daily dose of the avengers

Tony: Mine just says ‘Tony, no’.

Tony: Exactly. I bottle up negative and positive emotions so they cancel out.

Tony: It’s called ‘every time I’m depressed I take a drink’.

Steve: That game exists.

WHERE IS VISION

THE ONE WITH THE MEMORIES

WandaVision

season 1 episode 1: recap and review

[ spoiler alert ]

obviously, this will contain spoilers from WandaVision, but also from Infinity War and Endgame, so proceed with caution

the title’s self-explanatory, so if you haven’t seen any of the WandaVision episodes and you don’t want anything to get spoiled, DO NOT READ THIS. just move on and get a sandwich or something—

[ one more spoiler alert ]

anyway...to get to the actual show. so i’ll admit that i completely forgot it was coming out till, like, this morning when I saw it on instagram. but no regrets watching the first episode first thing this morning because the show is off to a really good start!

the first two episodes are on Disney+ and are about 30 minutes long each, excluding, like, 8 minutes of credits.

the first episode is all basically Wanda and Vision in this black-and-white, 80s-themed sitcom (with the laughing and everything) where they’re leaving the “American dream” and a suburban life — fit with the poofy dresses, perms and period-appropriate sexism! the show takes place in a square-ish frame, which annoyed me at first but becomes important later on.

this was a confusing start (duh) because last we heard Vision died in Endgame and Wanda was by the lake with Rhodey etc, but all it did was make me even more curious because then I genuinely wanted to know what happened to them.

so anyway, they live through this suburban life, apparently married (?) and have a heart marked on the calendar for this day — except neither of them know what it stands for! (an anniversary, Wanda guesses)

throughout the day, Wanda speaks to her friendly neighbour, Vision works at a computing company, and then they have his boss and his wife over for dinner — which is when the issues start to arise. Wanda cooks using her powers, which they’re forced to hide from their guests, so there are small reminders throughout the episode that everything isn’t as it seems! which is good, because I genuinely forgot that this was a Marvel show at one point.

then during dinner, Vision’s boss starts to choke, and that’s where it gets a little freaky — because his wife doesn’t seem to care and simply carries on laughing, while Wanda stares on in horror. she only urges Vision to help the moment his boss is on the floor, but there’s a long stretch of time where it’s just ominous music and a sharp slap back to reality.

almost immediately, once that’s done, everything goes right back to normal and the boss and his wife leave the house. Wanda and Vision discuss their “story”, and she makes them wedding rings, but really it’s just a reminder that none of this is real.

in fact, at the end of the episode, the screen zooms out and the frame expands to a bigger rectangle, and Wanda and Vision are actually a TV programme on a television screen (?????) which literally made me gasp. you can see someone’s hand in front of the TV, and they seem to be in some high-tech place — S.H.I.E.L.D. maybe? Stark Industries? Avengers Compound?

unfortunately that’s the end of the first episode, and no, there wasn’t an end-credit scene (disappointingly).

[ review ]

so I honestly have very high hopes for this show — as someone who used to be really into Marvel and has drifted a little since Endgame — and am super excited for FINALLY some new material.

the show looks really good; I quite like the whole 80s theme and it was easy to forget that this was a Marvel show and not some old sitcom. the script is good — cheesy and era-typical jokes — while also hinting at their previous lives, mainly when they can’t construct a story of how they met for Vision’s colleagues, and the fact that Wanda is clearly not a suburban housewife (thank goodness).

my guess (and everybody’s, really) is that Wanda’s constructed some kind of false reality for herself. not sure whether it was a coping mechanism — she has lost her brother and her boyfriend after all and got dusted — or an experiment of some kind, but someone is monitoring it so that has to count for something.

I also think that episode 2 will show the reality breaking down, but I don’t think she’ll go back to her ‘real life’ and all that stuff until a bit further into the show (episode 3, hopefully?).

I do recommend the show, which I know isn’t streaming everywhere as of yet, and it sucks that it’s only on Disney+, but I do think it’s off to a good start, and I can’t wait till this whole ‘fake reality’ thing breaks so we can see what’s going on behind the scenes (pun unintended).

wandavision starts streaming today!