A common complaint about critics and viewers of the “WandaVision” series finale was that it seemingly let Wanda off the hook for essentially torturing and holding the citizens of Westview hostage. Even after we had a whole song about how it was “Agatha All Along,” it was actually Wanda who was behind everything, and some fans weren’t happy that Wanda got away free and didn’t get killed? Or imprisoned? It’s unclear what exactly they wanted out of the show, but now director Matt Shakman pushed back against criticism that the show agreed with and condoned Wanda’s behavior.
READ MORE: Marvel Studios’ ‘Assembled’ Trailer Goes Behind The Scenes Of ‘WandaVision’
“I don’t think we’re letting Wanda off the hook. She realizes in that final episode what she’s done,” Shakman said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “She’s brought to that moment by Agatha — ‘Are you a hero? Are you a villain? Heroes don’t torture people’ — and she tries to let them go in that moment, but realizes that she’s not fully able to say goodbye to her family yet. So the crisis at the middle of the episode is important to her story, that she is ultimately moving towards accepting the loss of Vision and her family.”
“The show was always about grief and how we come back from loss, so it always had to end with her accepting that loss, but also accepting this new mantle of the Scarlet Witch and what that means,” Shakman continued. “But that final scene, she comes into town, it’s her walk of shame as she walks through town and feels the daggers being stared at her, meant to be this indictment of her. She is a pariah, and she’s not being forgiven by them.”
Indeed, the show didn’t include a scene like that for no reason, and just because Doctor Strange didn’t come to Westview to fight Wanda doesn’t mean that it can’t happen in the future. It’s been clear for years that the MCU is one giant TV show, and the end of “WandaVision” was just a cliffhanger to be resolved at a later date.
In a different interview with CinemaBlend, “WandaVision” creator and head writer Jac Schaeffer explained another unresolved subplot, that of new Vision and why he didn’t stick around. “The point is that he’s not her guy. That’s not the man that she had children with. That’s not the one who’s been in the sitcom world with him. That’s not the one that she said goodbye to on a hill in Wakanda,” Schaeffer said. “That’s the body and the data.”
