The Watch - Questions From the ‘WandaVision’ Finale. Plus, ‘The Investigation’ and ‘Beartown.’

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

Chris and Andy talk about ‘The Investigation’ and ‘Beartown,’ two Scandinavian TV shows they’re currently liking (2:34). Then, they try to answer some of the remaining questions after the ��WandaVision’ finale, including who the show’s final villain was (18:53) and where the Marvel universe will go from here (41:16). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be surrogation. suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tool. Restrictions apply. See terms at Fandul.com slash predict slash bonus dash offer dash terms. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch.

My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at the ringer.com and joining me on the other line. Just finishing up this dark hold, it's Andy Greenwald. You blew it early. That's going to be our big double-down book club read this summer. The Darkhold. Larry McMurtry's The Darkhold. Do they have that on Kindle yet?

I don't think so. No, but we support small businesses and independent bookstores. Who do you think the ideal person to be the, like, would be the voice of the darkhold in the audiobook? Oh, the guy who made the room?

Michael Stolberg. Or the guy who made the room. Yes. Or the guy who made the room, yeah. Greenwald, it's Monday. It's so great to see you. We're going to be talking about the Wanda Vision finale

and what we learned, how we've grown as people over the course of these two months watching this show. A couple other things we'll sprinkle in there. How was your weekend? Well, I appreciate you, as always, giving me some space to unpack my own stuff and talk about my experiences. But I reject it today. Turning it back on you. You are burying the lead.

Moments before hitting a record, Chris announced to me that he had shaved his mustache, which to me is a sign that maybe optimism is back. It's funny you should say that. I had in my mind. With the passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan came the revelation of Chris's upper lip. I did shave this for Joe. I shaved my creepy Joe mustache for Sleepy Joe. But I had it in my mind thought to myself, like maybe I'll shave like the second I get the, that Vax, you know?

And shout out to, hey, can we say this? Shout out to our moms. Our mom's got the vaccine in Philadelphia this weekend. Not together, but essentially at the same time. Yeah, at the same time. At different pharmacies spread out across the greater region, yes. So I do have a little bit of optimism today, and that's maybe why I'm freshly shorn like a baby sheep.

Do you feel different? Because let me just say, you look great. You look a year younger. You look like you did early 2020. Yeah. Yeah. I feel different. It was a pretty interesting weekend.

I think part of the thing is that I've been going through a little bit of a transformation. this weekend. Oh. Are you becoming the Scarlet Witch? No, but I think I'm becoming Scandinavian. Oh. Okay. I see what we're going. I see what we're going. I guess crime shows, but they're really making me question what like it is that I like about crime shows in the first place on HBO Max. So the first one is The Investigation. Have you watched any of this? No, but I believe a guy from Early Borgon is in that show, right? Two guys from Borgon. Love it. Yeah. Okay, that's all It's written and directed by a guy who used to write on Borgon, Tobias Lundholm. And if you guys have watched Borgon, it obviously features Iran Greyjoy in a role in investigation.

He plays a lawyer. And then the guy who is, it's been a minute since I watched Borgon, but basically the dude who runs the evening news. Yeah, that's the guy I recognized from the ads. Yeah. He's the star of the show and he plays the lead detective. And it is about the investigation, literally, into. the death of the Swedish journalist Kim Wall. So I don't know if you read about that story when it happened a few years back in 2017,

I think it was. I did. By the way, for people who watch Borgon like I did, the character you're talking about play the Robert Guillaume in Sports Night role. Yeah, right. Except he gets dunked on a lot. He basically gets yelled at. But this has been a pretty fascinating watch.

So it's wrapping up tonight. It's fictionalized, but it's about something that was real. No, it's pretty accurate. I mean, from what I understand. I mean, it's dramatized. These people weren't involved in the real. A painstakingly dramatized rendition of recreation of the investigation into this woman's death. It's a sensational murder.

She was killed on a personal submarine of a sort of an eccentric kind of techie disruptor guy in Denmark. And never, never, never get on a personal submarine. Just don't get into submarines that aren't like don't fly a flag. And so anyway, I mean, The point is, is that obviously it's Scandinavian, so it's just kind of cool being there and being cold. But this show really inverts a lot of the things that you have come to expect about crime shows.

And it is, I mean, you hear the term slow TV thrown around a little bit. But, you know, as somebody who really likes crime shows, I am often forced to interrogate why that is. Like, is it that I like these sort of like cool anti-heroes or, you know, am I like want to walk on the dark side a little bit? Check. This show is entirely about the painstaking detail work that goes into putting together a case against someone. And I'm not kidding.

And I'm not spoiling anything by saying there is a 50 minute episode that is almost entirely comprised of divers diving into the sound off of Copenhagen looking for evidence coming back up and being like, we didn't find anything. That is like 50 minutes. And then the guy being like, shit. Like that is it. And it's like, it's actually like way more like this is what this is really like. It's not romantic at all. But it has idealism. And I guess I'm really, I'm really responding to that.

The other Scandinavian show that I'm watching right now is Beartown. Before you get into Beartown, can I just ask you? Yeah, hit me. I think people will know this about me. Like, I'm intrigued by the investigation. But at the same time, my interest in Copenhagen is such that I would really only watch it if the divers came up empty. And then the camera panned around to. the former Noma pastry chef Rosa Sanchez is Ica de Sanchez taco stand.

Did you just have that in your back pocket? But yeah, that is located by the harbor in Copenhagen. And if they went there for lunch and talked about the struggles of finding the wreckage of private submarines or what have you over freshly griddled corn tortillas, like that's cool. There's not a lot of lifestyle stuff going on in this one. There's some good interior design. There's some walks in the woods. It looks like a beautiful place.

