AV Club
With two episodes that are fun sitcom parodies and a third that ends as a vaguely horror-flavored take on a Marvel movie,
WandaVision has the makings of what could be a riveting entry in the MCU canon. After all, where does a TV show go when it has already been madcap black-and-white sitcom, a slightly saucier high-concept comedy,
and a super-powered mystery with possibly enormous repercussions for the wider universe? It’s hard to say, because such a feat’s never really been done before, and it only makes sense now because of the seemingly bottomless—yet often sparingly utilized—storytelling potential of the MCU.
WandaVision is tapping into a power that the MCU has been sitting on for a decade, and like Wanda ripping Thanos apart in
Endgame, it’s about time we see what this thing can really do.
Polygon
The one thing to know about
WandaVision is that, at first, it isn’t an
Endgame sequel, a bridge to
Doctor Strange 2, or a TV series cast from molten Marvel lore. And unlike the MCU movies, which have the luxury of keeping butts in seats for two hours and explaining themselves in a single breath, this story is chopped into pieces, leaving plenty of room for unfulfilled expectations. A sitcom is lightweight. A Marvel story might need to be something else. But not in this case —
WandaVision is
WandaVision, and if you can watch it for what it is, it’s satisfying television.
Empire
Above all, it’s delightful to watch superhero characters in a big-budget outing and not have a clue what’s going to happen next. There
is likely to be more formulaic stuff to come — we know there’s a big role planned for Teyonah Parris’ Monica Rambeau, and appearances due from Kat Denning’s Darcy and Randall Park’s FBI Agent Woo — but in the meantime, we get a bizarre trip back through beloved TV tropes that is a world away from the usual superhero punch-ups. If this is Marvel’s post-
Endgame imperial phase, where they do whatever the hell they want because they can, sign us up.
Vox
After seeing the first three episodes, I think
WandaVision is a show whose early going is going to seem better in hindsight, once it has some time to unspool. The foundation the show is clearly working toward in the first three installments really comes to life in episode three — the oddities, the central mystery, and the very suspicious supporting characters all start to come together. I imagine that when everything starts locking into place, the first episodes will take on a new meaning. Until that happens,
WandaVision’s debut is an intriguing, visually captivating world with a lot of question marks, one that’s full of potential but also requires a bit of patience.
rogerebert.com
Cleverness is a welcome thing, but it can’t be the only thing. “WandaVision,” the first collaboration between Marvel Studios and Disney+ that begins airing on the streaming service on January 15, has a strong grasp of sitcom tropes, is deft at subverting them with a wink to the audience, and finally lets
Paul Bettany be funny again. (“A Knight’s Tale” fans, rejoice, for Bettany returns to the same kind of zaniness that made his Chaucer so fun.) But it’s difficult to tell where “WandaVision” is going to go based on the series’ first three episodes provided for review. Each half-hour installment is so defined by allusions to classic TV like “I Dream of Jeannie,” “The
Dick Van Dyke Show,” “
Bewitched,” “I Love Lucy,” and “The Brady Bunch” that its titular characters seem sidelined in their own series. The show-within-a-show format makes for cheeky diversions—like a series of commercials that reference other elements of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including Stark Industries and Hydra—but ultimately feels somewhat shallow. “WandaVision” makes an initial commitment to playfulness, but the realization that this experimentation remains in service of a larger, continued narrative rather than fully standing on its own removes (at least in these first 90 or so minutes) any real sense of narrative stakes.
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Forbes
Since this is episodic television, the best compliment I can pay to
WandaVision is that I am thus far enjoying each episode as a singular installment unto itself, regardless of how the story ends or how it connects to the larger MCU. I can inquire out loud as to how satisfying the wrap-up might be, but considering
Avengers: Endgame was essentially the only big-scale fantasy IP that didn’t botch the landing in 2019, they have my benefit of the doubt. Moreover, as long as each episode is entertaining as its own thing, the destination is of less importance presuming it doesn’t screw up as badly as, say, HBO’s
The Undoing.
Observer
Because of the MCU’s interconnected storytelling, we cannot absorb
WandaVision without considering the chapters that came before. For those that want more of the same,
WandaVision’s first three episodes will most assuredly feel slow, as it hones in on the couple’s avant-garde suburban life with just occasional references to anything beyond its line of sight. For those of you excited by the prospect of disassembling Marvel’s formula, which can occasionally taste flavorless,
WandaVision is the remedy. It’s a fantastical, time-hopping conspiracy at an intimate scale—off-beat and low-stakes in comparison to the recent
Avengers saga. It’s deliberately and refreshingly weird, with the themed introduction changing as episodes zip through different decades, along with the clothes, design, and directorial style.
ScreenCrush
While the one-liners themselves sometimes leave a little to be desired, Olsen and Bettany do a terrific job tailoring their performances as Wanda and Vision to match the aesthetics of 1950s and ’60s multi-camera productions. Everything from the way they walk, to the pauses they take between lines to accommodate the canned laughter, feels just right for the period. They generate all the biggest laughs, like the sequence in the second episode where Vision puts on a disastrous magic show and Wanda needs to use her actual magic powers to cover for him.
