Cold Take: Thoughts about Wandavision

TL:DR Enjoying anything publicly while female has always been fraught.

Now that the loud, shout-y, fanboy reactions to Wandavision, and the loud, shout-y, counter reactions have moved on to the 200 hour version of the Justice League , here’s some cold takes on the Scarlet Witch’s long dark journey of the soul.

What’s worth knowing about Wandavision? Why is it groundbreaking?

WARNING: Spoilers

Wandavision is a hit, and a lot of people were mad about it on the internet.

In the grand tradition of men on the internet complaining about things not explicitly made for them — lots of dudes found it boring but still stayed up until 1am each week to crash Disney+ about it. A 30 second song from episode 7 launched at #36 on the Billboard charts.

I’m not writing this pretending any sort of journalistic remove, it was hugely refreshing to me, and I was squarely in the target audience: Women, 18–45 and the gigantic audience of people who will watch anything in the MCU. One of the great things about franchise storytelling is that not all story has to cater to every audience and it gives room to experiment both commercially and creatively. Wandavision did both, backed up by huge reams of research that says: “women watch TV, and they definitely like witches”.

It was the most aesthetically ambitious programming format in the Marvel…