But there's just a lot of diving and a lot of. of people sort of driving around answering cell phone calls. What is the level of Borgonese spoken in the show? For people who don't realize that Borgonese is, or who haven't heard us say this before, Borgonese is a very specific hybrid language that is half whatever the Scandinavian mother tongue is, and half phrases said very quickly in heavily accented English.

Yeah, don't have a cow, man. And then further in Swedish. I imagine the phrase private submarine is untranslatable. No, they've got Danish. They've got a Danish way of saying that. You know, and then the other show that I'm watching right now is also on HBO Max. It's only a couple episodes into its run. It's called Bairtown.

And it is about, it's a small town drama set in a sort of dilapidated Swedish factory town centering around a junior hockey team. And it's about an NHL player who comes back to his hometown to coach the junior hockey team. And shit goes wrong. And I, you know, we, we, we. started talking about this a while back when we were talking about Call My Agent and Lupin, but I think we should, it's worth mention now, I just don't understand why they can't make American shows this good anymore. Like why they, I want to almost check out like debris on NBC or something.

Right. Like I don't understand why other countries seems to have mastered the art of like adding wrinkles to well-worn subjects. Like this is just hockey Friday night lights, but a lot less romantic Fairtown. You, I think you've hit on something really important that should, influence our coverage of the next year of television, which is that TV has definitely gotten too clever for its own good and not just clever, but hyper-niche, hyper-specific. Part of that has to do for sure with the way TV is made in America versus in smaller countries, and the way TV is made in America now is bespoke television for 17 different streaming services, nearly all of which are designed to exist globally as well. And it's very hard to just

make something that is a fastball down the middle smacked. Yeah, I guess the New York crime drama is SVU. Like I guess some of those crime dramas are like that. But I do think there is increasingly a shift. And generally when there's a shift internally within the industry, it takes a year or two to play out in terms of what people can watch. But I do think that, at least, you know, in terms of the meetings I'm having in the conversations I'm having, there is a shift from the, uh, heady anthology series or the, basically the model that FX pioneered and everyone else gobbled up over the last 10 years, back to, oh, wait, why don't we just make something entertaining that a lot of people will watch and will watch for years?

And it's weird that it diverged. And I think part of that was this, the sort of residual stink of that type of show being a broadcast network show. Right. which is still kind of lost in its own sauce of who it has to serve and service and what it has to be. But, you know, there's a reason why Succession is going to keep winning Emmys and Better Call Saul is going to keep fueling conversations like ours. I mean, all the services are now looking. I would say they are all looking for their bear towns, but what a bear town means in America outside of parts of Fire Island is unclear. There is a, that's very funny.

there is a the second episode of Beartown is I would say 70% comprised of one hockey match and I was like this is this rules like it was actually like

just a sports movie in the second episode of Beartown it was really really and I was like I don't think that they would do this on the regular

HBO or the Netflix version of this show they would have like a quick highlight reel and then they would be like they won or they lost or here's like

the winning goal or something like this is like painstakingly like you see like the team go down to nothing and score three goals but unanswered. Do you think ice hockey is currently overrepresented,

underrepresented, or correctly represented in American culture? Well, you know, that's a fascinating conversation topic. I mean, I think Lake Placid and like the miracle on ice has gotten a fair amount of mind share. But I'm not sure, I think we're due a hockey show. I would be down for it. I mean, Mighty Ducks is coming back, right? Good point.

The reason I ask has nothing to do with any like NHL resurrection in my own timeline or life. I was under no illusions that you were like, I have a secret hockey passion. There was like our friend Matt, who I know listens to our show on occasion, like when we were hanging out a lot in high school and we would be talking about records or Quentin Tarantino movies every so often, he would be like mentioned that he's super into. the St. Louis Blues. And what was that guy? It was like Brett Hart or something? Brett Hall, right. Brett Hall was a wrestler.

Right. And I was just like, that is the undiscovered country. That is the thing that you carry that I can never understand or know. But recently in my household, we watched the Pixar film Inside Out. And while people are picking up on this, I think. And it's actually going to come up in a surprising way later in this podcast, I think. My opinions about Pixar have been trending slightly downward. I do think this movie remains a masterpiece.

And we watched it with the family. And I was concerned that both of my children, even the older one who's incredibly articulate and clever and smart and perceptive, might struggle with like the ideas of emotions and who's steering and what it's trying to say about how we form memories. All of that was fine.

All of that was completely basic. What neither of them have recovered from was the main character Riley's obsession with ice hockey and its role in her life. they were so in on this young girl protagonist and her emotional struggle and moving to a new town and navigating school and friends

but the end game for Riley is that she wants to join a new ice hockey team in the Bay Area and they were just lost. They were out on it. Out on it. So it's still a divisive sport. Yeah, I think it's very cinematic though.

Like the skating back and forth, there's a lot of flow to it. there's a lot of like, you know, hitting. I think it's got a lot, a lot to it. Anything else from your weekend that you wanted to touch on before we just, just dive headlong into Wanda Vision? I know people really came for Bairtown and mustache updates. I do want to talk about coming to America, coming to America,

but we could save that for after Wanda Vision. I watched, yeah, I watched a little bit of it. You want to save it for after Wanda Vision? No, let's just get into this quickly. I, so I think, I guess I didn't really have my feelings. finger on the pulse. I don't know if people were expecting it to be great. I don't know exactly how bright the flame of ardor for this 30-plus-year-old film burns in the hearts of people who aren't exactly us and exactly our age. But, you know, not unexpectedly, the movie dropped

on Amazon, and then I did see some negative feedback to it, and I watched it. And I got to say, you saw some negative feedback in that prompted you to watch it. No, no, no, no. I was going to watch it no matter what. I realized this might sound counterintuitive, but I, actually think that this is one of those projects that weirdly the pandemic helped. Because this was made to be a cinematic release. This was intended to be a big screen experience that people would go see. And maybe that would have been fun to laugh with the barbershop guys, again, 30, whatever, years later. But those guys kind of old in coming to America.

