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WandaVision
File:WandaVision Logo.png
Genre
Created byJac Schaeffer
Based on
Directed byMatt Shakman
Starring
Theme music composer
ComposerChristophe Beck
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons1
No. of episodes2 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers
  • Kevin Feige
  • Louis D'Esposito
  • Victoria Alonso
  • Matt Shakman
  • Jac Schaeffer
ProducerChuck Hayward
Production locations
CinematographyJess Hall
Camera setup
Running time29–36 minutes
Production companyMarvel Studios
Original release
NetworkDisney+
ReleaseJanuary 15, 2021 (2021-01-15) –
present (present)
Related
Marvel Cinematic Universe television series

WandaVision is an American television miniseries created by Jac Schaeffer for the streaming service Disney+, based on the Marvel Comics characters Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch and Vision. Set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), it shares continuity with the films of the franchise, and takes place after the events of the film Avengers: Endgame (2019). WandaVision was produced by Marvel Studios, with Schaeffer serving as head writer and Matt Shakman directing.

Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany reprise their respective roles as Wanda Maximoff and Vision from the film series, while Debra Jo Rupp, Fred Melamed, Kathryn Hahn, Teyonah Parris, Randall Park, and Kat Dennings also star. By September 2018, Marvel Studios was developing a number of limited series for Disney+, centered on supporting characters from the MCU films such as Wanda and Vision, with Olsen and Bettany returning. Schaeffer was hired in January 2019, the series was officially announced that April, and Shakman joined in August. The series is presented as an homage to past sitcoms, with Wanda and Vision living in a reality that takes them through different decades of television tropes. Filming began in Atlanta, Georgia in November 2019, before production halted in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Production resumed in Los Angeles in September 2020 and completed that November.

WandaVision premiered with its first two episodes on January 15, 2021, and will run for nine episodes until March 5. It is the first series in Phase Four of the MCU. The series was praised by critics for its homages to past sitcoms and the performances of Olsen and Bettany.

Premise

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Marvel Studios presents “WandaVision”, a blend of classic television and the Marvel Cinematic Universe in which Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) – two super-powered beings living idealized suburban lives – begin to suspect that everything is not as it seems. The new series is directed by Matt Shakman, and Jac Schaeffer is head writer.[1]

Cast and characters

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  • Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch:
    An Avenger who can harness magic, engage in telepathy and telekinesis, and alter reality.[2] Olsen said the series brings the character more in line with the comic book version, including depicting her mental illness,[3] and introducing the "Scarlet Witch" moniker that was not previously used in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.[4] Executive producer Kevin Feige added that the series explores the extent and origin of Wanda's powers.[5] Olsen felt her "ownership" of Wanda was strengthened during development of the series,[6] which allowed her to explore new parts of the character's personality such as her humor and sassiness.[7]: 30  She was thrilled that WandaVision focuses on Wanda rather than telling her story "through everyone else's story lines" as in the films, and was sold on joining the series when Feige mentioned specific Scarlet Witch comic storylines that inspired WandaVision.[8] Olsen was influenced by Mary Tyler Moore, Elizabeth Montgomery, and Lucille Ball for her performance.[9]
  • Paul Bettany as Vision:
    An android and former Avenger created using the artificial intelligences J.A.R.V.I.S. and Ultron as well as the Mind Stone,[10] who was killed during the events of Avengers: Infinity War (2018).[4] Bettany described Vision as "decent and honorable" who "exists for Wanda". He was influenced by Dick Van Dyke and Hugh Laurie for his performance.[9]
  • Debra Jo Rupp as Mrs. Hart: Wanda and Vision's neighbor and the wife of Vision's boss.[11][12]
  • Fred Melamed as Arthur Hart: Wanda and Vision's neighbor and Vision's boss.[11][12]
  • Kathryn Hahn as Agnes:
    Wanda and Vision's "nosy neighbor".[8] Hahn described Agnes as the neighbor "that won't get off their couch at the end of the night" and is "always in [their] business".[6] Hahn was fascinated by the "jolts of adrenaline and humanity" the MCU provided and the fact it had a "gasp of human magic".[8]
  • Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau:
    The daughter of Air Force pilot Maria Rambeau and an agent of S.W.O.R.D. (Sentient Weapon Observation Response Division),[13] who first introduces herself to Wanda and Vision as their neighbor "Geraldine".[14] She has a "toughness and an ability to be a woman" in a male-dominated world.[6] As a child, she looked up to her mother's friend and colleague Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel.[15] Co-executive producer Mary Livanos called Rambeau's inclusion in the series "a discovery" when it was first being researched and developed, that was "not quite mapped out, but [became] really enriched in the show".[7]: 28  The series shows the things Rambeau "has seen and gone through and how they've shaped her life" since her appearance in Captain Marvel (2019).[16]
  • Kat Dennings as Darcy Lewis:
    A political science major turned doctor who previously was an intern for Jane Foster and befriended Thor, and is working with Jimmy Woo to solve a mystery.[17][18]
  • Randall Park as Jimmy Woo: An FBI agent who was the parole officer of Scott Lang / Ant-Man and is working with Lewis to solve a mystery.[6][18]

