WandaVision

“WandaVision doesn't grasp gender or racial representation as well as it thinks it does.”

Title: WandaVision
Episodes Reviewed: Season 1
Creators: Jac Schaeffer 👩🏼🇺🇸 based on the characters created by Jack Kirby 👨🏼🇺🇸, Roy Thomas 👨🏼🇺🇸, John Buscema 👨🏼🇺🇸, and Stan Lee 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writers: Jac Schaeffer 👩🏼🇺🇸 (9 eps), Peter Cameron 👨🏼🇺🇸 (9 eps), Laura Donney 👩🏼🇺🇸 (9 eps), Mackenzie Dohr 👩🏼🇺🇸 (9 eps), Megan McDonnell 👩🏼🇺🇸 (9 eps), Cameron Squires 👨🏾🇺🇸 (9 eps), Bobak Esfarjani 👨🏽🇺🇸 (9 eps), Gretchen Enders 👩🏼🇺🇸 (1 ep), and Chuck Hayward 👨🏾🇺🇸 (1 ep)

Reviewed by Monique 👩🏾🇺🇸

—SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 3.5/5

WandaVision hits on a personal level for me. The Disney+ series, which showcases Wanda Maximoff's (Elizabeth Olsen) life after the Blip, first entranced me with its commitment to retro sitcoms. Wanda uses her magic to create a black-and-white fantasy world, aka “the Hex,” through which she journeys through her own grief and I was hooked as her grip on reality faltered. Little did I know that I would soon enter my own mourning period about two months after the series ended, due to the sudden death of my father.

I'd lost family members before, so I agreed with Vision (Paul Bettany) when he calls grief a form of "love persevering" in Episode 8’s “Previously On.” The poignancy of the line, written by Laura Donney, surprised me with its depth given its unusual home within the Marvel franchise, known more for lighthearted banter than philosophical ruminations. The writers hardly stop there, and my personal investment in WandaVision only increased over time.

But losing a parent is a different type of grief altogether. Now that I'm in my season of mourning, Vision's statement rings that much truer. Wanda's palpable anger and hurt seem more realistic. Her decision-making makes sense to me now: If you live in a universe where magic crystals can bring people back from dust, and you're a witch with untapped power, why wouldn't you try to bring your family back to life? Of course, Wanda takes this wish to its most extreme and dangerous form, with the series stumbling in how it allows Wanda's actions to go unpunished.

Aside from its effective portrayal of loss, WandaVision also serves as a love letter to the American sitcom. The series is at its best when it dedicates resources to manufacturing the nostalgia inherent in classics like The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Dream of Jeannie, The Brady Bunch, Full House, and others. Unfortunately, as the references get closer to the present day, WandaVision starts feeling less memorable, probably because shows like Malcolm in the Middle and Modern Family are still present in our collective consciousness. And while moments with the fictional government agency SWORD and evil, near-immortal witch Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) remind us of WandaVision's place in the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe, those moments take the levity out of watching Wanda's TV fantasy. Most concerning, however, is the way Wanda never pays a price for keeping an entire town hostage. Still, the series' intimate exploration of grief through unconventional means makes WandaVision one of Marvel’s stronger offerings.

Gender: 3.75/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

Women propel the story forward, and the titular hero Wanda naturally feels the most complex among them. But there were opportunities to expand on other characters. SWORD agent Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) contends with her own personal loss; when she (and half the universe) had been disappeared by mega-villain Thanos during the Blip, her mother passed away. Head writer Jac Schaeffer told Entertainment Weekly that she pitched giving Monica a therapist. But the scenes were cut, which seems like an oversight considering how much Monica’s experiences relate to those of Wanda’s within the story.

In the first Thor (2011) film, snarky scientist Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) unfairly got the “comedy relief” end of the stick before mysteriously vanishing from the franchise. Thankfully, she's back and given more to do in WandaVision, bouncing off the chemistry between FBI agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park) and Monica. Along with Monica, Darcy serves as an excellent onscreen example of a woman working in STEM.

As the season's Big Bad, Agatha provides interest but isn’t fleshed out enough, seemingly presented just so there can be a clear villain. Arguably, Agatha’s character does resonate more if you already know her backstory in the comics. But that doesn’t come through in WandaVision as successfully as the series might like.

On the whole, though, WandaVision creates some interesting opportunities for women to shine, especially when compared to Marvel’s awful track record in this regard. Perhaps it's because Schaeffer got to lead a majority-female writers' room, enabling the series to better showcase women independent from their male love interests. But its lack of care for Monica’s written story, and even that of Agatha’s, keeps in step with the franchise’s penchant for only highlighting one woman at a time: case in point, Black Widow being the only woman surrounded by the rest of the male Avengers.

Even worse, they range in likability and sympathy, with results conveniently falling along lines of race. Wanda, Agatha, and Monica have all felt their share of anguish in their lives. But only white women, Wanda and Agatha, are given the grace to be complex and redeemed despite having hurt people. In contrast, Monica seems forced to compartmentalize her feelings so she can focus on breaking Wanda’s cycle of pain as she helps end the Hex. Ironically, the method Monica uses to stop Wanda is to relate her own tragic experiences so that Wanda can see she isn’t alone in her suffering. In this mentoring role, Monica appears more well-adjusted, a trait that could be seen by some as a plus. But it can also perpetuate the stereotype of Black women having to be stronger than most, regardless of any trauma they might experience, while white women like Wanda are seen as more fragile and reliant on the emotional labor of a Black woman—tropey depictions that help no one.