Incredible. That was actually my favorite thing about the sequel is that Eddie Murphy still maybe his best performance as the old Jewish guy in the barbershop who is well into his 80s in the first film is still sitting in a barbershop. Is he just drinking the blue water that they put the combs in and that's somehow like keeping him COVID free and happy? I love that. And I love those scenes. Those are my favorite scenes in the sequel. But what I wanted to say was it's best, I think, not to consider this a movie in the way we used to consider movies. This to me was a reunion special. A wildly overpriced and mislabel reunion special, but at its heart, it really wasn't that different than like the Parks and Rec Zoom

meetup last fall, you know? It was an exercise in nostalgia that was really just about the people wanting to have fun again, and maybe you get a few laughs and smiles remembering the good times, which at this point, I think, should be its own genre and was kind of interesting. There was something, you remember the happy endings, the read-through thing on Zoom that was really funny, and there was that moment last year when we were all like, you know, it doesn't actually matter that this is on a crappy app that we all use and that people are just in their homes or apartments, it's fine.

And that lowered our expectations to a degree. And I'm trying to wrap my arms around an idea that maybe in the same way that movies are slightly changed and our perception of them have changed and that will play out over the next year. So, you know, if and when theaters actually reopen across the majority of the country. But there was a flattening.

And the flattening in this case helped coming to America instead of feeling like a cynical cash grab or totally out of touch nostalgia trip, it was just kind of a pleasant thing that was on TV. Is that heartwarming? Have I gone soft? No, I mean, I got a bit.

Because it was a mess, but it was fine. Here's my experience watching that. I watched it for a little while after I got done watching Harry and Megan last night. Very excited for Harry and Megan. Speaking of finger on the zeitgeist. Well, me and 17 million other of my fellow Americans, we can't be wrong.

Great, great point. So I started watching. it. And this was a really interesting film in the sense that for six and a half minutes, I'd be like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever watched. And then in the seventh minute, it would make me laugh. And it kept doing that so that I kept watching. But it would be like, you know, Eddie Murphy and his four daughters stick fighting and training for, I'm like that. I mean, that was insane. But that like literally was like probably the cost of a Duplass movie to get that scene done. And then I was just like, that was pointless. You know what I mean?

And then, and then Wesley Snipes shows up and you're like, oh, I'm in. Come on. You got to got to watch Wesley Snipes. It was crazy, too, because one of the things, I mean, that first movie is just, it's a classic for us. Oh, huge. Its view of like fictional, fantasia pan-Africanness is like, that's not something we are here to unpack, certainly not even the 1989 version of us. But now this movie comes out and it's just like, we're going to do Black Panther also,

which kind of was its own version of that. So they're going to be stick fighting and, you know, shouts to the director Craig Brewer, whose beautiful camera work to just kind of swoop above and beyond the middle part of Eddie Murphy's body, which is not in stick fighting shape. No offense. I mean, who among us saw after the year we've had? But it was weird the way it just kind of couldn't get out of its own way time and time again. Like you have Kiki Lane, who I love as an actor as the older daughter.

But yet, like, ego or. history or patriarchy dictates that this needs to be about the sun that he had. Yeah. You know? And so, Jermaine Fowler, who was really good, by the way, I'm like, oh, this kid maybe is a star. I love it. You think it's patriarchy, huh? I think patriarchy is to blame for coming to America.

I just didn't understand, like, the movie where Akeem has to, like, make, change the rules of Zamunda, which, you know, spoiler, we get there. But, like, there's something there. But instead, we're just like, okay, I mean, I'm happy. We are so fucking lost in the sauce of this quarantine where I'm just, Like, I'm full on Swedish. Like, I have just, like, applied for dual citizenship. And you're, you're, like, way into Zamundan parliamentary procedure.

I'm, you know, I did some research. You're the Christian cinema of Zamunda. I did some late research on Zimunda's title nine. And I have to say, it does not go far enough in terms of national stick fighting representation. Oh, my God. What a time. Let's get into Wanda. Oh, you want to do one more coming to work with her thing?

Rick Ross, pretty good. Pretty good. Not a bad actor. Nice to see him. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day,

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it's great for affordable touchups on the go. Get this new must-have concealer at Sephora or at Sephora.com today. Let's get into Wanda. Let's do it. We obviously have talked about this show every episode. We've really been through the ringer with this one

because I think while we anticipated it being a really big deal, I don't think we had any idea that it was going to become such a cultural flashpoint and such a huge conversation starter, yet at once also feel a little disappointed by the product. You know what I mean? I think that I thought I would like it fine and that people would be like, this is really cool, but that it would be the first step in, you know,

a long sort of rise to the next films and the next phase of the MCU. But so I was kind of taken aback by like how captivated everybody was by it. At the same time, I think I had to like kind of figure out, like, why do I not like some of this stuff? And so going into this last episode, I really tried to go in with like an open mind and an open heart and just let it happen, which I did.

I came out of it with a lot of questions, though. Okay. And I thought maybe the way that we could structure our conversation is to kind of go through some of these questions. Would that be okay with you? What if, what would happen to our nine-year-old podcast if today I said no? I would just hit a button and, you know, a Swedish guy would appear. Me and Bjorn would do the pod. Ryan Rusilla would come out of the Copenhagen Harbor.

