The next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) will finally begin in earnest early next year as Marvel Studios have announced Wandavision will be dropping on Jan 15, 2021. Set after the events of Avengers: Endgame, the Disney+ original will see Marvel's power couple living a life of vintage sitcom bliss, at least until they discover all is not what it appears.
The seeds for the trippy looking show were sown by the 2016 miniseries The Vision written by Tom King and illustrated by Gabriel Hernandez Walta which saw Marvel's android hero creating a white picket fence suburban family life of his very own. The show will also help kick off phase 4 of the MCU as the events of Wandavision will tie into 2022's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
All that's currently known about Wandavision is that it'll follow Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olson) and Vision's (Paul Bettany) idyllic life over several decades as if it were an episode of Bewitched (or Scarletwitched if you prefer). For the first episode the production crew went to extraordinary lengths to recreate a 1950's sitcom right down to the lenses used on the cameras.
As mentioned above, Wandavision will be MCU phase 4's opening gambit. Due to Black Widow and The Eternals having their release dates delayed indefinitely thanks to the current COVID-19 pandemic which also affected Loki and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier's filming schedules. All three series have integral parts to play in setting up key story points in the MCU's future, which in turn has delayed pretty much its entire slate.
Wandavision looks like it'll be perhaps the most experimental MCU project so far, closer in tone and ambition to David Lynch's dreamlike Twin Peaks than the other Netflix Marvel series. It's a bold direction for the MCU and could potentially open the doors for new interesting approaches to their roster of iconic characters.
Wandavision will be available to stream on Disney+ from Jan 15 2021.
Source: MarvelStudios/Twitter