Jolene Purdy has a recurring role as Beverly, Wanda and Vision's neighbor.[19][20] Other residents of Westview include Asif Ali as Vision's co-worker Norm; David Lengel as Phil Jones; Amos Glick as Dennis, the mailman;[20] Emma Caulfield Ford as Dottie Jones, a "skeptical mom who rules the neighborhood with an iron fist and poison smile";[21][22] and David Payton as Herb. Ithamar Enriquez and Victoria Blade appear as the man and woman in the fake commercials.[20]

Episodes

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No.TitleDirected byWritten byOriginal release date
1"Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience"Matt ShakmanJac SchaefferJanuary 15, 2021 (2021-01-15)

Newlywed couple Wanda and Vision move into the town of Westview during what appears to be the 1950s. They attempt to blend in, despite Vision being an android and Wanda having telekinetic and reality-warping abilities. One day they notice a heart drawn on their calendar but neither can remember what the occasion is. While Vision goes to his job at Computational Services Inc., Wanda decides that the heart represents their anniversary. Their neighbor Agnes introduces herself to Wanda and helps her prepare to celebrate that night. Vision amazes his co-workers with his speed but is unsure what his company actually does. He is reminded that he and Wanda are hosting his boss, Mr. Hart, and his wife for dinner that night, which is what the heart represents. Wanda and Vision struggle to hide their abilities while making a last-minute dinner for the Harts. While interrogating Wanda and Vision, Mr. Hart chokes on his food, and Vision uses his abilities to save him. All of these events have taken place on the fictional sitcom WandaVision which someone is watching on a television.

A commercial during the WandaVision program advertises a Stark Industries ToastMate 2000 toaster oven.
2"Don't Touch That Dial"Matt ShakmanGretchen EndersJanuary 15, 2021 (2021-01-15)

During what appears to be the 1960s, Wanda and Vision hear strange noises outside their house, which seems to be caused by a tree branch in the wind. They prepare their magic act for a neighborhood talent show. Wanda and Agnes spend the day with the show's planning committee, led by Dottie, and Vision attends a neighborhood watch meeting, where he accidentally swallows some chewing gum. Wanda befriends another neighbor, Geraldine, and notices more strange things: a yellow and red toy helicopter in their black-and-white world; a voice on the radio that seems to be speaking to her; and a red bloodstain. Thanks to the gum caught in his internal mechanisms, Vision appears to be intoxicated at the talent show and publicly reveals his abilities. Wanda uses her own abilities to make this look like simple magic tricks and fixes Vision by removing the gum from his gears. They return home, and Wanda becomes visibly pregnant. When they see a strange beekeeper emerging from a manhole on their street, Wanda responds by resetting reality to before the figure appears. The setting then changes to the 1970s as everything becomes colorful.