Be like, I didn't find the submarine, but I watched Wandavin. But let's talk about Yellowstone, finally. Okay. All right. So yes. I'm going to say yes. Okay. My first question for you is it's about the sort of central character. You know, and it's about the person that I think all of this was revolving around the entire time. And that was acting sword director Tyler Hayward. Totally agree with you. What a portrait of Trump-era institutional malfeasance.

That guy shot a gun at some children. Now, I think that he may have been like these aren't real kids. right? Like he was like, these are figments of Wanda's imagination. Although that would suggest a real deep understanding

of the multiverse on behalf of acting sword director Tyler Hayward. Because the alternative is that he is a attempted child murderer, right?

Right. By the way, Kevin Feigy, if you're listening, the spinoff where Matt Daredevil Murdoch defends former acting sword director

Tyler Hayward for his attempted murder of fictional chaos magic children trial. A few good swords, yeah. We are ready for that one. I do want to ask whether you thought that this show ultimately had a villain problem.

There was a little bit of three card Monty going on with like, is Wanda the villain? Is Tyler Hayward the villain? Is there a villain off screen that is going to appear in the last two episodes that will be the sent, will be the Thanos of these next few years? I got to admit

like, I wasn't really sure what he wanted, like, you know, he wanted to create white vision, which he did. And then he seemed like he got greedy and wanted to also... Also sounds like a relic of the Trump era. A lot of people had white visions they wanted to create back then. Steve Miller is just crazy white visions. What did you think of, seriously, though, what did you think of the sort of revolving foil of this show and how it was Agatha sometimes and it was bad Wanda sometimes? It was Tyler Haylor one week. What did you think of that? I think that's a really smart question to

begin the conversation about the show because I think it speaks to what to me was the ultimate failing of the show. And look, what is failure, if not the perseverance of trying? Because I want to be clear, this in and of itself is not the particular failing of an individual who worked their ass off for the show. And I think we'll get into some of the winners specifically of this entire thing as we get under our conversation. But I think it speaks to the central challenge, which is a Marvel Cinematic Universe property needs a villain because it needs to end with a fight and the villain needs to be vanquished. The show that Wanda Vision ultimately, I think many people involved wanted it to be,

the way they certainly speak about it, the part of it that resonated the most with superfans and just ordinary fans who maybe hadn't seen the movies, is a story that has no villain. It is, as many people are saying, in both good faith and bad faith tweets, this was a story ultimately about grief. And you don't need a MCU sanctioned psychotherapist to tell you that grief exists. Can you get accredited through the MCU to be a therapist? I believe you can. I wish my mind is racing for the most famous psychotherapist in back issues of West Coast Avengers. I can't help you with that at the moment,

but I'm sure I'm sure someone will correct me on Twitter. But what I mean is grief is not a tactile enemy that you can punch in the face. And yet the end of the series demanded one. And I think that if anything, the resolution with it's Tyler Hayward, but it was also kind of Agatha, wrapped things up very neatly,

moved us on to Dr. Strange 2 in the multiverse of madness. But it also neglected. And I think that we're, not alone in bumping against this, the true villainy of the piece is Wanda's near month-long psychological torture of an entire town, which is waved away, not with chaos magic, but with Tiona Paris being like, these people who moments ago were begging for the sweet release of death from your abject cruelty will never understand that you let go your robot-sacelior. sex toy lover and your made up kids for them.

I mean, that was incredible. And maybe some people can bridge that, but I don't know if I could. My second question was, does Wanda belong on Alcatraz? Mm-hmm. Should we reopen Alcatraz, sharks and all, get the tours out, get the guides out. And, you know, I have a lot of, you know, of feelings about the American prison industrial complex. But I would be willing to make an exception for Wanda.

I mean, yeah. There have to be consequences, right? But there can't be consequences. And again, not to keep doing this sort of delicate dance here, but I think that there's clearly partisans on both sides of this, one of whom say, if we all understand that these stories are naturally limited by what they are, they can only ever be about good winning ultimately, and they always have to lead into the next thing.

just skitching up to the side of something kind of disturbing and profound is worthwhile and should be celebrated. I don't disagree with that across the board, but in this case, I'm going to need a little more. I'm going to need a little more unpacking of what she did to people to feel okay about any of it. And it was pretty rough, and yet by the end of it, she's completely re-centered as not just our hero, but our hero who is now infinitely more powerful. Well, I would take a little bit of issue with that. I think that she is sort of like at the end, like we're supposed to look at her like the Hulk, right?

Like she's a being that can't quite control what she is, right? That's why she's got to live on a lake? Well, she has to read all four books of Larry McMurtry's Darkhold series. I have a note. I would have just loved to have seen this. Throughout this season, they've done these great homages to classic television shows, classic television eras. They did the 50s and 60s.

They did the Brady Bunch. They did Modern Family. They did the sort of full house style 80s sitcom. At the end of this season, as she's sort of like confronted with what she's done, and you've got the, Deborah Joe Rupp.

