When WandaVision debuted on January 15, 2021, it blew people away. Up until that point, the Marvel Cinematic Universe had been very successful, but it sometimes had been criticized for playing it safe with somewhat formulaic, “hero's journey” stories. WandaVision was entirely different. Those first two episodes clearly laid out the idea that each episode would portray Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) through the filter of a different sitcom era, with episode 1 covering the likes the earliest shows including I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke Show from the 1950s and early 1960s. Episode 2 tapped into the high-concept sitcoms like Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie from the mid-1960s.

A week later, episode 3 followed suit with a parody of 1970s sitcoms. And while episode 4 broke the format to explain a bit of what was going on outside of Wanda’s hex, episodes 5, 6, and 7 got back into the inventive sitcom formula with episodes in the style of ‘80s, ‘90s, and early 2000s TV. Then came that eighth episode, which gave Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) a backstory, which was fine, but not as much fun as the sitcom stuff.

Finally there was the finale, which saw a show that had been really creative and interesting devolve into typical MCU fare, with cookie-cutter fight scenes like we’d seen dozens of times in Marvel movies. Given how unusual WandaVision had been up until that point, it was a major letdown.

Fortunately, tonight’s finale for VisionQuest finally did what WandaVision ’s finale should have done, even if it was five-and-a-half years too late.

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