The Prestige TV Podcast - Ask an Expert: 'WandaVision'

Episode Date: February 12, 2021

Juliet Litman, a Marvel newbie, asks Van Lathan, a Marvel expert, a few questions about the latest episode of 'WandaVision.' Hosts: Juliet Litman and Van Lathan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One! Do! Don't try to find what you want you. You can try you. Some days. It's all if it's all illusion. Sit back and enjoy the show. Sierrej, I'm Juliet Litman. I am the host of Bachelor Party and the co-host of Jam Session.

I'm joined today by Van Lathen, the co-host of Higher Learning with Van Lathen and Rachel Lindsay. Van, Van, hello. What's up, Juliet? How are you? I'm great, thank you. TVConceirege is the ringer's guide to streaming television. And we have gathered here today to discuss the TV. program on Disney Plus, Wanda Vision.

Cultural phenomenon, Wanda Vision. I love the show. Do you like it? Fantastic. I don't know if you know this, but I haven't seen an MCU movie in 10 years, but I decided to just like join in the monoculture. And so I'm watching Wanda Vision. And so today I wanted to ask you some questions and talk about the show. Sure.

I'm wondering how you're even following. First question. Do you think that's like kind of weird or? extremely weird. You know, I'm going to go extremely weird. I'm going to go extremely weird just because these movies are now so saturated and everything. It seems like it's almost you'd have to miss them on purpose by this point, it seems like. It wouldn't say it was on purpose.

I've seen Avengers one. I've seen Iron Man 1 and 2. I have seen Thor Ragnarok. I obviously saw Black Panther. I saw it into the Spiderverse doesn't count, but it's my favorite. movie of all comics in the world. I just was like, this is too much. This is too much.

This is too much of an obligation and frankly, too expensive. I'm just like, I want to spend all this money on these movies and like 4D or whatever it is. So I opted out, but I'm not against it. I just like love television. I was like, I think I'm going to watch the show. And I really like it because it's like a cool meta dialogue about television in addition to being like the next part of the MCU.

I'm curious, like for you like what like what's your favorite part of the show so far? Just the devices, I think that one thing about superhero movies is, despite the fact that there's so much spectacle to them, once you've seen the same thing over and over again, it ultimately becomes boring, right? Yeah. It's like if you, you have to dial it down the six so you can appreciate 10. And I think other superhero franchises, they or other superhero structures, haven't really understood that, but Marvel has. Yeah. So with this show, the easy way to do it for all the fans would have been to have picked this up right after in game and continue that story in some way with Wanda and in some vision and some iteration. But the fact that they used this old Ozian Harriet, you know, kind of dynamic.

Yeah, the TV, like TV through the years. Right. Because they use that. It's just unbelievably creative and effective in the storytelling. Yeah. I love it. that's like, I'm gonna, we're gonna talk about where we are in the season and we'll talk about, like, what it means for the MCU, but I'm glad to hear you say that because like, that's why I love it.

Like, I just love TV. I've always loved old TV. I like old sitcoms more than new sitcoms. And like, I love it as like exploration of the form. Like to me, it's like art in my favorite medium. It's like if you really love painting and you get to see like your favorite painters sketches and like the iteration from sketch to like finish painting hanging in the museum, this is like, I think kind of similar. And I just think it's like really fascinating. One thing that occurred to me, though, is that, like, the people at Marvel don't know how to make a TV show until they had to use, like, some kind of gimmicky structure to, like, break it up into chapters

because otherwise it would just be a really long movie. And that kind of leads us into this week where I think this is episode six or week six. What week are we in here? Six. And we are at Malcolm in the middle. That was what this episode was based off of. And this week we found out, or this week, I guess,

Vision found out that he is stuck in one. Wanda's Mind Palace, essentially. Is that correct? Yeah, I think he started to have an inkling of it last week when they kind of faced off. But yeah, I think this week is the first time that he's looking to find out what exactly this structure is, what's outside of it, and how he can actually help the rest of the people that are inside it. Okay, which is great.

I know this is a conversation that's happening online. I don't have a ton of visibility into it, but I'd love to hear about it from you. Who is the villain of this show? Is it Wanda? It's Juanmaxima. What about the other guy? What about the guy who is telling Monica that she's a problem and taking her off the project? The Hayward is his name.

Hayward, the director of sword. I think he's the, there's two different things sometimes in the MCU that happens. There's the villain and then there's the trouble. The villain and the trouble are not normally the same thing. The trouble of the show is that guy. He's the trouble. He's the one that is stopping. the people who are trying to get.

