We Need to Talk About Wanda

[Spoilers ahead for WandaVision and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness]

(I’m not above reusing this headline when I finally getting around to seeing the 1970 Barbara Loden movie.)

One of the benefits of having my own Substack is I’m no longer beholden to the news cycle. WandaVision is over a year old. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness came out in May and is now on Disney+. They are, in the constant grind of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, old news. Since entertainment sites are always about what’s coming next, the focus is now on the year’s remaining MCU projects, She-Hulk and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which is fine. People are interested in those, and I don’t begrudge any coverage of that stuff.

But when Marvel laid out its big Phase Five and Six plans at San Diego Comic-Con a couple weeks ago, I became a little annoyed because you can see that the TV shows and the movies are still tied together. On the surface, that’s not inherently wrong. For example, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) debuts in Black Widow, the credits scene hints that she’ll return in Hawkeye, and then she shows up in Hawkeye, adding her charm to a charming show that should have just been a movie. Fine.

However, you cheat the viewer when you say that one story matters only to completely disregard it in the next film. Some folks had this issue way back when Iron Man 3 followed The Avengers. The film tried to make the argument that S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Avengers wouldn’t get involved because Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) wanted to do this one solo, which, again, fine. However, there’s nothing in Iron Man 3 that refutes the character of Tony Stark (although the film does fumble the whole PTSD aspect of his character arc).

When I look at Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (from here on “DS2”, because I’m not going to keep typing that long title), that’s not the character who finishes out WandaVision, which takes the MCU’s best show and makes it a waste of time because a movie needs a villain.

Last Time on WandaVision…

The arc of WandaVision is a woman wrestling with her grief. She has unimaginable power, but as a person, her story is marked by constantly losing the people closest to her. She lost her parents when she was a child. She lost her brother when she was an adult. She lost the man she loved, Vision (Paul Bettany), twice, once after euthanizing him only to have Thanos rewind the clock and kill him in front of her. Avengers: Endgame left her in an interesting spot where the world was saved, but not for everyone. Vision is still dead, and Wanda is left adrift.

WandaVision worked as a series because each week a little more mystery was revealed and the show would reboot itself to be a different sitcom era (making it the only MCU Disney+ series thus far that could only work as television rather than feeling like it could have easily been tightened up into a movie). The larger arc of the series is Wanda coping with her grief, and realizing that her coping mechanism is harming not only others, but also herself. She has retreated into fantasy and dragged an entire town along with her, thus creating monumental character stakes at the conclusion of the show. For Wanda to do the right thing, she has to let go of not only Vision, but also their magically-created children, Billy (Julian Hilliard) and Tommy (Jett Klyne).

Whatever missteps WandaVision made along the way (a big CGI battle in the sky at the end; never really reckoning with Wanda accidentally torturing the residents of Westview for months), it had a clear idea of where it wanted to go with Wanda as a character and what this particular story would mean. WandaVision is a story about Wanda letting go, and knowing that while she’ll always love Vision, Billy, and Tommy, they can’t be together anymore.

And then she reads from the wrong book.

Wanda as Villain

WandaVision has a credits scene where she’s seen reading from the Darkhold, an evil book that belonged to WandaVision’s antagonist, Agatha (Kathryn Hahn). In DS2, we’re led to believe that the Darkhold basically turned Wanda “evil” and that she’s so desperate to be reunited with Billy and Tommy (Vision can stay dead, I guess) that she’ll tear through the Multiverse and kill plot-device America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) to get what she wants. More than that, she’ll kill another Wanda and replace her as the kids’ mother. Setting aside the fact that this is a problem easily solved by simply working with America to harness her powers and send Wanda to a universe where Billy and Tommy have lost their mother, Wanda’s motivation here undoes everything from WandaVision.

As I said in an earlier issue, I think DS2 is a fun movie. The plot is kind of a mess, but Marvel let director Sam Raimi do his Sam Raimi thing and so the film at least has a personality (yes, it is a low bar for Marvel movies when we applaud filmmaking that isn’t anonymous, but that’s how it goes), and it’s enjoyable to watch for how outlandish it’s willing to be.

