**WARNING: This contains major spoilers for Wandavision**
At 8AM on Friday the 26th of February, I was getting ready for a funeral. Despite its taking place in the afternoon, my thoughts that morning were already swirling toward a darker place than I wanted. So, like most of my Fridays over the past two months, I sat on the sofa, booted up Disney+, and watched Wandavision to distract me. However, as played out as this saying is, I was truly unprepared for the emotional journey I would undertake over the next thirty minutes.
Up to this point in the series, there was an element of mystery to the show; Why were Wanda and Vision recreating vintage sitcoms? Why was Wanda mind controlling the citizens of Westview against their will? Was there a villainous underbelly to the show we had not yet seen? Through a series of spell-aided flashbacks across the episode, these largely separate questions fell under a concisely solitary answer: grief. We found out that moments before her parents were killed in an explosion, Wanda watched sitcoms from across the decades with her family; and that the Vision we saw across those episodes was not the one who met a grizzly fate at the hands of Thanos, but one created from Wanda’s new powers, unearthed by a the pain of her grief. Those same powers were what converted Westview, a once-derelict suburb, into an idyllic sitcom setting. Through her grief, Wanda created her paradise.
As you can imagine, this emotionally-charged narrative deeply resonated with me that morning, and was one of the last things I expected from an MCU property. But somehow it all felt so apt: the right thing I needed to see at the right time. I was already convinced that Elizabeth Olsen’s portrayal of grief was the most accurate I had seen in years, and that Wanda’s narrative was perfectly crafted for the television medium. But there was one scene that won me over, that made ‘Previously On..’ my favourite episode of Wandavision and one of my favourite entries in the MCU.
There’s a flashback to the timeframe of Captain America: Civil War, not long after Wanda and Vision have become an item. Even less time has passed since Wanda watched her brother, Pietro, sacrifice himself to save Hawkeye. While watching those same sitcoms she watched with her brother as a child, Wanda pours her grief onto Vision - lamenting on the emptiness of grief and the ever-increasing void of loss. While Vision, a sentient synthezoid, explains to Wanda that while that he’s never felt the lack of grief, he knows the weight of love. This leads to one of the most human quotes across the whole show, “What is grief, if not love persevering?”
Attempting to comprehend my grief was what initially had led me towards that darker place within my mind. But once Vision delivered that line, everything suddenly became clear. If Wanda’s narrative was a grand puzzle that attempted to map out and comprehend years of grief and trauma, this quote was the final piece. While it’s hard to describe my emotional response to the line, I felt the same resolution and reassurance upon hearing it. The reassurance that the reason why we grieve will indefinitely be rooted in our love for that we have lost.
Funerals are naturally a time for closure, although I myself have never felt this closure until days, or weeks, after they take place. On that day, I felt it as I watched the end credits roll. With a clear mind, and a clear sky in sight, I turned my television off and put my suit on - letting my grief pass through me, and allowing love to persevere.
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