A commercial during the WandaVision program advertises Strücker watches.
3"Now in Color"Matt ShakmanMegan McDonnellJanuary 22, 2021 (2021-01-22)

During what appears to be the 1970s, Wanda and Vision have a doctor, Stan Nielson, check on her due to her being pregnant unusually fast. Nielson explains everything is fine, and leaves, intending to go to Bermuda with his wife. While Vision sees Nielson out, he sees his neighbor Herb cut through the wall. The couple builds a new room for the baby. While debating on what the name should be–Wanda calling the baby Tommy, while Vision calls it Billy–Wanda suddenly has her pregnancy elevate to six months, then goes through the Braxton Hicks contraction. This causes her to accidentally generate an energy surge, which shuts down the entire town's power. She then gives birth to twins with the help of Geraldine. Vision catches Agnes and Herb gossiping and interrupts them. They talk about Geraldine, and Agnes stops Herb when he stutters repetitively that "She came here because we're..." Wanda interrogates Geraldine after she reveals she knows Ultron killed Wanda's twin brother Pietro. Wanda notices that her pendant has a S.W.O.R.D. emblem. Vision returns to find that Geraldine has disappeared, and Wanda says, "she had to run." Outside of Westview, Geraldine is cast out from a wall of TV static, then S.W.O.R.D. agents surround her.

A commercial during the WandaVision program advertises a Hydra Soak bath powder.

Release

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WandaVision premiered on January 15, 2021, with the release of its first two episodes on Disney+.[23] The other seven episodes are scheduled for release weekly until March 5.[24][23] Marvel Studios considered releasing the entire season at once, but chose weekly releases after seeing the "fun of week-to-week" provided by the Disney+ Star Wars series The Mandalorian. Feige said the episodes were built with the weekly release in mind, so the audience could "try to guess what happens next, to have a week speculating or rewatching and building that anticipation." He felt binge watching the series after all the episodes were released would be an "equally fun experience".[25]

Shakman said the series was able to premiere so soon after filming completed due to post-production work beginning during the series' COVID-19 production shutdown.[7]: 34  Schaeffer felt the series was "suited to [being released during] this moment in time", amidst the pandemic, because it is a "reflection of a lot of the anxiety that we're feeling, and a lot of the pathos and chaos of [2020], so it feels very right to me".[7]: 35  The series was originally announced as releasing in early 2021,[26] before being moved forward to a December 2020 release in February 2020.[27] It was then moved back to the early 2021 slot in November 2020.[28] It is the first series in, and the start of, Phase Four of the MCU.[16]

Critical response

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The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 97% approval rating, based on 140 reviews, with an average rating of 7.85/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Part loving homage to TV history, part off-kilter mystery, WandaVision is a wonderfully weird and strikingly bold step into the small screen for the MCU – and a perfect showcase for Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany".[29] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 76 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[30]

TVLine's Rebecca Iannucci gave the first three episodes an "A", calling them "an intriguing, fresh, genuinely delightful deviation from what we've come to expect", and praising the performances of the cast, specifically Olsen. She did question if the series would have been better suited releasing its episodes all at once as opposed to weekly.[31] Giving the series an "A-", Sam Barsanti at The A.V. Club called WandaVision "the ultimate expression" of the MCU's potential to "do new things and tell new kinds of stories" and a series with the potential to be "a riveting entry in the MCU canon".[32] Calling WandaVision Marvel's "oddest TV property to date", Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter said it was not weirder than Guardians of the Galaxy, but it was "creatively courageous [to give] a postmodern exploration of sitcom conventions to an audience expecting snazzy suits and explosions." Fienberg likened the series more towards meta-sitcoms Get a Life and That's My Bush! than a traditional comic book series, and called it Marvel's version of the short Too Many Cooks.[14] The shift between each decade in the episodes was "simply remarkable" to Liz Shannon Miller of Collider. Miller praised Olsen and Bettany, and said Hahn was "too good for mere words to encompass". Awarding the series an "A", Miller concluded that the MCU "framework has never allowed for this level of experimentation before now... WandaVision dares to actually really challenge the viewer".[33] Darren Franich at Entertainment Weekly said it was an unusual start to Phase Four, and gave the first three episodes a "B+". He described the scenes that "lovingly conjure the mood of very old television shows" as the best parts of the episodes, but was concerned that the mystery of the series would be "like just another movie" with the potential to become "an overly familiar superhero smash-up". Franich said the success of the series would be determined by how this is handled.[34]