Matt Shakman, whose resume includes epic dramas like
Game of Thrones and actual sitcoms like
Everybody Hates Chris, is an ideal director for a show that includes elements of both genres.
Still, if
WandaVision was going lean so far in the direction of vintage sitcoms, it might have benefitted from punchier scripts. It takes a long time for a clear picture of what’s going on behind Wanda and Vision’s televised domestic bliss to emerge. The tiny teases of the larger story behind
WandaVision are intriguing, and promise a final six episodes that should be a lot more exciting and Marvel-y than these three. On their own, this very prolonged first act feels a bit like the sitcom equivalent of a synthezoid: A simulation of something so convincing it could almost pass for the real thing — almost.
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IGN
With all these elements combined, WandaVision makes quite an entrance. While right now it can’t claim the oddball crown from Marvel’s strangest project (hello, Legion), it is nonetheless a surprising and refreshing move for the distinctly mainstream MCU. And while the sitcom design may mean it’s not a show that reminds you why you love superheroes, at least up front, it most certainly is a show to remind you why you love comic book stories. In print, Marvel’s best plots are those that reach beyond the genre staples and buck formulaic trends. WandaVision definitively states that the MCU is ready to do this, too. And, for me at least, that’s the most exciting promise the first entry of Phase Four could make.
Variety
Because no, of course things in “WandaVision” are not quite as they seem. While there are no concrete answers to be found in the first few episodes, there are clues and eerie moments that make plain that the stakes of their supposedly blissful domestic life aren’t nearly as low as advertised. Despite its character and dialogue beats, “WandaVision” isn’t a sitcom; it’s a sinister thriller wearing respectable clothes and an unnervingly bright grin. It’s “Pleasantville,” if “Pleasantville” opened with the characters stuck inside the black and white television. When “WandaVision” leans into this uncanny-valley side of itself, it works much better than it does when it’s just going through the sitcom motions others have done better before.
CNET
Most importantly WandaVision sets up a whopping great mystery of its own. There may not exactly be a Baby Yoda to set social media abuzz, unless Paul Bettany's bumbling synthezoid wins hearts with his sheer befuddled wholesomeness. The divine Kathryn Hahn will also win fans with her pitch-perfect performance, throwing herself into the role with relish.
Even without a Baby Yoda-style phenomenon, WandaVision will no doubt invite frenzied theorizing in a similar manner to shows like Westworld. It remains to be seen over the course of nine episodes whether the apparently fairly slight premise can sustain its twin engines, building suspense while holding our attention with engaging characters. But it's utterly self-assured and colorfully entertaining -- right from the moment you walk in the front door.
Collider
But beyond its place in the MCU ecosystem, a key part of what makes
WandaVision so great so far is that it's
not a goddamn movie (said swearing brought to you by years of frustration over creators calling their TV shows "a 70-hour film"). The episodic structure of the series is essential to its existence, and the rich collection of details packed into each installment makes me grateful we'll have several weeks to unpack them all.
Is the most exciting thing about
WandaVision the fact that for the first time, Marvel is really trying something new? Perhaps. The artistic merit of the films and ancillary media that have been released since 2008 and become perhaps the planet's most dominant pop culture franchise today has long been a point of controversy. For sure, unique creative voices like
Taika Waititi and
Ryan Coogler have found ways to thrive within the framework established by
Jon Favreau's first
Iron Man film. But that framework has never allowed for this level of experimentation before now — meanwhile,
WandaVision dares to actually really challenge the viewer.
Lots of weird stuff has happened in the MCU, but never before has an MCU property kicked things off by trying to make us think that said weirdness is, y'know, normal. It's great TV on its own merits. But for those who relish these stories but always want them to reach further,
WandaVision is a true triumph.
Grade: A
Slashfilm
As the episodes go on, these uneasy moments begin to become more frequent, seeded into both the subtext of the show (the filming style switching up to more modern techniques with each tone shift) and the text, as Wanda begins to notice strange happenings in her suburban ideal. The only downside to these more frequent interruptions into the sitcom gimmick is that
WandaVision starts to lose its unique style that makes its first episode so striking and unusual, and begins to feel stylistically like a typical Marvel Studios project. The unanswered questions are intriguing enough that this loss of the show’s experimental style doesn’t bother me too much, but I almost wish they could give equal commitment to the gimmick as they do the slowly unfolding mystery.
But regardless,
WandaVision is unquestionably the most experimental thing Marvel has ever produced. It hopefully harkens a new era for the studio to break out of that darned formula every now and then, and get weird. There’s nothing wrong with being a little unusual.
EW
There's a lot of stuff to enjoy in
WandaVision, and I haven't even mentioned the period-appropriate theme songs by
Frozeneers Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. But if you pop the hood of this overlit comedy twilight zone, I worry that the central mystery is a bit standard. Success will depend on whether the eventual answers are satisfying — and whether all those fancy sitcom adornments are just a long wind-up to an overly familiar superhero smash-up. Consider
WandaVision an unusual first step for this new Marvel phase. The best parts lovingly conjure the mood of very old television shows. The worst parts feel like just another movie.
B+