WandaVision Finally Brings Some Much-Needed Romance to the MCU
Photo Courtesy of Disney+
Even the most casual of superhero fans know that WandaVision characters Vision and the Scarlet Witch are a big deal. One of Marvel’s most iconic comic book couples, the pair is epically romantic and breathtakingly tragic by turns, their story the epitome of big, messy stakes with potentially reality-ending consequences. That Disney+ has chosen to give them their own series isn’t surprising; that Marvel has waited so darn long to really focus on their story is.
Granted, almost no one could have guessed that the franchise would finally give the pair their long overdue chance at the spotlight in a bizarre, genre-hopping trip through the history of American television. But, then again, it quickly becomes difficult to imagine a more appropriate love letter to one of the more offbeat pairings in comic book history than this show, which asks Wanda and Vision’s relationship to be the one constant that grounds us within it, no matter how bizarre things may become around them.
Like the couple at its center, WandaVision is deeply weird, and part of its appeal will inevitably be tied to dissecting the ways it connects to the larger Marvel film universe via explainers and in-depth fan theories. But the biggest reason the series works has little to do with the dozens of Easter eggs hidden inside it. Rather, it’s because this strange little series is the first time that the larger Marvel universe has really focused on a specific romance as the center of a story its trying to tell. And it’s a great argument for why it should do it a lot more often.
The 20-some-odd feature films of Marvel universe have all been entertaining in a variety of ways, of course, but none of them devote much time to their heroes’ love lives. Even the franchise’s supposedly most integral romantic pairings (Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter, Tony Stark and Pepper Potts) share little more than a handful of scenes and the occasional kiss, leaving viewers to fill in the details of their relationships—with gaps often spanning both years and other sequels—on their own.
Though Wanda and Vision’s romance is essential to the climax of Avengers: Infinity War, prior to that film, the couple’s relationship was primarily developed offscreen, at least until it was time for one of them to tragically kill the other in the name of saving the universe from Thanos. Imagine how much more impactful that sequence might have been had we actually seen Wanda and Vision fall in love, rather than just heard them talk about it in the past tense?
The now-defunct Netflix corner of the Marvel universe was always better at telling those kinds of stories than its big screen cousins, using romantic relationships to humanize and add context to the lives of both its heroes and its villains. (Don’t at me, the romance between murderous Daredevil Kingpin Wilson Fisk and his art dealer wife Vanessa is the hands down the best one in the entire MCU.) WandaVision follows a similar path, dropping hints at a larger, more sinister plot unfolding in the background but grounding its primary story in its main characters and the love between them.
And, as a result, it feels like Vision and the Scarlet Witch come alive for the first time.