Was this coincidental timing? I hope you and I both like Agatha Harkness more than Wanda Maximoff. I am glad she got lost at the end of Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, since Agatha turned out to be a surprise fan-favorite character who is much more likable than Wanda and Monica. Only time will tell if Agatha Darkhold Diaries is any improvement over WandaVision. July 11, 2024, 4:21pm
That checks out. It takes a long time to record 34 minutes of commentary, and an even longer time to edit together every single clip you want to show us. July 11, 2024, 8:34pm
You know who else lost everything? Peter Parker. Yes I know this argument has been used a billion fucking times but bear with me because I’m about to make it a billion and one. Peter Parker arguably has a harder time than Wanda by the end of his trilogy. He’s seventeen, a literal child, and has lost absolutely everything. Not just his family and friends, but his future, his dreams, and any hope of a normal life. That’s not even getting into what he went through before and during the first two movies (Uncle Ben, having a building dropped on him, dying, losing Tony, etc). But instead of throwing a pity party and making it everyone else’s problem, what does he do? He decides to do the right thing. He continues being a hero, because his own tragedies don’t have to define him or his actions.
Both actually had villain narratives in comics, while Wanda was also done in several ways, I don't get it, all Marvel characters have potential villain archetypes or multiverse villainous versions. What is the argument? The MCU narrative is the ONLY narrative? Because if it is, Spiderman is from Sonyverse, not MCU. Thor has hundreds of years, so, he also fkd up, and the first movie he sucked and was a brat and was sent to earth to learn how to be better? We are going to ignore this? He had everything and he sucked and was punished by losing his powers and sent to earth... Spiderman problems are caused by his powers, the fact he chooses to use the way he does, is he's downfall, so much so in the comics you have the version who don't have powers and have a good life, you have the villain version, even in movies he is the reason why people die. But is all about what you going to hate today about Marvel or DC Comics? Series? Modern? Movies? Representation? Costumes? Writing? What? Is just the version they are doing it in the movies. Wanda is not a mutant like her original counterpart, it is the definitive version? No. Makes sense? No, but is not the worse version either. Is just how MCU choose to portrait her now. Every time a comic is printed a soul dies inside a man because is not about how awesome homoeroticism is. There's a fkg woman there to spoil everything. But without them, no history would ever happen.
Quick point, but Peter decides first to look out for number one, and then as a result of the outcomes of that way of thinking effecting him personally, he realizes that acting selfishly when he has the ability to help makes him feel worse than he would otherwise.
Fun Fact: Dr. Strange was actually supposed to be in the finale but was rewritten without him because 'They couldn't have a man solve a woman's problem'
Let me get this straight, wanda functionally enslaved and tortured several thousand people to use as props and in an attempt to make this out to be sympathetic they have a black character go out of her way to defend her despite wanda having assaulted her outright
The contrast between Wanda and Star Lord within the fandom was always striking to me. Peter Quill found out, a week after meeting his father, finding out that father killed his mother, _killing_ that father, and losing his adoptive father, that his girlfriend was murdered by _her_ father, and chose to take out his anguish and grief on Thanos...and people hate him for that. Wanda lost her boyfriend in battle and chose to take that out on a group of several thousand strangers, and people make excuses for her.
Not only that but Peter commited one mistake ONCE. Wanda, after the entire wandavision incident, went on to THREATEN MULTIPLE UNIVERSES, killed god knows how many people, and all for what?! Not vision since she seems to have forgotten him. No, she does it to murder both a teenager and herself in another universe to "recover" the children that never even existed to begin with. And act she knows will ultimately lead to an "incursion", DESTROYING ONE OR MORE UNIVERSES (depend on wether she and her imaginary hellspawns survive). AND PEOPLE STILL THINK SHE'S A-OK AND REASONABLY GRIEVING. Nah, just nah. She's ruined as a character.
Fun fact I always remember: The series was supposed to end with Doctor Strange getting involved, leading more directly into Multiverse of Madness. But the finale was changed at the last minute, resulting in hasty rewrites to Multiverse of Madness. This just goes to show how scattershot the MCU nowadays has become.
Miraculous Ladybug is a master of Narrative Gaslighting. The main character is a stalker portrayed as a victim, and the writers made the only likable person (albeit a bully) Chloe abandon her developing redemption arc just because some writer (a man named Astruc) hate her. Hopefully you get to cover that someday.
That's the show with the insane nonsensical love square, between the 2 main characters and their alter-egos, that they've been beating to death and consumed the show since it came out, right?
@diegodankquixote-wry3242 To be fair, that was kind of what sold many people on the show in the first place... The problem was that the rom-com antics were based on a bull@#$% reason as to why the characters couldn't just reveal themselves to their significant others and carried on for _waaay_ too long.
I honestly think they couldve pulled off sympathetic, loving, motherly supervillain if theyd committee to her being evil. Framed this as a fall from grace. Had others treat her as a friend who lost her way and they grieved her "death" as a hero
Even though we know it wasn't on purpose...Multiverse of Madness kind of completes that idea of a motherly villain arc. It brings full circle her fall from grace. Wandavision is just the start of the fall, and her taking the darkhold solidifies her fate. Her ending herself was fitting.
