WandaVision: TV Review

Starts streaming on Disney + on Friday January 15 with 2 episodes, before delivering one a week to a total of 9

Don't come to WandaVision expecting easy and quick answers.

Little's been known about the latest Marvel series that thanks to Covid-19 related delays means the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is actually happening on the small screen - and heralds the start of Marvel being a little weird and loose with their franchise.

The premise is simple - Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen, terrific throughout and able to turn one look of joy into something of pure uncertainty and perhaps fear) and Vision (Paul Bettany, leaning much into the quirk and delivering the comedy throughout) are two suburbanites living in West View, with its perfect picket fences and seemingly wholesome neighbours.

But much like any apparently perfect suburban world, peer closely through the veneer and you'll see something a little more unsettling....

It's an ethos David Lynch has used to chilling effect for many years, and the new series from the Marvel team certainly delivers the oddities. Marvel, as usual, has been wildly quiet with the intricacies of the show, and it's not for this review to spoil what lies ahead from the first three episodes - mainly because even after a third of the series has been viewed, answers aren't exactly forthcoming.

There are flashes of innovation here, from the use of the Bewitched motifs and set-ups to the Brady Bunch style third episode. But also in the last 10 minutes of the third episode, there's a whole sequence that tantalises, teases and leaves you feeling deeply unsettled by what's been watched. There's an off-kilter feeling to much of what transpires here, leaving the I Love Lucy, Bewitched and Dick Van Dyke Show set ups feeling more sinister and imbued with a sense of dread throughout.

Tone is key for WandaVision and writer Jac Schaeffer's mastered the tropes of the genre as well as the more playful edges to try and hook in a casual viewer who's not au fait with Scarlet Witch and the Vision relationship. (Though those not au fait with the Marvel world will find this an odd starting point, given the rigidity with which the show follows sitcom set-ups and screwball executions.)

And it is this relationship which becomes key to WandaVision - Bettany and Olsen inhabit the characters with ease and yet even they seem like players in their story. Certainly, there's a feeling that Maximoff is controlling things a little more than it appears given some of the tone of some of her interventions and perhaps more specifically given that Vision died in Avengers: Endgame.

That is WandaVision's strength - its experimental edge of unpredictability. 

It's dangerous to rate a show based solely on a third of its finished crop, and especially given how some comic book series don't stick the landing and especially with how heavy the intrigue is trowelled on throughout. 

But the fact Marvel's been willing to try something bolder and different hints at what viewers to the next phase may get - certainly, the journey appears to be more than worth taking, given episodes are but 30 minutes long (whether that may change, who knows) and given the elements of mystery which are teased out.

From its black and white vistas to its striking use of colour a la Pleasantville and bizarrely, Schindler's List, WandaVision looks like nothing the MCU has proffered up before and plays out in ways that you don't expect.

Given the Marvel film series became bloated with superhero spectacle and bombast in amongst it all, this remarkable change of tone is extremely welcome - and completely extraordinary for a studio that until now, hasn't seemed willing to gamble.

Whether that surreal-tinged gamble will pay off remains to be seen in the final six episodes, but WandaVision is off to a compelling and original start. Here's hoping it sticks the landing, maintaining the unsettling intimacy of a television series rather than relying on the big soulless spectacle that's depressingly become the superhero norm on the big screen.

WandaVision screener access was provided by Disney +