So I'll start by saying I'm not a fan of the MCU: truth be told I had watched "The Incredible Hulk" way back when, and recently tried watching "Daredevil" but hated the pilot episode with a passion - perhaps coming from "Gomorra: La serie" I just wasn't ready to see mafiosi kung-fu fighting; but these two are the only things, best I recall. When I heard about "WandaVision" I was intrigued, however. I fell in love with the idea of a "mainline" Marvel series playing with the format of a series, by having the characters literally live inside one. You could just foresee a great experience: a 1950s-style black-and-white sitcom with a story dealing with these sci-fi characters, one of whom is the Scarlet Witch. If you're at least vaguely familiar with the plot of the MCU (as I happen to be, and as you have to be to get some parts of the show) and/or with Marvel comics (at least vaguely), then you probably already have a good hunch what the story will be: "No more mutants" and all that. However, you might also suspect a twist coming. I won't spoil the plot - I typically care little for spoilers, but this one I watched "blind" and it was intense - but when it comes to the premise let's just say that they stick the landing reasonably well, it all checks out, the worst is avoided.

By now I've read some other reviews and am utterly perplexed by some people's positions. In my opinion, the first couple of episodes fly by too quickly rather than too slowly, as some object. The series had potential for several legitimately great seasons in that mould, the initial idea being just too good to waste on about an hour of content. Unfortunately they start hurrying things along a bit too much, and the quality dips, then suddenly peaks in "All-New Halloween Spooktacular!", drops to a new low, recovers in the acting-heavy "Previously On", and concludes in a horrendous, absolutely unforgivable "The Series Finale".

"WandaVision" changes decorations rapidly. Each episode - a new decade, not to mention the parallel plot happening outside the series within the series. I wonder whether some people better versed in American sitcoms' history have produced any kind of analysis, going episode by episode over the inspirations for each one, the stylistic changes. I'd love to read or watch such an analysis, I think some of things revealed there could be quite profound. Even the acting notably changes to fit the style of each new decade, with amazing subtlety! The acting (especially by the leads, but also by Agnes and Norm) is brilliant in general. As the series juggles many hats, on many occasions you see these actors put before a challenge: switch from comedic to dramatic mode within the same scene, maybe mid-sentence - and they pull it off! The show is juicy with material for the actors to act their their hearts out, so if you happen to love these ones mentioned - well isn't that just red meat for you!

So why didn't I rate the show as highly as I honestly hoped to, having watched the first episodes? Let's just say that the dramatic potential of the show was touched upon, but then the writing team must've gotten distracted by a squirrel running outside, and MCU's main storywriters' squad walked into the abandoned office equally absent-mindedly, looked at the script and went: "Hold on, is that even a superhero show? How can you tell? Should we have 2-4 villains in there? Like, the main character might or might not be a villain herself in the plot, sure, but is somebody going to be punched through a building or not? And we won't take "not" for an answer!" And there you had it. Now, I'm a compromise-seeking sort of person in general, but none of the villains _had_ to do any such things. Peaceful conflict resolution was disappointingly absent.

Oh, and also the humour sometimes fell a bit flat, felt gimmicky or forced, there were technical issues here and there (absent continuity and such) and there was this character called Darcy, who was annoying, smug, quipped unfunny nonsense with every breath (of which she had too many) and was unfailingly involved in some of the worst scenes (to be fair, she _made_ a lot of them so bad, but not all). She's an astrophysicist by trade, but at one point magically becomes a hacker. Smart people's jobs are all the same, is that the idea?.. Also, I had some issues with some moral and logical implications of the finale, but the less I think about this episode, the better my opinion of "WandaVision" stays.