#vision and wanda

Some recent metas have shown a major bias that misinterpret Wanda completely. Wanda clearly wants marriage and children. She was in a relationship with an artificial intelligence who is now dead. By the relationship’s very nature (which is referenced in the nosy comments of being asked why they don’t have children yet), they are biologically incompatible. He’s not human. Do you understand why this desperation to follow the housewife emancipation narrative thus doesn’t make sense?

The show isn’t making fun of housewives who want marriage, children and a normal life or telling them to give up wanting those things because academia has decided for women that a traditional family life with a nurturer and a provider is unfulfilling. It’s also not making fun of historical time periods and their mindsets in a postmodern way (not the same criticism that Pleasantville made), but actually is looking back on those sitcoms and their tropes with a lot of love. The show creators actually had a sit-down with Dick van Dyke because they have affection for these shows and it showed in how accurate they got everything. At no point do they make fun of the eras or sitcoms of old, but rather reserve most of their poking fun (lovingly) at the characters themselves instead. Elizabeth Olsen herself is a sibling of sitcom royalty (the Olsen twins of Full House fame). Wanda herself has a lot of affection for those escapist shows that got her through hard times and she yearns for having a lot of the things depicted in them. Criticism of past media for not being currently relevant enough (this idea that the ‘50s sitcom world or even music of the era is creepy all on its own even before it unravels–sorry, but a lot of people still respect I Love Lucy, et al.) or of women who might actually yearn to imagine themselves into such a “normal” or “traditional” life with things they’ve always desired (yet are explicitly denied to them) or one free of tragic endings (yet at the same time acknowledging that we do suffer loss we have to accept) was completely the opposite of WandaVision’s message.

Wanda has been denied every single one of those things for her entire life and she’s in mourning for the life she thinks she’ll now never have because everyone she’s ever loved is now dead. She desperately wants to have children, a husband and family, to the point where she still hasn’t given up on creating them for real. And do note that she has to create them magically, whether Vision comes back or not.

Before she even lost either of these Visions or her imaginary children, she had already lost her own parents, home and twin brother. She’s been a young woman without family for years and Vision was the one being she had left (she didn’t have many Avengers she was close to and one she spent her entire life blaming for killing her parents), as unusual a couple as they were, until he was taken from her, too.

Hayward pushes her buttons constantly by using language that dehumanizes Vision (phrases like “back online”, rather than “back to life”) as he’s being stripped for parts while she’s using language describing a loved one she wants to give a human burial to. She has been judged for her choice in partner, just as the act of White Vision being stripped of Vision’s memories that were wrapped up in falling in love instead of strict programming without distraction (Vision injured War Machine in an act of friendly fire because he was distracted by Wanda) is deemed by Hayward to be an improvement. He sees Vision as nothing more than a very expensive weapon to be used. He even puts a price tag on him. The relationship between Wanda and Vision with Vision being capable of having feelings or sentience at all is thus treated as a programming mistake.

The denial of Vision’s personhood also mirrors Wanda’s own for years. Hydra and Ultron used her as a weapon, then the Avengers used her as a weapon until they spent more time treating her as a live nuke that needed to be guarded and imprisoned. It’s not much different than Wanda being told that Vision doesn’t even belong to her and even his own desires are irrelevant (he thus doesn’t even own himself); he’s mere property of an organization.

The last thing Vision wanted to be was a weapon and it shows in how he doesn’t defeat White Vision with a battle, but rather an existential philosophical debate.

Consider this when you realize that Vision was ready to flee the Avengers completely with Wanda to go live in a suburban lot in New Jersey when they were pulled into the mess with Thanos. Their attachment was to each other during those stolen moments for two years, rather than to some greater duty. It was Vision who bought that empty lot and was talking about the two of them running away from everything and pretending to be a normal couple. It’s the life that Vision was talking about in Infinity War that was taken from Wanda because he was attacked right after that scene and later died in that movie.

Interesting thing to note about Infinity War is that Vision was using a human form at the beginning of the film even when there was nobody around (even alone in their hotel room and even when the Mind Stone is bothering him–he doesn’t change form when she’s connecting with the stone in his forehead either). Throughout WandaVision, Wanda is constantly asking Vision to remain in his true form with her, such as when meeting his children for the first time. It actually contradicts the real Vision that we saw at the start of Infinity War who seemed to be wanting to be seen as a man instead, even in only Wanda’s presence alone.