If they had stuck to Wanda not knowing anything about what she was doing and everything seeming to be a unconscious self defence against grief then maybe it would have worked. With Wanda slowly working out over the series that she is responsible for it all and keeps rewriting her own memory to keep the illusion going. Only at the end does she know it's all her fault and tries to fix everything. Otherwise she has to be a villain.
See, her brother telling her its the most ethical approach possible could've been an excellent scene. Have Wanda externalize her own justifications and mental gymnastics by having her brother tell her this. Have them say the last line in unison to drive home that she's puppeting him to ease her own mind and these are actually her own ideas
It genuinely makes me happy to know I'm not the only one who saw this as Wanda just being absolutely evil. Everyone else I talked to about this show all said she was "Misunderstood." or "She just wants her love back and to have a FaMIly" ugh.
Thats people who narrative gaslight worked on, who don't think about actual story and decide who is villain and who hero just by evil laughter and heroic pose (and music) Which is horrible because same "narrative gaslighting" used by real world propaganda a lot. Heroic music and right camera shots make warcrimes into collateral damage, sad ass music and crying grandma make collateral damage into warcrimes. And also music decides, is audience must sympatize to convicted person or hate him.
Misunderstood or not, Wanda is still the villain Monica does not think she is, and wanting her love back is no moral justification for _any_ of her actions. Having a sympathetic villain who is also an anti-hero can work if the story direction could at least commit to painting Wanda with a villainous lens, instead of having its cake and eating it too, which *really* backfires on the story when Agatha almost seems more heroic by comparison for wanting to take away Wanda's magic powers for her own.
@@adampkalbThis is why I cannot see Monica as a hero. Because she specifically sides with the perp who tortured and kidnapped people, sure at first Wanda was doing it on accident, but then even after she found out, Wanda still tried to keep the barrier up, even the main villain does more ‘good’ by trying to take down the barrier, yet Monica badmouths everyone that tries to even stop Wanda, and when Wanda finally stops, Monica basically tells Wanda that the victims can just screw off. If I were in a hostage situation in the MCU, I’d have to assume one of the writers must hate me if Monica is the one who’s suppose to save me in the script. If anything she’d become buddies with my perp, and lecture me.
If they double down on her villain arc, from AOU to DSMOM it would have been consistent that Wanda has a habit of justifying her actions in her own eyes. Which is a hallmark of all villains. The pieces were there really. Plus she's sooooo scary when she's openly evil. I think people just get caught up in the fact a lot of people would do the same thing if they had her powers so they see her as misunderstood. They would justify it too just like her 😐
The quicksilver thing out of universe sounds like her using him as a voice to agree with her. Which the writers didn’t think of and just have to make her seem better
if you think this is bad just wait till you see them trying to say some terrorists who are only terrorist becouse they lost there special privilages are the good ones
Um, no! I did not think The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was trying to paint the Flag Smashers as the good guys who lost their special privileges. Sam Wilson was not trying to defend their evil actions, but he sympathized with Karli Morgenthau's noble goals and intentions regarding what caused them to become terrorists. He stood up to the irresponsible politicians for not using their power to distribute their resources wisely to help the less fortunate people, because they would otherwise not resort to becoming Flag Smashers in the first place. I still know that does not excuse their evil terrorist actions, because Karli Morgenthau and other such Flag Smashers are still in the wrong for squatting in and taking over the homes of people who disappeared in Avengers: Infinity War, and still feeling entitled to have that home after everyone who used to live in their "new homes" came back five years later in Avengers: Endgame.
@@adampkalb They killed people. Innoccent people. Don’t give me this bullshit about how they had their reasons because that sob story is bullshit. "Do better?" You got any advice for that? Come on man it’s so generic and slapdash dor a woman who has multiple deaths on her hands, including Walker's parter. Yoi don't get to kill people because your suffering asshole.
Falcon showed more empathy for Karli (a psycho killer) than Walker Also his words to the senator were flat out embarrassing and childish FATWS is a disaster
Dear Wandavision Defenders, If Wanda _wasn't_ the villain of the series for what she did... ...THEN WHY IS THE SERIES BASICALLY AN ORIGIN STORY FOR WHY SHE'S NOW EVIL IN DOCTOR STRANGE 2!?!?
@Saltedroastedcaramel And yet it perfectly fits for the ending WandaVision where she's sitting in a creepy cabin reading the Darkhold.😆😂 Nah, I choose to believe the rumor that Doctor Strange was supposed to appear somewhere near the end of WandaVision, which would connect it to DS: MoM. 🤔 Which means, that somebody must've either altered the writing of Wanda in the show (possibly to save her villainy for DS: MoM) or they attempted to clear her of any wrongdoing by saying it was Agatha all along that caused the Hex or made it worse. Unfortunately for that latter one, it seems that they didn't execute it well enough because despite literally singing "it was Agatha all along" she's really not as involved with and/or responsible for the Hex and everyone else's suffering as the writers think she is. Hence why the line "they'll never know how much you sacrificed" feels insultingly tone-deaf.
She is absolutely a villain, and that's the point, she abused her power to get what she wanted, but she had to learn how terrible she was and work for forgiveness. Her entire arc looked like a redemption arc and then Multiverse of Madness just undid it all and THAT was a terrible piece of media. Wandavision was silly and mediocre, but it wasn't awful.
