So, one criticism I’ve seen of the otherwise excellent WandaVision series is that the archvillain was one-dimensional. I’m not totally sure this is accurate, for two reasons.
First, the reveal of the so-called villain didn’t happen until the final third of the series. Unlike the Thanos sequence in the Avengers movies, that doesn’t leave a lot of screen time to get the Big Bad’s story. Most villains get their story early on in a story, during a set-up period to establish a conflict. That conflict was masked in WandaVision until about a third of the way through. I’m okay with those decisions.
As a side note here, I don’t find I care enough about villains. I found the Thanos unfolding and characterization in the movies to be too much. At one point, I ceased caring. And when it’s revealed he really did care for another being, it didn’t seem believable to me.
Two, I’m not convinced Agatha was a villain as much as a catalyst for the series’ true antagonist: Wanda herself. After all, she did enslave a whole town and at the end just says “I’m sorry,” gets a nod of affirmation from a supporting character, and flies off.
True, in the movies, her character begins on the opposition side, and switches when she gets a dose of compassion for innocents harmed. In the series finale here, is the “sorry” as heartfelt as we see in the films? I’m not sure.
If Wanda is the real villain in the series, isn’t that just a sign of the times? The rich and powerful do bad things, harm large numbers of people, and there seems to be no justice, no accounting, not much prison time, and maybe a few more suicides to evade consequences.
So, maybe I like the exposition of villainy after all. And if people are still curious about Kathryn Hahn’s character, give her a vehicle.
Catholic Sensibility 