One of the most engrossing and creative shows on any streaming platform,
WandaVision is a crowd pleaser, even for people new to the MCU. If you want to learn
about the magic behind this Marvel series, then prepare for the untold truth of WandaVision.
Marvel has been dominating television for decades.
Dating back to the days of the 1960s Spider-Man cartoon and Bill Bixby's The Incredible Hulk,
it's been more common to see the spandex-clad Marvel characters on the small screen than it
has been to see them on the big screen. But until WandaVision, those TV shows didn't hail
from Marvel Studios, the outfit responsible for the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
For decades, Marvel licensed their characters in film and television out to other studios.
That all changed in 2010, when Marvel started their own standalone division, Marvel Television,
to tackle small-screen outings for their characters. The likes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
and Daredevil were just a few instances of the shows produced by Marvel Television.
But despite scoring a number of successes, Marvel Television was shut down in 2019, resulting in the
demise of countless popular programs, as well as an unmade animated Howard the Duck series.
“Sometimes I still get this feeling there’s some kind of special destiny waiting for me.”
The seismic shift was due to the company's new focus on Marvel Studios-produced television
programs made specifically for the Disney+ streaming service.
The first show in that initiative? WandaVision, the first in a new era of Marvel television.
Over the course of WandaVision, a grown-up Monica Rambeau has become a fan-favorite
character, particularly once she got her superpowers in the show's seventh episode.
In addition to being entertaining, Rambeau has also become somebody who's proven important to
the overall plot of WandaVision. In particular, her internal struggle with missing the death of
her mom has served as an effective parallel to Wanda Maximoff's own struggle with grief.
Rambeau is a manifestation of hope that Wanda can work through her own pain,
that there's a path to coping beyond just getting lost in sitcoms.
Given her central role, it can be surprising to realize that Rambeau wasn't always supposed
to appear in WandaVision. When showrunner Jac Schaeffer first pitched the series,
Monica was nowhere to be seen. Schaeffer explained to Screen Rant:
"There was a character like Monica; she served the purpose of Monica in my pitch.
But it was a later discovery that we could use Monica Rambeau for that
character. And that was so exciting when we put those pieces together."
Monica Rambeau may not have always been a part of WandaVision,
but viewers everywhere would agree that it's now impossible to imagine the show without her.
WandaVision wouldn't be a classic sitcom if it wasn't at least partially filmed in front of
a live studio audience. While later episodes of the show would employ an artificial laugh track,
the real thing was sometimes used as well. Producers decided to film WandaVision's
debut episode, which evokes sitcoms of the 1950s, in front of actual people.
Needless to say, capturing Wanda Maximoff and Vision on a small stage in front of
an audience was a massive departure from the traditional filming style of MCU properties.
But filming the show in this manner didn't just add further authenticity to the retro-vibe of
WandaVision's earliest episodes. It also brought out the best in the actors themselves, as one
of the audience members, WandaVision lead Teyonah Parris, can attest. As Parris explained to TVLine:
"I got to take a little 'cheat day' and absorb it all and watch my amazing castmates, Lizzie [Olsen]
and Paul [Bettany] and Kathryn [Hahn], kill it. And then I jumped in with them a little later."
Kat Dennings entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the franchise's fourth entry,
the first Thor movie. Playing the role of Jane Foster's intern, Darcy Lewis, Dennings provided
levity as an original character created for the MCU. She reprised the role in Thor:
The Dark World, where she now had her own intern, but that was the end of her story,
at least for a moment. She subsequently vanished from the series, and it wasn't hard to see why.
The next Thor movie, Ragnarok, was mostly set in places other than Earth, and more importantly,
it depicted Thor and Foster as having broken up, thus giving Foster’s intern no reason to appear.
It appeared the book was closed on Darcy, and that perception wasn't just shared by fans.
Apparently, until WandaVision came along, Dennings was convinced that there wouldn't
be any further opportunities for her to appear in the series. Dennings said to Entertainment Weekly:
"That call was very unexpected. [...] [O]f course, I was delighted to be asked. I am just a big fan
of Marvel in general. I had no expectations of ever coming back, so I was just thrilled."
“1950’s, 1960’s, and now the 70’s.
Why does it keep switching time periods? Can’t be purely for my enjoyment, can it?”
The Marvel Cinematic Universe couldn't be brought to life without the talents of many artists.
But there's no denying that Marvel Studios Chief Creative Officer Kevin Feige is a key
creative voice in the sprawling enterprise. His influence was particularly felt with WandaVision,
as he came up with the initial concept of creating a sitcom that would take
the characters of Wanda Maximoff and Vision and plop them into suburbia.
Not only was Feige taking cues from earlier comic runs featuring the two characters (namely House
of M and The Vision), he was also inspired by his own love of sitcoms. Feige was apparently a Nick
at Nite fan growing up and that love has seeped into his creative pursuits at Marvel Studios.
Watching WandaVision, it becomes readily apparent which TV shows certain episodes take cues from.
The first episode wears its love for the Dick Van Dyke Show on its sleeve,
while a later episode features a staircase that could only have come from The Brady Bunch.
However, movies have also provided creative inspiration for the production.
In talking about how the series tackled unique visual traits,
WandaVision director Matt Shakman revealed that two films from the 1990s had a great
deal of influence on this Marvel TV show. When asked if Pleasantville and The Truman Show had
any sort of impact on WandaVision, Shakman told The Hollywood Reporter:
"Absolutely. [...] I love both of them. I think that there's some
spiritual connection to both films, of course."
