Disney+'s WandaVision (2020) 6 6

[fantastic_four]

Marvel posted a few pics of a forthcoming Hot Toys version of Wanda's new costume which I only post here because you can see its design more clearly in this pic than you can in the show.  Looks like the cape and hood along with the tiara are a part of the complete new design, although oddly we never saw this complete version in the show.

[Westy Steve]

7 hours ago, fantastic_four said:

We hadn't, there's just nothing else for over a year before Multiverse of Madness tied everything up.

But that was until I heard Kevin Smith's interview with the director.  He spoke rather definitively about the idea that Agatha was the only hidden element and that Wanda was responsible for everything we saw in Westview.  It was never the mystery show the hints suggested at.

OK, well that is disappointing.  I was wondering if maybe we'd see Mephisto further down the road.  Hmm...the production may have been under strict orders to "do no harm" to the MCU.  Still, I can't help but feel that the executives at Disney may have noticed that advancing their overall story arc a little bit through Disney plus might keep the coals in the fire hotter.

[Hibou]

2 hours ago, fantastic_four said:

Marvel posted a few pics of a forthcoming Hot Toys version of Wanda's new costume which I only post here because you can see its design more clearly in this pic than you can in the show.  Looks like the cape and hood along with the tiara are a part of the complete new design, although oddly we never saw this complete version in the show.

That looks fantastic!

[Hibou]

So I just had to look up that figure (and preorder one in the process), but this looks interesting. Although it's blurred, she may come with the Darkhold. 🤔

 

[Juno Beach]

Dear Hot Toys,

Please make a version in her Halloween costume.

Signed, 

Comic Fandom

[theCapraAegagrus]

I am disappointed, because the show needs to be a good story in and of itself. Most of the Infinity Saga was good, not because of the lead-in to Thanos, but because the movie in a vacuum (or its own trilogy) was compelling.

I couldn't care less if 3 years down the road they retcon the show by Mephisto dialoging he was taking jogs on the sidewalk in front of her house every day inside the hex supervising Agatha. WandaVision needed to be good by itself.

[fantastic_four]

8 hours ago, Hibou said:

So I just had to look up that figure (and preorder one in the process), but this looks interesting. Although it's blurred, she may come with the Darkhold. 🤔

 

Cool.  At the time I posed my pic Sideshow didn't even have her on their site yet, but two hours later when you looked I guess they did and I do see it now.

Hasbro is doing a 6" figure of her, and theirs has no cape or hood and she looks like we mostly saw her in the show.  The only time you see the cape and hood is in that final CGI scene where she's flying off, so they must have added the cape and hood late in production after filming was over.  Hasbro's releases in a month or two and they usually take about a year to go from idea to produced item, so that also suggests they only recently added the cape and hood into her new design.  Hot Toys doesn't release theirs for well over a year so they must have just created their prototype within the last few months after the cape was added.

Edited March 9, 2021 by fantastic_four

[@therealsilvermane]

9 hours ago, Westy Steve said:

OK, well that is disappointing.  I was wondering if maybe we'd see Mephisto further down the road.  Hmm...the production may have been under strict orders to "do no harm" to the MCU.  Still, I can't help but feel that the executives at Disney may have noticed that advancing their overall story arc a little bit through Disney plus might keep the coals in the fire hotter.

I for sure thought Mephisto was going to pop up at some point in the show.

However, with Monica's revelation early in the series that "it's all Wanda," I think it was important to the character development and powering up of Wanda, that the whole thing not be blamed on another omnipotent patriarchal character like in the past. To do so would have taken away and diminished her new more powerful role as the Scarlet Witch and also let her off the hook a little too easy, as in, "it was never Wanda, it was always the devil!" which would have been a tired and overused excuse. To have introduced a new all powerful character like Mephisto or Chthon at the end to take all the responsibility and have Dr Strange come in at the end to save the day would have just diminished Wanda in her own show. Marvel took the right path in not introducing a big bad or a Sorcerer Supreme saviour, thus keeping the focus and spotlight on the true rising star here.

As it is now, though Wanda was given some closure and hope for the future, she still has to deal with the fact that it was her and only her who turned an entire town into her zombies for a couple of weeks. On the brighter side, nobody died and a few good things came out of it besides Wanda getting closure:  the world has a new superhero in Monica Rambeau, Vision 1.0 is back and not a government weapon, and Agatha is off the streets for a little while at least.

Edited March 9, 2021 by @therealsilvermane

[@therealsilvermane]

Agatha, like in the comics, turned out to be Wanda's mentor after all. If you go back and watch Episodes 8 & 9, although Agatha is being antagonistic towards Wanda, she is also teaching her the entire time. Whether it's intentional or not, Agatha ended up showing Wanda how to be a witch, and prepped her for her role as the Scarlet Witch.

[theCapraAegagrus]

[bpc3qh]

2 hours ago, Angel of Death said:

I am disappointed, because the show needs to be a good story in and of itself. Most of the Infinity Saga was good, not because of the lead-in to Thanos, but because the movie in a vacuum (or its own trilogy) was compelling.

I couldn't care less if 3 years down the road they retcon the show by Mephisto dialoging he was taking jogs on the sidewalk in front of her house every day inside the hex supervising Agatha. WandaVision needed to be good by itself.

