Vandavision Series Review: Who’s the Scarlet Witch?

[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for WandaVision, including the season finale.]

Is Wanda Maximoff a villain?

Disney plus series Vandavision Actually wraps up without answering that question, even though he does a lot of work in his final episode, which is named “The Series Series”. There is a physical and philosophical battle between Wanda’s Simulacrum of Vision and the vision residing in her now-white reorganized body has resumed. In this episode, Wanda Maximoff is shown her comic-book identity, and it introduces her to a previously unknown world of magic. This signals her as a harbinger of doom, and demonstrates Monica Rambue’s ability to strange new powers. These are all neat ideas, which will undoubtedly be detailed on future Marvel Cinematic Universe projects – at the cost of the show they were offered, and at the expense of any clarity on how their big plot arc really wraps up.

This devotion to anticipation culture is the bargain of the MCU driving the devil: Sure, the thing happening right now is cool, but just wait until the next thing comes along! Maybe that’s why Vandavision Doesn’t really decide who Wanda is Now. Sure, it is likely that one of the fans will lure him in for the next appearance – currently planned for 2022 Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness – The question will be in whose favor it is, if any. But this is a strange choice for the only character who gets a full, meaningful arc in this series. “The Series Finale” closes with a cathartic vision of a woman who does not let her grief and fear of others shape her to choose who she is. But because the story wraps up with no clear information about how it has affected him, it is a disturbing unfinished scene that grief cost everyone around him.

Picture: Marvel Studios

In some ways, this dynamic works: grief is messy and not easy to resolve clearly, and trauma compounds and spirals outward. Grieving leaves people emotionally compromised, and blind to how their actions may seem to other people – whether it means helping a loved one who is only trying to help, or magically Se is forcing you with the entire New Jersey township to act in your sitcom fantasy. And perhaps its esoteric ending can also be justified by the story: we don’t have to figure out who Wanda is because she isn’t either. She went from the world to find it.

There is a wrinkle in this reading of the series as Wanda’s emotional journey, however, and her name is Monica Rambue. Vandavision If we think too much about Monica then almost don’t work. He has another character in dealing with trauma and loss, burdened by his own grief. To a certain extent, Monica finds herself at work by her mother’s death and her own blip-related displacement: she is the brave explorer who is leading us into Wanda’s TV hex as it takes her life into a new messed up world. It is easy to solve. But Monica isn’t really given much interiority, and everything that came about her own grief journey eventually looks shallow. His pain needs to stop because it is not his turn. This is wanda – this is his

The show, both in fiction and in its magical meta-fiction, and in its shows, only one person can speak at a time.

Photo: Marvel Studios

Now that Vandavision Is over, I think the most about Monica Rambau. the access Vandavision From a slightly different angle, and Monica is its protagonist: a steadfast scientist and government agent, working diligently to free a small town from the grip of a supernatural phenomenon. If Wanda is, at first glance, a villain, Monica is the hero here, not to confront him but to understand him.

“We Interrupt This Program,” revealed in Monica’s backstory, episode 4, is a nightmare. Suddenly regained to life for events of Avengers: Endgame, She recounts five years of life on Earth, her mother’s death and a period of uneasy transition to Sword, the organization Monica and her mother devoted their lives to.

Monica is yearning – this is why she is able to understand Wanda, to give her her place to do her damage. But Wanda leaves no one for Monica, who does not go through the parallel process. In his efforts to bring Westview Hex to a peaceful end, he has transformed, but has little investment in his transformation, what has happened to him or what it means to him. All this is left for Monica’s next MCU appearance. Monica has to do all the work of controlling herself and processing things in a healthy way, while dealing with the downfall of Wanda, who is lying outside.

Vandavision Does not necessarily absolve Wanda of her actions – she is shown leaving Westview in shame, unable to see the people she saw. But it removes him from the hook. Everything left of Monica Rambue and Swift falls apart, as does the FBI team backed by Agent Jimmy Wu. The duality of Wanda’s final scene – the cozy hut on her mountain stupa, the witch-going in her cabin room – reveals that Juda is still out on Wanda’s nature and recovery, as it is supposed to be. Wanda remained unfinished as the show began. The uncertainty of this ending makes the story formless; Its characters go on a journey, but they come nowhere. Yes, Wanda is now the Scarlet Witch, but what does she mean? And what does Monica mean, who is now formless in the absence of a clear view to the contrary?

Picture: Marvel Studios

VandavisionThe biggest breakthrough is the way it raises the question of whether Wanda is a villain. Yes, she did terrible things in nine episodes of the series, things that cannot be understood neatly, except to say that some of the other witches were real bad. But the series isn’t really interested in the heroism or lack thereof, which is why its final Fight-Fest makes the show compelling with cross purposes: its slow-paced suspense, which the sitcom pays homage to the fun of Is presented by means of.

Marvel Studios’ first TV show started off as something different and cool, putting the audience in an awkward-to-familiar context that makes the audience invest in unqualified characters. It then evolved into the familiar rhythm of a Marvel Studios film, resolved with more irritation for a future story than a proposal for this one. Vandavision What was most beneficial to his interest in uneven broken pieces was that, when assembled, we call a person. It’s just a shame that the MCU is actually the place for one of them at a time.