f13.net

https://disneyplusoriginals.disney.com/show/wandavision

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj9J2ecsSpo

Web site says "2020", Wikipedia says "December 2020".

I will watch it, but I don't understand it at all.

Is there some comic knowledgeable person here who can explain it?

So my basic guess is that somehow they're in a virtual reality where the Vison's consciousness survives and somehow Wanda gets a chance to join him there and they're trying to figure out how to build their relationship in a situation where he can't even be 'real'. I would not be surprised if some other Marvel bad guy who operates in that kind of situation is in there with them, unbeknownst to them. Ultron, possibly? Quasimodo? The Mad Thinker? etc.

In terms of what you're seeing, they seem to be in a I Love Lucy sort of sitcom (with a slight touch of the Dick Van Dyke show, maybe), but maybe with some of the set-up of Bewitched (nosy neighbor spotting the superpowers, etc.) but then there's other settings/frames.

The other referencing I can kind of see is:

a) The Vision and Scarlet Witch had two "children" that she created more or less by wishing for them (summoning souls from the netherworld without knowing it) who were then retconned out (driving her dangerously insane, with some ultimately cosmos-changing consequences) and who were then retconned back in as having gone off to an alternate reality, etc. It's possible that Wanda's presence in this virtual reality is not because the Vision is there and she wants to join him but because they need to manage her because she has a remnant connection to the Infinity Stones. I kind of hope not--I really actually hate this version of the Scarlet Witch (reality-altering, crazy, etc.). But that scene where the dude is grilling them about where they are actually from feels a bit like that kind of "you're crazy and somebody is determined to make you feel that you're crazy" thing.

b) I dunno about the witch who is "because you are dead" is, but she might be a new version of Agatha Harkness, a kind of shitty character connected to a hidden city of magic people who became the nanny for the Fantastic Four and then a kind of mentor to the Scarlet Witch. Maybe she's bringing some bad news/good news to them after the sitcom virtual reality breaks down.

c) Other possibility is that they're going to work with the super-bummer but very good Tom King Vision limited series but that doesn't have the Scarlet Witch in it in a major way--however, it does seriously think about AI and androids etc. and they might rip out a few of its best ideas to explore what it means to be the Vision (especially if he's now a completely virtual intelligence). It's possibly that he AND Wanda have to be stuck in a virtual reality because both of them have residual Infinity Stone shit going on and that worries/interests someone good/someone bad and this becomes an exploration of his consciousness primarily. The bit about him dressing up for Halloween in full color feels a bit like that.

Scarlet Witch's powers have always been fairly ill-defined. At one point in the comics she was powerful enough to warp reality and that has manifested in dangerous ways either consciously or subconsciously due to trauma. Also at least at one point it was said that there'd be connection here to the Dr. Strange sequel.

So my take is that she's created some sort of pocket reality here where Vision is "alive" but it's unstable as she mentally keeps trying to block out reality.

 

I hope this is it.

Also, I've seen it described as "disney+'s first sitcom", but that trailer didn't look anything like a sitcom.

? It's set in a sitcom-looking reality. Maybe that's most of the episodes.

There also was an early Vision and Scarlet Witch limited series when they first left the Avengers where they moved to New Jersey and just tried to live a normal suburban life. They may be riffing off that too.

I honestly hope they don't go for Scarlet Witch-reality-warping-powers character. She's been at the heart of some truly terrible shit as a result of that approach.

I'm doubting they are going for the reality-warping Scarlet Witch. Since it has already been stated that this has connections to the Dr. Strange sequel, I'm guessing it will have something to do with trying to bring the Vision back without his connection to that stone since that's what powered him in the first place. It does feel a lot like they are taking some of the tone and ideas from that Tom King Vision series where he created an entire family (wife and kids) and their AI all went in completely different ways. That would be a bold take on the two characters relationship and I wholeheartedly support it.

I'll watch it no matter what story they are taking and I loved the trailer.

Yeah, this is some pocket dimension where Vision isnt technically dead, and Wanda isnt technically real, but yet they are both there. Timey-wimey wibbly wobbly stuff, no happy ending unless Dr. Strange somehow immanentizes the Eschaton and makes Pinnochio into a real boy in his next movie.

--Dave

They never went into any actual detail with how it happened, but Wanda and Quicksilver in the MCU somehow got their powers from the mind stone also. Never really made a whole lot of sense, but there's an added connection there between Vision and Wanda.

