WandaVision: We Interrupt this Program Review

WandaVision "We Interrupt this Program"

"So you're saying the universe created a sitcom starring two Avengers?" - Jimmy Woo

Whether the fictional Marvel universe did or not, the filmmakers behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe certainly did. That tension between the text and metatext of WandaVision is constantly at play in "We Interrupt this Program", an episode that contextualizes what we've seen so far and gives the audience a riveting look at events in the "normal" world; that is, events outside the sitcom Westview bubble.

Geraldine, expelled from Westview at the end of last week's episode, is seen expelled again, this time through a recognizable burst of Wanda Maximoff's power. (That familiar CGI effect depicting her telekinesis appears for the first time in the show.) But this time, we have a new perspective. Geraldine is actually S.W.O.R.D. agent Monica Rambeau, sent to investigate the uncanny events in the town.

One of the chief pleasures of the episode is catching up with events on normal Earth. For a fan of the MCU, each character reveal is a crowd-pleasing moment, no action sequence required. Monica Rambeau! Jimmy Woo! Darcy Lewis! Monica is formally introduced to us through tragedy. The S.W.O.R.D. organization was founded by her late mother Maria, who died in hospital while Monica was blipped for five years. As for the other two competent but comedic characters, Jimmy is seen to have kept up with his close-up magic lessons when he presents his FBI business card, and Darcy has now finished her PhD!

After Monica is subsumed into the sitcom, Jimmy and Darcy observe, becoming audience surrogates. Darcy becomes "invested" in the story. The two gradually identify the supporting cast by their real-world identities and pin their headshots on a whiteboard, in a meta take on assembling a cast for an actual TV show. Jimmy namechecks the show's production design, which actually becomes a plot point, as clothing and objects are transformed into something era-appropriate when they cross the bubble's threshold.

The comedic tone of the previous three episodes is thrown on its head in this episode. We're back to an equilibrium of a standard wry procedural rather than a comedy with canned laughter. The sober tone is set with Monica re-materializing in a hospital, which is desperately over capacity (sound familiar?), and even in the sitcom world, we are privy to more of the darkness underneath it: Wanda briefly sees a vision of Vision as she really left him, an empty, grey husk.

The show continues to nimbly sketch out an intriguing scenario and go some way toward justifying the comedy pastiche within the plot itself. This episode in particular gets a lot of mileage from casting Darcy and Jimmy as ersatz audience members, further developing a unique meta quality. An 80s setting is likely next week, as the focus will probably swing back to Wanda. 8/10.

Stray observation:

- In the audio montage that accompanies Monica's reappearance after the Blip, we hear clips from Captain Marvel, from Maria Rambeau and Carol Danvers herself.