Race: 2/5

WandaVision is a very white show, even by Marvel's wobbly standards. Some of it occurs by design: The show imitates popular sitcoms of a bygone era. It seems to recognize that for modern audiences, some people of color should be visible, hence the additions of townspeople like Black neighbor Herb (David Payton) and Vision’s co-worker Norm, played by Indian American Asif Ali. Also included are some nameless townsfolk played by Black child actor Sydney Thomas or Latinx actors Ithamar Enriquez and Eric Delgado. Even Monica gets added to the mix of WandaVision's diversity quota. Meanwhile, Jimmy and tertiary characters like Latinx character Agent Rodriguez (played by West Indian American Selena Anduze) and a Black SWORD agent (Elijah Everett) make up the small amount of diversity we see outside of the Hex.

While the charisma of Jimmy and Monica are such that viewers on social media wanted a spin-off featuring the duo, their actors Park and Parris can't save the inclusiveness of a series by themselves. That’s up to the writers, who unfortunately fail to give Monica proper depth while other key moments fall into stereotype.

In Episode 2, "Don’t Touch That Dial," Monica has been trapped in Wanda's Hex and is forced to go by the name Geraldine. As Geraldine, Monica acts as a standard Black character of the 1960s and 1970s—attached to a white protagonist (Wanda) while audiences learn next to nothing about Geraldine, except that she seems like a nice Black woman. Even Agnes, Agatha’s sitcom alter-ego, gets more of a backstory as someone who consistently mentions her husband and their comedic marital issues.

Episode 3, “Now In Color,” grows borderline-offensive as Geraldine becomes a jive-talking caricature. Her communication style might be a reference to Good Times character Wilona, the sassy next door neighbor to the Evans family. But even with Wilona as a reference, Geraldine’s funky personality feels out of place in the context of Wanda’s Brady Bunch aesthetic. Charles Pulliam-Moore notes in Gizmodo that “the shot of Geraldine on SWORD's monitor was a reminder that, on some level, she was the only kind of period-appropriate character Wanda could envision for a Black woman." Even after Monica escapes the Hex, she continues Marvel’s problematic trend of using Black characters as sidekicks to white protagonists, one that quickly recurs in Disney+’s next Marvel series, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, where Clé Bennet’s Battlestar gets treated like yesterday’s garbage in order to further the story of his white superhero partner, John Walker.

Finally, WandaVision’s finale (Episode 9) sees Monica literally using herself as a human shield to protect Wanda's children from gunshots—another example of pop culture envisioning Black characters to be indestructible, with the 2016 Marvel series Luke Cage coming to mind. The fascination with Black trauma in media takes place over and over again, recently in Prime Video’s Them or last year’s Antebellum. Writers seem to think that seeing a Black person survive a barrage of gunfire is triumphant. But it’s not. This imagery, instead, reduces Black people twofold: It reinforces the centuries-old stereotype of Black people having superhuman strength while indulging in the horror of seeing Black characters suffer. Yes, Monica survives, but do we need to see her stare down the barrel of a gun to know she’s a superhero?

If WandaVision fails this hard with Monica, you can imagine how little attention the series gave to its second most important character of color, Jimmy. Currently, Park has to rely on his comedic skills to give the character interest, but Jimmy actually has a long and storied history in Marvel Comics as the head of the Agents of Atlas, an organization created from a secret society that Jimmy is the unsuspecting heir of. Marvel may be notorious for teasing character storylines years in advance, given their enormous production slate. But does it make sense to save him for a rainy day? With fans showing their interest in a Jimmy-centric saga, it would behoove Marvel to give it to them.

LGBTQ: 1.5/5

WandaVision doesn’t focus at all on LGBTQ identities, but fans have repackaged Agatha Harkness as a community icon. As Advocate's Daniel Reynolds writes, Agatha's queer fanbase stems from the character’s sense of camp. Fans also love Hahn herself, whom Reynolds describes as "a gay icon in her own right from roles in Bad Moms and Transparent." Reynolds also cites Agatha's references "to the gay classic The Wizard of Oz … including the central journey of a heroine looking for self-discovery in a landscape that shifts from black-and-white to color." Further proof of Agatha’s popularity comes from Ocean Kelly, a queer musician, who capitalized on WandaVision’s popularity with their dance tracks “Wanda’s Cunty Vision” and “Agatha’s Revenge.”

But any LGBTQ WandaVision content has stemmed from fans, not the show itself. The franchise itself flounders to rise to the challenge of adding any intentional queer representation.

Mediaversity Grade: C- 2.69/5

WandaVision shines when it uses sitcom conceits to dissect the complexity of grief, illustrating how such emotions can seem insurmountable. But while the series perfectly handles its ode to bygone sitcoms, it doesn't grasp gender or racial representation as well as it thinks it does.

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Grade: CLiJune 27, 2021Female/Nonbinary Creator