Directed by Matt Shakman
Starring Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Teyonah Parris, Kathryn Hahn, Randall Park, and Kat Dennigs
Running time: about 30 minutes
New episodes Fridays on Disney+

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, The Red Herring

Wandavision...now in color! With its third episode, the show moves along the sitcom timeline into the late 1960s and early 1970s, more Here’s Lucy than I Love Lucy. The episode goes from pregnancy to birth in about 18 minutes, knocking down trope after trope about new parents swiftly. Of course, a lot of the ways those tropes are played invoke Wanda’s red energy powers or Vision’s lack of humanity. This episode is thinner than the two preceding it, but the high energy pregnancy antics make it feel even quicker than it might otherwise.

But sometimes, that’s just how time works. In my mind it is April 2020 still, but I know that is also January 2021 (soon to be February). The result of all that we’ve lost in the pandemic has brought us just a tiny bit closer to Dr. Manhattan–experiencing multiple points in time at once–but with a similar cost to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ iconic character: disconnected from the people we love. As Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) careen forward through pop culture history, we see how they are disconnected from everyone else. 

And the fourth episode shows the extent of that disconnect. We follow Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), the little girl from Captain Marvel all grown up, returning from The Blip as happened in Avengers: Endgame. Soon after, her bosses at S.W.O.R.D. (they handle cosmic threats in the comics) send her to Wesview, NJ to meet with FBI Agent/Ant-Man babysitter Jimmy Woo (Randall Park). He’s investigating missing persons cases and it turns out this town isn’t on any maps. We essentially see what’s been happening outside of Wanda’s bubble, and Thor’s pal  Darcy (Kat Dennings), now a doctor of astrophysics, cracks the code allowing everyone outside to tune into the previous 3 episodes we’ve seen. 

Deep breath. All caught up? WandaViaion is pulling threads from across the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and bringing them together. Since the show stars two characters who have never led their own film, it’s hard to call this a fault. Some of this gives the illusion that Marvel plans things out in advance, but it’s more that Kevin Feige and company are just really good at reassembling the pieces they’ve already taken out of the box. 

By the end of this episode, we are caught up to where we ended the third episode, and the  show is able to drag out the cliffhanger a bit more. I appreciate that the show has set up a problem (someone or something is trapping these people inside Wanda’s world) that doesn’t have a solution that should require too many punches or energy blasts. This first quartet of episodes have done a lot to ground this warped reality in Wanda’s emotional state, and if that focus doesn’t get lost in the shuffle, it will help it stick in the back half.

VisionQuest:

• The costuming and hair choices on this show might be my favorite thing about it, and I almost wish we got even more period settings. I enjoy that even the “commercials” are matching the show’s aesthetics as they evolve.

• Also, we’re now in the widescreen era of television, as evidenced when Wanda stretches the frame. So does that mean next week, the show is going to model E.R.? I hope we get a few more style parodies before this wraps.

• I’m glad Spider-Man: Far From Home isn’t the only story dealing with the after effects of bringing people back years later.

• My big prediction for next week is that we’re going to send Darcy and Jimmy into Westview, because how could you not let Dennigs and Park rip into style parodies?