Binge-watching and mental illness versus comfort TV and mental health in WandaVision

Abstract

WandaVision launched the Disney+ subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) platform by blending the sitcom and the superhero genres in a nostalgia-inducing fusion of Marvel comics, cinema and television. The series represents the canonisation of Marvel media into a single cohesive narrative ‘multiverse’, yet the story focuses on the personal experience of the character, Wanda, and her struggle with loss, grief, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In this article, we explore how WandaVision presents a unique examination of the tension between the role of screen media as comfort TV and the pervasive fears over the obsessive escapism of binge-watching. The article also assesses the potential risks of excessive media consumption through the framing of American sitcoms and superhero families from the 1950s and onward.

Keywords

Mental health mental illness comfort TV binge-watching superheroes sitcoms MCU WandaVision Disney+

Introduction

WandaVision (2021) was released on Disney+ as a nine-episode series in early 2021 and marks an important milestone for Marvel Studios and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). WandaVision is the first of many episodic shows that directly contribute to the serialisation of the MCU Studio Production Phases (Gil, 2014) which had until then traditionally been narrative- and production-based demarcations of storytelling periods collecting several films under one banner (Phase 1, Phase 2, etc.). Serialisation in WandaVision operates in a way that had previously been restricted to the cinema experience of the MCU. Both main characters in WandaVision, Wanda Maximoff, and the android, Vision, were introduced in The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), which lends an important degree of recognisability to the television series. Conversely, WandaVision provides a sense of intimacy, character development, and continuity through the televisual form and the techniques of screen language (Morely, 1992: 197–198; Silverstone, 1994).

Marvel-themed television shows have been featured on other services, including Netflix, Hulu, Freeform and the American ABC broadcast network (see Figure 1 for the full list). These shows, alongside their comic book histories, novels, audio dramas, video games and other transmedia elements and paratexts, were previously considered outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe by Disney and their fans. WandaVision is Disney’s first overt blending of Marvel-based televisual and cinematic narrative as part of its streaming video-on-demand (SVOD) service. The narrative events in WandaVision lead directly into the story within the film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). Therefore, with WandaVision, Disney effectively canonised the Marvel comics ‘multiverse’ within the MCU. Indeed, the third Disney+ serial Loki (2022-) and the platform’s animated series What if…? (2021-) further cement the presence of the Marvel comic multiverse within the established MCU narrative (McEwan and Longridge, 2021). Over the past century, both DC and Marvel comics developed complex multiverses in which endless parallel worlds exist, resetting and revitalising them many times. The first comic book character to travel to a parallel world was in issue 59 of Wonder Woman in 1953 (Shoeyer, 2020). In The Flash issue 123 in 1961, writer Gardner Fox proposed that a series of alternative Earths existed (Beedle, 2021). Marvel’s first foray into alternate reality stories was Strange Tales issue 103 in 1962, when the Fantastic Four character, Johnny Storm, is transported to the ‘Fifth Dimension’, which began decades of experimentation with stories in different realities, realms and dimensions (Marston, 2022). Disney+ served as the means for Marvel Studios to finally embrace the multiversal aspect of the comics and bring its acquisition of 21st Century Fox, with its share of Marvel intellectual properties, under one umbrella.

Figure 1.

List of MCU TV and streaming shows as of October 2023, arranged chronologically by first airdate.

The multiversal aspects of WandaVision are significant because they draw a direct connection, within the MCU narrative, to the experiences of the MCU protagonist Wanda Maximoff and her comic book counterpart. These two women are not the same individual, nor is the MCU character simply an adaptation of her predecessor. These characters inhabit different universes and media, but their lives share similar experiences of grief, trauma and mental illness, which has a direct consequence for both the framing and the trajectory of the MCU Wanda’s story. One of the key differences between the two Wandas is the MCU Wanda’s relationship to television, specifically sitcoms, and the comfort they bring throughout a lifetime of tragedy. In the following, we will explore the relationship between the televisual framing device, within the narrative of WandaVision, and the MCU Wanda’s mental health. The article will consider the representation of mental illness in the series within the context of ongoing concerns about excessive consumption of televisual materials. It will focus on the way the series visually and narratively explores the decades-long socio-cultural debate and the (un)healthiness of television through the juxtaposition between the notions of escapism and the unhealthy connotations of ‘binge watching’, and the role that ‘comfort TV’ plays in the mental health of the protagonist. We argue that comfort TV is shown in WandaVision to provide support, assisting with increasing resilience and strengthening familial bonds. It will also consider the implications the series has for understanding the trope of the family in superhero stories and what this means to audiences and fans of the MCU.

