Final thoughts on WANDAVISION

Okay, I stuck with WANDAVISION until the very end.  All nine episodes.  As some of you know I reviewed it after the first few episodes.  Again, I know I’m not the target audience.  But it seemed to me they took a story that could have been a 90 minute movie and stretched it out to 4 1/2 hours (9 half hour episodes).  To me it was just a confusing mess.  When Kathryn Hahn turned into a witch I should have bailed.  Or when storytelling simply became Wanda shooting red energy bolts into the witch’s purple energy bolts.  

At what point do “epic” air battles between superheroes become boring, even to Marvel Universe fans?   How much suspense can there really be when characters can solve problems with magic?   Or the writers make up bizarre technical gibberish to explain away absurd phenomena?   

I won’t spoil the end except to say the whole series felt like one big shaggy dog story.  

For those who haven’t been following WANDAVISION on Disney +, a Marvel character imagines she’s living sitcoms, and through the course of the series they move from the 50’s-00’s.  And the show reflects the style and dialogue of each era.  So the first two episodes are in black and white.  And there are theme opening titles that reflect each era (which frankly are the best part of the whole series).  The first three episodes are pretty much just these recreated sitcoms.  

We finally learn that it’s all in Wanda’s mind.  And then let the convoluted plot with tanks and force fields and flashbacks to Salem witch trials begin.  Here’s a storytelling tip:  When setting up a fight, let the audience know what they’re fighting for.  But I imagine the thinking was: as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the cool CGI effects, who gives a shit?  

Mike Reiss is a longtime writer/producer of THE SIMPSONS.  To me, his recent tweet summed up WANDAVISION perfectly. 

from By Ken Levine