What's her name? Deborah Ann Rupp? The woman from that 70 show coming up and begging for death. Man, wouldn't it be cool if they had done the finale as basically a Breaking Bad episode? like as a anti-hero prestige TV

I've done a bad thing I'm a good person but I've done a bad thing kind of really reckoning with it and being super dark about it instead of boys you handle the military I'm gonna get the witch and flying it not that there's anything wrong with that like I get it like I totally understand

like the in the in the sort of vibe of comics like that all worked fine and in the sort of snappy dialogue of the Marvel universe like that whole ending I'm gonna get to the action part of it but I was kind of like boy you had like a really cool opportunity here to just be like,

isn't with great power comes great responsibility one of like the bedrock ideas of all superhero writing? You know, it's like, why not have her reckon with that? Or if we are committed to the sitcom bit, why not take inspiration from another classic, Seinfeld,

which ended with the four characters being confronted for their years of sociopathic, egocentric behavior and locked away in prison for it? You know what I mean? Like, that was a show that refused to give people the happy ending they thought they wanted because it was like, no, these people don't deserve that. For what it's worth, though, I would direct people to our old pal Davidskopf has an interview with Jack Schaefer,

who we will speak about in a moment, I think, who's the showrunner of Wanda Vision, and asks specifically about the shows that they chose to celebrate or do amages to. And apparently, originally there was a CSI episode. Yeah, that was supposed to be the previous line. on. Previously on, yeah. But like a forensic investigation episode, but they felt ultimately

that the DNA of the show was just sitcoms to riff on. Okay. So then maybe it wouldn't have worked to have, to have Wanda start making meth. Although I think that would have been cool. She just, like, waved her hands and...

It made red meth? Yeah. Got that Scarlet Witch? I'm in. Okay. After watching this finale, and it's, you know, watching the last like 15, 20 minutes

of this finale, I came back to a problem, which I don't think I had really thought about for a while because I thought that as an action kind of fan, as an action connoisseur, the early Marvel movies especially had sort of been, I just have always thought that they had like a little bit of a problem with actually the action.

Like, I'm not like, I can't wait to watch these guys fight. But like I actually do appreciate it when, if you're going to have a fight sequence, if you're going to have an action set piece, to make it make sense geographically, give it some sense of physics, and especially make the objectives somewhat clear.

You know, like, what is this person want from this person? Why do they have to fight over that? And how are they fighting? Like, what are the rules of engagement here so that I can follow back and forth what's going on? And I think that for the most part,

they course corrected once the Rousseau's came on board with Civil War and Winter Soldier and like kind of making it way close. those are like the born movies than, I don't know, 300 or something like that. That being said, I kind of thought that the action sequences towards the end of this episode were just sort of nonsensical, primarily because I didn't really understand the, like, rules of engagement. Like, I didn't really understand how the two visions could be fighting and flying through one another and kind of almost like touching each other's foreheads and stuff

and doing everything. Like, visions died so many times, too, that I'm just kind of like, I don't really know what the big deal is here, but... I hear you on that. I think the bigger challenge here is, and look, this is something that I want to be clear about. I think the best comic books do this, and I don't mind Wanda Vision trying to do it as well, which is at a certain point, you've got to just steer into it, you know, and if we spend too much time thinking about the fact that there are two visions fighting each other, one is completely not real. And so every, it's just a, a figment or a creation of Wanda's mind that is run wild,

and yet is completely self-aware and has all of the abilities of one of the most powerful beings that's ever existed with the smartest computer mind and a bucking infinity stone tattooed on its forehead like LeluziVert has that jewel. And yes, somehow Wanda's mind is like doing these calculations while she's also chatting with acting sword director Tyler Hayward, it doesn't make any sense. You know, you can't. But I guess I felt much like a Marvel movie

at the end of the part I care about least is when they're punching each other at the end. No, I don't remember that. I don't remember that part. I don't think about it. And so the witch combat and the two robot combats were kind of a washes for me. But they had to be there because that is the DNA of a show like this.

Sure. And every so often you get a zinger or a funny observation. or a, you know, interesting momentary reversal of stakes or power. And then you also get a, you know, a conversation about the ship of Theseus, which I'm into that. Yeah, I was fun. I mean, like, I thought both of the fights hinged on interesting twists, the ship of Theseus and the runes in the sky. Both cool ideas. Is Vision the Bruce Wayne's parents of the Marvel universe?

So this is a big deal to me because, yes, I agree. but what if Bruce Wayne had to live through his parents' death over and over again? Because I think... Watching the movies about himself? Well, I just think that part of the problem is like if you're going to make a show and you're going to say this is about grief and loss

and like getting and recovering from that and that this whole thing was just like a coping mechanism for her to get over the death of vision, I guess in end game, even though there's a new vision that's been created. And he is, where is he at the end of the episode? It was an Infinity War, right? Because he took the last stone from him

and then he was gone for all of endgame and then I didn't even remember so Scarlet which so Wanda vanished and came back with everybody else? Right. Okay. But like at the end of

at the end of Wanda Vision, the white vision, he's good, right? He's just... White Vision is real. He's out there. Yeah, he's just working at a Cinebun somewhere in Nebraska. So I guess I was just curious

like whether or not you felt like is that like kind of like killing Chubaco only to bring him back five minutes later? Is that, yeah, right? I mean, he's back whenever they want him to be. I mean, that is, and we, you know, we don't need to keep belaboring it, but like that is. I'm not mad at this. No, no, not mad at it, but the point that like the core mission is to keep as many balls in play for as long as possible.

