WandaVision 2: Sitcoms and Superheroes and Spoilers too

[mormont]

Kicking off this thread with my favourite observation from a podcast discussion I listened to today:

In ep 4, when Wanda blasts Monica out of Westview, she smashes through the wall of the house, then through two more walls on the way, so that when she breaks through the force field around the town... she's breaking the fourth wall.

Re: possible sitcoms to be referenced, I think people are missing the key element. The simulations are always going to be of sitcoms centred around a married couple, in suburbia, and at this point, with kids. No Friends, no Frasier, no Seinfeld, no Curb Your Enthusiasm. These don't speak to that aspiration that Wanda is desperately trying to fulfil. And that's the critical plot element here.

[RumHam]

The only show that hasn't been revealed is the 90's one. Unless they're not sticking exactly to decades. We know it's a Halloween episode.

You can see the Modern Family bit where Wanda is addressing the camera mockumentary style in one of the trailers. Bettany has said they do 

Malcom in the Middle

 

 

[Werthead]

49 minutes ago, RumHam said:

The only show that hasn't been revealed is the 90's one. Unless they're not sticking exactly to decades. We know it's a Halloween episode.

You can see the Modern Family bit where Wanda is addressing the camera mockumentary style in one of the trailers. Bettany has said they do 

  Reveal hidden contents

Malcom in the Middle

 

I thought that was the 1990s one, but it turns out that's a lot more recent than I thought it was. Pleasant change from thinking a show is ten years old max and finding out it debuted in 1996.

What would be wild is if they did a 100% animated Simpsons-style episode. But I doubt that will happen somehow.

[Werthead]

Quote

Edit: thinking about all this sitcom stuff makes me think more than ever that the origins of all this have to be way beyond Wanda, even if she's taken control of it. How likely is it that an eastern European child growing up with lots of trauma is super familiar with the history of American sitcoms? Unless Sokovia's media consumption was all American, all the time. I guess it was never part of the Soviet Union?

There were a few articles about this. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, television stations in Eastern Europe flocked to buy old American shows en masse and because they sometimes couldn't afford the latest series, they ended up buying a backlog of old and sometimes really old shows on the cheap, then use the success of that to buy newer shows. US companies were encouraged to invest in or sell products to the former eastern bloc as well.

Wanda was born in 1989, so would have grown up in post-Soviet Sokovia, not during the USSR itself.

[DMC]

11 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I thought that was the 1990s one, but it turns out that's a lot more recent than I thought it was. Pleasant change from thinking a show is ten years old max and finding out it debuted in 1996.

Me too, I figured it was mostly in the nineties and couldn't believe it didn't debut until 2000 when looking it up.  Still undecided if that misperception makes me feel less or more old though.

[Rhom]

3 hours ago, mormont said:

Kicking off this thread with my favourite observation from a podcast discussion I listened to today:

In ep 4, when Wanda blasts Monica out of Westview, she smashes through the wall of the house, then through two more walls on the way, so that when she breaks through the force field around the town... she's breaking the fourth wall.

Re: possible sitcoms to be referenced, I think people are missing the key element. The simulations are always going to be of sitcoms centred around a married couple, in suburbia, and at this point, with kids. No Friends, no Frasier, no Seinfeld, no Curb Your Enthusiasm. These don't speak to that aspiration that Wanda is desperately trying to fulfil. And that's the critical plot element here.

Do you mind editing the title of the post to mark it as a spoiler topic so we don’t have to hide everything behind tags?

Might be understood, but I know some people get persnickety about it.

ETA:  Thanks @mormont!

[Rhom]

You know... Vision’s rising angst against Wanda at the end of Family Ties would really lead in well to his transition into Al Bundy!

An opening sequence where Vision sits with one hand down his pants would be epic!!!!

ETA:  I realize that’s unlikely.  Hard to think of too many other shows from the 90s that fit the suburbia image of the others.  Full House might be the best fit.

[Caligula_K3]

2 hours ago, mormont said:

Re: possible sitcoms to be referenced, I think people are missing the key element. The simulations are always going to be of sitcoms centred around a married couple, in suburbia, and at this point, with kids. No Friends, no Frasier, no Seinfeld, no Curb Your Enthusiasm. These don't speak to that aspiration that Wanda is desperately trying to fulfil. And that's the critical plot element here.

This is the aspiration that Wanda thinks she wants to fulfill, but once she gets more and more annoyed by Vision and the kids, she's going to realize that what she really wants is to hang out with Richard Lewis and challenge others in Westview about social norms and customs. Especially when Norm yells at Wanda for throwing garbage into his garbage can in episode 7.

[Argonath Diver]

I thought I read somewhere that there were 6 "sitcom" episodes and three "real world" ones? Episode 5 kind of screwed that logic up, though, so take that with a grain of salt. So, are there two more sitcoms to cover, or three? Growing Pains started only three years before Full House, and both went into the 90s. Malcolm seems like the next logical jump, then on to Modern Family. I think there might be three sitcoms for the previous four decades, basically. Two more, then the last two episodes of the show don't introduce another sitcom pastiche, as by then the proverbial shit will have hit the fan. 