Caroline Framke, in her review for Variety, called WandaVision "an admirably weird introduction to the new age of Marvel TV", but felt it could be confusing to casual MCU viewers as well as fans of the sitcoms that inspired it. Framke also did not find any of the episodes "particularly funny", and felt the series' best moments were when Maximoff and Vision were shown to not belong in their reality.[22] Michael Phillips, writing for the Chicago Tribune, was more critical of the first three episodes, calling them "interestingly bad" and criticizing the use of sitcom tropes such as "canned and deadly" laugh tracks. He also felt that one episode's worth of story was stretched out over the first three.[35] Roxana Hadadi at RogerEbert.com said it was difficult to tell where the series would go from the first three episodes, but she felt Maximoff and Vision were being sidelined in favor of the allusions to past sitcoms and also that there was no "sense of narrative stakes" due to the series taking place within the larger narrative of the MCU.[36] Dominic Patten of Deadline Hollywood was also critical of the series, calling it "tiresome" and "a baby boomer punchline in search of a joke". Patten believed WandaVision was a step backwards for Marvel television series, believing that Marvel's Netflix series and ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. were better, and he added the series to his list of times Marvel had "gotten it wrong".[37]

References

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  1. ↑ WandaVision Media Kit
  2. ↑ Disney Investor Day 2020
  3. ↑ Cite error: The named reference OlsenNYTimesOct2019 was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Cite error: The named reference YahooRoundUp was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  5. ↑ Cite error: The named reference EmpireNov2020 was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Cite error: The named reference EWNov2020Characters was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Cite error: The named reference SFXCoverStory was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Cite error: The named reference EWNov2020CoverStory was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Cite error: The named reference ColliderPressDay was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  10. ↑ Cite error: The named reference MarvelDisneyInvestorDay was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Cite error: The named reference RuppMelamed was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Cite error: The named reference VarietyRecap was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  13. ↑ Cite error: The named reference SWORD was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Cite error: The named reference THRReview was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  15. ↑ Cite error: The named reference Parris was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Cite error: The named reference DeadlinePressDay was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  17. ↑ Cite error: The named reference D232019Cast was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Cite error: The named reference DarcyJan2021 was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  19. ↑ Cite error: The named reference Purdy was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 Cite error: The named reference ScreenRantEps1&2Cast was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  21. ↑ Cite error: The named reference DottieJones was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Cite error: The named reference VarietyReview was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Cite error: The named reference TwoEpPremiere was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  24. ↑ Cite error: The named reference NineEpisodes was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  25. ↑ Cite error: The named reference TVLineFeigeJan2021 was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  26. ↑ Cite error: The named reference DigitalSpySDCC was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  27. ↑ Cite error: The named reference ReleaseMonth was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  28. ↑ Cite error: The named reference Jan2021Premiere was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  29. ↑ WandaVision: Season 1 at Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved January 21, 2021.
  30. ↑ "WandaVision - Season 1 Reviews". Metacritic. Red Ventures. Retrieved January 20, 2021.
  31. ↑ Cite error: The named reference TVLineReview was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  32. ↑ Cite error: The named reference AVClubReview was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  33. ↑ Cite error: The named reference ColliderReview was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  34. ↑ Cite error: The named reference EWReview was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  35. ↑ Cite error: The named reference ChicagoTribuneReview was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  36. ↑ Cite error: The named reference RogerEbertReview was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  37. ↑ Cite error: The named reference DeadlineReview was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).

See also

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Category:2021 American television series debuts Category:2020s American comedy-drama television series Category:2020s American science fiction television series Category:2020s American sitcoms Category:2020s American television miniseries Category:Androids in television Category:Disney+ original programming Category:English-language television programs Category:Marvel Cinematic Universe television series Category:Mental health in fiction Category:Mental illness in television Category:Scarlet Witch Category:Serial drama television series Category:Television about magic Category:Television productions suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic Category:Television series about couples Category:Television series about television Category:Television series by Marvel Studios Category:Television shows about telekinesis Category:Television shows based on works by Jack Kirby Category:Television shows based on works by Stan Lee Category:Television shows filmed at Pinewood Atlanta Studios Category:Television shows filmed in Atlanta Category:Television shows filmed in Georgia (U.S. state) Category:Television shows filmed in Los Angeles Category:Television series set in the 1950s Category:Television series set in the 1960s Category:Television series set in the 1970s Category:Television series set in the 1980s Category:Television series set in the 1990s Category:Television series set in the 2000s Category:WandaVision Category:Witchcraft in television

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