1x06 All-New Halloween Spooktacular!

[7.4/10] My favorite part of this one is Vision realizing something is up, lying to Wanda to try to get to the bottom of it, and trying to break free to get help, even at the cost of his own life. We’ve mostly been focused on Wanda’s trauma to this point, and for good reason. But there’s something equally disturbing about Vision realizing he is a prisoner here, that people are suffering because of the woman he loves, and that something is very very wrong. It’s a kind of psychological horror that’s gripping in an underplayed sort of way.

I like the subtle coldness in his interactions with Wanda, despite the theoretically warming confines of the sitcom form. There’s a painfully believable awkwardness between the two of them in the moments where the facade slips, and it’s good work from the performers and the show. Likewise, I love Agnes’s monologue when Vision jolts here out of Wanda’s control for a minute. Her half-deranged, half-resigned ramblings are striking and just as eerie.

The piece de resistance though is Vision trying to break out of the hex. Watching him slowly disintegrate as he breaks the bonds makes for a tragic and horrific image, particularly when his near-dying words to those who come to check on him are “you must save the people.” There’s something so noble about Vision, from the beginning really, and it makes what’s happening to him all the more sad and terrifying.

That said, I wasn’t as crazy about the stuff happening outside of the Hex this week. It feels too mechanical and generic Shield. As much as I enjoy the trio of Monica/Jimmy/Darcy, Director Hayward has turned into such a generic government suit antagonist that the conflict feels played out. Nevermind the fact that the three of them can apparently take out big dudes with body armor and automatic weapons. Most of their business either strains credulity or feels like a warmed over “good organization gone bad” thing we’ve seen time after time in the MCU.

That said, I’m intrigued at the prospect of Monica and Jimmy choosing to go back into the Hex on their terms, while Darcy seems to get sucked in by Wanda’s expansion. Seeing these performers “in the show” is an exciting prospect, even if the way we get there is a little contrived.

“The show” part of the episode is good too! Malcolm in the Middle is an interesting touchstone to go with, and I suppose it’s the most noteworthy leap in family sitcoms in the 2000s. As usual, WandaVision does the pastiche well, with the jump to single cam clicking nicely and the scrappier, less middle class affluent suburbia vibe of latter day family sitcoms kicking in.

But the most intriguing dynamic to me is not only Quicksilver’s arrival as the manchild brother who sleeps on his sister’s couch, but the way that he casually breaks the fourth wall with Wanda. He talks about the mechanics of the sitcom -- how he’s needed to add some tension and the like -- while also hinting at the way the details don’t add up, the way he’s bending things to make them like she wanted, the way he knows Vision’s already been dead. It creates an interesting role for him in WandaVision, as someone whose cracking Wanda’s fantasy defenses just a little bit, at the same time he’s letting the audience in on the truth at the same time.

I especially like the choice to have it be a product of their being siblings, telling his sister that she can talk to him, in a way she can’t talk to anyone else. It gives her the emotional space to reveal that she’s not fully in control here. She doesn’t remember how it all started, and while the things she wants are coming into play, and she can clearly extend the bounds of the Hex, there’s more going on there than even she knows.

We also get to learn what she’s grappling with here -- survivor’s guilt, something exemplified by the claymation, gogurt-inspired commercial. She confides in Pietro that she felt all alone, having lost her parents, her brother, and eventually the man she loved even after all the dust cleared. Pietro stirs all of this up in her, bringing it to the surface, and Elizabeth Olsen does a particularly good job as a performer conveying all that internal strife while trying to put on a smiling face. The layers in her acting here are really, really good.

There’s also tons of plot-relevant stuff going on here. For one, the twins have powers that mirror their mom and uncle, with one gaining superspeed and the other seeming to have Wanda’s psychic and telekinetic abilities. There’s reason to think the development of these kids, who take more focus here, is a big part of the motivation behind whatever’s causing all of this.

We get more hints in that direction as well. I’ll admit to thinking that Agnes might have been the culprit, but Vision’s conversation with her definitely suggests that she’s not the mastermind, at the very least. Herb (who was surreptitiously chatting with Agnes in a previous episode) seems a little more self-aware than we knew, asking if Wanda wants to change things up. Plus, Darcy’s hacking intimates that Hayward may know more, or have bigger plans for what’s going on here than anyone knew. We’re getting just enough hints toward the mystery to bring things tantalizing closer to being in focus without disrupting the cool and slightly unnerving sense of ambiguity as to who’s really in charge here.

That just leaves the texture, which is also really good in this one. I like using Halloween as an excuse to get the cast into their comic book costumes. Also, this episode does a good job of showing us people on the edge of the Hex being a little less resource-intensive for the simulation, just doing basic tasks and not being as fully hoodwinked by Wanda’s hoodoo as folks closer to her orbit. It too is creepy, in a good way. And once more, the show wrings real unnerving terror from the brief moments where real life and real emotion cut through the sitcom artifice.

Overall, this episode didn’t grab me as much as some of the others have, but there’s still lots of good work within it, matches with some strong character work with Wanda and Vision in particular, with Pietro being a catalyst for it, not just a gimmick or bit of stunt casting.

Last week, everyone got a little excited seeing Evan Peters as though it were the arrival of the X-Men in the MCU. I don't know that I necessarily saw it that way because of the context of the show. And it kind points to a central stylistic impasse between the two genres we straddle in Wandavision. In weird fiction, weird stuff happens and the literal interpretation could not matter less. The how of what's going on (i.e. everything in Mulholland Drive) does not matter. The figurative interpretation is king. For Mulholland Drive, that just means it's an artistic exploration of what it's like to face rejection, success, and then be tossed aside in a cutthroat industry. But if you were to really explore the specifics of Lynch's labyrinthine masterpiece, you'd have a headache because it's just completely off the cuff and bonkers.

I don't really know how this functions in Wandavision. Juggling weird fiction and the superhero genre places extreme importance on both literal and figurative. And, granted, comics have never been afraid to bend the rules to get weird but the idea of having logic based people try to explain the specifics of what's happening is likely to just disappoint. Remember how people felt about the weirdness of Twin Peaks: The Return?

It's kind of back to the point I've been saying: these two genres demand wildly different expectations and as a result it's difficult to appease fans of each at the same time. As we get into the more Marvel-centric plot, I miss the weirdness (even though it has never been all that weird). But those early episodes were extremely underwhelming to some of Marvel's more ravenous fans, and I can't necessarily blame them. Oddly enough, the more I see these episodes the more I'm reminded of Netflix's Maniac, which kind of did this as well while maximizing the weirdness and going all in on the figurative.

Wandavision is not what I expected and it's also not really what I want, either. After watching the pilot my friends asked me what I thought. I said, "I don't think the pilot is representative of what the show is going to be and so I don't really know how to feel about it. And, because of that, it kind of fails as a pilot". I was kind of right. Based on the pilot, we should assume we're going to get a weird fiction, meta-sitcom with intentionally bad humor and a dark underlying twist. By episode six, we just have a Marvel hostage situation. And here's the thing: there is a way to keep the audience on their toes without misleading them entirely. It feels like the showrunners here might have preferred Wandavision to be weirder for the duration, but knew ultimately that would lead to a branding problem down the road.