My endless lists and rankings are coming to a close for 2021 with the topic I usually leave for the final day – new TV shows! Other than with the books and movies, the show actually has to be released in 2021 for the first time to qualify. I didn’t struggle with my picks as much as I thought I would though? Usually, I have a hard time narrowing it down to 20, but here we are … let’s check out my picks!
So, before I get started, I need to clarify a few things. There’s a lot of Marvel content out there these days, but what I will be talking about in this particular post are the movies and TV shows that are considered canon part of the MCU. This excludes property such as Marvel’s Hit-Monkey and M.O.D.O.K., which is no judgment on their quality, it just falls outside of the MCU and therefore what I want this list to be. All of the titles must have been released in 2021 to qualify for the ranking. But now comes the really important part:
(Also, there’s potential spoilers for everything, so beware if you haven’t watched the properties.)
I know we will all be feeling the hole that WandaVision leaves in our TV schedules (read my Spoiler-filled review of the finale here). There’s nothing really quite like it out there at the moment, but I still think I can come up with some good alternatives and complementary TV shows and movies. This is not a definite guide and I’m sure there’s more and possibly better recommendations out there, but I hope you will find something to dive into here!
I think this show went under a lot of people’s radar, but it’s actually phenomenal. Sorry for Your Loss follows recently widowed Elizabeth Olsen and her close family as they deal with the doubts, anger and repercussions of losing a loved one. You know how good she portrays this particular emotion already if you have finished WandaVision, so why not hurt alongside her some more?
WandaVision, in my humble opinion, had a lot of great women front and center and I think it’s so important to show healthy female friendships and relationships, which is why Dollface, a fun and quirky show came to mind (it did get an extra plus point for featuring our Darcy Lewis – Kat Dennings). After a break up, Dennings’ character realizes she has neglected all her friends and now feels the need to reconnect with them. She is guided through that journey by a cat-lady (as literal as cat-lady can get).
I know a lot of you have fallen in love with adorkable FBI agent Jimmy Woo, portrayed by Randall Park, over the past couple of weeks. He’s been in business for quite a while, but why not watch one of his recent movies where he gets to be the main love interest? I know I loved seeing it! So, check out Always Be My Maybe and swoon some more with me.
Usually, I like to say as little as possible about the OA, because it’s such a special and unique show. Unfortunately, it was cancelled before its time, but still gave us an amazing two seasons and ending on a mindblowing meta ending.
This show is for you if you don’t mind slow storytelling that focuses on characters and that always leaves you with more questions than answers. I don’t think I can say more.
Dramaworld could possibly serve as a little palette cleanser after WandaVision. I loved how Wanda’s reality celebrated TV and there are many shows that do something similar, but I also like when people “stumble” into shows and then have to pretend to be characters. This is exactly what happens in Dramaworld, which is a very short, fun 1-season-show with a bit of an open end and a strong KDrama inspiration.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier starts in two weeks (March 19 to be exact), which gives everyone enough time to catch up on any missing Marvel projects. I know that WandaVision has drawn a new crowd to the Marvel universe and sometimes left them confused when references weren’t understood due to lack of prior knowledge of the universe. I doubt The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will be as intricate and theory-inducing as WandaVision, but just in case, now is the time to rewatch or get aquainted with the material.
If you are like me and you do not have the stamina to go through all of this again, there are neat short videos on Disney+ labeled Marvel Studio Legends that recap the arcs of the characters.
I want to apologize for not including anything specific to Teyonah Parris in this post! I have seen some of her work, but nowhere near enough to know what to recommend yet. I fully plan on doing a deep dive into her filmography and can’t wait to see her again in Captain Marvel 2. Although, let’s be real, Monica Rambeau deserves her own spin-off!
So, this is it. My final WandaVision review/recap on the blog. In case you haven’t been here for the rest, the following post includes SPOILERS and is meant to be read after watching the episode. I will, however, give you a little heads up and tell you that there are TWO post credit scenes, just so you’re prepared.
Now, let’s dive in!
In a final battle, Wanda has to decide whether to save the town or her family. Will she make the sacrifice?