And by that token, it managed to rather artfully do both. It gave Wanda closure. We got to enjoy the death of the green and red ball bettening. again, knowing that he'll be back at some point and in some future story. I think it's worth mentioning with the action stuff that I read in, Matt Shackman did a really long interview with Kevin Smith and he was talking about the finale and how there was initially like they had shot a whole sequence with Monica and the kids and a, like a chase sequence between them and the rabbit that Agatha had and how it had turned into like a demon and the demon

chase them and he was like it was this whole like goonies type thing and then he was like but we couldn't finish the effects in time and it turns out that they were still working on the finale two weeks before the first episode dropped and that because of the pandemic and everything that that had basically they had initially planned on releasing three episodes first so we would have gotten the finale two weeks ago but they weren't going to be able to finish the finale in time so it just goes to show you that they were still tweaking this thing pretty close up to the the release and that that might have had something to do with maybe what we saw in the finale. So I want to ask a, I want to come back to Matt Jackman too when we talk winners and losers of

this whole thing. But I want to ask a broader finale question, both to you because you're here. And then also I am curious what the show's many fans who listen to our podcast would say, which is if you are in any way underwhelmed by the finale or if you're disappointed by the finale, how do you think you would have felt if at the end of this Al Pacino painted bright red with devil horn swaggered out of a house as the rumor mongers would have had us believe

and he's playing literally the devil as he did in the film the devil's advocate exactly look but don't touch taste but don't swallow remember that speech Don't stop. I can't remember there's...

Now pivoted into Wanda Vision stuff. Oh, you thought it was Agatha all along. There is. It was me. The devil. Can I just speak for everyone

without waiting for an answer? Like, that's not better. That's not better. That's fun to think about. That's not better. Does anyone think that's better? Who, I... Okay.

I think what it was was, there was a very specific point in this show where everybody was like, all signs are pointing toward Reed Richards being on the other side of this hill. When Monica goes and says she's got an engineer friend who's going to whip up this tank

that is not going to get into the hex, everybody's like, here comes Krasinski. Here comes Reed Richards. They're going to start Fantastic Four. I'm trying to think back now. I mean, I think that we've talked extensively about how we ourselves were way too susceptible to like some of the theories and scholarship

that were going into the show and making us feel like this show is going in a direction that maybe it wasn't, or maybe that the show and there was the version of the show that was on screen, and then there was the version of the show that was in conversations, and that those were actually two separate things. I don't think that this show would have necessarily benefited from Pacino or Krasinski or Benedict Cumberbatch or any number of things. If Ralph had turned out to be Mephisto, I don't think that that was going to really, like,

make this show better. Honestly, like, I think I would need to have my own West Coast Avengers therapy if I had seen Al Pacino with devil horns in 2021 in a Disney blues streaming show. What do you think? Yeah, I agree with you. And it got me thinking, lost is, remains one of the most influential shows of this century. And, you know, it's back in the news. I, people should check out if they haven't. Vulture had an oral history of the lost finale, which I really enjoyed.

Damon rarely talks about that and he contributed his thoughts to that piece as well. But I think it's become influential. I mean, it's influential full stop because the way that the internet swooped in to carry the show from week to week and carry these theories and to increase the passion of an ardor of fandom

and obviously taught a whole different generation how to expect, anticipate, and watch serialized storytelling on TV. We're still unpacking all that. But I actually think it's worth maybe revisiting the influence. Because when the show aired and when it ended, there was so much conversation about, are they going to stick the landing?

That was the subtext to the drumbeat towards the finale of that show, especially once they announced they were given permission, which was a big deal then to actually wrap it up instead of run for 9, 10, 12 seasons as the ABC executives wanted. That subtextual question of are they going to stick the landing has come to really define our discourse in how we talk about long-running shows. you know, Game of Thrones being the example that is also perhaps proving the rule that like generally the conventional wisdom is that they didn't. There were so many shows that came in the wake of loss, particularly on broadcast TV, that

we're like, we're also going to throw a bunch of insane questions at you and we're just going to keep tap dancing in the hopes that you'll find these questions interesting enough to stick with us. The lesson of loss that I'm seeing in the brilliant management and success of the MCU and now slowly Star Wars as well. So the thing that Disney really figured out is that you can always win if you never land at all. There is no landing to stick. These stories are never going to end. And their fundamental storytelling technique is define gravity. On to the next one. On to the next one. On to the next one. And if you just keep moving the goalposts of an ending. And I want to be clear,

I'm not saying stories are defined by a good ending. Like I think Lost was just absolutely one of the best experiences of my life, even if I didn't love the very, very, very end of it. That doesn't matter as much. But I think it's pretty amazing the way that they've completely turned what was the hardest thing about it into the defining characteristic. We're just going to keep you perpetually in the place where you're asking the questions that you love to ask, and we never fully, fully, fully have to answer them. And so that's where we're at. And I feel like that's where we're going to be with these Disney Plus shows going forward. Do you think that, though, for people who have been following television over the last 10 years, there's going to be any kind of adjustment

period where we're used to seeing more definitive endings, even in seasons, you know, even at the end of a season of The Wire for some first instance, or even Mad Men, like, you would get the feeling like everything had changed. I don't necessarily feel like where Wanda winds up at the end of this season of Wanda Vision is decidedly different than where she was when I met her. Like, she's always kind of been pinballing around the globe, kind of trying to find a team, trying to kind of find a family, trying to kind of find a reason

for all this rage that she has inside of her. And I guess part of that will get answered in the Doctor Strange movie or whatever, but I guess that's kind of like the sort of magic of comic books, right, is to keep these sort of essential core characteristics while moving everything else around the person. Yeah, well, I also think maybe the more generous

way to consider it is one of the rules of being a polite comic book creator is put the toy back on the shelf and you're done playing with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, this, and in that version of it, Jack Schaefer used Wanda to tell a story that motivated her that talked about, you know, the influence of media and TV and meta-story telling and also family and grief, and then put her back on the shelf, maybe in the shadow of Mount Wondegore, shouts to my West Coast Avengers fam, for the next person take her down and tell a different kind of story. And I think that's the best case scenario here for the Kevin Fagie management of these toys going forward, that if more personal voices are encouraged,

they're still going to end with that sort of rewrapping them in plastic moment, but maybe we can treasure what they did with them when they had them off the shelf. Right. The last thing I was going to ask you that was sort of my own answer question here had to do with that ending, but also with Monica. and whether and you know there's two post-credit sequences in the last episode of Wanda vision the first one being Monica Rambo is a scroll right it's a scroll it's a scroll it's a scroll my man and scroll's like we got we gotta go upstairs man we gotta go to space um and the second credit sequence is Wanda by the lake and then you see that she's like got an astral projection or she is the astral projection of the Scarlowidge the Monica scene suggests as I have read that we are in foreseeing that we are in foreseeing Secret Wars, that there is going to be some, or at the very least, I can see you, now people can't see you because this is a podcast, but you just put your head in your hands.

