WandaVision Is Still The Best TV Show Marvel Has Ever Made
Half a decade later, Wanda’s nostalgic delusion endures.
After the 2026 Golden Globes, Hamnet director Chloe Zhao was asked what message she wanted viewers to take away from her work. “What is grief, but love persevering?,” she answered, while the cast nodded in agreement. It sounds like a beautiful maxim from Shakespeare itself, but it actually came from the Marvel Cinematic Universe — something Zhao would know, as she herself made an MCU movie.
Its origin, Jac Schaeffer’s show WandaVision, was the first MCU TV show to premiere on Disney+, and it set a high bar for the rest of the franchise — one that sparked a movie, two spinoff series, and countless comparisons to other shows.
WandaVision was able to incoporate many meta references thanks to the Hex Wanda put on Westview.
WandaVision has a simple premise: forced to face the loss of her love, Vision (Paul Bettany), Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) instead dives deep into denial, using magic to create a nostalgic, black-and-white world where she can live the idyllic suburban life with Vision without any concern. Meanwhile, FBI Agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park), Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings), and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) investigate a weird anomaly in New Jersey.
WandaVision begins as just a classic black-and-white sitcom in the vein of I Love Lucy, but episode by episode, the format of the show is updated to a send-up of 1970s Brady Bunch, to 1990s Full House, all the way up to modern sitcoms like Modern Family, complete with talking head interviews. In this TV fever dream, Wanda and Vision get married, start a family with their twin boys, Billy and Tommy, and get up to hijinks with their neighbor. But, as everyone was humming in 2021, the villain was their neighbor Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) all along.
By the time WandaVision reaches the ninth and final episode, it’s your typical Marvel fare, but there was nothing like the eight previous episodes. The love of television history was palpable, while there were plenty of Easter eggs to Marvel’s past, including the appearance of Evan Peters as a “recast” Pietro (who turned out to be a random guy named Ralph Bohner). Not to mention, we finally heard the words “Scarlet Witch” used in the MCU. It was also the heyday of fan theories, and while some didn’t come true (we would have to wait until Ironheart to meet Mephisto) it was a great time to be a Marvel fan.
WandaVision brought back Evan Peters as Pietro Maximoff — sorta.
WandaVision’s effect on the MCU was immediate. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ greatest flaw was perhaps how much it leaned on WandaVision’s plot, and Agatha All Along soon cemented Kathryn Hahn as a character actress for the ages. Now, five years later, we’ll see Paul Bettany back as the newly reborn White Vision in the upcoming series Vision Quest.
It was the perfect pairing of substance and medium, proving that superhero TV didn’t just have to be a movie chopped up into chunks, while paying homage to those who came before. Everything since has been in its shadow, either by comparison or by a canon connection. After all, what is a spinoff but a great show persevering?
