What âWandaVisionâ Gets Right (and Wrong) About Female Superheroes
In the Disney+ series, Wanda Maximoff has depth and power, a turn for the Marvel world. But she faces a familiar dilemma: Hero work or domestic bliss?
In “WandaVision,” Elizabeth Olsen plays Wanda Maximoff, who seems to be living in an old sitcom.Credit.Marvel Studios/Disney Plus
This article contains spoilers for âWandaVision.â
We love our superheroes: charging into battle, dropping from the sky with an asphalt-cracking entrance, thrashing one another to a lively score. But nine times out of 10, the figure bearing the shield or swinging the mighty hammer â and delivering the final showstopping blow â is a man. As the â90s girl group 702 famously asked,
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Ifâlike Wanda Maximoffâyouâve been living in your own reality, distant from all things in 2021, you may not have heard about âWandaVision,â whose first and only season ended on March 5th. (If youâre planning to watch it and hate spoilers, stop reading now.) The immensely popular show, from Disney+ and Marvel Studios, follows Wanda, a.k.a. the Scarlet Witch, an Eastern European refugee with âchaos magicâ powers, and her husband Vision, a synthezoid (android) who died in the events of the Marvel movie âAvengers: Infinity War.â Nearly all nine episodes of âWandaVisionâ depict the pair in what appears to be domestic suburban bliss. Nearly all take plots and visual style from one of the sitcoms that Wanda watched for solace during her bleak wartime youth, from the black and white of âThe Dick Van Dyke Showâ to the faux-reality vibe of âThe Office.â
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Currently Reading WandaVision : A Marvel Expert and Casual Fan Unpack The Series Finale and the Double-Edged Sword of Fan Theories
Caroline Framke, provided by
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SPOILER ALERT:
Do not read if you haven’t seen “The Series Finale,” the ninth and final episode of “WandaVision” on Disney Plus.
“WandaVision,” the first big television show of 2021, ended up being both an oddity and an inevitability. While the Disney Plus series is from the powerful production house of Marvel Studios, it also proved to be a deliciously strange, surprisingly poignant reflection on grief, family and community. Watching Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) wind her way through decades of sitcom history, layers of her own trauma, and an increasingly tragic love story with her considerate (and synthetic) counterpart Vision (Paul Bettany) became a weekly event that united viewers in a pressing need to know what on earth was going to happen next.
March 7, 2021
‘WandaVision’: A Marvel Expert and Casual Fan Unpack ‘The Series Finale’ and the Double-Edged Sword of Fan Theories(Photo Credit – Marvel/Instagram)
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you haven’t seen “The Series Finale,” the ninth and final episode of “WandaVision” on Disney Plus.
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“WandaVision,” the first big television show of 2021, ended up being both an oddity and an inevitability. While the Disney Plus series is from the powerful production house of Marvel Studios, it also proved to be a deliciously strange, surprisingly poignant reflection on grief, family and community. Watching Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) wind her way through decades of sitcom history, layers of her own trauma, and an increasingly tragic love story with her considerate (and synthetic) counterpart Vision (Paul Bettany) became a weekly event that united viewers in a pressing need to know what on earth was going to happen next.