‘WandaVision’ Season Finale: Love Perseveres, But Marvel Spectacle Persists [Review]

We’ll probably never know how “WandaVision” would have played with audiences had it been released following “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” as originally intended, but the first MCU show on Disney+ really felt like a microcosm of the MCU at large. There was big-budget spectacle with some character moments, a lot of fan service, and mystery box-ing meant to have the internet talking, great performances, and also an underwhelming CG-fest of a final confrontation. In short, a true part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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Following the cliffhanger from last week’s episode, this last episode, aptly titled “The Series Finale,” mostly falls victim to the MCU’s over-reliance on CG-heavy fight scenes for its third acts. With Agathe Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) threatening Wanda’s kids, and S.W.O.R.D. on the move to take Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and her Hex down, most of the episode is dedicated to spoon-feeding exposition and clumsy fight scenes that boil down to Wanda and Agatha shooting different-colored magic beams out of their hands at each other. There’s a lot of cryptic talk about what it means that Wanda is “The Scarlet Witch,” and how dangerous she is and how better it’d be if Wanda just let Agatha steal her power and allowed her to live happily inside the Hex with her family. But none of that, the chaos and danger teased, and Wanda’s potential destructive power really amounts to much in the end.

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Elsewhere, Monica (Teyonah Parris) discovers that Fake Pietro (or “Fietro”; Evan Peters) is really Agatha’s fake husband Ralph, in disguise, and decides to help Wanda by taking care of the S.W.O.R.D. soldiers entering the Hex, and Vision battles the White Vision (and fulfills Paul Bettany‘s troll of wanting to act against himself). Fans who were begging for a longer episode certainly got what they wished, except most of the entire thing was just one big fight scene.

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This is not necessarily a bad quality per se, and thankfully “WandaVision” shakes things up a bit with the vastly better duel between the two Visions, which plays more like a battle of wits than one of fists. White the two witches shoot beams at each other, the synthezoids spend a good chunk of time arguing about the metaphysics of identity via the Theseus’s Ship paradox (essentially, if you dismantle a ship, fix it, and then assemble it again, is it still the same ship?). The sequence plays out like the “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain” scene in “Doctor Strange,” and it stays true to Vision’s character and calmer demeanor. Even the boys end up helping, with Tommy and Billy easily taking down most of the S.W.O.R.D. soldiers before the whole family get together with an epic hero shot like in “The Incredibles” or even “Spy Kids.”

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Those expecting to see Benedict Cumberbatch‘s Doctor Strange show up in the finale will surely be disappointed, with the Sorcerer Supreme only getting a vague name-drop in the episode. Likewise, fans hoping that Fietro would pay off in any X-Men/Marvel/Fox way were probably not expecting him actually to be Ralph — does this mean Ralph was the guy in witness protection that Jimmy was looking for? We don’t know. Dropping red herrings and leaving questions unanswered isn’t inherently a bad thing. Still, the problem is that “WandaVision” placed so much importance on its mystery box that it treated Wanda’s grief as a puzzle to be solved rather than as character development to be explored throughout the season. Seeing flashbacks to Wanda’s life last week and the pain she’s endured her entire life was emotional, for sure, but dropping all of that on the audience like a brick at the last minute as a final missing piece of a puzzle cheapened Wanda’s journey by treating her like a plot device in her own show.

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The best example of this is the way “WandaVision” made a big deal out of S.W.O.R.D. Director Hayward (Josh Stamberg) went from a shady guy with some good reasons to mistrust Wanda, to a mustache-twirling villain in the blink of an eye, going as far as to try and shoot down Tommy and Billy in the finale. The second act of the season spent a significant amount of time building up Jimmy (Randall Park), Monica, and Darcy (Kat Dennings) as important characters that could help save Wanda, only for Darcy to appear for a single scene and then disappear again, while Jimmy spent most of the finale in handcuffs (demonstrating they had little purpose other than plot tools, albeit familiar ones). Really, the only pay-off to the whole S.W.O.R.D. thing was Monica getting powers, which the finale’s mid-credits scene makes clear was little more than a teaser for “Captain Marvel 2,” as Monica is greeted by a Skrull in disguise that invites her to go off-world with her to meet a friend of her mother — probably either Ben Mendelsohn‘s Talos, or Nick Fury himself (further illustrating the only reason she was really in the show was a narrative bridge to get to the “Captain Marvel” sequel, which why her arc ultimately feels so shortchanged). There was a lot of time spent on making Monica sympathize with Wanda’s grief, but the only interaction between the two in the finale is a silent nod of acknowledgment as Wanda walks away from Westview.

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Despite the issues with the finale and the show at large, “WandaVision” works because of Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen, who manage to sell even the show’s worst parts. Agatha’s fight against Wanda may be just a repeat of any other MCU film, but Wanda coming to terms with her abilities and embracing her powers to defend her family was as satisfying as most Marvel film’s climaxes. Likewise, Wanda’s goodbye to her family, and her explaining what exactly Vision is — the manifestation of her memories and her love — is absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking, and it only serves to make one angry at the way the show sidetracked Wanda for half of the season to focus on S.W.O.R.D. instead.

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So, where does Marvel go from here? As mentioned, the first of two credits scenes tease Monica’s role in “Captain Marvel 2,” while a post-credits scene reminds audiences that Wanda will return in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” We see what seems like a projection of Wanda in a remote cabin, while the real (?) Wanda is inside, levitating and reading the “Darkhold” book of magic, while the theme from “Doctor Strange” plays in the background. The voices of Billy and Tommy ask for help across the cosmos, and we cut to black, teasing that Wanda’s family will return after some potential multiverse-tempering (?). As for Vision? It’d feel cheap if Wanda simply gets her husband back after such an emotional goodbye and then huge weight placed on her sacrificing her happiness to defeat Agatha, but then again, this is a comicbook movie, and we do know White Vision is out there somewhere — with his memories intact.

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In the end, “WandaVision” was not about the cameos, or the mystery-box plot twists, or the bigger connections to the MCU; it was always meant to be a self-contained story about Wanda and her relationship with Vision. When the series actually focused on the tragic, human element— the ideas of love, loss, grief, and the hole that one leaves inside us when they’re gone— the show was great, funny, smart, and emotional. Unfortunately, the MCU had to MCU and shoehorning-in of the S.W.O.R.D. subplot and the focus on the mystery box diminished Wanda’s emotional journey and resulted in another MCU project. Not terrible, but not perfect, and perhaps a stark reminder that while audiences may love the human soap opera melodrama, the company still feels obligated to bring the big flashy spectacle, for better or worse.