WandaVision season 1, episode 1 review: The Fifties

“You hear that? My wife’s head is spinning! Generally speaking, I don’t want it to do that!” Spoilers for WandaVision season 1, episode 1 follow.

WandaVision, Marvel Studios’ first foray into television on Disney Plus, has arrived and in it, Wanda Maximoff and Vision simply just want to live a regular life. Well, in a sitcom that is.

But their new life brings up more questions than answers namely, how is Vision alive after dying at the hands of Thanos?

Welcome to the fifties

From the get-go, it’s clear that WandaVision is going to be a love letter to sitcoms from different eras, with this first episode putting its emphasis on the 1950s. In fact, nearly everything about this episode specifically feels like a love letter to I Love Lucy. Just this one episode has managed to differentiate WandaVision from the rest of the MCU catalogue, which is wonderful.

Really, WandaVision is the first MCU property to seemingly go all in on the genre it is trying to represent. Sure, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a political thriller and Ant-Man is a heist film, but they are still firmly planted within the realm of the superhero genre. Almost nothing about this first episode of WandaVision feels like it is set within the realm of a superhero universe.

Even with Wanda and Vision themselves, the show just tries to portray them as oddities attempting to blend in rather than the fantastical superheroes that they are. Even after not having any MCU new properties to watch for over a year, this is still a nice change of pace for the franchise.

Truly though, this does feel like a love letter to ’50s sitcoms. From the camerawork, set & costume design, blocking techniques, and even acting, it feels like it would fit right in, wedged between re-runs of I Love Lucy on TV Land. Well, it mostly feels that way, but we’ll get to that later. For the vast majority of the episode though, it feels like the entire team was just having fun recreating this era.

Wanda and Vision, together at last

It’d be impossible to truly talk about this episode without bringing up how incredible Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany are on-screen together. Their chemistry just flows so naturally that it feels like these two were made to share the screen together. They play off each other wonderfully both with their excellent comedic timing and in the one intense, horror-esque scene that happens toward the end of the episode. Everything about their performances are truly pitch perfect whenever they are together.

Even separately, their charisma is electric. From Wanda’s attempts to get Agnes (also played excellently by Kathryn Hahn) out of her kitchen and house to Vision questioning what the company he works for actually does, Olsen and Bettany’s performances just draw you in. They are absolutely hammy and over-the-top, but that’s exactly what they’re supposed to be for this episode and they pull it off incredibly. Olsen in particular just steals every scene she’s in.

What’s also nice is that we actually get to see Wanda and Vision together here, as a couple. This is something that was not really able to be explored all that much during Civil War or Infinity War, although it’s obviously shown that they are together in the latter. However, it’s nice to finally be able to see them as a happy couple for once, even if their happiness is fleeting and will be brutally taken away by the end of the season. Yeah, I’m a cynic. So what?

Horror settles in

As has been mentioned a couple of times in this review, there is a moment that transforms this episode from a love letter to 1950s sitcoms, to a set-up for the horror that awaits Wanda and Vision as the season progresses. It’s a drastic shift in tone and style that easily could have fallen flat, but it was handled perfectly.

What made this moment work so well is the sudden shift to it. There was no build-up. No impression that it will happen any second. It just does. And because it just happens with none of that build-up it sucks you in even more than previously. The sudden shift to modern camerawork, repetition of dialogue, and score creates the perfect sense of unease to let the audience know that, like a Transformer, there’s more than meets the eye in the suburbs.

WandaVision begins the series with a fantastic love letter to the sitcoms of old, while also paving the way for the series as the season progresses.

What did you think of WandaVision‘s premiere? Let us know in the comments below!