Marvel’s WandaVision on Disney Plus: first reactions, start date, all your questions answered

Welcome to WandaVision, a new Marvel TV series coming to Disney Plus on Friday, January 15 that combines superhero action with 1950s sitcom style. This could be the weirdest entry to the universe Marvel cinematic to date, and we’re totally here for it. Here’s everything we know so far.

The series stars Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany reprising their roles from the Avengers films as overpowered romantic partners Wanda Maximoff (aka Scarlet Witch) and Vision. WandaVision, geddit?

Trailers

“It’s going to get weird,” Olsen told Comic-Con. Numerous trailers and TV spots reveal what she means. All of the promo spots show Wanda and Vision as happy suburban grooms living in what appears to be a 1950s sitcom, but time travel takes them to the 1970s and other decades. Buckle up, this show won’t follow a traditional timeline.

First reactions

Official reviews will be released later this week, but here’s a sample of the early reactions from critics and fans who saw the first episodes.

“A tremendous mix of great weirdness and a sore heart,” wrote Alex Biese, reporter for Asbury Park Press.

“I am stunned by the imagination, creativity and risks of the show” wrote CinemaBlend’s Sean O’Connell. “Each episode brilliantly recreates a classic sitcom model, but also fuels a much larger mystery with huge Marvel ramifications.”

Wrote Hoai-Tran Bui of SlashFilm, “WandaVision is a tantalizing experience with Lynch undertones that’s almost unnerving dedicated to slowly playing out its mystery. (Wanted more!).”

Characters and plot

Wanda

Wanda Maximoff, aka Scarlet Witch, first appeared in Marvel Comics in 1964 and has a complex story – and a twin brother, Pietro / Quicksilver. In most comedy stories, they were seen as mutants, born with superhuman powers, and their parentage is complicated and ever-changing. The X-Men’s powerful foe Magneto would have been their father first, but later intrigues juggled the family tree. The series would reveal why Wanda is also referred to as “Scarlet Witch”. No word on whether her twin will show up.

Vision

Vision has had a very different journey from that of his wife. He’s obviously an android, but very special, with human emotions, and so he’s able to maintain a romantic relationship with Wanda and marry her later. While he’s obviously an android in most depictions, one of the trailers shows him spinning and his features settling into a more human look, shedding red skin and gaining human hair – arguably. so that the neighbors are not alarmed. (In what appears to be a Halloween scene, he can step out in his original guise, fooling everyone into thinking it’s just a great costume.)

Kids?

At one point in the comics, the couple have twins, but WandaVision seems more inspired by a 2016 suburban comic book series in which Vision is married to someone else and has a son and daughter. In the previews, Wanda appears suddenly pregnant, and another shows the couple each holding a baby, so the twins appear to be in the game. In a preview scene, Debra Jo Rupp (Eric’s mother on That ’70s Show) asks them why they don’t have kids, so the kids don’t have to show up right away.

Until death do us part

Vision does have a sad ending in the Marvel big-screen movies, but he’s obviously a major part of WandaVision – viewers just don’t know how. Some think the sitcom-style perfection depicted in WandaVision is quite a dream she has to resurrect her husband and live a normal life. And in a preview scene, the character of Kathryn Hahn, dressed as a witch, tells Vision in shock that he’s dead. But comics love alternate realities and different universes, so there’s no real way to find out.

Time travel

Prepare for all kinds of retro sitcom shots as the show seems to be jumping from decade to decade. Scenes from the 1950s dominate the previews, with Wanda in a satin dress and pearls cleaning up, while Vision gets dressed and heads off to work. But there are also hippie sons from the 1960s, colors and wild hair from the 1970s and even aerobics from the 1980s. If you are familiar with your classic sitcoms, you are sure to pick up plenty of tributes – one. scene shows a house interior that looks a lot like the Brady Bunch house, and in another, Vision and Wanda have I Love Lucy-style twin beds, which they quickly push together.

Release date

the the show will premiere on January 15th, on Disney Plus, the $ 7-per-month streaming service that offers an extensive catalog of new and old shows and movies. It will premiere with two episodes at a time, with the third episode airing a week later on January 22. It will last nine episodes in total.

Phase four

WandaVision takes place after the events of Avengers: Endgame, and its plot will lead directly to Wanda’s appearance in Doctor Strange: In The Multiverse of Madness, which hits theaters in March 2022. The series is the first title. from Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which also includes Disney Plus TV shows featuring The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight and She-Hulk — Although the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted production.

The music

In a TV spot released Jan. 4, the show reveals a Brady Bunch / Patty Duke Show-style sitcom theme song, the genre that explains the plot of each episode in case you just wake up from a style snap. Thanos and that you would need to know who these people are. Sounds catchy? It should – it was written by Oscar-winning Frozen songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, who also wrote unique songs for several episodes, ranging from the 1950s to the early 2000s.

Lopez said in a press release that director Matt Shakman is a friend from college, and the couple were thrilled and challenged to mix “the bright feeling of American sitcoms” with the “deep sense of unease” of WandaVision. Do Wanda and Vision want to build a snowman? It doesn’t have to be a snowman.

Throw away

The studio shared more details at the Disney D23 convention, including more actors and team members. Game of Thrones director Matt Shakman will helm the series.

• Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff, aka the mutant superhero Scarlet Witch
• Paul Bettany as Vision, her android husband and companion Avenger, who may or may not be dead
• Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau, daughter of Carol Danvers’ best friend in Captain Marvel.
• Kat Dennings as Darcy Lewis, known to Marvel fans as Jane Foster’s assistant in the Thor movies
• Randall Park as FBI Agent Jimmy Woo, from Ant-Man and the Wasp
• Kathryn Hahn as ‘inquisitive neighbor’, allegedly Marvel witch Agatha Harkness
• Debra Jo Rupp is listed as a guest star, so maybe not a huge role. However, her character, Wanda and Vision’s neighbor Mrs. Heart, plays a plum role in the previews, demanding that the super-couple answer questions about their marriage and family.
• Fred Melamed plays Mr. Heart, Rupp’s character husband.

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