Let's Face It. Wanda is a Pandemic Mom Who Needs to Deal With Her Sh*t.

On loss, the anniversary of the pandemic, and Sonny being wrong.

Wanda Maximoff is a pandemic mom. A potent mix of rage and ferocity and ennui, she is laboring under a crippling mental load, literally holding her world up around her with the sheer force of her will. She is simultaneously a supermom and a menace, joking sweetly with her family until the second she’s ready to hurl a glowing-hot look of red death in their direction over morning coffee. 

Right down to the slouchy ‘90s sweatpants and messy low ponytail, she is us.

I feel you, Wanda. So deeply. She is also a warning to all of us as we try to emerge from this calamitous year.

There is a moment in “Wandavision,” in which Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) looks back at her own life and the time after her twin brother Pietro was killed. She sits dazed on a bed, at Avengers headquarters, watching “Malcom in the Middle.” Vision (Paul Bettany), uninitiated in the ways of either human grief or American sitcoms, attempts to comfort her. 

As he sits down, a structure falls on Hal, the well-meaning, goofy dad character on screen.

“It is funny because of the grievous injury the man just suffered?” Vision asks.

“No. He’s not really injured.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“It’s not that kind of show.”

Vision goes on to say something very beautiful and memeable— “What is grief if not love persevering?”— but I think the real key to understanding pandemic grief is “It’s not that kind of show.”

Wanda is so sure of it. That is what makes the format comforting. If you know what kind of show you’re watching, you know what can and cannot happen within the bounds of its universe. 

We are all pretty sure, when crafting the narratives of our lives, what kind of show we are living. We grab stock characters, tropes and arcs from our childhoods. I was a 4-year-old Capt. Kirk sitting in my back yard, looking for adventure, a teenage Brenda Walsh trying to get invited to parties in high school, a wannabe Dwayne Wayne dreaming of college.

You imagine you are protected, in control. And then one day your narrative takes a turn, and you’re sitting on a bed, clutching a pillow, buried in grief saying “But it’s not that kind of show.” 

“Wandavision” began filming in 2019, had to halt for COVID in March 2020, and resumed in September of that year. It makes sense a production that straddled the pandemic would reflect the jarring tone change of American life during that time.

We’ve all been watching the narrative crumble since March 2020. Whether it was loss of life, jobs, routine, church or community, this year has taken something from you. And, maybe the pandemic didn’t let you say goodbye. Many couldn’t visit their loved ones in the hospital or have funerals for them. Your pre-pandemic office became a still life, trendy succulents withering in their pots. Children left teachers and classrooms and friends not knowing they wouldn’t be together again.

My 7-year-old daughter has referred to it all year as “when COVID snapped.” It’s a unintentional but fitting echo of Thanos’ snap, which preceded the “Wandavision” storyline, and disappeared half the world’s population for five years.

In the universe of “Wandavision,” everyone on both sides of the Hex lost something massive in that event, whether it was part of their family, five years of their own life, or in the case of Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and Wanda, both. My friend Sonny Bunch, ever the contrarian, suggests SWORD’s Tyler Hayward (Josh Stamberg) is the real hero of this series for trying to rip Wanda forcefully from her self-made world.

“He saw how Earth struggled to stave off collapse after a previous supervillain snapped away half of all sentient life,” Bunch writes, while Rambeau “missed all that drama.”

Let’s talk about missing all that drama.

With Rambeau, “Wandavision” explores what “Endgame” did not— the horrific implications of Hulk’s snap. It rematerialized half the world’s population, but it rematerialized them into a world they did not recognize, where spouses had moved on, parents had died, siblings grown up, and they had been cheated. The experience of Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), running joyfully into the arms of his family after having turned to dark vigilantism in their absence, would have been an exception in a world of messy, painful reunifications. (Am I close to a Sonny-worthy hot take that it was actually the Avengers who were the villains in “Endgame” for their redemptive snap? Yes, yes I am.)

Rambeau gets un-dusted into a hospital room in a chaotic new reality, learning within minutes that she has lost five years and her mother. It’s no wonder that she is the one willing to sacrifice to coax Wanda out of her world. She understands her trauma and the allure of the cocoon she has created, even admitting she would bring her mom back if she had the power.

She’s also smart enough to know Hayward’s aggression won’t work. His attempts to assault Wanda and the Hex head-on only result in widening their scope and number of victims.

Sonny is right that Wanda’s actions don’t warrant redemption. She built the life she wanted at the expense of an entire town’s population. She is a grave warning about what grief and trauma can do to a person and her loved ones if left untreated.

Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) offers the indictment she deserves, the bad cop to Rambeau’s good cop and Hayward’s Keystone. 

“Heroes don’t torture people,” Harkness keens over Wanda and the people of Westview. “Now do you see? You tied your family to this twisted world and now one can’t exist without the other.”

The loss of her children and husband, by her own hand, is her punishment. (Wanda’s really racking up “times I murdered the love of my life” trauma.)

Rambeau offers the off-ramp Westview needs. Because she understands why Wanda built her world, she comes into it again and again even when rebuffed, protecting Wanda’s children and earning her trust. She helps her see a better path out of pain.

Every pandemic mom needs an off-ramp and would be lucky to have a friend like Rambeau. Frankly, I’m worried about Wanda leaving without Monica, who seems to have a much healthier grasp on how to process trauma.

Today is March 12, 2021. A year ago, you went into your pandemic world. What did you build? Who did you hurt? What did you lose and who did you let in? How mad are you about it all? And how are you going to move beyond it? These are all questions I’ve asked myself before, in the wake of my past trauma. I’m asking them again after this year.

As Wanda leaves Westview, she says, “I don’t understand this power, but I will.”

There can be great peril in staying in a place of grief and pain without dealing with it. But there is power in walking through it and coming out the other side.