That like with the Eternals coming, with the movies that we know are coming between multiverses and also, you know. And Captain Marvel 2 and Guardians the Galaxy 3 and space expansion. Right. And Thor, you know, that, that this is getting, we're going to get interstellar and that there Celestials and Beyonders and battle worlds and stuff like I have like a working knowledge of, if not like an absolute like back of my hand knowledge of. And I just want to say that part of the reason why I've enjoyed these movies,

believe it or not, over the last 10 years or enjoyed these stories over the last 10 years, is for as much shit as I give Marvel about like the Scovia Accords, I appreciate the effort. I appreciate the fact that it's rooted in some version of, of the world that I live in, right? Like that the stuff that's in Winter Soldier or the stuff that's in Civil War, the stuff that's in even Age of Ultron,

for as maligned as that movie might be, has parallels to the world that we live. I have no problem with outer space kick-ass dramas. Like, I'm sure a bunch of these movies are going to be good and a bunch of these shows are going to be good. But it gets a little heady once you start getting into some of the stuff that the Eternals might be about. Am I right?

Yes. There is a piece of this, I mean, that is like the truly trippy stuff that a lot of it was created by like Jim Starlin in the 70s when he was doing acid constantly and turning in these wild scripts. And Jack Kirby's, you know, most out there space operatic fantasies, which ended up, you know, things like The Eternals. There's a piece of Marvel fandom that is crucial to a lot of people's love of it. And our friend Sean Howe loves the stuff and it really has a heavy presence in his great book, The Untold Hizabeth. of Marvel Comics, which people should check out. Where, yeah, like beyond superheroes and beyond alien races, there are these just different levels of, like, galactic celestial beings, including, like, death is a lady in a cloak,

and the Living Tribunal, which is this floating entity with a disembodied head with three faces that judges everything, and eternity literally is space in a body. And when the three of them talk, they're just in a white room. I mean, I love this stuff. you can't get more, you can't get bigger and crazier. And I think that certain people who are now playing in the Marvel Sandbox really love it too, specifically James Gunn and Tycho Waititi. And so you get stuff that went back, 20 years ago when we were coming out of college

and they announced like a Spider-Man and an X-Men movie. And I was like, oh, here they go again. They'll never succeed. No one wants this stuff. Yeah. The fact that within, within a couple decades, ego, the living planet would be a character in a billion dollar grossing film is insane. But that stuff is being brought in and mainstreamed and whatever.

That said, I think that they, I think the reason why this stuff remains successful is because Feige keeps a pretty tight rain on all sides of it. Like he likes to keep it rooted as much as possible in Spider-Man is from Queens, even if he's now he's wearing space armor and flying around Europe, Jake Gyllenhaal. it is kind of grounded. So whereas scrolls and the Cree exist and we're introducing Captain Marvel and are probably coming back,

I don't think we're headed to Secret Wars, which in the comics was when a multi, like the most powerful being in the universe wearing a white leisure suit called the Beyonders, snapped his fingers and took all of the superheroes and villains and put them on a planet to fight each other and it was all just marketing for a toy line that Hasbro wanted to make.

Or the other version of Secret War. do that. No. But it introduced the black costume that Spider-Man has that became Venom. And then also,

then Jonathan Hickman, who we've talked about doing the X-Men, did a secret wars recently where he wrote the Avengers for like three years and it ended by destroying the multiverse

and then being reborn on a new planet where the survivors were and then they fought. It's great comic book reading, but I don't think that that, just because it exists in comic books, they've pretty much proven

that they strip mine the most translatable planks and then kind of riff a little bit on top of it. So the scroll thing for me was more like Monica Rambo, whether she's known as photon or spectrum, whatever she's going to be now that she's a superhero, was always going to be a big part of Captain Marvel 2. Jack Schaefer was one of the writers in Captain Marvel 2. Nick Fury is connected to Captain Marvel. Nick Fury is in space, I believe, when we last met with him.

So I think that that's who she was being taken to see. Again, it's fun. All of this is the equivalent of Val Pacino in a red suit. But what it really is is shuffling the furniture for the next movies, which we know that. We don't know what they're going to mean and what fun stuff and little, you know, icing and trifles are going to be included for the super, super reddeter obsessive heads. But it's shuffling the deck for Captain Marvel 2 and Dr. Strange too. Well, we only have, we have less than two weeks to wait until Falcon and the Winter Soldier. So can I, can we run through a couple names?

Because I feel like we mentioned Jack Schaefer and it's interesting and probably not to our credit. or to anyone's credit, that her name has been the least said during Wanda Vision's ascent to the top of the pop cultural rankings for America, she is the showrunner of the show. And did a really remarkable job. And it's weird, right, Chris, that, like, I was trying to think why when we talk about our praise for the show, we kind of fall back into industry speak sometimes. And it's, I guess it has to do with the fact that like... You mean industries speak like the job titles, like showrunner or...

