First came the teaser, then the trailer, but it was not until the first two chapters when we have completely finished believing it. ‘WandaVision’ (‘Scarlet Witch and Vision’) works exactly like a classic sitcom. No, it is not a little joke that lasts a scene nor is it a dream that the protagonists wake up from at the end of the pilot. If the first two chapters of the first and highly anticipated Marvel series on Disney + have made something clear, it is that it is, with its peculiarities, a whole sitcom.
The joke that wasn’t a joke works the same way as the mother of all sitcoms, ‘I Love Lucy’. In this case, Scarlet Witch and Vision are the new neighbors of an American upper-class suburb, all very fifties, that will be forced to fit into society. In black and white, with a four-thirds format and with a tone as traditional as it is historically macho, the series that has returned the Marvel logo to our screens after more than a year of absence, is a pure sitcom.
The 9-episode miniseries has started with an untitled two-episode double broadcast directed by Matt Shakman. In the first, the couple must behave to organize an idyllic dinner for the head of Vision and his wife, while they put up with the gossipy neighbor (Kathryn Hahn). In the second they will be divided, Scarlet Witch will try to make good friends with the housewives and Vision with the members of the neighborhood security. Both will end up together in a talent show in which the new couple from the city will have to earn their place as valuable elements of their community.
As in any situation comedy, the plot reaches the joke through the characteristics of the character. Thus, the superpowers of the Vision and Scarlet Witch are nothing more than the differential element of the gag. For example, we will have to see how Vision prevents the wife of his boss from seeing Scarlet Witch cooking by levitating half the kitchen, or Scarlet Witch passing Vision’s powers as cheap magic tricks in the talent show.
There is a trick, of course, everything is a facade to hide a reality that will be the great mystery of the series. But ‘WandaVision’ takes it very seriously and fulfills two full chapters of pure sitcom that live up to the genre with the rules of Marvel characters. Moreover, after them, we do not believe that the following will not follow, from beginning to end, the same sitcom structure.
However, it is clear that there is a trick that we will learn. One that has not been revealed in these two chapters other than by slight indications, but that unequivocally confirms the end of the second episode. Wanda, pregnant, and Vision go out to find a kind of Hydra beekeeper coming up from the sewer and, then, Wanda rewinds reality to return to the living room. However, this time he modifies it, as if they had found it, and builds another one by bringing color to the image. We have seen Hydra through television commercials and we have also heard how a voice through the radio seems to seek her and want to wake her up. Scarlet Witch is either locked in by someone or has she locked in this classic sitcom world. Judging from the end of chapter two, it certainly seems like the second option.
With Vision dead in ‘Infinity War’, Scarlet Witch must have created a parallel space or dimension, a paper-mâché world where she can live idyllically with her deceased lover. The ads, one per chapter, seem to remind the Scarlet Witch of HYDRA, the organization that empowered her and her twin brother through Loki’s scepter. They are the two clearest visions that we are in a world created by Wanda’s mind and that advertising acts like the traumas locked up by her subconscious.
Nor can we forget the presence in episode 2 of the actress Teyonah Parris, the only neighbor who seems to be on good terms with Wanda and who will play in the MCU, news confirmed, Monica Rambeau, the daughter of Carol Danvers (Maria Rambeau, played by Lashana Lynch) and who will also end up having her own powers in the MCU. Will she be the one who takes Wanda out of her reality? Will it be Doctor Strange, since it is known that his second installment will be related to the series? Will Wanda be able to stay in her love fantasy and grow old with Vision? The truth is that for now it is impossible to solve these questions, and that is great news. 7 more chapters await us.