I read somewhere that the creator of the show apologized before the finale aired, because they were afraid that fans would be disappointed. I get how it can come across that way, because there were some wild theories flying around, but I tried to not expect anything out of this world. I would have enjoyed many of these theories come true, but I also appreciated that the big bad of the season was what we’ve known all along – grief! And yet, we still got an epic fight scene too. Everything was very much in tune with what we had gotten so far, which is why I personally was not disappointed. By sticking to the narrative they have given us all along, I don’t see how that’s not delivering what they’ve promised?
Let’s break it down a little:
As I said in the very beginning, there’s TWO post-credit scenes. So, I hope you didn’t skip out on anything here. I may have expected some more “interesting” cameos in the end, but it’s still setting up some intriguing stuff:
Ultimately, there’s some questions that remain for me in general. Who was Jimmy Woo’s person in witness protection? Where is White Vision? How is Agatha now bound to Westview? Where is she going to live considering that she has no house in town? What happened to Hayward to make him so angry at superpowered beings? Will we ever see Ralph Bohner again?
One thing is for sure, if we ever should get answers, it won’t be in a second season of WandaVision, because that is done. But many of the people are confirmed to appear in other Marvel projects and Elizabeth Olsen is currently filming Doctor Strange 2 aka the Multiverse of Madness, so … we’ll know more in a couple years!
Just because I felt like it, here are some of my favourite and most heartbreaking quotes from the episode:
“Family is forever. We could never truly leave each other, even if we tried.”
“Thanks for choosing me to be your mom.”
“You are the piece of the mind stone that lives in me.
You are a body of wires and blood and bone that I created.
You are my sadness and my hope.
But mostly you’re my love.”“I’ve been a voice with no body. A body but not human. And now a memory made real. Who knows what I might be next?”
“We have said goodbye before, so it stands to reason …”
“We’ll say hello again.”
I hope by episode 8, you kind of know how things work on here, but just in case this is your first time stopping by (hi, by the way!), the following post is intended to be read after watching the show, because it includes SPOILERS! (If you haven’t seen it yet and you can, watch it with tissues!)
Agatha takes Wanda on a trip down memory lane to discover how the Westview anomaly was created.
When WandaVision calls an episode “Previously On”, they do not mess around. For the longest time, we have been waiting to find out what happened, how Wanda got into Westview and how the hex started. Well, this episode delivered in every possible way.
Before we get into Wanda’s history though, we learned a bit more about Agatha. The episode starts all the way back in Salem in the year 1693. You might presume that it’s part of the witch trials, with last week’s reveal about Agnes/Agatha’s real identity, but on the contrary. Agatha isn’t on trial because she is a witch, she is trialed by her coven sisters because she is using dark magic. In an intriguing show of power, she absorbs her coven members energy, remaining the sole survivor instead of the victim, showing that despite her claims of wanting to be good, she has great potential for evil. As a final act before stepping away from the corpses, she grabs the (to us) now all too well known brooch from her mother’s coat.
Fast forward a couple centuries to modern day Westview and Agatha is still as power hungry as ever. She is amazed and intrigued by Wanda’s sheer power, but also confused by her lack of knowledge and training. Agatha is sure that Wanda is a witch too, an unwilling one who doesn’t want to share her secrets, but a witch nonetheless. So, in order to learn how she created the Westview hex in a matter of moments, when it took Agatha ages to learn even simple transformation spells, they start exploring Wanda’s memory (again, unwillingly, since Agatha is holding the twins hostage).
What follows is a walk through the years, bits and pieces of Wanda’s life that shaped her. A lot of Marvel fans know about these moments, as they have been discussed in previous movies, but they have never been shown with such detail. While I understand that maybe not everyone was interested in seeing this breakdown of her life, I think it was necessary to portray that the true villain in Wanda’s life is grief and her inability to deal with it and/or catch a break from it. Let’s take a look at what we learned:
It’s only after that display that Agatha finally lets her leave this maze of memories. It’s the cries for help from her twins that bring Wanda back to reality, her children the one thing she still cares about more than anything. They are held hostage as Agatha says the words I have waited for for the longest time! We finally, finally, finally get the official name reveal for Wanda, when Agatha explains that the power Wanda possesses should be impossible. It should be nothing more than a myth. But Wanda wields chaos magic and that makes her a SCARLET WITCH!!!
