WandaVision Episode 1 & 2 Review

WandaVision Episodes 1 & 2

So it came to pass, that the first Marvel Cinematic Universe release since July 2019 was not Black Widow, nor Captain America follow-up The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but a half-hour sitcom - this week, in black and white, and filmed before a live studio audience. Wanda Maximoff and Vision are shown in the familiar yet incongruous confines of a suburbia-set 1950s sitcom, complete with era-appropriate theme music and Bewitched-style sparkle effects when phasing powers are used. The opening salvo of WandaVision is a pleasure to watch, a refreshing change of pace for comic book storytelling that unlocks the comic potential of Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany as performers.

Indeed, the two leads' adaptability to broad comedy is a delightful discovery, especially because their careers to this point haven't paved much of a path towards this. (Ingrid Goes West is the closest thing to a precedent in Olsen's case, but still an inadequate comparison.) Their mugging for the camera pairs with solid comic timing, and without this element of genuine performance quality, the sitcom pastiche would ring false.

Interestingly, Olsen drops Wanda's Sokovian accent in the show so far, but her powers are present and correct, telekinesis rendered with disguised strings. Hiding Wanda and Vision's powers from their neighbors is what a lot of the episodes' action is concerned with, but that doesn't keep at bay the strange elements on the fringes that make it clear something is very amiss. (The talent show is a benefit "for the children", to a cult-like extent, but actual children are nowhere to be seen.)

A clear template for these early episodes is I Love Lucy, including a subversion of that show's "standards and practices" two bed setup. (There are also vintage ads for fictional products.) The episodes function as effective pastiche precisely because they commit to those shows' setups, the first episode a particularly tight execution of a simple comic premise.

Cast members like Kathryn Hahn and Emma Caulfield Ford modulate their performances well, so the show would function even without the rug-pull we know must be coming. But that rug-pull is unavoidable, and as well-done as the retro comedy is, it achieves the effect of an eerie rictus grin simply by being so relentlessly good-natured. But for now, WandaVision is breezily entertaining. It's ironic that one way to be radically unconventional is to embrace the conventionality of a different era. 8/10.

Stray observations:

- Nice to see Frozen song masterminds Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez contributing the two pieces of theme music.

- The voice saying "Wanda? Who's doing this to you, Wanda?" sounds to me like Randall Park as FBI Agent Jimmy Woo from Ant-Man and the Wasp. 

- There's a new Marvel Studios logo (!), but ironically given that it arrives with WandaVision, it seems to have dropped Wanda from it?!