Well, no, what I mean is commending the people involved for like strategic decision making, you know, which is part of show running. We are, the two of us are less enamored of the occasional flourishes of poetry like the grief line and more impressed with like the way that the action figures were arranged. And part of that, and I don't think this is a criticism of Jack Schaefer who did a really impressive job walking in. There's an interview with her, as we said in The Times, where basically like she had worked a little bit on Captain Marvel and a couple other projects and took the meeting. I mean, there's always taking meetings. And what they said in the meeting was, we're going to do a Wanda and Vision's dead. And we think it'll have something to do with her reality bending powers. And we kind of want to end up here.

And how do you do that? And so much of creative business in Hollywood is that kind of problem solving. It is reverse engineering. This is where they want to go. So how can I do this in a way that feels fresh and creative a movie? It's like you never, it's not like throughout these Avengers movies, like there was ever any scenes of Elizabeth Olson being like, do you know what I really like is to watch Malcolm in the middle? You know, like, there's never any reference to like heard.

Do you remember the people in the Dick Van Dyke Writers Room were? incredible a murderer's row of talent don't call me a murderer just a mind controller let's be clear maybe my victim's beg for death

yes that is true but I will exile myself to a lake you've been hiding the Sukovian accent from us I don't think it's very good

the new Sukovian accord is you must do that accent for at least a part of every podcast but you know what I mean like I think that one of the reasons why we are not and this is probably not fair. This is the new model for a lot of entertainment

is what Jack Schaefer excels at. And maybe she's also really great at the other kind of writing, too, but this is the business right now. And I think it doesn't fit as neatly into either our personal taste or what we are gravitated towards elevating as artists. You know what I mean? Like, Michaela Cole, I get totally different. This is unfair.

But pours herself into something deeply personal and unique. Jack Schaefer clearly also pours herself into something. something that is based on IP and that involves a lot of like handholding and cable connecting like Doc Brown at the end of the first Back to the Future movie. It's really impressive. It's just a completely different skill set. Speaking of skill sets, shouts to Matt Shackman, who has been just putting together one of the best CVs of contemporary TV jumping from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia to giant battle scenes

and Game of Thrones. To all of one division. All of one division. a whatever, four-to-a-half-hour Marvel movie. Which absolutely has put him in the running. He will direct a Marvel movie. I mean, I guess he kind of already has. Oh, you'd have to say he's the clubhouse leader.

If they ever were going to do a team-up movie, I would probably do it. Yeah. Because, and again, like, it's my, you know, obviously casting Downey and stuff, these are the big decisions that kind of fueled the MCU. But it makes sense. I mean, the Russo came from sitcoms too. Yeah. The second biggest decision to his success was hiring the Russo Brothers,

who had been directing on community. But finding people who can, you know, wrangle giant productions who can move effortlessly between tones and genres and work with actors and deliver stuff, you know, on budget or on time at least, like that's rare. And that's, shouts to him for making the most of the opportunity. I have a couple shouts. Yeah.

I want to say shout out to Paul Bettney. Yes, like, is my favorite version of Paul Bettney, Paul Bettney and Margin Call? You bet. What about Paul Bettney and Master and Commander, the far side of the world? He's amazing in that, but I happen to more enjoy his weird tortured. Is this a British guy working on Wall Street or an American guy who keeps letting his British accent creep in?

Because maybe the paycheck's not high enough. Was there any... He's awesome in margin call. But isn't it the same performance he gives in Solo? No, it's far less handy. It's far less handy. Shout to Betney. I thought, you know, he caught a lot of flack for the I can't wait to work with this person.

and I've never gotten a chance to do it before. It wound up being him. And I think a lot of people got completely, like, way laid by that. We were some other winners and losers for you before we get out of here. Well, I think clearly Catherine Hahn, who has long been beloved by many, many, many, many people is getting the standing ovation from the larger culture that she's long deserved. You know, do you and I wish that she was getting the curtain call for, like, private life? the movie she made with Paul Jammati on Netflix?

Like, yeah, probably. But always good in everything and deserves a ton of credit. Because again, like Matt Jackman, she is one of those. With Hansen's afternoon to late. And to say nothing of stepbrothers. You know what I mean? But it's great to see her get this round of applause for sure. But there is a specific lane for creatives now.

And I would put Matt Jackman in it too, the people who can, you know, there's Swiss Army knives. Like they can play in any different sandbox. And that's what is being asked of them. And that was cool to see. Lizzie Olson carried the show. I mean, that's the other thing that I think was kind of buried because the star, I guess, was Marvel Cinematic Universe coming to television.

But actually, this was an entire show built around her and her character that was not beloved and pulled it off, you know, being able to do the comedy and the drama and I think surprising a lot of people. And so when you get to the end of this Jack Schaefer interview that Itzkoff did and like, what about a second season? And she's like, I definitely cannot talk about that. And, you know, Kevin Feigey said

this Wanda Vision is a one-season thing. Like, yes, it is, but what he's not tipping his hand is there's going to be another Scarlet Witch TV show. Yeah. Of course there is. Why wouldn't there be? It just, the flexibility they have

is it doesn't have to be Wanda Vision season two. It can be the Vision and the Scarlet Witch. It's Wanda Vision coaching junior ice hockey in Sweden. You fixed it. You just fixed TV. I know. that was incredible by you Kevin call me

effortless Greenwallet we gotta wrap it up as always it's just been a lovely experience talking about television with you we'll be back on Thursday I think we might be doing some stuff on Paramount Plus on Thursday I'm not sure though but yeah like if people have got a chance

check out those two shows on HBO Max Beartown and Investigation and thanks to everybody for their thoughtful feedback on WandaVision throughout this last couple of months Andy I'll talk to you soon Great job, Branskins. We did it. We did it. We closed the dark hold on it.