Pleasantville also explored black-and-white 1950s sitcoms,
but with an eerie touch that emphasized how divorced from reality these programs were.
What’s more, Pleasantville and WandaVision share a prop designer, Russell Bobbitt,
who helped ensure that both projects got the tiniest details of their TV worlds just right.
“Pop quiz, Wanda. How does a housewife get a bloodstain out of white linen?
By doing it herself.”
The MCU may be a pop culture juggernaut, but even it couldn't avoid being impacted by the
COVID-19 pandemic. Every project in the works at Marvel Studios was delayed by the crisis,
with their entire movie schedule getting delayed over a year. WandaVision was no exception. The
show was almost four months into filming before principal photography was shut down.
As recalled by director Matt Shakman to The Hollywood Reporter,
the timing on this whole matter was peculiar. Shakman explained:
"We were shut down at a really interesting moment, because we had just wrapped in Atlanta,
and we had moved to L.A. So we were about ready to start shooting the next
chunk of our schedule, which was all about shooting on backlots."
Principal photography took months to resume,
only kicking in once more in fall 2020, albeit with extensive new safety procedures in place.
WandaVision employs a number of visual tricks to help clarify the differences between the
sitcom world inside the Hex and the real world outside. Beyond the use of period-era costumes
and black-and-white photography, one notable visual trait is the show’s ever-shifting aspect
ratios. The show is shown for sometimes making these changes right in the middle of a scene.
Different aspect ratios, such as 4:3, are used for the different eras of television that take
place inside the Hex. The on-screen visuals are bending to the history of classic television,
as a way of reflecting how much control Wanda has over her reality. Meanwhile a 2.40:1 aspect ratio
is used for scenes that are supposed to remind the viewer that they're watching something firmly
rooted in reality, such as everything happening at S.W.O.R.D.'s compound or in Agatha's basement.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has tackled period projects before with films like Captain America:
The First Avenger and Captain Marvel. But WandaVision was multiple period pieces in
one, requiring the team to focus on endless details from different eras.
Matt Shakman explained the process to The Hollywood Reporter:
"We recreated everything from vintage lenses, production and costume design,
to the actors getting together with me and studying what those old shows looked like.
We tried to put our finger on what comedy was like back in the '50s versus the '60s,
because it really does change. [...] It was really important because ultimately
this is the reality of that episode, and we wanted people to fully buy into it."
Going the extra mile in every department — they even brought in a dialect coach
to nail the voices of each decade — paid off. Rather than just doing surface-level pastiche,
WandaVision took the MCU period piece to a new level.
“I am doing my best to blend in!”
WandaVision has been praised for its ability to go weird and creepy without
winking to the audience. It's a tone that hasn't really been explored in previous
Marvel Cinematic Universe properties, which have largely avoided eeriness.
Though it's widely seen as a groundbreaking trait of the program, WandaVision showrunner
Jac Schaeffer doesn't see the program's aesthetic as totally unprecedented. In fact,
she's attributed the show's unique vibe to a prior creative endeavor in the MCU, Thor: Ragnarok.
Like WandaVision, Ragnarok was widely praised for its distinctive weirdness. Things like a kindly
Kiwi rock monster or an ending where Asgard needed to be destroyed weren't standard MCU fixtures.
Instead, they reflected the bold creative spirit of writer/director, Taika Waititi.
These creative inventions inspired Schaeffer, who told IndieWire:
"That was really the movie, for me, that broke my brain. I thought it was just so daring and
so exciting. Smashing the mold and taking all the colors and throwing them around."
By the end of Avengers: Infinity War, Vision hasn't just ended up dead — he's had his
head ripped open by Thanos. It's a gruesome moment that seemed to put an end to Vision,
especially after the character didn't return for the big blowout adventure in Avengers:
Endgame. Even Vision actor Paul Bettany never thought he'd get to play the character again,
let alone as one of the lead characters of a big TV show.
Therefore, Bettany didn’t know what to expect at his next meeting with Marvel execs, telling Emmy:
"I was called in to see Kevin [Feige] and [Marvel co-president] Louis D'Esposito and
was convinced that they were going to be gentlemen and say,
'It's been a great ride; thank you for your work and good luck.'"
That, of course, isn't what happened, and once Bettany was informed of what
the future held for Vision, he jumped at the chance to re-inhabit the character.
When WandaVision was first announced at San Diego Comic-Con,
it was also revealed that Elizabeth Olsen would be reprising her role as
Wanda Maximoff in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
While it wasn't clear what kind of part she'd play in that blockbuster, since that announcement, it's
been apparent that WandaVision would be helping to establish Doctor Strange's second solo adventure.
However, it now appears that it's not the only upcoming MCU movie the show is helping to set up.
In an interview with ComicBook.com, WandaVision director Matt Shakman revealed that he'd been
coordinating with other MCU productions to make sure his TV series fit into the larger MCU canvas.
Two MCU directors he'd been in particularly close contact with were Multiverse of Madness’s
Sam Raimi and Spider-Man: No Way Home director Jon Watts. As Shakman put it:
"It's a relay race, this whole thing. And so you're passing the
baton [...], and you want to make sure that handoff is effortless and perfect."
Given that no cast members from No Way Home have appeared in WandaVision thus far, it's currently
unclear how it connects to the next Spider-Man movie. Perhaps it'll connect by way of those
rumored multiverse shenanigans the web-crawler will supposedly engage in. Whatever the connection
ends up being, it's just one of numerous ways WandaVision is connected to the larger MCU.
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