Spoilers and wild baseless speculation within.

I’ll be discussing the show solely in the context of the MCU. This means I won’t refer to organisations, characters or events which may give context but which you’d only know if you’ve read the comics.

Wanda is pregnant – with twins…

I’m struggling with this show. The schtick has outworn its welcome. Episode 3 is in colour and we’re ostensibly in the 1970s era of sitcoms now, exploring another stable trope of the genre – how do suburban parents handle pregnancy?

So far so cliched and after three episodes I’ve run out of patience with the structure the show’s taken. I confess this is hurt disproportionately by releasing only one episode a week. It’s likely I would have watched the whole thing in one go if it had been released all at once, although I suspect it would probably have been background watching after the first one.

My issues are the tone and structure. Olsen and Bettany continue to deliver solid performances with the scripts they’re given but this is, for me, where the good runs out.

We have a world (and it seems increasingly likely Wanda has created it) in which there are people of all kinds of races but where sexism is rampant. Worse still, this is played for gags. In particular, one joke this episode being about a nurse which just doesn’t land and led to my daughter looking at her phone having already said she found the whole sexism subplot infuriating.

There’s clearly something wrong with the world and we’re seeing it in almost every frame now but with yet another HYDRA advertisement which lends nothing to the ongoing story the structure of what the show is trying to give us remains elusive.

It appears for the time being that Wanda has created a world in which Vision is essentially trapped and each time he starts to emerge from his clear intellectual and emotional torpor she changes the world so his suspicions are wiped away. It’s not even that his suspicions are allayed, Wanda changes Vision so he no longer even remembers his concerns. This is an abusive relationship and it’s being played for laughs most of the time. I’m really nonplussed at how this subject is going to be treated once the story progresses and the world they’re inhabiting starts to properly come down around their ears. I worry it will simply be forgotten with a moment where they profess their love for one another rather than acknowledging just how damaging it is to deny other people their own life experience.

It’s also clear others are observing and directly interacting with this world. Assuming you’ve seen the Avengers’ movies, you will know Vision is dead. Dead in a way the subsequent time travelling shenanigans of Endgame shouldn’t have undone.

So who is this Vision? Is he even real? Is Wanda actually alone in this world she appears to be in charge of?

I do hope Wanda is grieving for Vision and this world, her abusive actions regarding his self-awareness is just her way of holding onto the person she loved and lost. The question being: is Wanda having an emotional breakdown driven by losing Vision?

More generally I want to know the rules of the game. People appear to be able to interact directly with the world in question, but their impact also appears inconsistent. One moment they know something strange is going on and they’re playing along with deliberate intent. The next they appear to have forgotten they’re there as observers and are nothing more than other characters in the sitcom which is WandaVision.

It remains the case that my children don’t care about this show. Until the last establishing shot of the episode they were bored, fidgety and talking. So far WandaVision isn’t a show for them. However, nor is it a show for my partner who has watched just about everything else in the MCU willingly despite not being any kind of fan.

You could argue this was where the MCU needed to go after the epic events in Endgame. Yet on the evidence so far this feels like a misfire. Many people are going to enjoy it, I have no doubt, but its appeal is limited and it remains unfocused.

I am mostly frustrated because this is a brave departure and I want it to land. The last thing I want is for it to fail and we revert to more of the same old punching villains through buildings.

Verdict: There’s still time for it to find its way, to reveal its hand and show us how brilliant it is. So far it’s clever but it’s showing its smarts via what it’s copying and not in the story it’s telling. 

Rating? 6 babies out of 10

Stewart Hotston