WandaVision may homage sitcoms, but you won't find any satire here. According to star Kathryn Hahn, who plays the mysterious Agnes, the Disney+ series strove to capture each decade's "comfortable ideal" through sitcoms tropes -- but in a way that didn't border on parody.
"I feel like what the sitcom always represented is this kind of like aspirational view, this kind of comfortable ideal," Hahn shared. "The trick was not only were we trying to be lifelike within each decade, but present this kind of comfortable ideal... The structure of a sitcom, which is that setup, the misunderstanding and the resolution, is such a comforting little structure that... is something that we have just baked in us, I think. You know, I'm a kid of the 80s; that's just like baked in."
"So the trick was to not satirize it, but to get inside of each one, and that's what I think was, tonally, such a trick to pull off, which I'm still so blown away by [director] Matt [Shakman] and by [writer] Jac [Schaeffer], by being able to do that, because that's difficult tonally," she added.
Disney+'s WandaVision takes place following the events of Avengers: Endgame, which saw Earth's Mightiest Heroes reverse Thanos' Infinity War snap and bring back half of all life in the universe. In the wake of that, Wanda Maximoff, aka the Scarlet Witch, has found herself in a bizarre reality where her life is a sitcom. However, something insidious lurks beneath the surface of this picture-perfect world, and that may spell trouble for more than just Wanda and Vision.
Along the way, WandaVision borrows from a handful of sitcoms for inspiration. For instance, the first three episodes lean into the physicality and dialect of beloved family shows like The Dick Van Dyke Show, Bewitched and Brady Bunch, among others. However, the creators behind the series intended these to act as a love letter to yesteryear's TV without crossing over into parody.
Written by Jac Schaeffer and directed by Matt Shakman, WandaVision stars Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, Paul Bettany as Vision, Randall Park as Agent Jimmy Woo, Kat Dennings as Darcy Lewis, Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau and Kathryn Hahn as Agnes. The series premieres Jan. 15 on Disney+.
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