Review: Wandavision – We Interrupt This Program s01e04

At the end of last week’s episode ‘Now in Color’, there was bit of a tease that hinted at what may really be going on.  Any idea that Wandavision would continue that tease and be frustrating is firmly dispensed with in ‘We Interrupt This Program’, as the curtain isn’t so much pulled aside, as torn down entirely.  *Warning: Spoilers Ahead!*

There was potential that this series could have become a sideline to the films and just be an interesting thing of its own, but this episode went full MCU and tied everything together.  It seems impossible now that Wandavision can be anything but a key step in the ongoing plot of the MCU and a critical connection point for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.  It’s a move that wasn’t entirely expected, at least not to this extent, but it works extremely well and shows the ambition behind the scenes.

The reveal at the end of last week of Geraldine (Teyonah Parris) being flung out of Westview gave us a certain amount of information and this week fills in a number of blanks.  In a way, ‘We Interrupt This Program’ works as both a flashback, giving us Geraldine’s true identity of Monica Rambeau, daughter of Maria Rambeau, and also like the opening act of a feature.  While the previous episodes have kept the focus tight, as befits the nature of the set bound sitcom, this suddenly feels more expansive.

Returning from the ‘blip’, after the events of Avengers: Endgame, Monica wakes up beside a hospital bed, expecting to see her Mother, only to discover that she died 3 years before.  Like most who reappeared, it takes some time to adjust, but she does so quicker than most, going back to work at S.W.O.R.D. (Sentient Weapon Observation Response Division) under Acting-Director Tyler Hayward (Josh Stamberg) who took over from her Mother.  In her first day she is instructed to handle a missing person case for the FBI, liaising with Ant-Man’s Agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park).  It turns out not to be a missing person, but more like a missing town, as the ‘real’ town of Westview, New Jersey is enveloped in an energy barrier, and none of the nearby locals can remember it existing.

After Monica is sucked into the energy barrier, ‘We Interrupt This Program’ kicks off its big set up, with a large-scale inter-agency response and military presence similar to the outside of ‘Under the Dome’ and a million sci-fi films and shows.  It’s a standard trope, but Wandavision punches through the potential cliches by having Dr Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings), last seen in ‘Thor: The Dark World’ immediately inject some humour as well as cutting off any notion of keeping things overly secretive.

The focus then becomes the team in this control centre, who are investigating the energy barrier, which seems to confound everyone until Darcy discovers a tv signal emanating from Westview.  That signal is essentially what we have been watching in previous weeks.  It’s an excellent setup and you can see why things have been presented in the way that they have.   The layers of mystery from the first few episodes make perfect sense, and paved the way for ‘We Interrupt This Program’ to be a massive, and very satisfying, payoff.

Aside from actually delivering for the audience a coherent reveal, what makes this episode really sing is that Dennings and Park are a fantastic duo, and inject ‘We Interrupt This Program’ not just with humour, but also an obvious dedication to solving this mystery.  They clearly care what happens to people, and have a great rapport while doing so.  In working through the clues, they are the audience’s proxies and the fact they are engaging and relatable helps enormously.

Interestingly, viewed from outside the perspective of the sitcom we gain further insight into recent events, seeing a different side of how Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) reacts to Geraldine.  It seems much more sinister and antagonistic this time around, coupled with pain as she then briefly sees Vision (Paul Bettany) in his murdered state, rather than her recreation.  The cracks are appearing, and the show is nudging them slightly, seeing how stable the whole thing is.  Obviously Geraldine nudges too hard and gets ejected for it, landing outside the town in a daze, just muttering “It’s all Wanda!”.  Time will tell if she is traumatised or not, but so far, Monica has been a great character that seems like she will work extremely well with Jimmy and Darcy.

The key question moving forward is how they are going to balance what is effectively now two great premises within one show?  There is obviously a need to keep both plates spinning at the same time, but whether each episode can cope with a switch between the realities, or whether it will need to be alternate episodes remains to be seen.  The most important thing though, is that they’ve dodged the worst of the tv trope bullets, and have set up an engaging mystery that also includes payoffs.  Their next trick won’t be easy, but the signs are that this is only the beginning, and remarkable things are about to happen.