I actually like comparing Doctor Strange to Wanda. See there is a core difference that makes Strange so much more admirable, and that's strength of will. To quote Wanda herself, "When you break the rule, I become the hero. When I break the break the rule, I become the enemy. That doesn't seem fair." While the quote is used to make Wanda more of a victim, it actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it. I mean what happens when they break the rules and why? Wanda breaks the rules to help herself, and often gets lost in it. She falls to despair, self pity and her desires. She doesn't have the will to resist any of it. Strange breaks the rules to save people, and he pays dearly for it. He doesn't let pain or suffering get to him. He's willing to go through hell just to get the job done. Wanda is weak will, and honestly always has been. It would have been great if they actually leaned into that instead of pretend she's just an unfortunate soul.
It’s an ongoing issue when creating male and female characters. The default for male characters is to work up to their power, status, dreams, etc. They have to earn respect from others and themselves. Male character stories also tend to revolve around an external threat that affects either them directly via person or loved ones, or a call to help those who can’t defend themselves. There’s sacrifice involved, flaws to overcome, goals to strife towards. In a nutshell, male characters are allowed to be characters and are normally meant to be inspirational. Female characters, in contrast, are often not allowed to have such obvious or decent flaws. The default for them is that they are in the place they need to be, and it’s up to everyone else to recognize how great the female is. Now that’s not always the case, as some stories are better with female leads. But more action dominated entertainment doesn’t do the female character any favors cause the audience doesn’t see the journey they took to get to their place, just the end result at the start and being forced to “recognize” how great she is.
@@jendoe9436 Sarah Connor and Ripley are good example of the writing treatment that male characters get, but done towards female characters. So, it either is a problem of writers in Hollywood's unresolved issues towards women or it is problem of hack writers that don't care about writing characters, but their propaganda instead. Personally, I am leaning towards the mix of both.
I haven’t watched WandaVision and have little plans to, but I always found the premise sooooo interesting!! A magic user who has suffered a lot of losses over her life snapping her control and unconsciously manipulating her environment into something that brings her happiness. If the writers kept it a more Twilight Zone style mystery series, then we could have felt happy for Wanda since we know her backstory but keep feeling like something is off. Magic would be the obvious answer, but it could have been interesting trying to figure out how detailed this magic is, how wide spread, what may or may not be real. Agatha could have also been an audience red herring where we think she may be the cause and is trying to manipulate Wanda to do something against SWORD, who comes in to investigate the strange magic around. Like, the premise was soooo good!! 😭
I love how they try to make the military commander, or whatever the white guy in charge was, out to be the bad guy because as Wanda put it "you're the one with the guns". Seriously? Those guns are tinkertoys compared to what she's capable of doing and they're somehow in the wrong for having them.
I’m happy you made this niche of dead topics I enjoy. I remember watching you back when you a year or two ago worrying that if you stopped doing High Guardian Spice content you would become just another review channel. I’m glad you’re doing something different.
I think this was a great idea for a channel. Too many channels only talking about what is hype. And a lot of people seem to be unaware of things from even a few years ago.
I always dismissed Monica's nonsense as clearly being in the wrong, but I guess people buying into that finally explains to me all the baffling whining about Wanda's "suddenly" being a villain in MoM.
My own little rewrite would have had her create the hex but this time it's actually accidental and she truly has no clue that she's controlling it. She starts to feel side effects from using her powers this way but has no clue what they are or what's causing it. Agatha still pretends to be under the hex, but subtly studies Wanda and encourages the hex to continue, even using her own magic to manipulate Wanda. Eventually, Monica breaks into the hex, tells Wanda what's actually happening, and it causes Wanda to break again and sends Monica flying out of the hex (like in the show). Wanda has a chance to stop everything here, but Agatha returns and manipulates her while the townspeople beg her to set them free. Wanda, now unstable, chooses to continue the hex because this is her perfect reality. This time her control is even stronger and more powerful since she's doing it on purpose. It would end with Monica, Sword, and Dr Strange facing off with an unstable and slightly weakened Wanda. Wanda would get wounded, forcing her to stop the hex. She escapes using the rest of her power. Strange will want to go after her, but won't be able to due to both the battle and having to help the towns people who have basically been rendered catatonic from Wanda's mind control. We won't see her again until Multiverse of Madness she where she will be a full fledged villain.
Wanda is way more evil than Thanos. She want to doomed all realities for her own selfish happiness as least Thanos only wipe out half the population of 1 universe. Wanda straight up want to doomed all universe to chase for her own happiness.
like i genuinely don't get it. why not just, idk make her a villain? like full mask off villain arc where she becomes evil and the narrative doesn't excuse her for anything instead of this weird half-baked like, "oh yeah she tortured a town but she doesn't *know* what she's doing even though she does actually" it's really weird
Ready? It’s because she’s a woman, and Disney is run by simps. Being evil requires someone do something, ya know, evil. Distasteful. Unforgivable. And we all know women never EVER do anything like that-
What I hated is that Dr. Strange was supposed to be in this but Disney didn't want him 'mansplaining' to Wanda on how to control her powers or get therapy. So yeah, all those commercials, it was Dr. Strange making those, which would had been more good than what they went for.
