How Jac Schaeffer created WandaVision inside the Marvel machine

WandaVision, the Disney + series that re-established the appeal of the Marvel franchise after the pandemic put it on hiatus, has always been conceived as a hybrid. It was both a superhero saga and a sitcom, a fun part of nostalgic travel, and a dramatic exploration of grief in a comic book setting. So when Jac Schaeffer – a writer who contributed to Marvel movie scripts, including Captain marvel and the next one Black Widow – took on the role of showrunner for the series, she approached it from a similar cross-pollinated location. She hired writers with experience in multiple genres, drew on influences from a variety of TV shows, and did the job of tying the stories from the first Disney + Marvel TV series directly into the Marvel movies. previous and future, blurring another pop-cultural line. : the one between movies and television.

While Marvel critics, and, for that matter, even fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, may view the Marvel creative realm as something akin to a factory, given the amount of content it produces. , Schaeffer describes the creation process WandaVision as collaborative and inspiring. “It was a crazy mix of everything I love,” Schaeffer said on a recent phone call.

After the series finale, Schaffer broke down for Vulture how his vision informed WandaVision.

The basic premise for WandaVision was designed by Kevin Feige, Marvel Creative Director and mastermind of the MCU. He came up with the idea of ​​using the series to explore the grief of Wanda Maximoff, and to have Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and her Synthezoid Love Vision (Paul Bettany) time travel through classic sitcoms.

“They had done internal developments on what it would look like and what it was to create the false reality,” Schaeffer says. “They uploaded that information to me, and I ruminated on it all and basically pitched what I was thinking for the season, breaking down the episodes and what I considered the core arc of the series to be.

The path WandaVision would be tied to future future MCUs had also been mostly plotted by Feige, but Schaeffer still had plenty of room to color between the lines. One approach she considered and then abandoned was to structure the penultimate episode, in which Wanda looks back on her childhood in Sokovia, like a riff on CSI.

“Once we’ve had the Writers ‘Room and took a really close look at what the episodes would be – and as you do in a Writers’ Room, it all just gets sharper and more refined. – it became clear that the focus should be family and the family sitcom, ”she said. “We wanted to be really daring in all of our influences and how we could consistently break form in different ways, but it required a measure of discipline not to fly into space.”

Schaeffer’s previous experience was mostly on the film side, and she had never been a showrunner before. But given the fluid nature of the genre WandaVision she wanted a mix of voices and points of view. Half of the writers were men and the other half were women, but including Schaeffer herself and producer Mary Livanos, she says the venue was predominantly female. The balance between Marvel obsessives and non-Marvel obsessives was also fairly evenly distributed.

“The writers in my bedroom were all Marvel fans to varying degrees,” Schaeffer says. “Some people knew it all and leaned in that direction and others would be general TV fans and just wanted to make a great show.”

Since sitcoms were such an important part of the series, she sought out people with experience writing for these types of shows, as well as others.

“[I brought on] Bobak Esfarjani, who is a writer on Manifesto, “she explains.” Mackenzie Dohr was a writer on both The Mindy project and Locke and key. She has mythology and puzzle box work, and she has sitcom work. Peter Cameron worked on Carnival row. What I wanted more than anything was if someone watched everyone’s credits they wouldn’t have a clue what our show was. It was a conscious choice.

The pandemic has caused delays in the MCU’s release schedule, particularly the postponement of Black WidowThe opening of the series, which is now scheduled for May 7. This means that Phase Four of the MCU Saga ended with the launch with WandaVision, which established that the Marvel Studios television series will now share the same storytelling weight with the films.

“What I find special about the MCU’s foray into television is that they don’t approach it with distinction. [between film and TV]», Says Schaeffer. “It’s just an opportunity to tell more than one story. They apply the same amount of energy, dedication, and budget to making the series as they do to the features. “

The writing process, however, is not the same as that of films.

“This is the opportunity to tell a bigger story,” says Schaeffer. “For me that translated into telling an emotional story, digging deeper with Wanda and with Vision, and also seeing the mundane moments and the relaxed moments, and not everything being such a frenzy. It was very different.

As Wanda revisits the television that comforted her as a child, Schaeffer’s work on WandaVision allowed him to incorporate some of his favorite pop-cultural influences, including shows such as Lost, The twilight zone, and Amazing stories and movies like Pleasantville, The Truman Show, Annihilation, and, a true deep cut, the 1992 John Ritter – Pam Dawber comedy Stay tuned, in which a couple are sucked into a version of hell where they are forced to star in various nightmarish TV shows.

“Throughout my life, I have also been an avid sitcom watcher,” she says. “The days of the week were defined by the shows that night. Tuesday is Who is the boss and Growing pains, Thursday is Cosby lounge – it was all so important to me.

Schaeffer points to a key moment in the WandaVision finale as a specific nod to something sitcoms have done often: “One of the tropes of the sitcom finale is turning out the lights – we’re leaving home. In that final scene where Vision turns the light back on, that moment grew out of those conversations about saying goodbye.

The sadness of the possible final farewell between Wanda and Vision was announced in the penultimate episode. One line in particular from this pre-final – “What is heartbreak if not enduring love?” – caused a sensation online. Like everything in this hybrid-focused project, inspiration for the line came from several sources.

Although Laura Donney is the credited author of this episode, this piece of dialogue was only written when the cast and crew prepared to shoot the scene in which Wanda and Vision have their grief conversation.

“Paul [Bettany] continued to talk about the line in Avengers: Age of Ultron“A thing is not beautiful because it lasts,” recalls Schaeffer. “He kept talking about Vision’s ability, which is not human, to make statements that so eloquently define human experiences. We were looking, What is that? I wrote several versions of it and it still didn’t. It was my assistant, who is herself a very talented writer, who came up with the phrase “persevere” and it clicked. I knew immediately that was it. It makes my heart swell with pride because I think the line was born out of all the hard work everyone did on this show. I didn’t expect him to be called at all.

Schaeffer is well aware that the line, and WandaVision as a whole, may have touched a nerve because so many people have been grieving over the past year: for loved ones lost to COVID, for routines that have been broken, for the ability to see the people in person, and everything else in the pandemic has swept away. Since the series was written in 2019 and mostly shot before the virus stopped things – “We shot about 75% of it before the pandemic,” Schaeffer says – it was a complete accident.

“A pandemic is not a gift. It’s not something we want and no one is happy about it, ”she says. “But there is a bizarre and beautiful symmetry and a coincidence in the way the series started.”

And while she is very flattered by the people who have praised WandaVision for his idiosyncratic approach to a Marvel story, his response to that praise is, and rightly so, to verify the name of another TV show.

“People are saying a lot of really wonderful things about our show and that it’s so groundbreaking and so original and breaking the rules,” she says. “My answer is: sit down and watch I can destroy you. “

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