I hear the people who think this episode included a lot of information that was already previously covered in the movies, but when did we ever get a chance to see it with Wanda’s eyes? To feel her pain penetrating ever cell of our bodies, drowning us in the sadness she feels with her? I thought that this was an incredible show of how powerful emotions can be. How dangerous they are if not dealt with. Even Agatha said that Wanda was dangerous and that woman was holding kids hostage while saying that.
But is Agatha really a villain? In the opening scene, she said she could not control these dark powers when she pleaded with her coven. Maybe, in the years since, she found a way to control it and is now not willing to let another powerful witch go rampage on the world. While she was accompanying Wanda through her memories, she was sympathetic, albeit still very straight forward with her comments. She seemed more curious in figuring out what she was dealing with rather than wanting to do any of this herself. Sometimes it even sounded like a tinge of worry for Wanda. I’m sure it will be resolved like many other things next episode.
Now that we know real magic is involved, it seems all the more logical to have a Doctor Strange appearance in the finale, ultimately tying this show to the Multiverse of Madness. I cannot wait!
Lastly, it looks like post-credit scenes are back for good! Once again, I just really want to punch Hayward, because he is such a massive liar. All this time, he had Visions body. All this time, he made Wanda out to be the villain when he was truly the evil one. Bringing the Vision’s body back online worries me. It can’t have his mind, that’s in Westview with Wanda … I think? Who’s to say that Hayward has any kind of control over this version of the Vision’s body? Danger lies ahead.
It also eerily feels like all those theories thinking that Hayward is Ultron or controlled by him make sense. His animosity after Wanda’s betrayal understandable, his lack of faith in humanity and heroes also very on brand. It would be in tune with the animated version, so I’m curious to see if that will actually be true.
Here comes the obligatory warning that the following post does in fact include SPOILERS, so if you haven’t been able to watch the episode yet, I recommend you return afterwards. Here we go!
Wanda starts to loose grip on her universe after expanding it, while Monica tries to reenter the hex to help everyone inside before Hayward does something drastic.
If this episode wasn’t a mix of Modern Family and The Office, then I don’t even know. I guess we are through all the decades now? It should be interesting what the theme of next week will be, as I do believe we have now reached the end of Wanda’s broadcasting era. I was a little disappointed to see that the episode wasn’t longer though, because there was an announcement that the last three episodes would be an hour long, but I am happy about whatever WandaVision content I can get and it was obviously going to end on a cliffhanger anyway, since we are in the final stretches of the show.
Still, this episode had some reveals that a lot of us had guessed for a while, which may not seem super exciting to most, but it was the big set up for the grand finale. I don’t think it was the best episode of the season, but I also thought that the reveals were well done. There’s grief, pain and still a lot of fight left in our characters to explore.
I’m going to keep the “outside Westview” thoughts really brief, because as we know from last time, most of it has been absorbed into the hex now.
Poor Wanda. Just when she wants a day for herself, it becomes abundantly clear just how little control she has over Westview. She was really on the brink of giving in to life just being meaningless, letting her grief and depression almost reach a peak. Here are my observations about what’s happening inside the hex:
Ad Break: I’m not sure my theory from last week about the ads reflecting the infinity stones really pans out here, because none of this screamed Power Stone to me. Anyway, the commercial seemed pretty straight forward, addressing Wanda’s state of depression, wanting to be left alone and escaping to your own reality. The name for the anti-depressant, Nexus, was well chosen. In the Marvel universe, the nexus is the interdimensional gateway between all realities, once again heavily referencing the multiverse. Wanda is also a Nexus being, which means she can open portals etc.
I know I say this pretty much every week, but what a gamechanger! I adore that WandaVision still keeps upping the stakes, even though a lot of us guessed that Agnes would be Agatha Harkness. It’s not so much about the surprise of it all as it is about the repercussion this knowledge has. The revelation still worked and added great tension for what’s to come. After all, it doesn’t look like Agnes/Agatha is working alone either.
ALSO, I hope none of you clicked away before our first post-credit scene of the season! We see Monica snooping around Agnes’ house and finding the entry to the basement, just to be caught by “Pietro”. Is he the infamous and never seen Ralph? And who is Ralph really? “Snoopers are gonna snoop”, so we shall find out!