He's the nuisance. He's the guy stopping the people who could probably find the answers and probably have the right motivations for finding the answers from doing what he's doing because the MCU rails very, very hard

against organizational control. It's about the hero, not about the organization. That's a recurring theme in the MCU. So he's the trouble. The villain, though, has got to be the person that is making human slaves

out of innocent people. And even though she doesn't think that she is, like that's Wanda Maximoff. There was a line in Civil War that kind of shows you how Marvel views this. Spider-Man says to Captain America, he goes, he's like, what did he say? Captain America asked Spider-Man,

what did Iron Man say about him? And he goes, he says that you think you're right. And that makes you dangerous. So that, the perspective thing is very important here. Wanda thinks she's right. And that makes her dangerous. Interesting. So was she a villain before?

No. Well, yeah, she was. She started off as a villain. That's her arc in, um, in this. She started off because they don't have mutants, uh, yet in, in the MCU. Then yet. Yet. Yet.

I love X-Men. I'm going to get back in when the X-Men arrive. Right. So she started off as an experiment. by Strzker using one of the Infinity Stones and then she got her powers and then she was on the side of Hydra and then of course she fought and she built bonds and they turned them and then they became Avengers. Well, she became an Avenger, her brother died.

Right. Okay, great. I want to talk about Pietro, who was their big reveal at the end of last week's episode. So how did you feel about them setting up this week's episode with like the flashback, like last week, you know, last week on or scenes from last week using the movie footage of Aaron Johnson and then going into the show where it's Evan Peters. Like as a continuity person, I know they made the joke about recasting and we're going to talk about recasting particularly.

But like as a fan, how did you feel about them using that footage to set up this episode? I liked it. Because we're in zany world. Everything is zany. We're zany, silly, crazy, wacky type of Marvel fans is what we are, Juliet. And so the reality is that none of this really makes any sense. sense and we're trusting the narrative to make it make sense. Okay.

So why, you know, who continuity? So you're fine with a retcon. You're cool with a retcon. Sure. If you're a comic book fan, well, hold on, just so let you know. If you're a comic book fan, you have to be cool with a retcon. Because retcon's happened. If you're a comic book, this is movie fans and comic book fans, movie fans are going to have to be okay with some of this.

If you're, if you're a comic book fan, the recon is just part of your existence. As a TV fan, I'm. I love it. I am so opposed to killing off characters because you've got a problem with the actor. Like, it has severely impacted one of the most important things in my life, which is Gray's Anatomy. Like, I understand they were mad about McDreamy. Killing him off has fucked up the show so badly that we're now stuck with Meredith's Pergatory. I'm all about the recast. I fucking love it.

And so I love that they're having fun with it. On girls, I felt the same way. I don't know if you watch girls, but like they should have recast this one character who wanted to leave the show, Marty's boyfriend Charlie. and said they just banished him and it fucked up Marty's character. The collateral damage of killing off characters or I'm having them leave before you're ready to

is too great atoll. So I was so excited to see that this show was embracing one of the hallmarks of old sitcoms which was recasting. Yeah. By the way, some of the recasting is just crazy

looking back in the past, you know, be witched, you know, stuff like that. Fresh friends, obviously on most famous. It's crazy. I mean, it's, It's like I like it as a TV fan.

It definitely sucks for actors. I mean, I think also with TV, it's like such a different prestige medium now that like it's a much bigger deal to do it. But like back when I think TV actors were seen as like B level versus movie actors being a level, it was like more accepted. But still, I don't think like your narrative should have to suffer because of personnel problems. It's like in sports. You change personnel if you need to.

Yeah. The same team, you know, different players. Get used to it. So what's Pietro's role going to be in the MCU moving forward? forward. Not sure because I'm not sure if this is really him. Interesting. This might be a mind creation, part of her mental illness. Or part of me thinks that sort sometimes somehow sent him in as a double agent because Oh, interesting.

The things that he's doing and the things that he's saying to her, he's picking at her. He's saying, hey, you've got all of these people. They're all slaves. They're all doing this. And he's creating a lot of mischief. And I know that's kind of the guest star's role to do that. But I think they're using that guest star. I'm not quite sure, and I'm most likely totally wrong. I'm not quite sure that she's a creation of his mind. I think that there's some kind of way that they figure out how to send somebody in to

destabilize her to make her fall apart. Because everything that he says to her is triggering to her. Right. So, yeah. And also that would make sense with what Darcy and Randall Park and Monica Rambo discovered this week with basically Hayward being able to track people that they weren't aware of.