Perhaps next week's will keep the boys as they are, and focus more on Quicksilver and Westview in general without a new sitcom setting; squatting on this late 80s/early 90s vibe we saw. They can jump the next week to a Malcolm setting with the boys as pre-teens, and in ep 8 and/or 9, we'll see a bit of the Modern Family camerawork and teenagers deep into their ennui.

 

 

[RumHam]

35 minutes ago, Argonath Diver said:

I thought I read somewhere that there were 6 "sitcom" episodes and three "real world" ones? Episode 5 kind of screwed that logic up, though, so take that with a grain of salt.

I posted that, it was just speculation I'd read based on the assumption they were doing from the 50's-2000's. 

We've seen a fair bit of next week's halloween stuff in all the trailers, but there's nothing there that really suggests any show in particular. 

One thing that's interesting going back to the first trailer:

is the scene of Vision waking Agnes up like he did to Norm.

[Jaxom 1974]

There are (at least) four episodes remaining and technically three decades of television to cover...if they're going to be complete...

Spoiler

Right now I'm guessing Agnes is actually Agatha Harkness, but she's working for Hayward, who is actually, possibly, Mephisto...Dottie?  She might be the Nightmare connection for the next Doctor Strange movie...

Though that's all just made up guesses...

 

[mormont]

Nah. I think if anyone is Mephisto, it's Dottie.

 

[Rhom]

We haven’t seen Dottie since that first appearance have we?

Its hard for me to see her as a major player going forward without some sort of through story.

[Werthead]

Yeah, Dottie's a bit low-key to be in that kind of role. Interestingly though, she was completely missing from SWORD's "big board" in the previous episode.

[IlyaP]

3 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Yeah, Dottie's a bit low-key to be in that kind of role. Interestingly though, she was completely missing from SWORD's "big board" in the previous episode.

Potentially accidental, or just an angle issue? 

[Werthead]

1 minute ago, IlyaP said:

Potentially accidental, or just an angle issue? 

Deliberate, it appears.

[IlyaP]

1 minute ago, Werthead said:

Deliberate, it appears.

What are the chances it's a red herring? 

 

[mormont]

Yeah, Dottie has only appeared once, hence the 'if' in my statement. But if you look around, a lot of people on the internet have some evidence for this conclusion:

1. Agnes tells Wanda that 'Dottie is the key to everything in this town'.

2. Dottie remarks that 'the devil's in the details', and in response Agnes says in an aside to Wanda 'that's not the only place he is'.

3. Dottie's picture is entirely absent from the board, as noted above, despite Dottie featuring prominently in footage Darcy watches.

4. Apparently Kevin Feige personally approved casting for the role, and there is a suggestion that this may be because it extends beyond this one series.

Might be something, might all be just nothing...

 

[Frey family reunion]

Forgive me if this has already been discussed, but I heard it referenced on one of the YouTube videos and I thought it was pretty interesting.  

Apparently the X-men movies starting with X-Men First Class each took place in a different decade.  I know that First Class took place in the 60’s and Days of Future Past partially took place in the 70’s.  What I didn’t realize is the Apocolypse movie took place in the 80’s and the Dark Phoenix one took place in the 90’s.  I didn’t realize it because I pulled the plug on the Apocolypse one early on, and I never watched the Dark Phoenix one.

But anyway, the Quicksilver that shows up in WandaVision was the one who made his premiere in the Days of Future Past from the 70’s, and came back in the next movie from the 80’s.  So if Wanda was technically in the 80’s when or if she reached out to bring her brother back, then the Quicksilver that showed up was the one who was actually age appropriate for being pulled into an 80‘s sitcom.  

[Rhom]

42 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

Forgive me if this has already been discussed, but I heard it referenced on one of the YouTube videos and I thought it was pretty interesting.  

Apparently the X-men movies starting with X-Men First Class each took place in a different decade.  I know that First Class took place in the 60’s and Days of Future Past partially took place in the 70’s.  What I didn’t realize is the Apocolypse movie took place in the 80’s and the Dark Phoenix one took place in the 90’s.  I didn’t realize it because I pulled the plug on the Apocolypse one early on, and I never watched the Dark Phoenix one.

But anyway, the Quicksilver that shows up in WandaVision was the one who made his premiere in the Days of Future Past from the 70’s, and came back in the next movie from the 80’s.  So if Wanda was technically in the 80’s when or if she reached out to bring her brother back, then the Quicksilver that showed up was the one who was actually age appropriate for being pulled into an 80‘s sitcom.  

I knew about the decades pattern to the later FoX-verse movies, but hadn't put it alongside the WandaVision.  

I never watched Dark Phoenix either.  Is it on Disney Plus?