They could easily say that because Thanos destroyed the Infinity Stones after the Blip, their energies are sort of cosmically diffused and available to former wielders on a more limited basis. Wanda's the last Mind Stone connected character standing, so maybe she can use that with Strange's help to resurrect the Vision inside an AI-generated environment. (I suspect Strange is going to be dealing with Time Stone-connected issues in his film, considering that was Mordo's reason for turning against him and other sorcerors.) Not sure who would have any remaining connection to the Power Stone, but it might be Star Lord. Jane Foster might be using her connection to the Reality Stone to get the power of Thor.  Captain Marvel seems to be the ongoing wielder of the Space Stone's energies. It's not a bad continuing story contrivance considering how much of the MCU's powers etc. depend on the stones (compared to mutation, etc.)   

I suspect that if Strange ends up really exploring a multiverse, though, that's going to be the mechanism they use to bring a wider range of origins/powers into the MCU.

Reminds me once again that we actually have no MCU explanation for Spider-Man's powers. He's the only major super-powered character so far that isn't powered by super-advanced technology and alien physiology (Thor, Loki), moderately advanced technology (Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Thanos), sorcery (Dr. Strange, Mordo, Loki) or some form of connection to the Infinity Stones (Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Vision, Captain Marvel, Thanos).

Radioactive spider bite, DUH.  :why_so_serious:

Well, yeah. Although they haven't really even gone over that. (Which I'm glad about--it's a blessed relief not to have Spider-Man's origin retold and to for once not have all of his adventures tied to some great conspiracy etc around his origins.) But it does make him the only MCU character who has superpowers that are a sui generis accident of the classic superheroic sort--there's nobody else who has fallen into chemicals, been exposed to radiation, been zapped by cosmic rays. Well, I guess Netflix Daredevil counts. I don't think AOS Inhumans exist in the MCU, though.

I guess Black Panther is the other exception--the herb is a kind of mutagen and it doesn't seem tied to the other existing sources of more-than-human power in the MCU.

Don't forget Hulk!  And Captain Marvel, I think (her getting her powers was the result of some kind of accident with the experimental spaceship doohickey, right)?

Captain Marvel was blasted by the Tesseract / Space Stone.

Hawkeye!

Get. Out.

In the MCU, Hulk, Winter Soldier, Red Skull and Captain America are all products of the same set of experiments with the Super-Soldier Serum. I almost would not be surprised to find out that was traceable to an Infinity Stone ultimately. Also would not be surprised if they decided to retcon Extremis to be yet another Super-Soldier Serum offshoot.

At this point, I'm kind of assuming that post-Dr Strange and Eternals and Shang-Chi they're going to try to set up a new status quo.

I'm sure they are, but they didn't commit to an Infinity Stones meta-plot until Dark World, and didn't unequivocally commit to Infinity Gauntlet until GotG.

I think they're heading for some form of "dimensional horrors/cosmic powers" line, but there's a lot of ways to get there in Marvel, and a lot of spade work to be done before we care.

--Dave

You guys seem to be ignoring what they're doing here - they're constantly evolving the MCU bit by bit to be more fantastical.  You start with a guy with technology.  Then you add super serum soldiers.  Then you add an Alien/God.  Then Aliens.  Then Wizards.  Soon, Mutants.  

I'm betting: Wanda is more powerful than she understood (as her powers tie her to real magic), and as she loses her sanity over her role in Vision's death, she breaks reality to bring him back in an alternate dimension of her making that she sunders and remakes based upon the ideal sitcom stories she has seen.  I Love Lucy, Family Ties, Full House (where she fabricates kids with him)... she tries to have a life with him even though he is dead.  In the end, she has to let him go, but the damage she does to reality is what sets in motion Dr. Strange and the Fucked Up Multiverse.  

I really, really hope not. Those have been consistently my least favorite stories in Marvel history, and I don't think I'm alone in that. They're right up there with Superboy-Prime punching the walls of multiversal reality to reset continuity over at DC.

The more they lean into Wanda being able to alter fucking reality at a whim, the less successful this shit will be narratively. I don't think that's the route they are going because it would make more sense for her to try that with Quicksilver than Vision.