I hate Wanda, and I have just despised her from her introduction in Age of Ultron. I was wondering if I was perhaps being a little too hard on her in Wandavision, just because I hate that character so much. But no. She deserves the hate. Also, I lost a close family member, six years later, it still stings. But do you know what I didn't do, and won't do? Delusionally pretend he is still alive and force others to participate in that delusion. Hmm... pretending something that is not real, is real; and forcing others to participate... that sounds familiar... Suddenly, Wandavision and the insane sympathy the writers wanted us to feel for her is starting to make sense.
The show seems to have two obvious sides: the sitcom side that shows how Wanda is while in her delusion, and the rest of the stuff around it. This goes for the writers and characters because it seems like the people who wrote the sitcom stuff tried making Wanda out to be more innocent, but the writers on the outside of the sitcom stuff had to realize the horror of the actual situation. And it shows when it comes to the Wanda Defense Force having to justify everything against what sensible people are saying. Its frustrating that both those sides are at odds, and yet the show already decided who was good and bad without acknowledging any points that made Wanda look bad.
i dont remember enough about the book to judge if its narrative gaslighting or not but in school we once read a book. i think it was called "love me blindly" problem with that book immediately is that the main character thinks its a good idea to PRETEND TO BE BLIND in the hopes of getting a girlfriend. which, especially when read by someone like me who has eyesight issues, im luckily not fully blind, puts such a character instantly in the "i want him to get punched" corner and a similar thing seems to have happened with wandavision. the story needs you to root for their main acharacter, but they are such a piece of shit that you cant. and unlike stories where your protagonist is the villain, this feeling of not being able to root for them is not intentional. and heck even in villain stories i can think of the story itself often serves either as backstory or just is a seperate conflict where the normal villian is the good guy because of the seperate conflict. for backstories its usually "ok i dont like you but i get how we got here" but wanda has none of this.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="139">2:19</a> “ mcu fans are in the abused partner phase of liking it” 😅 I like you guardian, I never heard of you and I’ve only watched 2 and half minutes of your content , but I like you already 👍
honestly, even though it’s probably not what they meant, i can think of one way to make it all make sense. the claiming they’re not in pain, the quicksilver interactions, the claiming to be the victim, all of it. wanda is just desperately trying to convince herself that what she’s doing is right. when she hears something that tells her she’s doing something wrong, it’s threatening her worldview that what she’s doing is a good thing, and she can’t cope, so she shuts her ears and does anything she can think of to resolve the dissonance. pietro is an illusion conjured to tell herself what she’s doing is right, and she’s so far gone that she believes him to be someone else as he parrots her inner thoughts back to her - she’s literally hearing voices. she’s a villain, but more importantly she’s an utter whack job. completely off the deep end. to the point where she’s making up voices to reaffirm her thoughts and lashing out at anyone that violates her fragile mental state. certainly not unsympathetic, but as you said yourself, it’s a reason, not an excuse.
It genuinely feels like there was dueling writing rooms or something. Like, the writers couldn't decide on what they wanted to do with the show, so they agreed to swap off every couple of pages and weren't allowed to go back and re-write anything the other writer did. Like...they went out of their way to make Wanda downright horrific. If they really wanted her to just be a sympathetic figure, why would they also include scenes of characters literally begging her for death? If those were written by the same team as the ones writing Rambeau, I would genuinely love to sit down with them and pick their brains and hear just what they were trying to do, because it's got to be on Tommy Wiseau levels of delusional of writing. There's so many other ways they could have done the show without also making Wanda downright horrific. Have the people just be magical constructs, or if you still need to justify SWORD getting involved and stuff, you could at least have the people in a magical coma or something. But they went out of their way to specify that, no, not only are they fully conscious and aware of what's going on, but it's legitimately so bad they'd rather die then remain trapped. That also means it just isn't something that the writers completely spaced on and forgot to mention. I'm very curious if it was just a case of trying to combine three different scripts into one or what, because it's just all over the place. I'd love to see the outlines for each version because I bet some of them would genuinely be alright if they were allowed to run with a single idea from start to finish. Especially from the writers that seemed intent on making Wanda a villain, I think there's some truly horrific storytelling possibilities if they committed to that idea and ran with it, because some of the "mask off" moments of the show are pretty twisted and would make for a great horror series.
The “can’t I” part during her argument with Vision really sold the deal she’s past the point of heroism and to me was when I realized she might not be a good anymore. Like how u gonna threaten the man you started all this for?😂
Modern Hollywood is not allow (for...reasons) to make women villains wholesale. They aren't allowed to have flaws and if they DO, the flaw must be someone else's fault. Women are not made to face accountability for the consequences of their terrible actions. Captain Marvel, Rey Palpatine, Velma in the Velma Show, Wanda, that one chick from Rebel Moon. None of them.
This wouldve been better if she had a split in her personality which caused this. Evil wanda crafts the town, traps the people and dumps her pain/grief/nightmares onto them. And normal wanda is left in the dark legitimately confused how this happened, then she has to face her dark half. But no.....
