Why Is the Debut Disney+ Marvel TV Show a Tribute to Classic Sitcoms? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #85 on WandaVision

The newest, now con­clud­ed super­hero series fea­tures char­ac­ters no one asked to hear more about, one of whom was accord­ing to the Mar­vel fran­chise films def­i­nite­ly dead, and drops them in media res into a lov­ing styl­is­tic recre­ation of The Dick Van Dyke Show, then I Dream of Jeanie, etc. Why is this hap­pen­ing, and is it good?

Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by guest Rolan­do Nieves from the Remakes, Reboots, and Revivals pod­cast try to fig­ure out what kind of sto­ry­telling this real­ly is, whether this exper­i­ment was suc­cess­ful, whether you have to be a Mar­vel die-hard (or old enough to have watched those sit-coms) to get it, and the poten­tial for future odd­ball super­hero out­ings that don’t fea­ture a big boss fight.

This episode is hot off the press­es, and more arti­cles are com­ing out about Wan­daVi­sion now, but here are a few that might help:

• “How ‘Wan­daVi­sion’ Uses the Stages of Grief to Under­stand Wanda’s Men­tal State” by Meaghan Dar­wish
• “Wan­daVi­sion Just Set a Dan­ger­ous Prece­dent for the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse” by Eric Fran­cis­co
• “ ‘Wan­daVi­sion’ Isn’t Too Slow, Every­one For­got How To Watch TV” by Paul Tas­si
• “A Guide to the Sit­com Inte­ri­ors in ‘Wan­daVi­sion’ ” by Jes­si­ca Wang
• “Before ‘Wan­daVi­sion’: The Wild Roman­tic His­to­ry of Vision and Scar­let Witch” by TJ Dietsch
• “Wan­daVi­sion Finale End­ing Explained” by Lacy Baugh­er
• “How Wan­daVi­sion Cap­tured the Secret Hor­ror of The Sims” by Matthew Byrd
• “Wan­daVi­sion Finale: Every East­er Egg” by Ryan Arey
• “Wan­daVi­sion’s Post-Cred­its Scenes Set Up 3 New MCU Movies & Shows” by James Hunt

Fol­low Rolan­do @Rolando_Nieves.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion (with more Rolan­do!) that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.