Skip to main content

TV Series Review: WandaVision (2021) *Spoiler Free*

WandaVision One Sheets
Marvel Studios continues the Marvel Cinematic Universe on the small screen with the nine part series, WandaVision, now streaming on Disney+. Initially released weekly during January and February 2021, the entire series is now available to stream with a Disney+ subscription.

Set a few weeks after Avengers: Endgame, superheroes, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olson) and Vision (Paul Bettany) appear to be living an idealistic life in a black and white 1950’s sitcom. However everything isn’t as it seems in this new reality.

WandaVision is an unusual story about love, loss, grief, and healing told through the lens of witches and superheroes. It’s a fairly original concept with plenty of humor, interesting character development, and quite a few surprises.

I don’t usually review television series, despite watching quite a lot of them through various streaming services, however WandaVision is definitely worth an exception. For me, the series was the closest yet to watching a live action version of a modern comic book come to life.

Quite possibly the shorter episode length combined, with at least five major story threads, kept the writing tight and the pace moving. I was never waiting for something to happen.

Some viewers may find the first three episodes to be a little slow, if you’re more into superhero action, but they really serve to ground the premise of the sitcom world as an actual reality and not just a light hearted magic trick.

While the show is likely infinitely better for fans of the MCU, since it does directly continue events from the films and is filled with Easter eggs, it holds up as a stand alone story. I’ve heard of many people, for who WandaVision is their first MCU story, and they’ve enjoyed it. It hasn’t been a problem for them to follow at all.

Personally I enjoyed the weekly release experience with every episode leaving me wanting more. It was also fun to hear all the fan theories during the week from people way more knowledgeable in the comics that inspired the series.

I’m continuously amazed by comic book readers who proclaim to know the events of future episodes, giving very detailed, blow by blow accounts of how the story will play out… and then it happens nothing like that because the MCU is not a rote retelling of the comics. Sometimes these fans get a little too married to their theories, which is a bit unfortunate.

I’m not that kind of fan. I’ll certainly theorise but the fun for me is watching how plotlines play out as the show creators reveal the story they’re telling. I was very satisfied with each episode and the finale. I look forward to seeing where many of the characters show up in the MCU next.

As the MCU’s proper first TV series I enjoyed seeing a longer story, featuring actual characters from MCU films as the lead characters. This is what Marvel Television should have been all along (Agents of SHIELD could have been so much better if it really was ‘All connected’ with more than just cameos from the occasional secondary characters of the films).

You’ll be hard pressed not to binge watch it if it hooks you in. The first two episodes may leave you wondering what is this, but they’re important to the story, which really begins to pick up by episode three. Especially worth a watch if you grew up on sitcoms. You’ll really appreciate the nostalgia or at least have some fun guessing the sitcom influences.

Did you watch WandaVision? Let me know what you thought in a short sentence or paragraph in the comments below.

Comments

Buy Gifts and Apparel featuring art by TET.

Popular posts from this blog

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices.  My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe?  Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us...

Introducing the Second Sunday Skateboard Sessions - Doing Less to Skateboard More

This was my second heelflip attempt of the day. I was pleased I at least got the full rotation even if I didn't land it. I  am determined to keep skating for as long as possible, though, since my last post in May 2024, about reigniting my kickflip battle at age 54 , I've probably been skateboarding less than I had hoped. Still haven't landed that elusive kickflip either. Strangely I've been wanting to film myself skateboarding again but have been reluctant to do so because it can be a bit of a hassle trying to create interesting content, not to mention a lot of editing, if you want to capture the full journey of learning a trick. I really hate editing. Looking at my camera equipment the other day I was thinking what is the most minimal setup that I can put together that would make it easy to film skate videos anywhere? I landed on using my Samsung A13, Android phone, mounted on a GoPro selfie stick that has a tripod base in the handle, and a wireless mic I bought some t...

