Wanda/Vision is a historic milestone for Marvel Studios.
Though Black Widow was the official kick off to Phase 4, the pandemic caused release dates and the planned order of phase 4 content to become re-arranged. Wanda/Vision is the kick-off for the relevant portion of phase 4, (minus the introduction of Yelena Belova).
Wanda/Vision is the official “it’s all connected” marvel cinematic universe, the argument Marvel television had a small claim with season 1 of Agents of Shield when Joss Whedon the series’ executive producer was near simultaneously preparing to direct Avengers (2012) and its sequel The Age of Ultron (2015). The one-shot mini-webisodes and the initial series contributed to the development of Phase 1 and the start of Phase 2; with cameo appearances of Maria Hill, J. Streiten (MD), Nick Fury, and Lady Sif. Fans were inspired by the growing universe. What followed was a change of studio leaderships, that amalgamated controlling power of both film and television content – Marvel Studios had now formed and it immediately etched a new world – or a complete universe were both platforms of film and television would sync-up harmoniously. With shared history and character developments.
Wanda/Vision was delivered under the new Streaming service Disney+ which became the very first television series to connect into phase 4, the character of Wanda Maximoff and what she had gained or loss from that mini-series automatically transfers over to be part of the continuing story in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Not only is this the first official television series, but it’s the streaming platforms first acknowledged program to receive award nominations. It gained nominations at the 2021 Primetime Emmy Awards, 2022 Golden Globe Awards, and a little love from the 2021 MTV Movie & TV awards. The Mini-series received a total of 23 Emmy nominations and won 3. Outstanding Production Design , Outstanding Fantasy/Sci-Fi Costumes, and Original Music and Lyrics for the title song ‘Agatha All Along”; which placed 36th on Billboards digital song sales chart, and garnered 1.6 million U.S. Streams in the week ending February 25th 2021. The unplanned success of the latter has now sparked a new mini-series Agatha: House of Harkness, set for a release in 2024.
At the time of its debut, Wanda/Vision was the most expensive episodic television in history beating out the series The Band of Brothers sequel ‘The Pacific’. Wanda/Vision delivered a half hour, 9 episode mini-series, and was reported to cost between 20-25 million an episode. It is a show based on watching television through different sitcom eras, viewers would find at around the half-way mark a single commercial for a product placement ad, that you would learn harbors’ an underlying connection to the main character, The single commercial spots would connect to Wanda as a person at this stage of her life post Endgame, and what she had to face / contend with from her past. Case-in-point I will discuss only 2 of the commercials. Episode 1 provided a commercial ad for the Stark ToastMate 2000, delivered in black and white; as was the entirety of the episode; it does however provide a Schindler’s list-esque trick by displaying the color red and trailing off the sound of beeping of the toaster. It’s revisited with much more context on episode 8 when the truth of the town of Westview and Wanda’s childhood is revisited. Connecting us the viewer back to her MCU debut in the Age of Ultron, where in a conversation she reveals, that her brother Pedro and her were trapped under the rubble of their house for 3 days, when it was bombed by a Tony Stark missile that did not detonate, but stood in front of the then scared children, just beeping. The story and context was given in a dramatic verbal nature in Age of Ultron and physically shown to the viewing audience in episode 8.
In episode 5, the commercial provided was for Lagos paper towels, as the paper towel wipes away the unwanted mistakes, as the household spill easily gets wiped away, its eerily important as the spill is blood red in color and shown as a simple kitchen spill, However in Captain America Civil War, while on a mission in Lago’s Africa, Wanda inadvertently killed upwards close to around a hundred people trying save Captain America by levitating a bomb away that was unfortunately too close to an occupied office building. The unintentional civilian deaths are like blood on her hands that can never come off.
In episode one, the 1st introduction of Wanda and Vision on the show is played for laughs but foreshadows a horrible past tragedy, Wanda levitates saucer plates that hit and break against Vision’s head as to signify flying saucers or aliens are coming to claim the gemstone on his head. The very first line from Wanda was “My Husband and his indestructible head” which was a false statement. Vision’s demise comes directly from Thanos ripping the Mind stone from his temple. When Wanda and Vision have a home cooked dinner with Vision’s Boss and his wife, his Boss begins to choke, as the wife repeatedly with comedic inference says “Stop it”, if you look very closely on the 2nd or 3rd last inference of her saying “stop it” she is looking directly at Wanda and there is absolute horror and despair in her facial expression for that brief moment in which cries out “stop it”. These are just a few of the hundreds of Easter eggs and strategically planned overtures of the series. Jac Schaeffer the Showrunner indicated 118 Easter eggs in just the first episode alone.
As the series is an ode to nearly a century of television sitcoms, it is at its core a story of grief. A love story of two characters curated over a span of when they fell in love and how that love has evolved, matured, transformed, and transcended in the nine episodes. The idioms expression Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. (by poet Alfred Tennyson)
The poetic line best describes the series which could never have been explored as in depth as it does, if it was presented in a two and a half movie. The show does get criticized in the climax; as the series by design of its genre must fall into a large CGI battle. While the battle of the Visions and dueling of witches was to be inevitable. The final episode did not stop on further exposition, instead entwined a philosophical discussion with the ship of Theseus . The finale also did not stop on internal conflicts and moral quandary; in fact it doubled down on the representation of grief, and who you would ask from within the town of Westview who they saw as the villain. A Scene with Senor Scratchy, Darcy Lewis and Jimmy Woo was never shot or completed due to pandemic and like its companion series such as Loki, and Falcon & Winter Soldier episodes were shorten , rewrites were made, and planned sequences and story arcs were dropped to fit with the changing larger narrative and planned release dates for the phases
