WandaVision Goes Deep

The Night that WandaVision Taught Me Something New About Grief and Touched My Heart

Note: There are spoilers in this article.

The other night I was watching WandaVision, a Marvel-based series on Disney+. It’s really a slow-burner and takes a while to get to the point of the series. Unless you just love nonsensical sitcom skits from the 50s, 60s, 70s, and more.

Each episode had a theme, starting with a Dick-Van-Dyke Show theme in the 50s, moving to a Bewitched theme from the 60s on the next episode, and then a theme in the 70s of a bunch of different shows. But I identified the most with the Brady Bunch theme. Even the house they were in looked like it came from that show. Each episode after that takes on a different decade, progressing to our present time.

Why Was Wanda Doing This?

It turns out, that Wanda lost her parents when she was young, but before they died, she would watch different sitcoms as a special treat each night with her family. They all took turns picking which sitcoms they would watch. All of them were on DVD as it didn’t appear they lived in a place or a time that would have streaming. They lived in Sokovia, a fictional place based on any number of Eastern-European countries.

If you are unaware, Wanda has many powers, but one of them is her ability to change your reality. She can put thoughts in your head and your reality completely changes to another time, another place, and as far as you know, you are really there.

All of these episodes are basically her using her powers, on a much grander scale, to change the reality of a town, the town that they live in, Westview, New Jersey. The entire town is enshrouded in her changed reality and living in these sitcoms she has created. It’s as if they are prisoners being required to act out the parts of these sitcoms.

What Was The Real Reason?

But the reason she has created this reality for her and for Vision, the being that she loves, is because, in the real world, she has lost everything. She lost her parents when she was a girl. She lost her twin brother, who died trying to save a town in the movie, Avengers Ultron. And she lost Vision, who died in the movie, Avengers Infinity War.

That’s right, Vision is actually dead, but she brought him back to life and inserted him in this sitcom version of life, which was a happy place for her.

Of course, we don’t have any of this information initially and it took a long time for us, the audience, to figure it all out. But as the series started to pull back all the curtains on the windows of her grief, you start to realize how much pain she is in.

Grief Defined

In a conversation she is having in Episode 8 with Vision about the loss of her brother, Pietro, she says that the grief is like, “this wave washing over me again and again. It knocks me down and when I try to stand up, it just comes for me again.…. It’s gonna drown me.”

Then Vision says something so profound about grief and sorrow, that social media is all buzzing about it. And honestly, it’s the night I fell in love with this story.

Vision says, “…it can’t be all sorry, can it?…. I’ve never experienced loss because I’ve never had a loved one to lose. What is grief, if not love persevering?”

Why Did This Line Impact Me?

That line hit me square in the eyes and put a lump in my throat. I connected with it in an emotional and reflective way. I often mourn the loss of my oldest brother, Walt, who lost his battle with prostate cancer in 2019. It has caused me to write poems and articles about the feelings that sometimes invade my heart and make me weep like a small child.

We often are made to feel bad about grief or that it’s a negative emotion. But this line, from what some would call a silly TV series, affirms that grief is an okay emotion to feel. Also, it actually represents the love that you had for that person, and that by the act of grieving, that love continues to live, or as he puts it, persevere.

It’s a beautiful concept and idea and one that I needed to hear. My hat goes off to the writers of this show. I didn’t expect to be impacted by a Marvel series in this way.

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