“WandaVision” has proved magical for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, earning the mega-franchise its first major Emmy nominations on Tuesday. Among them: nods for best limited series and leads Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany.
“WandaVision” joined “Watchmen” and drama series “The Boys” as the only superhero shows to date to earn series nominations, a feat made even more impressive by this year’s stacked competition in the limited series category.
“WandaVision” had been the pandemic equivalent of a “water-cooler show,” becoming a social media sensation. It spawned memes inspired by dialogue asking “What is grief, if not love persevering?” and explaining the thought experiment of “The Ship of Theseus.”
Its clever conceit of designing each episode to mirror a popular sitcom from different decades (“The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “Bewitched” and “The Brady Bunch” among them) captured viewers’ imaginations, as did the show’s moving depiction of a woman in mourning.
“The grief journey was the tethering force,” showrunner Schaeffer told the Los Angeles Times in May. “I aligned each episode to the stages of grief, so the story is told nonlinearly but the grief story is linear. We start in [Wanda’s] denial and move all the way to acceptance.”
“We were using the superhero space to explore mental health, conflict resolution, self-acceptance. So many superhero stories right now deal with things like PTSD and crisis of identity. The terrain of our current mythology has to do with emotion and psychology. Something that Marvel is doing well is an examination of all the different motivations in a given conflict as opposed to good versus bad. We all, as consumers, have grown up a bit and know the world is far messier than that.”
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