It's been a couple of weeks since I finished Loki, and since then my girlfriend and I have watched a couple of the documentaries that Disney+ has about the making of the three MCU shows they've launched in the past year. Overall, I think they've been decent, though I liked some better than others, as I'll explain below.
WandaVision
For me, this was probably the strongest of the shows. The central conceit/mystery, in which Wanda and Vision are inhabiting a different sitcom idiom each episode, was a great showcase of the strengths of TV versus movies, as well as a nice love letter to TV sitcoms. The episode riffing on 80s shows was especially strong for me, since that's the decade I grew up watching sitcoms like Growing Pains and Family Ties.
It also had a nice set of references to stuff from the comics, like Wanda and Vision's original costumes, and tied into the upcoming Dr Strange sequel, though that part would have been more effective if said sequel hadn't been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. My favorite thing, however, was the way it reused certain side characters from older Marvel movies; Darcy from the Thor movies and Agent Woo from Ant-Man and the Wasp were not only fun to see again, but they played really well off one another. It was also cool to see Monica Rambeau show up, grown up since her appearance in Captain Marvel and acquiring her powers.
However, the real "holy-shit" moment for me was the appearance of the X-Men version of Quicksilver, Wanda's brother Pietro. I'd found it interesting that the twins had been appearing both in the MCU and the strand of X-Men movies that kicked off with X-Men: First Class, and that the MCU immediately killed off their own Quicksilver while the X-Men films dispensed with Wanda at some point (I don't actually remember when she disappeared from there). And, ever since Disney bought the part of Fox that owns the X-Men films, I'd been wondering when they'd integrate the X-Men with the MCU (though I'm not really a fan of that idea).
In fact, I'd kind of expected that this integration would take place during the Infinity War/Endgame movies. As I saw it, the writers would use Thanos's unlimited power not only to destroy half the universe, but would break the bonds between universes and bring the X-Men in to help out. Things didn't turn out that way, so seeing Quicksilver "recast" was a fun Easter egg, though it's too early to tell if it will go anywhere.
Falcon and Winter Soldier
If WandaVision was the strongest of the three shows for me, then this was unfortunately the weakest. I'll hasten to add that it wasn't exactly bad - the relationship between the two leads was fun to watch, for the most part, and it featured some good meditations on what it means to be Captain America in today's world.
But the reason I call it the weakest of the three is that I'm not sure it earns its six episodes. There's a lot of business about Sam and Bucky coming to terms with stuff, and more about the Flag Smashers being angry, and more about USAgent also being angry, but it didn't feel like anything different than what we'd seen in the movies - and so that's why I think it might have been as effective as a 120+ minute movie than a six-hour TV show.
Such is the fate of all shows that follow something as formally exciting and innovative as WandaVision - it can seem a little bland to go back to the old style of making MCU stories when you follow something that played around with the format so well.
Another possible ding is that it doesn't feel like it leads into something the way WandaVision does. We've established Sam as the new Captain America, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a new bad guy (who also appears in the post-credit scene in Black Widow), but it's unclear what it's leading up to. That said, I do look forward to seeing what that will be, since that thriller side of the Marvel Universe has always appealed to me.
Loki
This was another fun one, and if it didn't play with the MCU brand/form as much as WandaVision, it was still a nice departure from the usual type of stories. It also helps that it was anchored by fan-fave Tom Hiddleston, showing off the complex version of Loki we've gotten in recent MCU films. That and the other Loki variants, particularly Alligator Loki.
From an in-universe perspective, it was nice to see what happened to Loki after he broke the timeline in Endgame by disappearing after his capture back in 2012, and how that leads into the upcoming Phase 4 of the MCU, where we'll encounter Kang the Conqueror (this seems to be another show that leads into Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness).
Getting back to my theories about integrating other properties into the main MCU, the storyline about the Time Variance Authority and its efforts to keep the timeline pure and uncluttered seems to point to a way that they'll be able to incorporate the X-Men movies, i.e. by having them happen on an alternate Earth.
The other thing I really liked about Loki was the design of the TVA. The technology all looked like it belonged in a 60s-based vision of the future, which made it very appealing - indeed, the TVA offices and the infinite city that they occupy look like an interesting place to hang out.
Because these shows all led into future MCU stuff, it'll be interesting to see how the franchise evolves as new movies come out. One nice thing about the MCU has been the way that it could incorporate lots of different types of stories, and these three shows have been a continuation of that trend. The hope is that Marvel can continue to be relevant and entertaining as Phase 4 progresses, but if it maintains the quality of these shows then it'll be in good hands.
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