Honestly what Wanda did is literally the subject of a few SCPs. You can have all the pretty excuses and justifxations of your actions... but that doesn’t undo the actions
Hey Dave, been watching your stuff for a while now and I'm glad you were able to solidify my feelings towards the current MCU. I tend to watch shows/movies and lose some focus partway through, so i generally have way better or at least smoothed over memories of stuff I've only seen once. I genuinely did not realize how messy Wandavision was, it's been a while but I guess I just liked the vibes and concept of it. Another thing, I'd like to know if you're planning on doing a positive episode of Dead Topics, like for a show or movie you like that you think was forgotten or left the spotlight too fast. Even if your schtick is more "the analytical hate-watcher" I think it'd be neat. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1745">29:05</a> lmao
Uhhhhh agreed. Disney+ botched the MCU with all setups and no payoff, basically advertisements for upcoming product instead of telling a coherent complete story
The solution to have it both ways seems without much contradiction seems fairly simple actually. Make Agatha an evil alter ego. Maybe Wanda does intentionally trap people in there at first but her guilt and gradual realization that people are suffering because of her. Her dark and evil temptations split off into the form of Agatha and we have our natural conflict. Wanda now wants to break the Hex but is forced to play along to survive and still scared she will lose her family fully if she destroys the Hex, versus Agatha, the dark selfish part of Wanda who wants to maintain the perfect façade. You can still have a final battle at the end and maybe even have a thematic climax where Wanda has to accept the death of Vision to defeat Agatha and break the Hex. If we want Wanda to be a villian in a little movie or show then imply that Agatha still lurks in her mind ready to evil things and might take over whenever.
ngl WandaVision's premise was good, but the execution was terrible. They also kinda tried getting people hyped for it by teasing Pietro coming back but that as well was bad and borderline just bait. I distinctly remember when it was coming out and me and my friends watched it and I clearly remember the disappointment we all felt when we finished it. I also don't understand what was the point of teaching Wanda a "lesson" in the show if by the end of it she basically ignores everything and goes full evil anyways because of the Darkhold.
I think Wandavision had a lot of potential that they just… pissed away by making it all be her active choice after a certain point. She could’ve just made it so the other kids could come out. She had the power to ease it. She had full control over The Hex, and yet did nothing to help. I think if they wanted the narrative to be more… coherent, and/or lack character assassination in favour of Dr Strange’s multiverse of bad, they should’ve made it that someone else (Agatha) essentially hijacked the spell after a very short period. Took control of it away. Because while it’s made clear that the manifestation of the Hex was essentially her not knowing what to do with her grief, after that point she has full control of it.
I was enjoying watching Wandavision while I thought that Wanda had had a psychotic break and had no idea what she was doing, but then they revealed that she was doing it all on purpose, but still wanted her to be the sympathetic character. PICK A LANE. Also they broke half of the rules of mystery story telling.
Its hard to see MCU Wanda as anything other than a villain when the first time we see her its her and her brother voluteering for Hydra (the Nazis) and in every thing shes in shes portrayed as an active threat and menace. Frankly her turn to villainy makes complete sense, the problem is everyone else thinks she can be fixed.
I believe that Wanda is in extreme pain and in denial about what she is doing. but yeah Monica and the others should not try to justify her actions they should be trying to convince sword that they need to take a different approach cuz there ir no way they can defeat Wanda with brute force. This way when she says "Could be thousands" sounds more like a danger warning. That way Wanda can be in denial and remorseful at the end of the show but her actions were painted as wrong and the result of her letting her grieve control her and her powers. but to me it feels like some directives didn't like the idea of making Wanda the bad one so they have to change the plot and could not fix it properly and that's why there are so many contradictions and a forced action scene to the end.
That is something I can suspend my disbelief for, UNTIL she is directly told to her face multiple times how much pain she is causing. At that point it's just utter malarkey.
Okay, I have one genuine critique on something I think you missed and I held my tongue until the end just to be sure you actually missed it, but I'm pretty sure you missed the point of the is she/isn't she a villain thing and that trying to frame her as either kinda misses the point of the plot. The writers still messed up because I don't think they understood how to do what they were trying to do and this is their very botched attempt. Here's the deal, I'm pretty sure that Wandavision was supposed to be a tragedy. Specifically, Wanda making the Hex was *supposed* to be a metaphor for a psychotic break, and the flip flopping of the framing for her actions was *supposed* to be an allegory for how someone can be semi-lucid, aware enough to know what they're doing, but so far out of it that they genuinely can't understand if what they're doing is wrong or not. The thing is, they wanted to justify her actions way to much which in turn made her more lucid which broke that part of the tension and ironically made it so she was fully conscious of what she was doing which makes this entire series go from a morally grey example of how grief can absolutely destroy your mind to a mess of convoluted points with a pseudo Mary Sue as it's lead. The thing is, I've had a lot of mental health issues in the past and when I first watched this series it was so close to something relatable, but especially in it's second half it just completed fell apart. It's like in the first half she's Medea, and the second she's Jesus. It doesn't work.
Imagine if someone like Dr. Strange or any MCU villain with reality warping powers did something similar, people would be begging for that character to be burned at the stake, but because wanda is what she is, a slate for millennial women to project themselves unto her she gets a free pass.