You know the drill by now! These reviews/recaps are all full of SPOILERS and meant to be read after you have watched the episode in order not to ruin any surprises.
Disclaimer: I watched the episode and wrote this under the influence of sedatives and painkillers after my wisdom tooth removal, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
While Wanda and her newly arrived brother celebrate Halloween with the twins, Vision does some investigation of his own. In the meantime, Monica, Darcy and Jimmy get kicked off the S.W.O.R.D. site.
I loved that the recap for the episode clearly showed how Quicksilver is supposed to look, just in case anyone missed the change in cast the last time. But even more so, I enjoyed the very Malcolm-in-the-Middle-intro and the twins narrating their day, just like Malcolm would have – we have arrived in the 90s!
The setting being Halloween, offered the possibility for so many easter eggs, aside from the fact that the first Vision and Scarlet Witch comic book issues took place around that time of the year. Everyone, including the twins, who have just discovered their powers (Speed and Wiccan confirmed – yay!), got a chance to show off their retro comic book outfits in the guise of the festivities.
As I mentioned above, I am a little under the weather, so I am gonna try and keep my observations brief. Let’s once again start with what’s happening outside of Westview:
Obviously, there was something else and very important happening, but let’s get into that in the next section.
Now, what has been happening inside Westview:
Ad Break: This ad was very strange and morbid. A kid on a desolate island gets Yo-Magic yogurt from a shark, but due to being too weak and hungry, can’t open it and dies. This could have several meanings, one is that the people who are not close to Wanda’s magic (e.g. those living at the edge of town, barely moving) are bound to die OR that someone is feeding off of Wanda’s magic (because she felt all alone in the world after Vision passed).
The definite meaning is still unclear, but I did notice a trend with each ad, which is that they all focus on a different infinity stone. If my theory is right, we’d have one more stone to go.
- toaster: looks like Visions head therefore the mind stone?
- Strücker watch: time stone?
- Hydra Soak: soap is a blue cube like the teseract – space stone?
- paper towels: red liquid reminiscent of the reality stone?
- lonely island with skeleton (Red Skull on Vormir) – soul stone?
The implications of the town/hex field expanding once again open up so many new possibilities. Will this be a strain on Wanda’s powers, as she has to stay in control of ever more people? Did Monica and Jimmy escape the expansion or are they now sucked in like Darcy? Will Darcy maybe get powers too? So many new questions!
I think it’s fair to say that the stakes are getting higher with each episode. We only have three more to go in the series and, at least I don’t, have a clue what is going to be the resolution to it all, but I am excited to find out!
I know I say this at the beginning of every WandaVision post, but better safe than sorry! This is a reminder that the following review heavily includes SPOILERS and is meant to be read after watching the episode!
Inside Westview, Wanda and Vision struggle as new parents, especially as Vision’s suspicions grow. Meanwhile outside Westview, the assembled team comes closer to finding ways to communicate with people inside the anomaly.
After last week, it was clear that we could not simply go back to the sitcom style of the first episodes. We now knew too much and therefore, I quite enjoyed the split perspective of seeing both worlds/storylines unfold. On the one hand, we are now squarely in the 80s, but with an ever fracturing facade, and on the other hand, the S.W.O.R.D. agents outside of Westview are doing their best to figure out what happened and how to free the townspeople. It’s very clear that one of my new favourite trios (Monica, Darcy and Jimmy) are not as judgmental and hostile towards Wanda and still believe that this was not premeditated, whereas the current director of S.W.O.R.D. believes her to be an imminent threat. That can only backfire …
I found it a bit hard to sort through my thoughts this time, so I will share my observations and a summary of what we learned outside of Westview first:
Now, let’s talk a little bit about what is happening inside Westview! First of all, the twins kept growing as rapidly as they did inside the womb. First they are babies, then five years old and suddenly they are ten. They seem to have a modicum of power over their growth, however, were apparently immune to Wanda’s attempt at using her magic on them when she wanted to get them to sleep as babies.
Even more notable though is the fact that no one seems to care about the strange things that happen in the WandaVision household. No one mentions anything odd about the twins growing up so fast, or being there in the first place. Especially Wanda herself becomes quite reckless with using her powers in front of the townspeople (mostly Agnes), which makes Vision feel very uncomfortable.
