When episodes of WandaVision started dropping on Disney+ I watched a few out of curiosity, but honestly I didn’t know which end was up and I bailed after two and half. To be clear, I’ve watched only about half of the Marvel movies because I am not interested in people in costumes bashing things all day. I was foggy about some of the side characters, but am a fan of Paul Bettany. He was in a Knights Tale, a Beautiful Mind and Master and Commander from the early 2000s. My cousin encouraged me to continue with the show and I am glad he did.
The series starts to make sense halfway through episode three. (If you haven’t watched, it’s all spoilers from here on out.) Then, the show started to make too much sense. The main character is creating an illusion for herself based on years of watching American family sitcoms with her grief as the driver. I won’t go into the supernatural/magical/quasi-science because to me, it doesn’t really matter. The point is that I feel like I have done the same.
In the first decade of the 2000s, I lost a bunch of people. First, it was my grandpa on my Mom’s side. Then it was my aunt and my Dad within a couple of months, and finally both grandmas in the following years. My family was disappearing from the inside out. They vanished and they weren’t coming back. I know how the grief of losing your family can create the motivation to try to build a new one. You want to refill all the holes carved out of your life and heart.
Unlike the show, my husband Tim is not-a-robot, but I did find him using Internet technology. The kids aren’t pretend. We did make them though, and for me that will always be supernatural/magical/quasi-science because, “Hey! We made people where there weren’t any before.”
Like Wanda, I too am drawing lifestyle inspiration from all the decades. My house is 1930s, and I am making dinners like the 1950s, also working part-time like the 1980s, but more equitable like the 1990s. Tim and I are decorating and parenting in a mix of traditional and modern—the security without the emotional and financial distress. Honestly, we’re all making it up as we go.
Now that we are rounding up a year of pandemic, I think we can all relate to this show to some degree. The daytime pajama scene was all too real! We lost the lifestyle that we had and we’re all grieving. Also, a half a million Americans died. Television has been an escape for lots of us, but also a bit of fantasy replacing reality. We need to mourn the loss and then move on. Well, after the next episode, obviously.
