Suspender Suspense

It's nice to see a family so devoted to braces. Last night's new WandaVision was a big improvement over the previous and I find myself becoming genuinely interested in Wanda's mental state.

We actually have a moment where Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) steps out of the sitcom reality and we see her in her old costume with hair that can't decide if it's red or blonde. The SWORD director guy (Josh Stamberg) has predictably turned into a boring caricature of the patriarchy and starts calling Wanda a terrorist and trying to kill her. Meanwhile, Rambo--I mean Rambeau (Teyonah Parris)--deduces that Wanda's actions indicate a more complex situation. I like the idea that Wanda might be making decisions that she herself doesn't understand and that she doesn't quite know the extent of her own control of the situation.

I'm intrigued by the fact that she doesn't quite know how to dress herself, too. This latest sitcom seems maybe to be an early '90s Full House type--meaning Elizabeth Olsen is finally following in the footsteps of her elder sisters, Mary Kate and Ashley. But that doesn't explain why the aspect ratio is no longer 4:3 and it also doesn't explain her hideous wardrobe.

Sure, that kind of plaid and denim combo is a kind of early '90s monstrosity but those high waisted jeans are a bit of an anachronism, as are the tight fit of both her and Vision's (Paul Bettany) clothes.

Maybe the infiltration of 2020s' fashion is a sign of Wanda's control breaking down?

Of course, the big bombshell was the end of the episode which featured an appearance from Evan Peters as Quicksilver--and not Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who played Quicksilver in Age of Ultron, where the character was introduced alongside Wanda. Evan Peters played Quicksilver in the Fox X-Men films so this is the first sign of how Disney plans to incorporate their new custody of X-Men rights into the MCU. We already knew they were planning to keep Deadpool, a character whose ability to cross intellectual properties seems more or less built in, but now we're getting some idea of how Disney may try to use more characters in that universe. Plenty of people seem to have connected the dots already with the upcoming Spider-Man and Doctor Strange movies--the latter of which features Elizabeth Olsen prominently as Wanda and even contains the word "multiverse" in the title.

Hopefully future episodes will at least maintain this level of writing quality. I see it was the only one so far written by Peter Cameron and Mackenzie Dohr. Given that Jac Schaeffer is the showrunner, we probably can't count on seeing them too many more times. Oh, well.

WandaVision is available on Disney+.