Persistence of memory & 31 flavors The Avengers

[gwyn]

Thanks to a friend who's given me access, I was able to catch the first few episodes of WandaVision this weekend. It's...I don't know. Okay? I'm somewhat irritated with the pacing and I really hope that there will be less overall of the whole sitcommy hijinks of each episode and more of the sinister stuff we saw in the trailers. The few bits of sinister stuff were fun, especially the way color crept in in small spots (the light on the toaster in ep 1 and the helicopter and blood in ep 2), and Debra Jo Rupp is truly the MVP of TV comedy if you ask me. I don't know enough about Wanda as a character or have the deep background in Avengers to know if that sword logo on the helicopter was intended to be (durr SWORD, I meant, don't know why the brain blip), or if the beekeeping guy was supposed to be AIM or a character I don't know of called Swarm. But those were the most interesting bits, to me.

It was also nice to see Emma Caulfield again--I feel like I haven't seen her since her Anya the Vengeance Demon days. Paul Bettany is dead to me because of all that shit with Depp, so I was meh on him anyway but he didn't exactly make me any more of a Vision fan than I was (which was nil), but I like Wanda slightly more and so she's the one draw here for me. I'm really curious to see where Kathryn Hahn's character goes, maybe more than the leads. The umlaut on Strucker is driving me nuts. So I don't yet feel like I have a lot of deep thoughts on it, but at least it's something new to watch.

But I think the real thing I'm wondering is--and I have to rewatch that second episode to see if I'm wildly off base or not--whether or not that voice on the radio saying "Wanda. Who's doing this to you, Wanda?" was Jeremy Renner. It sure sounded like him in the moment last night, but maybe I'm really wrong about that. It'd be interesting though, right? Clint was the most protective of her, closest to her.


Since I'm talking about Wanda, I thought I'd make today's rec about her.

Pour Back the Ocean by imperfectcircle (The Avengers, 10,907 words, T)
Summary: After the events of Age of Ultron, Wanda has to find a new place in the world. Contains team training exercises, expected grief and unexpected kindness.

This came out after Age of Ultron, and gives Wanda a believable journey toward integrating with the team and finding some peace after the loss of her brother. I really appreciated its accurate portrayal of what losing a twin feels like.

Comments

[musesfool]

The commenters at the AV Club said the voice on the radio in the second episode was Jimmy Woo. I don't know if that's accurate or not.

[kore]

It would be awesome if that were Clint! but I think Word of God has confirmed it's Jimmy Woo, who's in the trailers.

I think in the MCU we've now got SWORD, altho I think it's going to be the "Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division" instead of "Sentient World Observation," which makes more sense since I don't think we're getting any aliens in WV. Altho I don't know, because I think SWORD came up at the end of the last Spiderman movie with Nick Fury in a ship with a lot of Skrulls. On the other hand, if they really are setting up Secret Invasion, SWORD makes more sense as an alien response team, so I dunno (and Wiki saith the Vision/Wanda romance came up in the Kree-Skrull war. I don't think that will be a big link, but they love doing those little callbacks). Monica Rambeau is associated with Captain Marvel and the cosmic MCU, so maybe she has some connection with Fury and she's with SWORD? Or she will be? I wonder if SWORD will run through (lol) the more cosmic MCU the same way SHIELD did for the Infinity Wars movies. ....and as usual with MCU speculation it all kind of melts away for me, like a wedding cake left in the rain.

[killabeez]

I tried, but I couldn't make it through the first episode. Embarrassment squick activated!

[przed]

Ditto on pretty much everything you've said about WV. I thought it was...fine. But it's proven to me yet again that I'm not really that fussed about comedy, and I'm really over laugh tracks. I'm going to keep going entirely for the mysterious, creepy stuff, and because I'm very fond of Paul Bettany.