Wandavision just finished so it's time for the airing of grievances (I got a lot of problems with you people!). Overall it was a mess, but with some key redeeming qualities that made it worthwhile.
Let's start with the Good.
Marvel took a chance. They did something out-of-the-box creative and it worked. Tumbling through the decades in sitcoms was fun and clever and done very skillfully. It even got a well motivated cause. Given their unprecedented success, it would have been very easy for Marvel, and their Disney overlords, to just do the same thing over and over, but they broke the mold (at first). This bodes well.
There were flashes of really intelligent writing, mostly concerning Vision. There was a wonderful line about grief...I think it was "What is grief but the persistence of love?" And then there was the whole Theseus' Ship allegory. At least one person in the writer's room was trying to reach a stretch goal.
What went wrong? So many things.
Hand-wavy, contrived powers. I'm still not clear on the actual abilities of the various super-powered characters in this. One of the key advantages early Marvel had was, once you suspend your disbelief in superheroes, there was a cogent hierarchy of relative powers. That has withered over the years, but here it seems like anyone can be as strong or as weak as they need to be for the plotline. (I admit this is a bit of a geeky critique.)
Blunt, poorly integrated MCU service. A lot of what went on here had little or no development but simply occurred to forward the planned MCU narrative for the future. I understand the need for this, but it's not an excuse for jarring the show. Example: We got a full two-and-a-half hour, four-star movie to introduce Vision. We got about fifteen minutes of b-story to introduce White Vision and then he vanished after a quick fight, presumably because he is needed for something upcoming.
Too cute fan teases. Any interviews with cast and crew always contained allusions to big surprises. None panned out. Expectations were dashed rather than fulfilled (Chekov's gun unfired). A single exception: The dick joke. Which wasn't funny.
A disastrous finale. The finale was worthy of Netflix Marvel. Some of that was due to Covid and them not having the time or people necessary to do what they wanted, but I can't imagine what they would have done to save it or why they just didn;t delay it to get what they wanted.
The biggest issue: neither of the main characters are worth the spotlight. The ultimate problem is that neither Wanda nor Vision can carry the lead. They were fine as side players in the Avengers, but ultimately Wandavision was in dire need of one of the more charismatic characters played by one of the perfectly casted actors with exceptional comic timing that characterized the films. The new superhero they added, Monica Rambeau, is not a lead either. The most vibrant characters were Jimmy Woo (Randall Park from Ant-Man) and Darcy Lewis (Kat Denning from Thor) and they were given mere seconds of airtime in the disaster last episode.
It is not unexpected for Marvel to fall. It had to happen. A dozen years of pretty much non-stop five-star movies was a remarkable achievement but to expect it to continue at that level is delusional. It's now a question of how deep the fall will go. By the time we are done with the follow up series (Falcon and The Winter Soldier, Loki) we'll have a good idea.
