By treating Wanda’s story as one about grief, loss, and healing, Marvel denied me the chance to connect my comic book knowledge to the movies. Do you think we read comic books for fun? NO. We read them so we can amass a bunch of knowledge about storylines and then feel secure that we’re ahead of the curve when the movies come along to repeat those storylines. I haven’t been burned this badly by Marvel since The Mandarin turned out to be just an actor in Iron Man 3. Why would you play with my expectations, Marvel? To surprise me? To bring me joy? The only joy I feel is when my fan theories are proved correct so that people know I’m smart.
I don’t watch Marvel stuff to feel feelings or to think about my emotions or consider my place in the world or my relationships with others. I watch them for two reasons: 1) To acknowledge comic books (the more obscure the better, so as to reward my efforts), and 2) to tease future Marvel projects at the expense of the one I’m currently watching. We all know that the best part of Avengers: Age of Ultron is when Thor (Chris Hemsworth) goes on his vision quest because that clued us into the Infinity Stones even though stones had already been mentioned the previous year in Guardians of the Galaxy. I also think we can all agree that Iron Man 2 is the best Marvel movie because it does so much heavy lifting in setting up future Marvel movies. And in my opinion, there has not been a better Marvel scene than the one in Thor where Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) is in a bucket to introduce us to Hawkeye.
WandaVision denied us all of these great kinds of moments that were not promised by the show in any way, but they were promised to us by the fandom, which is obviously more important than the thing they’re supposedly a fan of. If you’re not listening to the fans, then what are you even doing? Crafting a story with a strong character arc to explore a universal emotion that resonates deeply with the viewer? Who wants that?! Looking back at WandaVision, all I see are a bunch of missed opportunities. Instead of using the series to introduce the X-Men, they just turned it into a gag about a guy named Ralph Bohner, which, while objectively hilarious, did not support my fan theory, so the show failed. WandaVision made me look foolish, and all entertainment must support my ego.