He obviously has a connection to inside of Westview that they weren't aware of. So that kind of makes sense, right? Did you think that before this week? Was there evidence that? I didn't. It wasn't. It was only this week. The only question there is... Well, I guess he arrived last week, so that was a bad question. Right. The only question there is, why send in

a version of him that she wouldn't... Why not just send back Aaron Taylor-Johnson in that case? So that's the only thing I would ask myself, but the reality is that I still think that in some way he's got something up his sleeve. Would that also explain why perhaps she saw his dead body when she had like that flash when he triggered her? Like that would also explain that maybe she's not controlling him. Interesting. Okay. My next question for you, why did it have to be Halloween? What was like the narrative

purpose or like the plot purpose of it being Halloween in this episode? Because it's a special episode. I see. So it's when you have the Halloween episode, that's something that we all look four, two, and all of these type of sitcoms. And it's also where the hijinks are at their highest. There's always hijinks surrounding the Halloween episode. It gave us, when you look at Wiccan and Speed, who are her sons, Billy and Tommy, they're wicked and speed. They're probably going to be Young Avengers in the future.

When you look at them, they're actually wearing their costumes. So it's kind of the thing where almost everybody, I think also as a plot device, because Vision has this traditional costume on because Wanda has her traditional costume on they're playing, they're going to Halloween as Vision and Scarlet Witch and Wicken and Speed which tells me

that they're getting close to realizing those characters again. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Got it. Okay. I'm glad you brought up the kids. How does she get pregnant and have kids if Vision is dead? Like, and also is a robot. Like, I don't understand because Monica had that one line where she's like,

everything that's how, maybe it was Darcy. One of them said like, everything that's happening is really happening to Wanda. It's not inside her mind. So, like, how did she have kids? Like, I don't get it. And, like, I'm very confused about, like, if this is, like, a Virgin Mary situation or what's what? Can you explain that to me?

She manifested the children. I mean, she, you know, she created some sort of alternate reality. You know what I mean? And so the best answer, because this is a different mechanism by which they were conceived in the comic books. So if she's in some sort of alternate reality, where she control all of it, she can control all of this stuff.

I am, being that she can basically create realities, I would say that she manifested the kids out of that reality. That's the best answer I got for you. Okay. So I just have to live with that not making any sense.

Just have to accept it and move on. You're in the comic world, baby. Yeah, I'm trying to get comfortable. I'm like used to, you know, melodrama from Shonda Rhyme. So I'm trying to get used to it here. Right. Yeah, that's, yeah. You're in the,

that's completely different. You know, you have to watch a lot of narrative leaps there as well. There are because I got to be honest with you. The staff over at Seattle, Grace, has been through way more than any staff. They got, first of all, they got the most heartbreaking cases ever anywhere, right? Not only that, they got sink holes. Was there a solar flare? They got all kinds of natural disasters that happened and all kinds of stuff.

So they've been through a lot. So, you know, there's some liberties over there as well. What's the purpose of the commercials? What's your best theory on that? Well, if you look at the commercials, I think there's two things. Number one, the commercials might be Wanda's brain taking a break. Oh. Like her brain actually taking a break.

That could be the thing because when you look at the commercials, they're common threads in them. They almost always have something to do with Hydra. Yeah. They're using the same actor and actress in all of the commercials. so it might just be her brain because it probably takes an ordinary amount of power and concentration for her to do this at all times. So Wanda might actually be taking a commercial break.

Now, that's Vans' own theory. There are a plethora of theories out here. And I watch all the YouTube videos. What are some of the other really good theories that are out there? Well, I think some of the theories before probably have been debunked now, but there were theories before that the commercials were actually sword trying to communicate with her.

Oh. Trying to tell her that what she was in, you know, kind of wasn't real and all of that stuff like that. But now I think that we know that that's not true because we know the ways in which sword has been trying to communicate with her. And they were very direct and overt. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Interesting.

So who do you think is ultimately in control here? Is it like, is there something that is controlling Wanda? and then she's then doing this, or is this all a result of her grief? Like, ultimately, what's going on? No one is control. It is in control. Wanda's not in her right mind.

