, or at least that is the assumption.

Wandavision is also laced with elements, clues and references to stories from the original comics, which add additional depth to an already clever show.  Whether you are a first time viewer, an MCU fan, or someone immersed in all of Marvel history, you will get some something from the little hints placed in plain sight.  From the Strucker watch, the Hydra logo, the Stark Industries toaster, to the S.W.O.R.D logo there are things in there to spot and be intrigued by, quite aside from just the narrative.

So far, this has been an excellent start to Marvel’s MCU extension into TV, and they have laid the groundwork for what could become a remarkable show.  Not only have they set in motion a grand mystery that feels like it will be right at home within the context of the films, but they’ve done so while also making an excellent, and funny, pastiche of 1950s sitcoms.  There was doubt and confusion before this aired over what it would be and how it could work, but these two episodes have clearly shown that Wandavision will become a must watch.

(Read the review of Episode 3 HERE)