The commander shooting the children wasnt the most unreasonable thing when you gather what they are. They are essentially extensions of Wanda's powers because she created them, and they have superpowers. When fighting in the dome, its not unreasonable to assume Wanda will use anything and everything to fight off SWORD, and the children are pure magic that are loyal to Wanda. Its unfortunate if you think shooting threats that look like children to protect real people looks bad
What matters is how the show framed it. Its framed as a negative action that the audience is supposed to be against. When it comes to narrative gaslighting how the show frames it and how it actually is are two different things. The fact it can be spun into being positive in Haywards favor is proof of my point that the shows framing is disingenuous/contradictory
@@guardianHQthat true. The use of framing in this show is disgusting narratively. And even worse in Multiverse of Madness when they kind of try to retroactively make the kids in Wandavision into real people because multiverse nonsense (not saying they are real in the show). Maybe in the multiverse there is a variation of the events where Wanda gets her appropriate punishment and absolutely nobody is trying to defend her actions
Oh yeah, the MCU. I unironically haven't thought about _that_ in years. I thought it died in that Film Actors' Guild strike or whatever. I kinda' blame the idea behimd Wandavision on the Thanos meme. ...Not the Ant-Man up the butthole one. The one about him being right. It's like the writers heard "every villain is the hero of their own story", slammed a dozen kilos of pixie sticks (or that's what their lawyers told them to call it at least) and went nuts with it. They must've thought they were making Wanda the next Thanos. What they missed is that the villain is supposed to _think_ they're in the right... and in the end be wrong due to a skewed perspective, insufficient foresight, or just good old fashioned selfishness. If you wanted to emulate Thanos, let the _viewers_ decide if Wanda has redeemable qualities. But no, Wandavision had to do all the thinking _for_ the audience, just to ensure that they didn't fail to come to the expected viewpoint. They were afraid to let the audience arrive at their own conclusion naturally because they might arrive at the _wrong_ conclusion. For what they seemed to be going for, there's not supposed to _be_ a "wrong" conclusion. It should be _okay_ if people look at Wanda's actions and think that she's a complere monster who went off the deep end. The way I would've hamdled the plot is to establish that Westview was a _real craphole_ before Wanda got there. Corrupt mayor. Drug dealers in the streets. Gangs. Crime. Death. All the trimmings of a suburban slum. Then, Wanda transmogrifying it into a slice of 1950's American suburbia could be seen as a vast improvement. Also, don't do the mind control torment thing... at least in the open. Let at least some people _choose_ the fakey Truman Show reality of their own accord, and reasonably so given the Ditch of Fecius the town was before. Save the torture and repression for the people who rejected that reality, perhaps keeping them as hostages in some hellish pocket dimension until they agree to play along. This would give Wanda more plausible cause to consider herself a hero. After all, how is what she's doing to Westview (bring peace and prosperity, imprison those who don't follow an externally imposed order) any different from how SHIELD operates? (EDIT: Come to think of it, this would be an _excellent_ situation for Falcon, of all people, to show up. It gives the B-lister some clout, and the themes of unpleasant freedom versus comfortable tyranny would give Sam Wilson the opportunity to slip more gracefully into Cap's boots than whatever the hell FatWS tried and failed to do.) (Oh, and this is just for me, but make it so that the inexplicabe amplification of Wanda's power come from the fact that the Infinity Stones which originally empowered her are no longer contained, thus the actual powers of the atomized Infinity Stones would naturally gravitate towards the greatest accumulation of their residue: Wanda herself. It's then the stones' released energy that's _really_ driving Wanda crazy, forcing the eventual creation of new Infinity Stones to contain that maddening power. ...I dunno, I just think destroying the Infinity Stones should have some kind of consequence.)
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1580">26:20</a> Well to be fair, this scene would have been really good, IF they decided to go full in on Wanda being evil, because remember, this isn’t actually someone with free will. This is some random dude she’s making act like her brother, in essence this would be Wanda talking to herself, trying to justify what she’s doing to herself. That being said, because this is most likely meant to make us feel sympathetic for Wanda it falls flat because again, this is just Wanda talking to herself, this is just her patting herself on the back. Essentially saying "see? I'm a good person!"
Okay, let’s see here… Wandavision, 50 Shades of Grey, Rent a Girlfriend, High Guardian Spice, Mr. Birchum, Velma, The Fate, The Princess’s Jewels, Miraculous Ladybug, the finale of Star vs. The Forces of Evil, and Wish. Those are all the pieces of media I can think of that use this terribly underhanded tactic and the fact that so many of them exist truly scares me. Am I missing any?
I didn't realize Wandavision went so far to justify manipulative and criminal behavior. I never watched it, but I watched Dr.Strange Mulit-verse of Madness and immediately felt disgusted by the twist of Wanda being a sympathetic villain. There is no justification for what Wanda did. She is a mentally unstable person with insane power that should have been punished for what she did. That little cop out of her "finally getting it" made no sense given that she knowingly made it her goal to do whatever it took to take and use America's powers for children in another multiverse. Anybody defending Wanda in Wandavision either doesn't know any better or are equally manipulative.
Wandavision was going strong before that final act. The fact they still tried to portray Wanda as a hero after all of that was the worst part of the entire show.
Hmm.......having thought about it. DC has a better version of this. For the man who has everything. Specifically the justice league episode of the same name. Superman stuck in a dream world, starts noticing its not real, doesnt want to let go. But finally tearfully says goodbye to his son in this dream world saying "I'll never forget..." Wakes up and absolutely wrecks the hell out of mongul.
I say Across the SpiderVerse is another form of narrative gaslighting. I find it rather tone-deaf that out of all characters that writers are using to strawman those who don't like Miles Morales or anything different r "breaks canon"....they use Miquel O'hara as the mouth-piece for it. Yeah the mixed race version of Spider-Man who in many ways is different to that of Peter Parker with his more Batman like persona who is pretty well liked among the fan base and from what I remember isn't motivated by tragedy is being used as a strawman for those fans who cannot entertain on the idea of a Spider-Man is different.....like seriously I cannot be the only one who thinks this is kind of tone-deaf
Yeah but Miguel and Miles still live in realities where Peter existed (at least in the comics) so it's not so much that they're breaking canon so much as telling a different story.
