It is once again time to check back in with everyone’s favorite sitcom about a lovable magic wielder and her synthezoid spouse trying to make it in suburbia. Last week’s big season premiere ended with some big questions and bigger status quo shifts, as Wanda shooed away an eerie, subterranean beekeeper, realized she was expecting, and brought her and Vision’s world into color. WandaVision Episode 3 spends most of its 70’s themed runtime dealing with the fallout from those final moments, as an expanding Vision family also risks expanding those cracks in Wanda’s carefully constructed alternate reality.
After a lovely new opening credits sequence that feels straight out of a mid-70’s ABC primetime comedy block (complete with another great theme song from EGOT winner Robert Lopez and his talented wife and writing partner Kristen Anderson-Lopez), we jump straight into the action and see Wanda and Vision, decked out in ’70s threads inside a house that has, since last we saw it, morphed in a very Brady direction, as they wait to hear what their family doctor (Randy Oglesby, Sharp Objects) has to say. “Definitely pregnant,” Dr. Stan Neilson informs the anxious couple.
It appears only a night has passed since Wanda noticed her small baby bump just before her world entered technicolor, and yet Dr. Stan informs her and Viz that the baby is already four months along. This understandably has Vision a bit concerned, but Wanda comedically hushes him with a series of punchlines that smooth over the oddity of it all and maintains the sitcom’s tone. Unlike in previous episodes where the audience could delight in Wanda’s wacky hijinks while her scene partners remained blissfully unaware, this week’s strange occurrences seem to be harder for Wanda to massage away. “Now in Color” is filled with sight gags and other oddities that, much like her rapidly growing belly, are much harder to explain away compared to Viz’s magician antics last week or her “exotic” dinner party in Episode 1.
Paul Bettany, as Vision, continues to be delightful in his ever-evolving role as a synthezoid all season. Here, he tries his hat at exasperated sitcom dad, obsessing over baby books and practicing his world-class diaper changing skills. It even features classic dad-to-be plot points like playfully arguing over the baby’s name and just-missing the birth after frantically rushing to get back. He does a wonderful job breathing genuine emotion and concern into this heightened sitcom aesthetic. That inner humanity pays off effectively both in his scene meeting baby Tommy for the first time and with a mystery box moment he has with his neighbors outside the house, which we will get into more deeply in just a moment.
Before we get there, however, I would be remiss to go much longer without once again praising the effortlessly charming Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda. This week, Olsen is allowed to show a wider range of emotions, and it continues to be stunning how she can snap in and out of an arch sitcom performance style. Now that we’ve entered into the ’70s milieu, sarcasm has started to more prominently enter into the comedic stew, and Olsen gets many fun opportunities to roll her eyes and make a loving, if mildly irritated, face at Vision’s nervous new dad interjections. With The Brady Bunch as a key influence this week, it’s easy to conjure the knowing faces Florence Henderson might make at whatever wackiness she was bearing witness to that week.
The Wanda we used to know and love is not completely absent from WandaVision Episode 3, though. During the key sequence of this week’s episode, Olsen gives us a greater glimpse at her as reality starts to seep into the fantasy, if only for a fleeting moment. The set-piece in question is, of course, Wanda’s extended scene with Geraldine (Teyonah Parris, Mad Men). What starts out as a wacky comedy of errors circling around Wanda at first trying to shield her sudden pregnancy from view (a nice nod to the common sitcom trope of pregnant actresses hiding their bellies behind all manner of items and objects so the audience would not know they were pregnant, since their pregnancy was not written into the show) and, later, a genuine stork that has emerged from the new nursery, soon becomes much more.
Parris, too, is excellent here as both the 1970’s stock sitcom character of “sassy Black neighbor/friend” (an often regrettable trope of the era) and when the sitcom veil seems to slip off of her character for a few fleeting moments. She seems to break for just a moment as Wanda begins to give birth to the first of what will end up being two baby boys (Tommy and Billy, whose names have deep roots in Wanda’s comic book history). At this moment, pictures are spinning on the walls, lights are flashing, and Wanda’s grip on her powers seem to be out of whack. Is this why the real Geraldine finally slips through, first when she is encouraging Wanda to push and later when she reminds Wanda of the fate that befell Wanda’s brother Pietro? Or does she have more agency in this world than we realize?
These questions are left to dangle as precariously as Geraldine’s necklace, which has a symbol we also saw on the beekeeper and the helicopter in Episode 2. Comics fans know this symbol as the logo for the intergovernmental agency SWORD, which typically protected the Earth from extraterrestrial threats but which has not yet had its purview clearly articulated in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as of yet (though many believe it was teased at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home). Olsen makes such interesting choices as a performer as Wanda seemingly reacts to the fleeting memory of her own twin brother while looking upon her twin boys. Whether she is choosing to let go of the sitcom facade for a moment in order to have a genuine human moment as she sings her Sarkovian lullaby to her boys, or if she simply breaks free of it to return to herself for a moment, at least partially, remains unclear. What is clear, is that Geraldine has been tossed out of her Westview suburgatory and into what appears to be a very modern, militarized field just outside of the town’s borders.
While all this is going on, Kathryn Hahn makes her triumphant return in quite the ominous fashion, as Vision spots Agnes and neighbor Herb (David Payton, David Makes Man) whispering just out of earshot. As Wanda’s powers are on the fritz inside during this exchange outside, it is unclear whether these two have momentarily regained agency and are simply afraid to tell Vision that they are stuck in this fantasy because they do not know if they can trust him, given his obvious close ties to Wanda, or if something more nefarious is at play. What is clear, however, is that they quickly draw Vision’s attention to Geraldine’s mysterious arrival to town and seemingly ambiguous presence there. Vision, we see in an earlier scene, has already begun to wonder if something is not quite right, yet again, and, yet again, the scene is magically rewound with a new ending that helps maintain perpetual motion. Onward to the 1980s, where I suspect the questions will only continue to pile up for now.
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