But if we’re supposed to treat MCU TV series and movies as one big project with all the parts connecting to each other, then you’ve severely undermined your purpose by making Wanda a single-minded villain in pursuit of children she already gave up. To watch DS2 and accept it on the merits is to also accept that WandaVision did not matter. It may have been a fun watch, but as storytelling, its conclusion (and more importantly, its catharsis), no longer matter because they don’t suit the needs to the latest Marvel thing. Is Wanda a more compelling villain than guys like Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) and Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) because we know her from past Marvel stuff? Sure. But it’s hard to say she’s a great antagonist when her motivation is as painfully thin as “I read from a bad book and it made me a monster who is now Homeless Dad.” And look, reading from a bad book and becoming a monster is a Sam Raimi thing, but if that’s all it takes, why make Wanda the villain other than she uses magic and Doctor Strange uses magic?

New Logos

This is why it’s more difficult for me to get amped when Marvel rolls out a big presentation promising a bunch of titles and logos for upcoming projects. That’s the illusion of a plan. It creates a false sense of security where we think if everything is carefully mapped out, then artistic creation is simply a matter of coloring inside the lines. It doesn’t matter if any individual Marvel thing is a disappointment because look: it’s all building to Avengers: Secret Wars, and that’s what’s important, right?

But if you’re not going to do right by the characters in these stories, then what’s the point? These characters will be passed between different writers and directors, but it’s the job of Marvel’s producers to ensure that viewers don’t feel cheated or that they wasted their time because the new thing instantly undoes the old thing. It’s fine to say that Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) is the new Captain America and that he’ll lead Captain America: New World Order, but will it matter at all about where the character ended up in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier? Is the MCU one big story or is it willing to discard an entire season of character development if Doctor Strange needs a formidable opponent?

What I’m Watching

• For the movies I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd.

• Squid Game: I finished this one, and it definitely lived up to the hype. It’s kind of funny that it landed on Netflix of all platforms since I found it far more rewarding to take my time with it and watch only one episode per day. But the series is brilliant, filled with great performances, imaginative production design and costuming, and with a story that’s painfully universal about the dehumanizing effects of capitalism. While on one level it’s The Most Dangerous Game crossed with The Hunger Games, it never felt derivative. Instead, it feels like something that other storytellers will seek to emulate.

• Myth & Mogul: John Delorean: If all you know about John DeLorean is that he made the car that the filmmakers used as the time machine for Back to the Future and his life was marked by scandal, then this is a good primer on who he was. To be fair, the most interesting part of the story is how DeLorean was tried for drug trafficking, but it was clearly a case of the FBI luring a desperate guy into making a drug buy so they could manufacture PR for the War on Drugs. It’s not like they were taking drugs off the streets as much as grabbing a headline. That all being said, DeLorean was clearly corrupt, likely embezzled from his own companies, and wanted to be seen as a successful businessman than actually be one. My biggest qualm with the docuseries is it never explains if the DeLorean was even a good car or not. Also, if his car hadn’t been a centerpiece of one of the most successful and beloved movies of all-time, would anyone remember him beyond auto aficionados?

• The Rehearsal: This show feels too pure and good to get more than a single season, so we should just cherish this outright lunacy while we have it. In three episodes, creator and star Nathan Fielder dances between the darkly comic, the painfully absurd, and the surprisingly poignant. Also, if you ever encounter Fielder in the world, you should probably run the other way.

• Nathan for You: This has been a nice palate cleanser after episodes of Squid Game. It also sates the urge for more Rehearsal in between new episodes.

• MacGruber: I love the 2010 movie, but I’m two episodes into the Peacock series, and it’s not really working. There are some good jokes scattered about, but a TV show feels like a bad fit for what the creators want to do. The 2010 film works in part because it’s a parody of 1980s action movies. There’s not really an analogue in the TV world, so it feels like an action movie being stretched out far past a reasonable length (the second episode is mostly MacGruber trying to escape a guy who wants to torture him) with places for commercial breaks since Peacock has an ad-supported tier. I’ll stick with it, but so I’m underwhelmed.

• The Sandman

What I’m Reading

• The Sandman: Volume 2

• Double Indemnity