‘WandaVision’ not quite a Marvel
First 3 episodes of Disney+ show are inconclusive as to if it has superpowers
Disney’s flagship streaming service, Disney+, promised subscribers a lot. You’d get access to a large collection of its recent and classic films, and Disney+ would serve as a depot for “Star Wars” fans wanting access to all of the movies, animated series and, last but not least, new live-action series like the monster hit “The Mandalorian.”
Of course, that’s not all. Marvel is another huge piece of the Disney+ puzzle.
And while the platform has been home to most films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the MCU’s expansion into serialized storytelling has been delayed due, at least in part, to the pandemic’s effect on filming and production work.
The wait for something akin to “The Mandalorian” in Marvel-land is over with the debut this past Friday of the first two … interesting episodes of “WandaVision.”
While action-adventure series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” was to have been the first series to launch, the MCU’s Phase Four instead begins with “WandaVision,” an unusual series centered around romantically involved powerful superheroes Vision (Paul Bettany) and Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), aka Scarlet Witch.
How unusual? Well, if you are looking for something akin to the typical big-screen Marvel action, you will be disappointed — at least through the first three episodes. ( The series launches with the first two episodes, with the subsequent seven installments coming each week through March 5.)
Depending on how you look at it, “WandaVision” — set after the events of 2019’s epic “Avengers: Endgame” — falls somewhere between an homage to classic sitcoms and a sitcom itself. It’s often fun and clever, as well as increasingly mysterious.
It also can be kind of grating.
The setup sees our strange, if also dynamic, duo seemingly trapped in a universe that, at first, probably most closely resembles the world as seen through the early 1960s series “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” After all, in the series’ production brief, series director Matt Shakman (“Game of Thrones,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) calls it the inspiration for the first episode.
Wanda and Vision have just been married, and we watch as he … eventually carries his new bride into their suburban home in the very-old-timey opening credits sequence. That’s followed by a sequence in which Vision’s unmistakable cranium collides with one of the plates Wanda has levitating in the kitchen.
“My wife and her flying saucers,” he quips.
“My husband and his indestructible head!” she happily responds.
Yes, it’s like that. For a while, anyway.
They know they have incredible powers that must be hidden, but they’re foggy on most other things, including why today’s date on the calendar has a heart on it.
What follows in this first half-hour serving of “WandaVision” is classic misunderstanding-fueled sitcom fare.
While at work, the now humanlooking Vision figures out the heart represents the fact that he and Wanda are to host his boss, Mr. Hart (Fred Melamed), and his wife (Debra Jo Rupp) for an all-important dinner after work. Meanwhile, Wanda is visited by nosy neighbor Agnes (a terrifically fun Kathryn Hann), who convinces her it must be their anniversary and that Wanda should prepare for a special night with Vision.
Naturally, the dinner is chock-full of gaffes and brush fires, but — wouldn’t you know it? — it all works out.
This debut episode, filmed in front of a live audience and with the laughs coming often and loudly, is very well done, from the writing to the art direction to the acting.
To the last point, this seems like a weird use of the significant talents of Bettany (“A Beautiful Mind,” “Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World”) and Olsen (“Kodachrome,”
“Wind River”), but they are more than game for the task.
Nonetheless, you get that feeling watching the first episode that you can’t sit through this kind of thing eight more times. Fortunately, at episode’s end, we get the vaguest hint that there is more than meets the eye here, as you would expect.
That idea continues, if only a bit more, in the second episode, which boasts a very “Bewitched”-ian title sequence. By the end of that installment, more story has developed, and blackand-white has given way to color. ( You’ll have to wait a bit longer to see something other than the old-fashioned square-ish screen aspect ratio.)
Things get more serious, if still vaguely so, and more colorful in the third episode as “WandaVision” apes a sitcom that debuted at the end of the ’60s and chronicled the adventures of two families “bunching” into one. Increasingly, Wanda and Vision know something is not right with their world.
It’s good that Disney made that episode available to reviewers because it both hammers home the show’s fun, constantly evolving aesthetic and further suggests something dastardly is afoot. (By the way, MCU fans, there’s at least one small reference to the nefarious group HYDRA and mention of a major villain from an “Avengers” film.)
A major link to the real world seems to be the character Monica Rambeau ( Teyonah Parris, daughter of Maria Rambeau, Carol Danvers’ friend in “Captain Marvel.” We’re also told to expect some old MCU pals, such as Kat Dennings’ Darcy Lewis from the first two “Thor” flicks.
It won’t truly be possible to render a verdict on this latest Disney+ headliner until all nine episodes have been released, but we can say we’re much more interested in looking deeper into “WandaVision” after three installments than we were after one or even two.