The best explanation that i have seen about the Hex, is that it started as an accident, but once she realized that she could play house with the whole town, she didn't care anymore and fully gave into all her own selfishness and bitterness, and fell from grace as a Hero because of her grief, but the show handled is like a llama behind a steering wheel and subtlety is not in the vocabulary of the productio team either
My biggest question after the finale was what were they charging the director with to have him arrest? Shooting at fake people? Trying to take down a villain and save a town? Trying to revive a robotic superhero?
The only good Quicksilver was from the X-Men movies. He didn't appear for long, was great when he was there, and left because he would be completely OP if he stayed. Perfect, simple, fun and done.
People defending Wanda seem to think that characters who hurt people for their own benefit (in this case the people being a whole town and the benefit being the fake husband and kids) are not the villains lol
Honestly regarding Manipulation and Insanity over "Protection", I believe Sunday from Star Rail (I know, a Shit Gacha Game) did a Resounding Job on what it feels to be Obsessed with wanting peace even through Eternal Manipulation and World Bending
To the point of "What could a drone do to Wanda?" Wanda is a glass cannon. A single bullet will kill her. In fact a strong enough punch should kill her. She's a normal human with crazy powers. Her powers do not make her more durable. Just because she has the power to body Thanos doesn't mean she can fight him in hand to hand. If Thanos struck her once with the intent to kill she'd be dead. She can't take the blows Tony, Thor, or Cap took in the fight they had. The one time he hit her was a light smack to get her out of the way. Which still knocked her like 10 feet away or something. I agree with everything you say about this show but an important thing about a characters strength is the damage they can do is not equal to the damage they can take. Wanda is a good example of that. If anyone attacked her while she was about to kill Thanos in Endgame she'd have nothing to defend herself with and would have died. Should have died from the airstrike but that's a different discussion.
"everything she did is understandable from a woman's perspective" Man, I wonder if the women this guy knows are entitled and over react to situations in a way that a reasonable person would not and should not. And if they were taught that this was normal for women, thus they shouldn't put the effort to do better.
The only explanation I can think of is that she didn’t know at first, but then she became so selfish and wanted to keep her perfect life so much that she blatantly ignored the horrors and is in a huge state of denial. Or she’s trying to convince herself that she still doesn’t know what’s going on and justifies her actions with her grief. Idk. They definitely could’ve explored that more and written it better if that’s what they were going for
NGL, i thought the show was good at first, then it was revealed that she was enslaving the town. Now at that point i didn't think the show got immediately bad, i was like 'oh shit they're gonna make wanda the villain in this show? that'd be cool' but then they portray wanda as the tragic misunderstood hero and the organization that was trying to free the enslaved people as the bad guys, then it all went to shit
Duuude... But she's.. like.. PRETTY... and ... ummm... like... you know - the "I believe in supremacy" meme, like... you know... DOMINEERING... and... uhhh... like... like... STEP ON ME MOMMY... like... you know... WOMAN?
Honestly, I think the show is largely consistant. I think Wanda did initially lack control of the Hex. Overtime, she realised what she had done, but it was largely on instinct. They gave her an interesting motivation and a moral challenge, which she initially fails, but eventually overcomes. The points where Wanda denies the pain she caused is just that: denial. She wants to play the victim, even when she's not, because that's the easy option. Unfortunately, they then also had Monica, who completely misrepresented the situation and made it seem like Wanda was a victim and not the perpetrator. It really feels like Wanda was *meant* to be a villain until that endpoint. I also don't think the version of Pietro that Wanda literally formed out of someone else is a reliable figure in what is considered right and wrong. This version of Pietro is basically just a mouthpiece to echo what Wanda wants to hear and quench her doubts.
If they wanted to go the route of her being "not" the real villain, the Agatha reveal should have involved Agatha manipulating Wanda somehow that led to her making the hex. Otherwise they could have double down that she's a villain and the DSMOM arc would have made more sense. I mean I still think it makes sense but would have been more consistent.
A small hex around her home could have made a better story. They could have gone back and forth between what looks like a happy place where wanda os isolated and the people who care about her who appear to be in a grey depressing landscape after the snap. The show could show over time that she is really in denial and creating a delusion while staying locked home alone amd refusing to interact with her friends and outside world living only in her fantasy. It would be so much harder for them to get through to her that way. Imagine Steve and Clint trying to bring her out of it.
Vision is the best character in Wanda vision like i dont even hate wandavison the first few episodes were really good and intriguing. It just had a weird writing to make wanda not a villain and the random villain out of nowhere woth Agatha when wanda being the villain and stopped makes more sense
I didn't think about it before, but in that scene where the townspeople are confronting Wanda while she denies everything, it looks like she's trying to fix/manipulate their emotions. Which would imply that she did know she had some measure of control over their minds.
When I first watched the show back when I just turned my brain off and was not very analytical when it came to writing even i noticed there was something very off about this show. I'm not too bright but even I a 22 year noticed the questionable moral view and sudden writing shift.
