Or wherein your author gets emotional.
My mom died when I was 9 and those (what feels like) eons ago, people weren’t as quick to get therapy, or talk about their emotions as much. Or maybe it was just my family. When my new life with my dad started so did one of the greatest outside influences on my life; cable tv. With that came my discovery of one particular love–Nick at Night.
From moment one WandaVision brought me right back to those moments, a sad, lost little girl wishing my world could be that of the Petries, The Munsters, or the Stephens, a world where even wild hijinks ended in love and support and understanding from a healthy family. I saw some complaints on social media that the first few episodes were boring. Maybe. But as a person who buried grief in a fantasy, I understood.
Marvel is known for it’s near genius build of a movie empire from individual heroes to the collective team movies. They built up a complex world from the street level with the Defenders t.v. shows to intergalactic. It’s the humanity they laced in their world that makes it connect to viewers.
WandaVision is an exercise in humanity. In Spiderman: Far From Home Peter, understandably struggles with the pressures of being a super hero and heir to Avengers leadership while being left no room to just miss his hero and friend, Tony Stark. By moving the story to the small screen Marvel is allowed to change how they are telling their stories, with less pressure on them to build blockbusters.
And by starting with WandaVision they honed in on the most grief-filled character, Wanda Maximoff.
Yes, it’s hard to have full sympathy with a character who mind controls a whole town in her effort to deny her tragedy. But this series can also be proof to other genres *side eyes urban fantasy and romance* that you can spark amazing character development without raping the lead.
WandaVision kicks off a much more personal super hero story (which continues in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) along with building toward a second generation of Marvel super heroes. It gives us viewers a closer look at the more complex machinations of ordinary people in the world of super heroes (much like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. did) and the moral struggles those with powers face.
I highly recommend this show for both those who have struggled with grief and loss and those who are super hero fans.