Again, we learned quite a lot here, so, I am trying to gather my thoughts in a hopefully conclusive way. So, here are my “inside Westview” observations:
Quicksilver/Pietro Maximoff is BACK! The funniest thing in that moment was Darcy proclaiming “Wanda recast Pietro?”, when we as an audience know that Evan Peters is ALSO Quicksilver, just in the X-Men franchise. This further strengthens my theory that we are already dealing with the multiverse at the moment. Wanda didn’t seem perplexed by Evan as Pietro, but just by the fact that he was here and alive in front of her. This is a huge maybe, but maybe we are dealing with more than one Wanda? Endgame messed up a lot of timelines and worlds, it was bound to have repercussions eventually. I adore how many new possibilities this opens up and that we might one day get a similar scene to this again:
We are back with another ad! This time it was for Lagos paper towels, suggesting they clean up any mess you make. Clearly, Wanda has created quite the mess now, but this was a heavy reference to her mission in Lagos where she accidentally killed several civilians and relief aid workers by redirecting an explosion too close to a building. It caused her severe distress at the time, questioning the destructive nature of her powers, while also causing one of the major discussions about the jurisdiction and accountability of the Avengers as a whole (ultimately leading to the Sokovia accords).
This was actually one of the longest episodes so far and I really think that WandaVision has found its groove with its pacing. You keep learning new things, but you are never overwhelmed with information. As the plot thickens, I am curious to find out what is truly going on, because I think we have only scratched the surface.
Before I leave you here with a lot to think about, I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be able to watch and review next week’s episode in as timely of a manner as I did so far. Unfortunately, I am not sure I will make it on Friday at all, but I hope you will still stop by once I do (and that I will be able to avoid any potential spoilers until I can enjoy it myself)!
Once again, I’d like to reiterate that this review of mine is filled with SPOILERS and should only be read after having watched the episode! Proceed at your own risk.
In a look back, it is revealed how S.W.O.R.D. and other organisations are involved with the monitoring of Westview and the information they have learned.
This was definitely a change of pace. I’m not 100% sure how I feel about the disruption of the storytelling style, but I can understand why they wanted to provide background information as well as a different perspective.
First of all, we learn that Monica Rambeau was one of the people who were snapped out of existence by Thanos. Upon her return, she discovers that Maria Rambeau, her mother and vital founding member of S.W.O.R.D., had passed in her absence because of cancer. Despite the heartbreaking news, she returns to work right away, although being grounded and only cleared for terrestrial cases. This puts her in the way of Jimmy Woo (former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who now works for the FBI and who we have met previously in Ant Man and the Wasp), who is looking for a missing person, someone who is in witness protection.
That person was supposed to be in Westview, a town no one knows or remembers. The 3,892 people inside forgotten by everyone they once knew … except that Jimmy does remember the missing person. And he can also see the town, just like Maria. It is not clarified why they aren’t affected by the selective amnesia, except for not having a personal connection to the town.
In an attempt to investigate, Maria gets sucked into Westview, prompting S.W.O.R.D. to step in and hiring a couple experts. Enter Doctor Darcy Lewis (known from Thor), who finds the broadcasting waves that let the agents watch the Wanda and Vision show.
In general, I feel like this episode answered a lot of question, even if it opened up some new ones in the process. We now know that things/people that pass the threshold to Westview forget who they are (except for rare moments of lucidity) and get transformed to fit into whatever time period is currently the most recent one.
We also have confirmation of Wanda’s awareness of the situation. Not only did we get to see how exactly she threw Geraldine/Monica out of town, but we also see her reassuring Vision that she has “everything under control”. As sinister as that already sounded, it is yet again verified when Monica comes back to herself and tells S.W.O.R.D. “It’s Wanda. It’s all Wanda.”
One of the things I adored was that Jimmy Woo had pretty similar questions to those we as viewers had the past couple of weeks as well. Let’s take a look at what he put on the whiteboard:
All in all, I believe this episode might not have been as much for the casual viewer as previous ones. It required a lot of information on what had happened in the Marvel universe before and if you wanted any kind of connection to the characters introduced, you would have had to watch a variety of movies (from Ant Man and Captain Marvel to Thor) to have known them from before. I personally love the connection to all those previous works, but I am still not sure how I feel about the POV change. If it’s only for this episode, I think I can live with it, but it was still quite the info dump buffer episode.