And so she's not really in control. I think she's dictating things, but that's different than being in control, right? She's putting the wheels in motion, but she is too removed from who she is because of what's happened to her to even be who, we really know her to be. And I think that's a very important, that's very important in this show

because these other characters, right, that are in the Marvel universe, they go through all of this traumatic shit. They lose friends, brothers, comrades, they get removed from their home world. All kinds of stuff happens, right? Think about Thor. That's why I really liked how in endgame, they talked about the PTSD and the fact that Thor had major depressive episodes where you would have them too if half of your people was killed. Yeah. If you lost your brother and if you lost your mother, your father, okay, all within the span of your boyfriend. Yeah, all within the span of like a couple of years. And so if you look at this, the fact that Wanda is going through this after having lost.

her brother, the love of her life. Sarcovia was largely destroyed. It makes sense that we have to reset that character. Interesting. I, like, really compelled by the ideas of, like, of grief and, like, how that is powering or, you know, motivating her. I don't know how you want to put it. It's just fascinating.

I feel like, just because I don't know anything about the MCU or at least leading up to this show, like, to me, there's, like, so many other ideas about TV. Like, maybe I'm giving it too much credit. But it's just like fun to think about and like it's just interesting to to play out. Van, I have one final question for you, which is what's going on with Agnes, who's played by Catherine Hahn? Like, what's going on there? Who is she? So there's some thought that she is Agatha Harkness, who was a very powerful witch that in the comic books gave guidance and tutelage to Scarlet Witch.

Oh, interesting. And that's, a big clue to that was in this recent episode how, you know, she's dressed up as a witch. That's what she went to the deal. Her Halloween costume. In air quotes, Halloween costume. Halloween, spectacular costume. But I will say this, I don't know what to make of her scene with vision.

That's one of the juiciest little pieces. You know that, you know the piece at the end of the rib, the rib tip, and it's got all the meat. You know what I mean? And not much fat. And it's like you can just, you know, you get the rib tips sometimes. You know, I like the tips of the rib, but you get the rib tips. That was a rib tip of the scene.

Just a juicy morsel. And it leaves you wanting more. You know what I mean? So for me, I don't know what to make specifically at that scene. And also, I'm doing something else. I am trying not to immerse myself in too many theories because I'm trying to use the old noggin up here. Figure it out yourself.

To figure it out myself. So a lot of the stuff I say, I could be wrong. This is just the way I'm looking at it. Well, it seems like she obviously has some kind of like mental power as well because she had the one moment where she asked Wanda if she wanted her to take it again. Right. And then she was like in this comatose state, couldn't get past Elm Street because that's like where the hex ends or whatever.

But she had some kind of like semi-awareness. But then she goes back into her TV state when he touches her head again. So there's clearly something going on with her. And I, uh, I just love Catherine Hahn. What a great, what a great role for her. Yeah, she's amazing. By the way, everybody Pulling off.

Well, I think pulling off that old-timey sitcom sort of vibe because when they were acting back then, they weren't trying to be that. That's like how things were. Yeah. So pulling that off.

She's flexing. Catherine Hahn is fucking flexing. She's playing like four different roles in this show. It's really, the show is like really good acting. I think it's really well done. Though I don't know anything, I'm still really enjoying it.

Which I think is also one of the reasons what the show works is like there's a lot. to use your metaphor. There's a lot of meat on the bone. I always wonder about people like you. Like, you're missing so much. There's so much because you don't know,

it's actually a very liberating way to watch the show. Because I'm watching the show with like a nerd eye, a find truth of nerd coming. It's like a wait on you. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, hey, better get this right. When is photon going to show up? You know, all of that stuff like that.

Like when, and you just get to watch. Yeah, just had a coffee. you all watching this morning. And it was great. It was delightful. I don't know, man. I just like TV. So I don't think I'm ready

to participate in the Marvel Cinematic Universe fully, but I think the TV shows are the way in for me. So I'll know a little bit and then I'll just ask you to fill in the gaps. You're going to do it

because after this. Falcon of the Winter Soldier. No, no, no, no. I'm not even talking about that because that's different. That's going to be ho-ha, dude, we're dudes, two dudes.

Like, you know, like, so that's going to be different. But I'm telling you, this movie right here, This show right here is probably the most important show, the most important piece of MCU stuff to reset the universe moving forward. So I think you're going to... For the next phase.

You're going to be connected to the MCU because I think the show is going to connect you to the experience and the development of Wanda Maximoff. So I think you're going to be investing into her story because I think there's so much heartache to come that people aren't going to be able to turn her story off. I know. Just something's going to take a sad turn. But we'll be watching. Van, thank you so much for enlightening me. For more Van Lathen, check out Higher Learning. For more Juliette-Litman, check out Bapser Party and Ring Her Dish.

Keeby Countyers will be back on Monday.