I don't think it's a good show, there's plenty of bad writing. But I think a simple solution to this particular issue is that yes, she is in control, but mainly subconsciously. She's in denial. Her subconscious blocks out what she otherwise should be perfectly aware of. Even if she consciously admits to some of it sometimes, she then blocks that out to return to her fantasy because she can't handle the pain of reality. The moments of lucidity are similar to real people I've seen in denial; they know things are true, but repress and lie to themselves, inconsistently. I don't think it was done well, but it's consistent enough to be an example of how denial is harmful. Her denial is an explanation, not an excuse. She's both the villain and the victim. Her actions are clearly wrong. She's clearly a villain. She's not the good guy. And that's because she's letting her emotions control her, and she's in denial. But the question is what do we do about it? Do we want her to suffer? Do we want her to die? What does being a villain mean? Does it mean we can't want to have a peaceful resolution? We shouldn't be rooting for Wanda, but we shouldn't be rooting for her death either. Killing her is not "just fine". That's the mental gymnastics of doing what's easy instead of what's right. She's not a psychopath, she's in denial. She's the bad guy and should be stopped, but to dehumanise her so that you can feel justified about using the most brutal methods to stop her is still wrong. Sometimes least evil choice is to kill the bad guy, but that doesn't mean it's completely ethical. Kill if you need to, but don't lie to yourself and say you have nothing to feel guilty about. Also she's not a terrorist, she's a dictator. Terrorists use fear to get something out of another group, she's using pain to get what she wants from her own group. They're not hostages, they're slaves.
Ive run into the people that think Wanda is justified cause she is grieving and shit makes me scared for the moral compass of current MCU fans. You could put heroic music behind Hitler and theyd start justifying his actions.
I said it before and I'll say it again, this has been a problem since Infinity Bore curb stomped a decade of storytelling to try and make A MASS MURDERING PSCYCHOPATH seem sympathetic when all he REALLY did was fart out idiotic strawmen arguments to try and excuse his actions as 'the only logical choice in the matter' when his so-called ''""logical actions''"" amounted to nothing more than a one-time drop of the hammer on half of all life in the cosmos
One of my biggest examples of narrative gaslighting is the character Namine from Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. The narrative would have you believe she's this tragic victim when in reality her actions are downright villainous! (For context, she mind controlled the main character into thinking they were a couple.) You could argue "the bad guys made her do it" but at the end of the day, the stated reason was that "she was lonely". Huh, the plot is pretty similar to Wandavision, come to think of it, right down to there being two witches in the story.
One thing that i'm confused in this series is white vision, where tf is him right now, what important thing he was doing that it wasn't present at all in doctor strange multiverse of madness you know, it could have helped is wife you know to not getting crazy
Now I see why Agatha Harkness is getting her own spin-off series. She ironically turned out to be more likable than Wanda Maximoff and turned out to be a breakout character better worth exploring more as long as Agatha Darkhold Diaries does not repeat the mistakes of WandaVision. July 11, 2024, <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="250">4:10</a>pm
All according to keikaku. ("Keikaku" means "plan".) The goal was always to replace every MCU character that matters with a hip young diverse star with a longer contract. (Or in Chadwick Boseman's case, literally being alive.) This was to avoid a problem RDJ nearly caused where he was critical to a number of Phase 3 plotlines and yet his original contract actually ran out midway through.
@@draketheduelist Yes, but Kathryn Hahn is still 15 1/2 years older than Elizabeth Olsen, is she not? Still, I am very excited to see Agatha All Along - and Aubrey Plaza too. I can not wait to see who she gets to play in Agatha All Along! My earlier comment was speedy enough to become the first comment on this video. July 12, 2024, 3:42am
@@adampkalb Like I eluded to with RDJ, Hahn has the fresher contract compared to Olsen. Olsen is probably free to walk away from the MCU for good after Multiverse of Madness, especially after her character's supposed death (let's be charitable and pretend that means a damn thing in an infinite multiverse where consequences literally cannot exist...), but Agatha is still very much around and her actress is still on the hook for more content. It has nothing to do with the literal age of the actors per se. Disney ideally wants a revolving door of actors to slide into the MCU and slide out when their contract is done, only to replace the old with yet another new face, ad infinitum. As beloved as Iron Man's story arc was, that amount of screentime is a _LOT_ to ask from one single actor. Jonathan Majors and Chadwick Boseman also highlighted the perils of the "this actor is going to be a huge tentpole to future storylines" style of doing things, but for different reasons. (Majors became persona non grata after domestic abuse allegations scuttled his entire career.) It's not been great to be Disney lately.
To be fair to Wanda, Hayward did deliberately provoke her in the hopes she would do something that would allow him to use Vision. He expected her to reactivate him at SWORD, but her creating the hex was an acceptable alternative. You were doing your own gaslighting by omitting certain details about his character and interactions with Wanda. The simple fact is that there were only villains and idiots leading the story, and then the victims being dragged along by them. Honestly, they had to have Team Wanda because Disney couldn't have a show about a villain, and they needed someone to think Wanda was a good guy. So, you are definitley right, Disney was trying to gaslight viewers.
It would have much way more sense for them to just have had Agatha mind controlling Wanda or something of the sort where her taking control of the town is actually not her fault. Or lean fully into her becoming more villainous. The show seems like it was written in two completely different ways that don't mesh well together.
