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Enough With the Boring Magic Duels! Here’s How to Fix Them. Slate 3/8/2021
What a thrill it was to watch the series finale of
WandaVision and see the show’s two exciting, powerful adversaries face off at long last! Yes, the evil spellcaster Agatha Harkness and Scarlet Witch Wanda Maximoff finally did battle and … they shot colorful lightning at each other from their hands.
Boring! Maybe it would have been exciting if we hadn’t seen it the previous week, when, in flashback, Agatha killed her mom with, yes, purple lightning. Or if we hadn’t watched nearly a decade’s worth of Harry Potter movies, culminating in Harry and Voldemort standing 10 feet away from each other, their colorful wand bolts meeting halfway in between them. What is it about magical battles that make inventive directors and special effects artists throw up their hands and say, “Sheesh, I dunno, I guess we’ll just do some lightning laser zaps here”? Look, I know that it’s my own fault for su