WandaVision: Now in Color Review

WandaVision "Now in Color"

A lot of "Now in Color"'s humor comes from the acceleration of Wanda's childbirth. A suddenly pregnant, suddenly showing, suddenly due Wanda gives birth to twins, and her birthing pangs interact with her powers by wreaking havoc with nearby appliances and household items. Paintings spin on their axis on the walls, an effect you might see in a theme park dark ride like The Haunted Mansion. Or the set of a 70s sitcom. So the show highlights the artificiality of Wanda and Vision's reality by highlighting the artificiality of sitcom reality. But of course, on this show so far the two have been one and the same.

Beyond the gags (maybe even broader than last week), there is a vein of stark emotion, standing out even more by contrast. The birth of twins is played initially for laughs, but even as Wanda brings new life into the world, she is reminded that she and the late Pietro Maximoff were twins. When Wanda remembers her departed brother with true sadness, there's the sense that this is a poignant and heartbreaking glimpse of the "real" Wanda, not a construct of her from the show-within-the-show. In fact, that theme of "who you really are" runs through the episode. See the touching moment when Wanda invites the human-guise Vision to meet his son as his true, synthezoid self.

The unsettling elements on the fringes are even more pronounced, and it's surprising just how much of a peek behind the curtain we get. Geraldine is essentially kicked out of the show, after threatening to break the characters' suspension of disbelief with her talk of the pesky real world. She falls onto a field staked out by an entire military/scientific operation. My guess is that a succession of characters from outside the "TV world" will infiltrate it to try to burst Wanda and Vision's bubble.

Geraldine's invocation of Ultron's name, as the murderer of Pietro, is jarring in context. But the plain-spoken, hard-to-hear truth is preferable to the mask of joviality worn by Agnes, who's revealed as a subtly malevolent force for the first time. Her conspiratorial neighborhood whispering touches a specific Twilight Zone nerve.

Kristen-Anderson Lopez and Robert Lopez are three-for-three in writing new theme songs for each installment, paired with variously styled title sequences that take pastiche to the level of an art form. WandaVision can't be accused of not committing to the bit, and maybe that also goes for Wanda herself. 7/10.

Stray observations:

- Despite Vision being referred to as a synthezoid in publicity materials since Avengers: Age of Ultron, this episode is the first time in the MCU the word has been spoken aloud.

- Wanda accidentally turns the baby's mobile into living butterflies. This is reminiscent of the moment in Avengers: Infinity War when Thanos uses the Space Stone to send a Mirror Dimension shard vortex at Doctor Strange, who turns it into harmless paper butterflies.

- Pietro Maximoff is mentioned by name for the first time since Age of Ultron. He was last alluded to via his picture in Wanda's room in Captain America: Civil War.

- Last week's episodes were retroactively given titles: "Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience" and "Don't Touch that Dial".