But as for the fight itself, there’s just no imagination to the staging or the realization of the action, and one wonders whether this is due it being new territory for director Matt Shakman or if this is another example of Marvel Studios handing the fight scenes over to a pre-visualization effects team that has done too many of these and is out of ideas. Wanda drains Agatha of all her power and reforms herself into the Scarlet Witch in an impressive array of light and particle effects, and then emerges with a sick new movie-ready costume. Second, the final stroke of Wanda’s victory over Agatha is the revelation that Wanda, taking a trick out of Agatha’s book, has cast giant runes onto the interior surface of the energy barrier around Westview, preventing anyone but herself from casting spells within its walls. We are still learning the extent of Monica’s powers, and there’s a sense of wonder that comes from learning them as she does. Director Hayward arrives on scene and tries to shoot pre-teen twins Billy and Tommy (in case you didn’t know he was evil), Captain Rambeau steps into the line of fire and her body reflexively phases into energy, slowing down the bullets as they pass through her. Two cool visual moments stand out during the battle sequence. Agatha Harkness’s dark witchy attire, which is reasonably cool in darkness, looks like a Maleficent cosplay in the light. Amplifying this issue is the decision to stage the climactic battle of WandaVision in broad, even daylight, which makes it impossible to hide the weaker effects and makes the whole affair feel flat and artless. We know what Vision is supposed to look like when he flies around, and this is not quite right. The effects are still very good for TV, it’s simply impossible not to compare them directly with what we see in WandaVision ’s theatrical siblings. So far, WandaVision hasn’t traded much in the same types of visuals as its big screen counterparts, so its limitations haven’t been noticeable, but here we’re seeing Wanda, Vision, and company in the familiar context of a superhero battle, and they don’t quite live up to the images we’ve stored in our heads from similar sequences in Captain America: Civil War or Avengers: Infinity War. What’s more, this battle is the first time in the run of WandaVision that its television budget becomes fully apparent. At this point we have seen so many on-screen scraps between flying men with capes and energy beams that it’s hard to bring anything new to the table. The Vision fight has some interesting exchanges that exploit the two synthezoids’ ability to phase through one another, but on the whole it still feels like just another airborne superhero punch-out. beam “dueling progress bars”-style clash. Meanwhile, Vision duels his reprogrammed doppelgänger, and it goes without saying that there’s a direct beam vs. Wanda’s newfound ability to totally transmute matter, which could have been visually interesting in a fight like this, goes entirely unused. Much of “The Series Finale” is occupied with delivering the action climax promised by the preceding chapters and, as feared, it’s a totally rote “Third Act Marvel Battle.” Wanda pursues Agatha Harkness through the skies above Westview, hurling red energy bolts at her while Agatha uses her purple beams to drain her power. It Says Here in the Script that “They Fight” But now that we arrive at “The Series Finale,” WandaVision is just another Marvel product, with all the flaws that go along with it, and in this particular case, the flaws are what stand out the most. WandaVision has been, for the most part, good fun, particularly when it began as such a dramatic outlier from the typical Marvel formula. Since the story is ongoing, you have to give the storytellers the benefit of the doubt that whatever dangling thread or dodgy narrative choice that’s bothering you is doing so on purpose, that you may see it resolved in a satisfying way by the end. Enjoying serialized television requires patience.
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