WandaVision

[osprey_archer]

I thought I had at last escaped the trammels of the MCU, but then multiple friends and also various news magazines informed me that I just HAD to watch WandaVision, and even though I did not care about (1) Wanda, (2) Vision, or (3) Wanda/Vision as a ship (two dull tastes that are somehow even more dull together?) eventually I cracked and did watched it.

I now care about Wanda, Vision, AND Wanda/Vision. Rarely have I felt so bitter about being forced to have feelings about a character. Apparently when they actually get character development and are allowed to interact with each other, they are... actually interesting? And funny? WHO KNEW. A MYSTERY.

As much as I'm enjoying the show, it's actually only strengthening my beef with the MCU as a whole, because it shows how shoddy the character work has become in the movies. This is character groundwork that they should have laid back in Age of Ultron, when they first introduced Wanda and Vision, instead of six years later in a supplementary TV show that many people will never see.



I'm particularly peeved that we only now! in the year of our lord 2021! got that flashback scene to Wanda and Pietro's defining childhood trauma, when a Stark missile hit their apartment and killed their parents. Putting some version of that scene into Age of Ultron, even a far shorter one, might have made me care about Wanda and Pietro's characters. Yes, yes, Wanda and Pietro tell the story, but that's not the same as seeing it.

And if I had cared I might have found it less ridiculous when Wanda and Pietro stopped working for Hydra and the Avengers instantly gather them into the bosom of the team. Also, I might have actually given a damn when Pietro died - although probably not much of one because having a guy whose superpower is "faster than a speeding bullet" die of bullet wounds is still a stupid cause of death. As it is, the first time in my life I gave a damn about Pietro was when not!Pietro shows up on this TV show and we get to see him, you know, actually interact with Wanda.

On a different note, this show has also strengthened my feeling that you could fill a thimble with what the people at the MCU know about ethics and still have room to spare, but tbh I expect nothing more, obviously it's bad that Wanda has taken an entire town hostage in her grief-sitcom-delusion, and just as obviously there will be no real consequences because the MCU would not function if superheroes suffered consequences for their actions ever. Do I care? Eh, whatever. At this point it's one of those things you have to suspend disbelief about when you partake of an MCU property. In some worlds, ghosts exist; in the MCU Superheroes Are Good no matter what they do.

Comments

less squee

[kore]

Altho to tell the truth, I was way less thrilled by one big fail continuing on from the MCU movies -- as far as I can tell Wanda's still not Jewish in the show (altho I did appreciate them removing that GIANT crucifix from her Avengers compound bedroom, WTF even was that), and the writers still have comics-canonically Jewish and minority characters VOLUNTEERING FOR HYDRA, characters who happen to be twins. That's just a giant fucking mess of Fail. They also blipped right over the possibility of Wanda observing Jewish burial customs, which makes her grief over how Vision's body is being treated even worse. But I don't think we've had an openly Jewish character in the MCU yet, altho I haven't seen the Spiderman movies.

(Maybe Dr Erskine in the first Cap movie, and maybe possibly Howard Stark in Agent Carter, but I think that's it. -- I did just look it up, and Peter B. Parker breaks a glass at his wedding in Spider-Verse and the director Rodney Rothman said unequivocally in interviews that the character was Jewish. So I missed at least one.)

Re: less squee

[osprey_archer]

I think the writers are locked into the "volunteering for Hydra" backstory at this point - that's the very first thing we learn about Wanda and Pietro when they're introduced in the Winter Soldier end credits scene, and it's reiterated at length in Age of Ultron. It wasn't a good idea in the first place (if nothing else, couldn't Wanda and Pietro have volunteered for a DIFFERENT shady organization? It's not like the MCU has a shortage...) but it's too deeply embedded in the characters' MCU backstories to retcon.

Also, TBH, I think the writers see "volunteering for Hydra" in the same way they see "taking a town hostage because grief": to them it's an interesting character fact about Wanda, not, like, something that has any moral implications.

Re: less squee

[kore]

Hand to God, I thought they thought they were volunteering for SHIELD or some not-Nazi organization, altho now I can't remember if I might have read that in the Sceptered Isle comic or if my brain just made it up out of desperation.

Altho frankly, since Wanda has been in the team movies since AoU and MCU tends not to have sympathetic (or good) villains (I think Killmonger is one of the very few exceptions), she's not getting a villain edit, no -- they didn't do that even in Civil War, where she was criticized not for joining Ultron or unleashing the Hulk upon a densely populated city, but an accident when she was part of the team. Nat and Gamora also got very light treatments compared to how they can be in the comics, particularly Gamora -- they just basically made a different and much more sympathetic character (with much less autonomy). And stuff like Tony making Ultron pretty much got glossed over too -- "You made a murderbot?!" is a punchline, and Tony's still defending his AoU actions in Endgame, and the movie never really contradicts him on it. It's just Tony *jazzhands*

-- Zemo could be a more interesting villain, if they move beyond "You killed my family, prepare to die" and to him actually having a problem with superheroes, which could tie in with Vision's observation in CW that the superheroes seem to bring trouble, not end it (paraphrasing). But I get the feeling the end of the Avengers is going to lead to the triumphant resurrection of Avengers 2.0, Young Avengers, so that idea will probably not be explored very seriously. (And to be fair, asking a giant revenue-generating pop culture machine worth billions and billions which is based on superheroes to critically examine the idea of superheroes is maybe a little unrealistic in terms of late capitalism.)

Re: less squee

[osprey_archer]

I think the MCU would be a lot better off if it stopped gesturing in the direction of critically examining superheroes. They keep having their heroes do eminently criticizable things (like Tony making the murderbot that, you know, almost destroys the world...), and sometimes someone even does criticize them (usually a bad guy ofc), but it always comes to nothing and just ends up reinforcing the idea that the superheroes are always right.

I'm pretty sure there is nothing that the superheroes could do that the movies would not exonerate them for. Like, again, Wanda has taken an entire town hostage, and the TV series treats it just seriously enough to give us, like, *stakes*, but at the same time it doesn't really want us to care about any of those people.

They're pretending to critically examine the idea of superheroes because that's cool and edgy right now, but at the same time they want us to uncritically root for the heroes - they're trying to have their cake and eat it too, basically. If they dropped the pretense of criticizing the idea of superheroes, I bet they'd have the superheroes do fewer dodgy things overall.