Before I start lemme just say that this article WILL HAVE SPOILERS. Don’t read if you don’t want to ruin the show for yourself. That being said I couldn’t ignore the pop culture moment that is WandaVision and of course had to write my completely unneeded thoughts.
WHAT A BEAUTIFUL REPRESENTATION OF GRIEF
When I tell you I balled my eyes out when Vision said ‘what is grief if not love persevering’- like man that hit me. This show was layered in so many ways but it was so refreshing to see a piece of media about a superhero actually acknowledge the trauma they faced after the so called ‘final battle.’ And not in a ‘boys don’t cry’ and I’m a man and I just blow things up when I’m sad way. In a true heartbreaking way that’s selfish yet undeniably universal. In so many action movies trauma is portrayed almost positively. As a justification for destruction. In WandaVision grief is a catalyst for destruction but not a justification. Wanda hurt people and she knows many of them will always hate her. She has to live with that. Man, between Frozen 2 and WandaVision Disney is really throwing around those grief metaphors!
WALKED THE FINE LINE
What WandaVision did so well was that is didn’t make fun of the content of older sitcoms. It completely embodied it. Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany threw themselves into the roles and refused to make them feel like a parody. Instead they made the “shows” feel genuine. Nowadays, when people try to emulate older T.V. shows they make their representation very parody like. (Like look what people actually found amusing and entertaining in the fifties!) They focus on the ridiculousness of the content. WandaVision reminded viewers what made these shows so fun and entertaining in the first place. In it’s purest form T.V. is escapism and WandaVision honored that. They whisked you away to a place where everything gets solved in 23 minutes and I loved it.
THE IMPORTANCE OF MEDIA
I was genuinely so happy that WandaVision touched on the importance of media and the arts in people’s lives. For Wanda, T.V. was a touchstone that she could always go back to. No matter what was happening in her life the sitcoms never changed. And it wasn’t just something she enjoyed as a child. The scene where she talks to Vision about Pietro and her grief while watching a sitcom was exceptionally poignant. She was alone for so long and sitcoms were her therapy and someone to connect to until she met Vision.
WEEK BY WEEK FORMAT
How did y’all feel about the Disney+ weekly episode releases that they’ve now done for both WandaVision and The Mandalorian? I feel like it worked well for The Mandalorian but WandaVision seems so easily bingeable. Releasing 2-3 episodes at once would have been ideal for me.
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