The first Marvel TV series under Disney's mega-successful Disney+ streaming service has finally broken cover, with various other Marvel-flavoured projects waiting in the wings. "WandaVision" isn't quite what most Marvel fans were expecting, in fact I doubt anyone would have comfortably predicted the direction Feige et al were going to take this series in. After all, most folk will know Wanda and Vision only from the Avengers movies, won't have a clue about the Marvel Comics Universe backstory between Vis and Wand and after two episodes probably won't be any the wiser as to what the hell they just watched.
It all opens like an old Black and White episode of a 1950s American sitcom (think "I Love Lucy" on LSD) but WandaVision delights in a bait-and-switch game under the hood to keep folk guessing, quite often downturning the strange forced comedy of the show towards the end of each episode with clues making you wonder (or wanda) who is actually pulling the strings to their seemingly happy homely life behind the scenes.
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| What in sam hell am I watching? |
Alarm bells have been ringing more or less the whole time for me, and I'm actually loving the fact that for 20 mins of the episode you roll your eyes in your head so hard that you're willing to forgive every single episode of "Terry and June" for being so twee, but laced into each ep is a sinister undercurrent of familiarity in what Wanda and Vision are going through, particularly as there are times where you see some sort of puppet-master pulling the strings, tapping the keyboard and directing the action for their weird sitcom lives.
Could it be Arcade? Surely he's just a Spider-Man baddie though? Could Mysterio be to blame? The theories have been buzzing across the internet since the first few episodes dropped. How did Wanda and Vision end up in this predicament? What do the weird symbols and totems that crop up in the show mean? Why the mix of mono and colour? What the heck happened to Vision's synth-wife and kids from the comics or does this somehow predate that?
It's deliciously surreal and pulls the same tricks on you that Twin Peaks once did, making you think it's one thing when it's quite blatantly something else. We sat and watched it as a family with my wife and daughter both taking opposing views on it (wife thinks it's a bit weird, not funny, totally unfathomable whereas daughter thinks it's absolutely great but hasn't got a clue what's going on and doesn't care).
It's a slow-burner to be sure and it's obviously not going to tip its hat to the audience until it's good and ready - and when it does, oh my it'll be fun to see who really is playing silly buggers with these two - and what they'll do about it when they find out.
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