This review contains spoilers
WandaVision began as something truly unique: a bizarre, thoughtful, often sinister superhero sitcom which seemingly pointed to a bold new era of storytelling for the MCU. As the series progressed, we did begin to see some of the old Marvel tropes creep in, but the show still retained a lot of its quirky charm, and managed to keep viewers glued to their screens every Friday as the strange tale of a broken Avenger and the reality she created to escape her pain continued to play out.
Then came "The Series Finale."
In many ways, the writing was on the wall. The last few episodes of WandaVision leading up to the finale slowly chipped away at the more cerebral elements of the story, and the penultimate installment's final shot of a floating Agatha Harkness in ridiculous witchy makeup with Wanda's kids on CG leashes really should have clued us in to what was coming.
A big superhero showdown was probably inevitable, and there's nothing inherently wrong with an FX-heavy action sequence, but not only did it feel completely out of place for this particular series, it was borderline incompetently handled. Badly edited with obvious ADR, Witches flying around spouting awful expository dialogue, cheesy one-liners, characters showing up out of nowhere before disappearing again with no explanation, Ralph Bohner!
Yes, the big mystery surrounding Evan Peters' version of Pietro showing up in Westview boiled down to a boner joke. Which brings us to those damn fan theories.
Look, if you were expecting Mephisto, or Doctor Strange, or even Professor Xavier to show up, it's understandable that you'd be disappointed, but that's not exactly something you can blame the show for (Paul Bettany's expert level trolling aside). The lack of big cameos or major reveals has nothing to do with why this episode didn't work - although an appearance from Doctor Strange may have succeeded in distracting us from how shoddily put together it was, at the very least.
Fortunately, WandaVision does deliver a suitably emotional payoff for its characters. Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany deserve all the plaudits for their complex, layered performances, and while the previous 35 minutes detract from their heartbreaking farewell to some extent, the final scenes do manage to recapture some of the magic of the earlier episodes.
Was it too much to hope that Marvel would have the guts to stay the course and make the Scarlet Witch a villain? Probably, but Monica Rambeau's "they'll never know what you sacrificed for them" line felt like a woefully misguided attempt to spin Wanda's actions in a more heroic light, and takes us to arguably the most egregious aspect of the episode.
We know that grief can make people do terrible things, and WandaVision started out as a powerful study of the effects of trauma and the struggle to overcome a devastating loss. But wrapping everything up in a neat, consequence-free bow glosses over everything that happened, and ultimately does a disservice to the character by robbing her of her agency.
It's a shame, because WandaVision really was shaping up to be something special. It's still well worth checking out if you haven't already, but such a clunky finale does Marvel's first Disney+ show no favors. We were excited to see how deep this rabbit hole went... we just weren't expecting it to lead us into such familiar territory.