I guess I'm on the side that thinks this show was good by itself. The through-line about grief, and how it impacts people, was powerful and well-delivered. Olsen, Bettany, and Hahn gave great individual performances, especially considering they were not just playing standard MCU roles, but mimicking classic sitcom characters. If they add in those retcons, it will only enhance an already-great show (assuming the retcons make sense, of course).

[@therealsilvermane]

Jac Schaeffer, WandaVision's showrunner, gives a little insight in this Deadline interview, post-WandaVision, into what the show's intentions were and addresses the non-appearances of Mephisto and Dr Strange.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/wandavision-ep-head-scribe-jac-130018823.html

[theCapraAegagrus]

4 minutes ago, bpc3qh said:

I guess I'm on the side that thinks this show was good by itself. The through-line about grief, and how it impacts people, was powerful and well-delivered. Olsen, Bettany, and Hahn gave great individual performances, especially considering they were not just playing standard MCU roles, but mimicking classic sitcom characters. If they add in those retcons, it will only enhance an already-great show (assuming the retcons make sense, of course).

The acting was good until Episode 9, IMO, where much of the dialogue felt very forced.

I think that the show does an outright awful job of juggling exactly who/what is 'good' and 'bad'. It also has extreme pacing issues and inconsistent story elements.

The problem with beginning production of many shows at once, when it's your first foray into episodic TV, is how can we be sure that the other titles won't suffer from the same issues? I'm not sure if Feige is making them formulaic, or if it's all up to the writers and directors. If it's the latter, then I have some optimism.

[HighVoltage]

11 minutes ago, @therealsilvermane said:

Jac Schaeffer, WandaVision's showrunner, gives a little insight in this Deadline interview, post-WandaVision, into what the show's intentions were and addresses the non-appearances of Mephisto and Dr Strange.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/wandavision-ep-head-scribe-jac-130018823.html

Thanks for the link!

This stood out to me:

 

When you first pitched yourself for the job, how did you prepare for the meeting? Did you read House of M? Did you have this notion of mapping out the stages of grief? What did Marvel spark to and what was your angle?
JS: They sent me a bunch of the comics and I looked over them. I’m not a very good comic reader. I have a hard time digesting the storylines and I never know which cell to look at, and I don’t know, I’m a disappointment, perhaps, to the fandom in that way, but the imagery is always, of course, very startling and moving and inspiring, and it was Kevin Feige’s idea to marry Wanda and Vision to the sitcom world.

================================

How hard is it to read a comic? You don't know which 'cell' to look at?
Good gravy.

And this is the head writer and executive producer?

[fantastic_four]

4 minutes ago, HighVoltage said:

How hard is it to read a comic? You don't know which 'cell' to look at?

Sometimes it's not obvious when the artist lays them out in unique ways that aren't just left-to-right-and-down.  I've read dozens and dozens of pages in the wrong order throughout my lifetime, so I assumed that's what he meant.

[HighVoltage]

3 minutes ago, fantastic_four said:

Sometimes it's not obvious when the artist lays them out in unique ways that aren't just left-to-right-and-down.  I've read dozens and dozens of pages in the wrong order throughout my lifetime, so I assumed that's what he meant.

I can understand this when artists are playing with the format (like Neal Adams and Steranko did in the late 60s or some of the more modern artists), but the Vision & Scarlet Witch stuff was pretty darn basic formatting. I realize the comic community, and talking about the intracasies of comics and the stories, can be insular, but reading & understanding comics is overall not that difficult. Is it?

[@therealsilvermane]

19 minutes ago, fantastic_four said:

Sometimes it's not obvious when the artist lays them out in unique ways that aren't just left-to-right-and-down.  I've read dozens and dozens of pages in the wrong order throughout my lifetime, so I assumed that's what he meant.

Jac is a she. Maybe short for Jacqueline I assume.

[piper]

57 minutes ago, HighVoltage said:

Thanks for the link!

This stood out to me:

 

When you first pitched yourself for the job, how did you prepare for the meeting? Did you read House of M? Did you have this notion of mapping out the stages of grief? What did Marvel spark to and what was your angle?
JS: They sent me a bunch of the comics and I looked over them. I’m not a very good comic reader. I have a hard time digesting the storylines and I never know which cell to look at, and I don’t know, I’m a disappointment, perhaps, to the fandom in that way, but the imagery is always, of course, very startling and moving and inspiring, and it was Kevin Feige’s idea to marry Wanda and Vision to the sitcom world.

================================

How hard is it to read a comic? You don't know which 'cell' to look at?
Good gravy.

And this is the head writer and executive producer?

I don't think people realize how gifted Feige is at providing an overall vision for the MCU.  We will miss him when he's gone.

[@therealsilvermane]

14 minutes ago, piper said:

I don't think people realize how gifted Feige is at providing an overall vision for the MCU.  We will miss him when he's gone.

Right, Kevin Feige is the comic book expert over there with, I'm sure, other consultants. But Feige knows his Marvel stuff. I think it's okay that Jac Schaeffer isn't constrained by the many comic book stories around Scarlet Witch and Vision. Many of those stories are dated and involve many many characters which wouldn't translate as well to a modern film or TV mini-series where you have to simplify the story a bit and limit the number of characters. As long as there's a guiding vision making sure these characters are true to Marvel. I think not feeling like you have to absolutely stick to the comics stories allows for more creativity in the story and a little surprise for us comics readers who think we know everything.

[TupennyConan]

We know everything.