They wanted Joaquin Phoenix to sign a 6 picture contract for Strange, before he walked away, and by the terms Cumberbatch has only appeared in two (not enough screentime in Ragnorok or Endgame). That implies he's supposed to play a major part in the next phase, and he's only confirmed for 1 in his own franchise.

Since his whole thing is protecting our reality from alternate dimensional horrors/cosmic powers (Celestials), and he seems to be slotted to linchpin the next arc the way Tony Stark did the prior one, that's what I base my speculation on. I also expect we're going to see some more of the Elders.

--Dabe

To be fair that has more to do with stuff like Avengers Disassembled and House of M being written by Bendis.

A story concept is not inherently going to fail or succeed.  The crafting, development and delivery of it will determine whether it works or not.  You can tell a good reality warping storyline.  The difficulty level may be higher, but it can be done. 

We have not had a single page for page translation of a storyline of comics into movie.  Everything has been highly adapted, if not completely rewritten.  They do not have to repeat the sins of the past.  However:

1.) As she, Agatha Harkness and Dr. Strange are all coming together in the next couple years of stories, it is likely she is going to be using real magic.
2.) As we see reality warping and Vision returning from the dead, we're likely dealing with altered realities.

I have confidence that the floor of Marvel is Iron Man II quality, and even if this came in at that level, I'd still be amused.

I can rewatch Iron Man II (just did recently). It's ok.

The floor is any serial they've attempted, like Agents of Shield. The Netflix stuff had moments but was so drawn out that ultimately I have zero interest in rewatching any of it. I haven't even bothered with any of the other stuff (Cloak & Dagger etc), though I do remember people here liked Legion, which I thought was also drawn out to convolution unless you're an Aubrey Plaza fan. Our personal favorite was Peggy Carter, because it was a better version of what AoS tried to do (non-superhero Marvel serial). The casting of Jarvis, Peggy, and Stark worked well together onscreen.

After all that, the idea of some convoluted mess of two mediocre characters is not appealing.

Anyway. They've pumped out a lot of mediocre stuff. I don't feel Marvel has had its Mandalorian moment (where a serial surpasses cinema).

You know, I'd love it if this was actually the Truman Show and Vision is trapped in VR.

But that would be expecting too much of Disney

Fair - MAoS was billed as MCU on TV, and it started out that way, but was cast aside.  And, quality - IMO (which few share) - fell off after season 1 when they lost connectivity and direction.  However, if you're going to rail - Inhumans becomes the floor if we include them.

Marvel has not had a Mandalorian moment yet, but there are high hopes for these upcoming D+ series.  Falcon and Winter Soldier could be close to it.  Honestly, Daredevil and Jessica Jones, for me, were pretty dang good, at least in Seasons 1 of each show.  Not Mandalorian good, but very respectable.  

Jessica Jones is better than Mandalorian, and Daredevil, at least the first one, is on the same level as it.

I liked Mandalorian, but I think the shock of star wars that is good without caveats has sent everyone overboard.

I'd put both first seasons of JJ and DD up with Mando's first season. Later seasons on both were not as solid. Let's hope that Mandalorian can keep its feet under it, and maintain or improve from here.

--Dave

Stylistically I like Mando better than the JJ or DD. Also I think all the Netflix Marvel stuff had serious mid-season drag.

If you trimmed the first seasons of Daredevil and JJ I'd agree, but there is more useless fluff that didn't him in both first seasons.  However, Mando's useless fluff was still very entertaining.  You could cut down the key elements into a three hour movie for Mando, but the extra hours of material is all interesting.

Hopefully Disney is bright enough to realize that Mandalorian is now their flagship for the franchise, and not just a content bridge between the ST and the next movie.

On second thought, that would be terrible, Favreau would have 150 Disney executives trying to stick their hand up his ass and play puppeteer.

--Dave

He's been an Executive Producer on many MCU movies -- I'm sure he's used to that by now.

First season of DD was still the peak of the entire thing, and a long slow gradual decline from there (lots of good stuff in that decline).  I liked JJ, but even the first season was not as good as any of the DD stuff.

I agree it was the best of the Netflix Marvel shows - but it was not a gradual decline of show by show.  For example, I liked Daredevil 3 pretty well, but Iron Fist was bad across the board.

DD had incredibly long grunty, violent grimdark fights that lasted for fucking ever.

I never really got past that. Also Daredevil is a lame as fuck character so I guess it was always going to be harder to win me over but for real the fights were awful like the super hero equivalent of Bay Transformer "fights". Not that bad but bad.

