From the mind of friendly neighborhood paragraph stacker Daniel P. Finney of Des Moines, Iowa.
Let’s be honest: The first two episodes of “WandaVision” make no damn sense.
The new Marvel TV series on Disney+ begins in black and white like an old episode of “Bewitched” with our heroes Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) apparently living a zany early 1960s sitcom lifestyle — complete with laugh track.
Vision supposedly died in “Avengers: Infinity War.” He died twice, actually. Wanda killed him once to save the universe. Thanos hit reset on the game and killed Vision to take the stone from his skull and snap half the universe out of existence.
The next time we saw Wanda, she used her powers of deus ex machina to put the smackdown on Thanos.
Thanos rolls his 1D20 and has his spaceship blow stuff up for a few minutes. After that, Wanda shares sniffles by a pond with Hawkeye over the dead, which included Vision.
Vision is back looking like a red-faced baboon in a green hoodie. Wanda is performing witchy tricks that would make Elizabeth Montgomery jealous in an effort to hide their collective weirdness from the nosy neighbor, oppressive boss and a collection of TV tropes so old you’d think you fell asleep during a MeTV marathon.
How did we get here? TBD.
Maybe there’s a clue in the title: “WandaVision,” like television.
There seems to be people trying to reach Wanda from the outside world. It blew up a radio at the neighborhood bully’s house.
The whole thing could be in Wanda’s head. That’s happened in the comics.
If it feels as if I’m not making things any clearer, that’s exactly right.
Wanda, known as the Scarlet Witch in comics, and Vision have some of the most complicated backstories in Marvel Comics history.
I tried to explain their comics’ origins to a non-comics friend and less than halfway through she said, “I’m to the point where all I can hear is angry bees buzzing in my head.”
The movie universe summed up Wanda and her dead brother, Pietro, as “He’s fast and she’s weird.”
Her powers are making red gooey things and doing whatever the writer needs in that scene.
The writer of “WandaVision” needed her to contour whole objects out of the air, teleport people into magic boxes and make lobster thermidor with copious amounts of levitation.
Vision can alter his density to make himself intangible or diamond-hard. He can shoot lasers out of the gem in his head. And he’s an android.
He’s technically a synthetic human, but let’s not get those Isaac Asimov “I, Robot” people into this.
The point is, Wanda and Vision have never made sense. Not in comics. Not in film. Not in this streaming show.
So just go with it. Right now, they’re doing schtick and it’s at least as amusing as an actual episode of “Bewitched.”
And Elizabeth Montgomery never looked as good as Elizabeth Olsen in a magician’s assistant costume.
Yeah, I know. I’m not supposed to say that.
Don’t tell me how to enjoy things.
And don’t try to figure out “WandaVision.”
Just watch. See what happens. But don’t expect it to ever make sense.
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