TV Series Review: Skeleton Crew (2024) (Disney+) *No Spoilers*

I f you saw the trailer for  Skeleton Crew  and decided the show looked too much like Star Wars for little kids, and didn't watch, you missed out on a real treat. While I will say this show was definitely targeted at bringing in younger fans to the Star Wars universe, it is very much more like family viewing than kids only TV. Not to mention, characters are literally gunned down or murdered on this show, but without the really graphic violence you might see on a more adult orientated show. It's actually no more kid only orientated than the first series of Stranger Things  (2016), or even the original  Star Wars  (1977) movie. In fact the whole show is a not so subtle homage to original Star Wars (1977), Treasure Island  (1950), and eighties movies like The Goonies  (1985), ET  (1982), Explorers  (1985) and others. The plot is very straight forward. A group of children, living in the Star Wars equivalent of the suburbs, find an aband...

The Princess' Butterflies - Using an AI Image to Video Generator to Animate Art That Started as a 23 Year Old Rough Pen Sketch

B ack in October of 2023 I used Prome AI's Sketch Rendering feature to color a 23 year old rough pen sketch I did of a princess watching butterflies, sitting next to a waterfall in the forest. You can read more about that in my previous article,  The Princess' Butterflies - Using an AI Art Generator to Color and Enhance a 23 Year Old Rough Pen Sketch The three images I used to create my final image (bottom right). Notice how closely the AI has followed my line art sketch (top left) but in the first image (top right) has misinterpreted the waterfall as some kind of large tree stump. Prome's render of the artwork was pretty good but I did end up creating a composite image myself from two of the best renders, to get my final image. Since then AI Image to Video has come a long way, particularly when it comes to creating animation from artwork and maintaining the art style for the whole generation. AI still does much better with turning photographic images to video but I found ...

Two Former Right Wing Australian PM's Call Out President Trump and His America First Approach

Q uite often, leaders on all sides of politics, once they've retired from office, become the kind of person, with a political view that I would've supported, if they had been that person with that viewpoint, when they were leaders. Case in point, two former right wing, Australian Prime Ministers were individually interviewed about President Trump's negative impact on Australia and global politics in general. Both said things that even a left leaning 'woke' voter like myself could get behind and nod in agreement with. Keep in mind both these former PM's are right wing politicians that should be aligned with the US Republican party, and President Trump's views on many issues. Malcolm Turnbull Mr Turnbull, like President Trump is a businessman turned politician. He's a person I was all set to vote for until he aligned himself with the Australian Liberal Party. Which was a little unexpected for me because up to that point his politics sounded more left than ...

Meanwhile, In Australia... The World's Most Boring Government Is Fine... We're All Fine.

That's um... What's his name? T o be honest, I stopped following politics in Australia years ago. The only time I check in is usually around election time just to see which set of woke lefty independents, I'm going to vote for, ahead of my fallbacks of the Greens, and then Labor. Despite my sister trying to categorise me as more of a 'left brained' person I definitely lean 'right brained' more at home with my cry baby, woke, alphabet, lefty people. (For the record, if this is the first musing of mine you've ever read, I'm a straight white male who identifies as an artist... Male artist - just in case you were thinking artist is some new kind of gender you hadn't heard of). This year is an election year for our Federal Government, potentially the world's most boring government, for no other reason than during its entire term, if you asked me who was our Prime Minister I'd actually have to stop and think for a moment. Maybe our 31st PM shou...

TV Series Review: Creature Commandos (2024) *No Spoilers*

O fficially, Creature Commandos is the first show of James Gunn's kind of reboot of the DCU. Technically though, it starts with James Gunn's, The Suicide Squad , and includes his series, Peacemaker , as the events of both are either referenced or felt within the show. Potentially that means Margot Robbie is Harley Quinn in the DCU, but I'd be surprised if she would even want another crack at it, let alone that James didn't recast the role. However that's a whole other rabbit hole for a character that may not appear again for at least a few more years. Creature Commandos is Suicide Squad but with monsters, and no real threat of Suicide - well, having your head blown off if you stray from the mission at least. Though I don't recall that being a thing in Gunn's Suicide Squad movie since the team was renamed 'Task Force X'? Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) somehow still has a job, but is no longer allowed to use humans on her team, so she assembles a team of...