Yeah, you're wrong. Like, so wrong we can't even have an argument.

--Dave

Daredevil had some of the best coordinated fights on television, especially in the first season with that hallway homage to Old Boy fight.

I couldn't make it through a single episode of daredevil. TV hero stuff, particularly netflix is all exactly the same kind of terrible. Shitty b tier heroes doing shit b tier shit. The property doesn't even matter.

Mediocre actors playing mediocre roles. I don't even consider any of the television Marvel shit prior to WandaVision to be MCU adjacent, including shit that is. It's just soap opera with masks (sometimes).

There was something of value in DD, JJ and Cage. Iron Fist was a mistake and a kind of baffling one at every level--I'm assuming that one of the appeals of doing Shang Chi was to show that the MCU can do martial arts right.

But basically, each of the properties was brought down by having way way way too many episodes in a season package, by being overly embarrassed at the concept of superheroes, and by not having enough focus on their best ideas and stagings.

Ultimately all four committed the ultimate sin in an age of too much good television: they were all boring for way too much of their air time.

yes when they ripped off old boy that was a fantastic fight scene, credit there. most of the fights versus swarms of deadly hand redshirt ninjas in particular were all incredibly fucking boring. imma be honest. DD just didn't stick with me. I remember foggy, annoying blonde, Rosario and Kingpin (who was especially good and whose storyarcs seemed good) and I remember kung fu guy showing up. but i also remember that every episode had like half a day too much of "realistic" grunting bloody combat. ultraviolence worked great in Punisher and i think it was supposed to be a key story element of DD but honestly it was boring as fuck.

there's a reason comics rarely (at least how i remember them) focused on beating up armies of grunts. that shit is boring. DD was like, every episode we gotta beat up 3 dozen grunts but also DD has to get really fucked up and then we can do a scene of how fucked up he is, it was just tiresome. there was too much of it. what i remember of spider man and iron man and sleepwalker when i collected them was that almost every cover told me "hero takes on X super villain in this issue" because that's what i want to see. not fucking hydra redshirts or ninja redshirts or aim redshirts, its what's always dogshit about skrulls they are all just skrulls interchangeable and boring.

All the comic TV properties out there, especially the DC Arrowverse properties, have all suffered from too many episodes. Or more accurately, too many episodes in one long arc. It's been a problem with an easy solution and I'm not sure why the properties haven't taken advantage of it - most of the arcs are focused too much around a "one big bad behind everything" problem. Hoax is right about the lack of "Spiderman takes on Rocket Racer!" in this episode. Many of them have either shied away from monster of the week episodes because people complain about them or they've done them but only in service of the greater season arc. A 22-episode season should have 3-4 mini arcs with a major one at the end. The Netflix properties should have stopped at 10-episodes, maybe even 8-episode seasons. That tends to be the sweet spot for bingeable shows. The 22-episode season is an unfortunate artifact of network TV. Netflix doing 13-episode seasons seem to be mostly them trying to figure out what's best and overshooting.

I think they also shied away from "enemy of the week" because they were all made on the cheap (hello, Perlmutter, you fucker). Even relatively cheap-ass villains with one-note gimmicks are more expensive to show on-screen and take more thought in terms of staging, etc.

But there really isn't any excuse for having superheroes with boring fight scenes because there are plenty of models for how to do more-or-less superheroic combat right where it's always exciting--you make the environment a challenge in its own right in some way (buildings on fire, need to not be seen or detected, need to prevent danger to civilians, need to protect specific objects or people, rooftops/bridges/heights, etc.), you create different kinds of emotional investments based on the scenes before (hero sad, hero happy, hero angry, hero doubting), you have the hero chased or being chased, etc. This is familiar stuff--if the showrunners and directors can't figure out how to make every scene of that kind have a payoff (or don't have the budget for it) better to just leave it be and not make the show.

That was my problem with Daredevil as well as all the other season of the netflix marvel shows.  With the execption of Kilgrave and Kingpin in the first year of each show, I found the villans really terrible and uncompelling.   It was as if the writers forgot they had to write the villan to and it became simply directionless.

You didn't like Mahershala Ali (Cottonmouth) in Luke Cage? He was my favorite villain of the Netflix stuff.

They probably should have ended it with him. Diamondback was awful (the actor that plays him just comes across as way too creepy, same deal with Boardwalk Empire).

