wandavision: why sitcoms?  —

january 27, 2021

Hey guys! I’m here to explain or theorize why wandavison has taken the form of classic tv sitcoms. The question everyone has been asking is going to be answered right here folks! Let’s start out with the question itself. Why the classic tv sitcoms? We have good guesses to why Wanda is in this pocket reality, what it really is and who is doing this to her. But, we haven’t wondered too much about the choice of sitcom homages to frame Wanda’s fantastical crisis. Like when you go back to the comics, house of m doesn’t really do Brady bunch. Tom King’s Vision isn’t exactly Dick Van Dyke. The witchcraft of the scarlet witch vision classic run isn’t bewitched-esque so where is this tv land nonsense coming from? Like we get marvel’s trying to be bold and genre-bending but for the purposes of Wanda’s mystery, why is it taking the form of all these tv sitcoms. Well, Elizabeth Olsen confirmed that this sitcom formula is actually crucial to the show’s deeper secrets, she said “the reason its a sitcom shows itself later in the show. When Kevin Feige told me, it didn’t feel so bizarre. It felt like a great way to start our story.” Kevin Feige explained that this sitcom format represented a kind of escapism from the horrors of the world. So the simplest explanation is that the sitcoms represent...WANDAS MEMORIES WITH VISION. Wanda has constructed this pocket reality, maybe with the help of some third party sorcery and she might have chosen these classic sitcom formats because these were a source of comfort and escapism when she was holed up with Vision during the period in which they fell in love. This began when Wanda was under house arrest with Vision during civil war, cooking up paprikash and body slamming eachother to the basement. For two years, after civil war, Wanda and Vision were on the run. Wanda, a sokovia accords fugitive. We caught up them in Edinburgh at the top of Infinity War and by this time Wanda had mysteriously dropped her sokovian accent. Perhaps that accent faded as a result of Wanda and Vision binging a ton of classic american sitcoms to burn time while they’re on the run because it’s not like they could go for a daytime walk through the park. TV would be their escapist distraction, and these tv formats would be fresh in Wanda’s mind as an example of what a happy family looks like and would help Wanda transition her accent from eastern european to bland american. Shows like the Dick Van Dyke show, Bewitched, the Brady bunch, these all exist in the mcu because remember Cap kept that list of cultural references to catch up on and pretty much everything is on it. It seems like all of pop culture is mcu canon especially based off of all Tony’s references. So, in the events that led to wandavision, whatever they were, when Wanda has the opportunity to warp her reality so that Vision can be alive once more WestView might take the form of the sitcoms that defined the period she was happiest with her synthazoid. Now, some are saying these sitcoms could just be shows that Wanda grew up with as a girl in sokovia but something tells me that an eastern european country like sokovia might not have the more modern american sitcoms especially like the ones that show up in later in wandavision episodes. Shows like modern family or Malcolm in the middle would not be in syndication in a country like sokovia. It’s just far more meaningful of an explanation if these are titles that Wanda and Vision netflix and chill to. Now there is a darker take on this, that the sitcoms could be what are just playing on the tv as Wanda’s in a coma. Some theories are speculating that WestView is a hallucination in Wanda’s mind as she’s being kept in a sort of catatonic state to keep her from tearing the universe apart. And that just the next room over some guard is watching tv land reruns. I’m not crazy about this idea, it makes Wanda way less active and clearly wandavision is an exploration of Wanda Maximoff’s reality warping powers. Not something being done to her mind, and episode 3 reaveled that WestView is a real town in the real world so why go through the trouble of building a town if you’re just gonna project the reality inside the person’s mind. Actually a similar explanation justifies the sitcoms as something happening, not inside Wanda’s mind, but Vision’s mind. Vision’s O.S rebooting. As a synthazoid, Vision’s consciousness comes from a variety of sources. Human tissue, vibranium, the mindstone, Jarvis and asgardian magic. Really he was built to be the final form body of Ultron, a process that was interrupted. Remeber, when Ultron became sentient, we saw his awakening from his point of view. His mind’s eye flashed through historical media until he woke up and murdered Jarvis in a hologram battle! In infinity war Vision went...offline. And now wandavision could be showing us the process by which that corpse is rebooted with Wanda using her mind stone derived powers to enter Vision’s consciousness and try to restore his soul. Like his predecessor Ultron, Vision could be relearning the story of humanity via historical media but in this case 20th century american sitcoms. I don’t mind this explanation, Ultron was just mentioned in episode 3 but it would make wandavision more about Vision than Wanda and it wouldn’t really explain why WestView exists in the real world. I think this series is clearly setting up Wanda’s arc especially since she is confirmed to come back in multiverse of madness. So a theory I dug up is that if we assume WestView was warped into a sitcom reality by a hex spell cast by Wanda then these sitcoms could come from a cursed object like Agnes’ cursed TV set. Just stay with me on this. Beyond the tv sitcom format, playing an important role on this show, the physical object of a television is also important. It appears all over promo art, the first episode ends with Vision using a tv remote to switch us out of the episode as a sword agent watches this all go down on a tv screen. Clearly the technology of broadcast media is part of this. Now the movie pleasantville is at least an aesthetic inspiration with objects switching to technicolor within a monochromatic world. I’m not saying Wanda got sucked into a tv show like Tobey Maguire did but she may have cast a hex alongside fellow witch Agnes that involved a TV set that caused this spell to misfire and trap Wanda and Agnes in a hellish dimension displayed via the medium of television but that theory is a bit complicated. So to simplify that theory, we might just need to involve an unseen third party in which case these sitcoms could be Wanda being tortured by a demon. I know I know but Paul Bettany keeps continuing to tease this top secret surprise actor coming into the final episodes who will make us look at the mcu in a whole new light, an actor that he previously said he had wanted to work with for a long time and that in wandavision a character Vision has fireworks with. Now we have speculated that actor could be Richard E. Grant confirmed for the loki series or Evan Peters rumored to be in the show. Or one of the other X-Men cast crossing over to the mcu. And although Elizabeth Olsen teased that wandavision does give too much certainty as to whether there even is a villain. I think most of us still believe this could be some dark demonic entity whom Agnes is serving, her quote-unquote husband Ralph. Someone distracting Wanda with the classic tv escapism while he drains her of her power, Mephisto. Or the grim reaper, nightmare or if we’re looking for marvel villains who love to use tv to torture people...MOJO. Mojo does look a hell of a lot like the devil with the yellow eyes from Legion. Yeah I guess wandavision could be set in the mojo verse, does that sound like that simple explanation Elizabeth Olsen talked about? Not really but uh mojo’s coming sooner or later so why not sooner 😏 Which of these explanations seems the best to you? DM me on Instagram if you have questions or suggestions on anything else I should cover. My Instagram: mqrvelzz