Summary

What are Wanda Maximoff and Vision doing starring in a 50's sitcom?

This original and remarkable series (part of Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or MCU) stages a brilliant narrative device recreating a perfect world, a television Arcadia haunted by disturbing cracks, configuring a dialectic that perfectly accompanies the psychological evolution of his main character.

A new type of MCU fiction that, supported by the extended tempos offered by a series, decidedly privileges the psychology of its characters and the construction of climates over the heat of battles and special effects and that can also be enjoyed by those who they don't follow the Marvel Universe and that will surely generate in them curiosity about the previous history of their characters.

Review

Wanda Maximoff (Scarlet Witch) and Vision appear as protagonists of a typical television sitcom of the 50s. Both characters (she, a sort of sorceress with certain powers and he, a kind of android, a "synthezoid") live in a typical suburban town as a married couple who hide their powers from their neighbors.

The series admirably reproduces the mise-en-scène of sitcoms, with a square screen and in black and white, and follows the typical dynamics of these programs (at the beginning one seems to be watching a combination of I Love Lucy and Bewitched; it also refers to other sitcoms and series like Americans, the series about the two Russian spies infiltrated in a US suburb, and Kevin can ### himself, which also takes place as a sitcom)

WandaVision is another series (like The Baby) that shows its cards as the chapters go by. Obviously, the viewer suspects that there is a cat locked up, wondering what two Marvel Avengers (especially one of them) are doing in that situation, and the suspicion is confirmed when disturbing anomalies appear in the story. This duality constitutes the essence of the narrative device that the series puts on stage and that has the virtue of not exhausting itself in novelty since it is "updated" as the chapters go by, basically responding to the evolution of Wanda's character. However, this evolution towards the inevitable synthesis of that dialectic, where its contours are being lost (necessary and functional loss to that evolution), leads the series at times to more conventional tracks (and related to the Marvel universe style) and less interesting than they make her decline. Little more can be revealed about a plot that adds layers of content, meaning and formality, to its initial impressions.

The sitcom humor and sentimentality of the series (sometimes effective and others deliberately faked and out of date) are interrupted by the irruption of those changes of tone that are very intriguing and disturbing, ranging from strangeness to the sinister, in the cabal meaning of the latter term. I clarify that I have not yet seen the films of the Marvel Universe in which both characters appear, but I consider that the series can be seen the same (although it does spoil previous episodes of its protagonists in the films). Surely for fans of the MCU, the series works as a sequel or spin off (and as an introduction to other characters and sagas) and poses more questions (and answers) than the "virgin" viewer.

Showrunner Jac Schaeffer's series creatively stages the way trauma is sought to be overcome, illustrating all its phases, with these anomalies making their way into that television Arcadia, a happy and perfect world that recreates the perfection of the aesthetics and the tone of various television styles and that only on a few occasions falls into parody as a means and not as an end.

Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany are perfect in the leading roles, as well as Kathryn Hahn as the typical nosy neighbor, in a Marvel fiction that, supported by the extended tempos offered by a series, decidedly favors the psychology of its characters and the construction of climates above the heat of battle and special effects.