The Netflix shows actually batted pretty well overall: Kilgrave and Kingpin are as good as anything the MCU has had to offer, if not better. Kilgrave is a quantum leap better than his comics inspiration, in fact. Cottonmouth was also pretty good.

MCU at this point has: Loki (great), Killmonger (great--there's something about the letter K, I guess?), Thanos (surprisingly good, given how cheese he is in the comics). Honorable mention: Nebula and Vulture. Maybe Hela, who is convincingly bad and has a touch of an actual reason for being bad.

At that point, the Netflix shows run out of anything worth talking about (still so depressing that the Defenders couldn't muster a villain that made that all pay off). But so does the MCU, really: Zemo is just a plot device made flesh, Ultron was a nice try but basically a failure, the Red Skull was kind of yeah I guess, Iron Man 1-3 didn't yield an actual villain of note but a villain deconstruction of note, both Ant-Man films have been like "good thing this is fun because the antagonists are just meh", and Mysterio was "sure, good twist".

The quality of the show dropped like a rock after Ali was no longer in it.

Snake Plissken was also good as a villain. And Jessica Jones' mother.

Most of the MCU movies suffer from having to shoehorn a villain that just happens to have the same exact powers as the hero.

Old comics narratives have villains who are either driven by uncontrollable emotional or psychological forces, mostly some variant on pulp versions of mental illness and pathology, occasionally by something marginally more 'rational' like seeking vengeance for slights real and imagined, or they have operatic villains who want to conquer the world, more or less, again in a fairly pulp fashion.

Later comics narratives have taken the world conqueror types and have tried to either give them more ideological aspirations (Ra's al-Ghul being a really severe environmentalist, say) or to have them realize that maybe ruling the world overtly is a strange goal to have while also thinking in slightly more complicated ways about what world-ruling really looks like. (Doom is the best example of this: at least three times now he's succeeded in actually ruling the world and has had to admit to himself that it doesn't really satisfy him, partly because he's had to mind-control people to do it.) The villains driven by pathology are still around but sometimes are more complicated. What's been added are people who have a genuine reason to dislike the heroes or who are angry at being marginalized or treated poorly by society--righteous motivations, bad methods.  And people who are simply just looking for financial or personal gain with an indifference to whomever gets in the way.

It's harder to come up with that kind of antagonist in a two-hour film, esp. if you're trying to establish the protagonist(s) also, while also staying inside family-friendly lines that puts certain kinds of pathologies and violent sensibilities off limits. An awful lot of superhero films try to make it happen by folding the entire arc of the villain's story into the film and connecting the hero and villain's stories rather than have the villain have pre-existing motivations and have them just cross the hero's story. I think the MCU films need to begin to have a bit more of that--villains who have motivations that come from outside the hero's own story and situation and who happen to intersect with the hero through happenstance or through mutual interest in a situation or objective.

Michael Keaton NAILED it as the Vulture. Making him MJ's dad and interacting with Peter outside the whole hero/villain thing worked so well (I haven't seen Far From Home yet, Fox doesn't stream as nicely as Didny, though some has made it onto Didny+ now). Motivations as you say, and an actor who can dig into the role (and the effects folks to get the costumes right and cool). The scene where he figures out Parker is Spidey in the car is golden. I wanted more of Chapelle as the Shocker, he made a terrible old villain fresh and believable, if not deep.

I've always disliked Toomes and Homecoming made me love him (as a villain no homo).

Vulture wasn't MJ's dad ... MJ wasn't his Homecoming date.

I understand the transposition, though--the character is in the MJ role. The actual MJ in the films is a really interesting hybrid of MJ and Gwen, really.

And yeah, the Vulture is a good reimagining--a guy with understandable resentments and a family motivation. They need a lot more of that for Spidey in particular, who fights street-level guys that he could potentially connect with or feel sympathy for.

Liz Toomes is the daughter of Adrian Toomes, aka the "Vulture". She's also the one Peter asked to the dance. "MJ" is Michelle Jones, and yes that confused me too for a while since "MJ" is Mary Jane, not Michelle Jones, in my, and probably most people who grew up on the comic books and not the movies, Spider-Man head-canon.

...and may not end up being the MJ of the comics.  I think she may end up being our Gwen Stacey.  *Swik* *Snap*

Sheesh  :why_so_serious: