I’m a little surprised I enjoyed “WandaVision” as much as I did. I didn’t expect to like it. Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) were never my favorite Marvel characters (though they were still better than Hawkeye — there are levels to this). The show seemed like a funky return to Marvel and a little off-putting. I know we were supposed to see “Black Widow” before the pandemic, which would have truly launched us into a new era. But we ended up with “WandaVision” and, truth to be told, I was a little unsure how to feel about it.
As the show went on each week, I enjoyed it more and more. Sure, I had little gripes here and there. But for the most part, I enjoyed it.
Hours after watching the series finale — titled “The Series Finale” — a sense of disappointment settled over me. But I couldn’t figure out why. Was the ending lame? Was the hype too hyped? Were the answers weak compared to the fan theories?
I started to think more about it all, and it soon came to me that it wasn’t a disappointment at all. It was that I was looking at “WandaVision” wrong this entire time. It wasn’t meant to be the all-time epic new film that reset the entire fabric of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “WandaVision” was meant to be a grounded story about grief, love and mourning.
It wasn’t about the multiverse, the alternate realities or magic. “WandaVision” was about the way we deal with all of these things.
There’s no question people will be disappointed by the finale. “WandaVision” director Matt Shakman told Entertainment Weekly that fans with major theories about the show will be disappointed by the finale because it won’t give them the answers they seek.
“I hope that they feel like the journey was satisfying for them,” he said. “I know there are so many theories out there; there will be a lot of people who will no doubt be disappointed by one theory or another. But we’re always telling this story about Wanda dealing with grief and learning how to accept that loss, and hopefully people will find that the finale is surprising but also satisfying and that it feels inevitable because it’s the same story they’ve been watching the whole time.”
So what gives? Why did we have such high expectations for “WandaVision” out of the gate? Why did we expect this Disney+ show — with its different format, a complicated storyline and confusing timeline — to deliver something so groundbreaking and mind-altering?
I blame “Avengers: Infinity War.”
Let’s wind the clock back to 2018 and talk about “Infinity War.” The film — which centered around Thanos (Josh Brolin) seeking out the Infinity Stones — was full of chaos, war, brutality and destruction. We hopped from one character to another. We saw the culmination of about 20 different movies in one. All the lingering threads are woven together to give us an all-time epic that will stand the test of pop culture’s pantheon for the next decade, if not longer. It was an all-time epic.
In a way, even the sequel “Avengers: Endgame” could never match the hype that “Infinity War” created. “Infinity War” ended with such a crazy cliffhanger — all the Marvel heroes disappearing after Thanos’ Snap — that people were too shocked to be shocked again in “Endgame.” At the end of “Infinity War,” questions were asked about which Avengers would return in “Endgame.” Many wondered what would happen to Thanos. There was speculation at the time that all the heroes who disappeared would be erased from Marvel and that future projects — like “Black Panther 2” and “Doctor Strange 2” — would be scrapped up from the upcoming movie slate because of their characters’ disappearance at the end of “Infinity War.”
An all-time epic like “Infinity War” legitimately had us questioning the future of the Marvel franchise. We wondered what would happen to our favorite characters and how things would shape out for future films and television shows. “Endgame” couldn’t match those questions or the hype. Neither could “WandaVision.”
“WandaVision” couldn’t do that, nor would it ever try to do it. “WandaVision” was, in a way, the new “Iron Man.” It’s the first in the next era of Marvel films that will bring us into the new realm of possibilities. “WandaVision” was meant to be simplistic and ordinary. It was meant to be a series that brought us back into Marvel and teased us with what’s to come. There weren’t over-the-top connections explored. The end credits scene with Wanda reading the Darkhold book is the closest thing we’ll get to linking us to the next “Doctor Strange” film.
Fans built up high expectations for the show — as if we were owed something of a mind-altering magnitude. Theories ran rampant that the Fantastic Four or X-Men would show up. There were some thoughts that the devil Mephisto would show up. Marvel didn’t help matters when Evan Peters — who played QuickSilver in the “X-Men” movies — showed up and pretended to be Marvel’s version of QuickSilver (before it was revealed in the series finale that Peters was playing a regular dude who had his mind altered). But still, we expected so much of this show, and yet, really, we should have been looking at it from another perspective — this is sitting up the epic moments yet to come.
I’m not sure if this is going to put anyone’s mind at ease. I don’t know if this will help. But “WandaVision” shouldn’t be remembered as a disappointment. Don’t bemoan the fact that we didn’t see Richard Reeds or Magneto or Doctor Strange. Don’t rant on message boards about how we never got an answer about the aerospace engineer.
Just remember this is setting up the next “Infinity War.” Keep your vision clear for what’s to come next.
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