If you have missed my previous reviews, you can check them out here:
As promised, I am back with another WandaVision review! As with the previous post, I would like to point out that this is meant to be read after watching the episode to avoid any kind of spoilers. I will not hold back!
After discovering Wanda’s fast pregnancy, the pair tries to prepare for the imminent birth as best as possible, all the while fighting off their growing suspicions of something being off in Westview.
As we are hurtling through the decades with WandaVision, now squarely in the 70s, I adore how easily recognizable they make their inspiration in terms of intro and style of the episode. This time we clearly got an homage to the Brady Bunch, which seems fitting as it was the birth of the (at least to Wanda and Vision) unexpected twins.
In the comics, their sons William and Thomas (on the show only lovingly called Billy and Tommy for now) mirror the powers of Wanda and her late twin brother Pietro. It will be interesting to see where they go with the boys on the show as their lore in Marvel history thus far is quite scattered. It does, however, point to the much suggested involvement of Mephisto in whatever is happening to Wanda. Since it has been said that WandaVision will also heavily tie into Doctor Strange’s Multiverse of Madness and Mephisto is a main antagonist of Doctor Strange (and often Spider-Man too) as well as Stephen Strange being a big part of the twins’ lives, things are shaping up to go even more into that direction. We shall see!
I do enjoy the general progression of the show! Much of the appeal is due to the dichotomy between fun, silly sitcom tropes and the complete tonal shift to dread and more serious matters. Both, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany, deserve a tremendous amount of praise for how quickly they manage to switch between these contrasting emotions and portrayals. It’s often quite chilling to go from discomfort to bliss in an instant. I wasn’t sure how soon they would get into the nitty-gritty of their world, but I thought there were some incredible revelations this week.
I’ve mentioned before that I believed that important moments were shown mostly through Wanda’s eyes, but this week had an interesting shift to include major moments with Vision alone. He seems to be more plagued by whatever is off about their town and neighbors than Wanda is, which makes sense in that we believe she is partially responsible for what is going on. Once again, he got cut off by Wanda when he started asking too many questions (prompting me to believe my internet wasn’t working right, when it really was some smart editing choices). It shows an awareness and consciousness on his part that I probably did not expect in a character that is supposed to be deceased and possibly only imaginary.
This time, I have no useful theory about the “commercial break”. It was obviously a Hydra reference again, prompting the potential customers to find their inner goddess. If my suggestions last time had been correct, with the ads pointing to significant events in Wanda’s life in chronological order, there should have been an Ultron or Quicksilver reference, but we got that from Geraldine instead.
UPDATE on Hyrda Soak and it’s possible connection to previous Marvel content:
While Vision was off on his own, getting warnings about Geraldine having no home, family or husband in Westview, Wanda also had a confrontation with the very same woman. If the final scenes of the episode are anything to go by, it looks like Westview is a very real town, but shut off from the rest of the world and suspended in old-timey sitcom bliss. Whoever lives there is bound to it and cannot leave. It looked like Wanda was not pleased to have her possibly self-made reality disturbed by a S.W.O.R.D. agent and therefore kicked Geraldine/Monica out, once again confirming that she has tremendous power over what is happening.
Now that we know all that, I simply have to wonder why Agnes and Herb showed concern about Geraldine’s presence in Westview and why Agnes stopped Herb from saying anything more to Vision. Clearly, they are stuck in that town as well, but do they not want to get out or are they worried that confronting Wanda (and Vision) with reality would end up putting them in danger? As Agnes is rumored to be Agatha Harkness, a fellow witch and potential villain, she might also have her own interest at heart in keeping Wanda put. It’s fair to say that I am curious! While the episode definitely answered some questions, it also opened up an onslaught of new ones!
I have to say, I wish they would continue with airing two episodes each week. On the one hand, I am glad that I am forced to be patient instead of binging it all in one go and then being miserable it’s all over, but on the other hand, 30-minute-long episodes are just not enough. This show is so much fun and so brilliantly intricate, I just want more.
Life and Other Disasters 