Representing mental illness/health in WandaVision

WandaVision is a surprising choice for Disney's first original serialised content on its SVOD platform because it represents some of the most conceptually elaborate elements of Marvel Comics' fictional multiverse. In the MCU, Wanda Maximoff is born a witch with magical powers. However, she becomes an orphaned refugee, a victim of United States interference and sanctioned terrorism enabled by neoliberal capitalist warmongering and experimented on by an extremist Nazi cult. Wanda falls in love with Vision, a synthetic humanoid, the product of an advanced Artificial Intelligence with the ability to manipulate matter at the quantum level. They enter a relationship after Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) and the death of Wanda’s brother, Pietro. The pair are adopted into the family-like structure of the Avengers, which suffers a catastrophic split following the destruction of the city of Wanda’s birth in Captain America: Civil War (2016). Then, after Wanda is forced to kill Vision in the events of Avengers: Infinity War (2018), she must watch him be resurrected and murdered by the villain, Thanos.

Although undiagnosed on-screen, Wanda is shown to be suffering from severe and untreated Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) beginning in childhood (Parvanae, 2023). PTSD is the reoccurrence of memories and feelings of pain, fear and other emotional and behavioural symptoms arising from the experience of traumatic events (APA, 2023). Kimberley McMahon-Coleman and Weaver (2020: 129–130), in their analysis of the representation of PTSD on television, note that the condition is listed in the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) immediately following depression and anxiety and that it is frequently accompanied by the external symptoms of anger, aggression and dissociated reactions, such as flashbacks. McMahon-Coleman and Weaver (2020: 130) also note that the Netflix Marvel series Jessica Jones (2015) includes an on-screen representation of the primary character with PTSD. Marvel shows also present lead characters who struggle with mental illness including the Disney+ show Moon Knight (2022), which features a protagonist with dissociative identity disorder (DID). Legion (2017) is based on the character David Haller, a schizophrenic mutant with psychic powers and the MCU character, Thor, is shown to be suffering from depression following the events of Avengers: Infinity War (2018).

Post Avengers: Endgame (2019), Wanda is experiencing tremendous grief, and the events of WandaVision are set in motion following an acute dissociative episode (Golden Bethany, 2021), which results in Wanda creating an alternative reality bubble that encloses an entire town. Wanda’s powers recreate Vision, and she lives out an idyllic suburban sitcom-based lifestyle with him, eventually reproducing some of the events from the Marvel Comics series Vision and the Scarlet Witch (Volume 2 issue 12) by magically becoming pregnant and giving birth to the twins, Billy and Tommy. However, Wanda's reality-warping magical powers ensnare the population of Westview, and this storyline taps into some of the events of the Marvel Comics series House of M (2005).

House of M contains one of Marvel’s worst instances of ‘the vilification of mental illness’ (Williamson, 2021: np). After losing her magically created children, Wanda’s powers become a considerable danger to herself and others, and her former friends and allies contemplate murdering her as a solution. The House of M results in the near extinction of Mutant kind, a prominent race of evolved humans in the Marvel comic book universe:

[…] vilifying a woman’s mental breakdown by having her virtually wipe out a species […] The story strips her of her own agency while making her the sole bad guy left to pick up the pieces years later. It’s a story that says the mentally ill are dangerous, that we’re capable of horrible things and maybe we should be “put down” before those things can happen (Williamson 2021: np)

Media villains are frequently represented as ‘mad’, ‘deranged’, or ‘unstable’ and often depicted as suffering from various mental illnesses. The overwhelmingly negative depictions of mental illness on television argue Pirkis and colleagues (2006: 536) have a cumulative effect on the public perception of mental illness, leading to stigmatisation and reduced care for mental health. However, the converse is also important, as Yinjiao and Ward (2010: 555) argue that televisual media is a powerful tool for ‘disseminating health information’ and promoting mental health care. Similarly, Johnson and Walker (2021) suggest that a more nuanced approach to understanding the relationship between mental illness and mental health in media representation is necessary to move beyond stereotypes, misinformation, and the stigmatising of mental illness as the cause of crime or the reason for villainous actions.

Mental illness is often portrayed as the source of both superpowers and villainy. The DC comic property Batman features mentally disturbed heroes and villains, including the Joker, one of the most recognisable comic book villains. As depicted in the latest film adaptation, Joker (2019), the protagonist Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), is a depressed psychopath with Narcissistic Persona Disorder (Skryabin, 2021). Mental illness is also often depicted as a source of superpower or extra-human ability, where the individual's mental health treatment obscures or removes their abilities. Beirne (2019: 235) accounts for the way protagonists in series like Legion (2017-), The Magicians (2015-), Homeland (2011-), Black Box (2014-) and others embody the ‘superpowered supercrip’ trope to show characters choosing not to take medication and withdraw from mental health treatment that would otherwise block ‘the skills that enable them to be of service to their communities’. In the series Monk (2002), mental illness is framed as having a social value when the protagonist’s disability is put towards a productive end, such as solving mysteries and punishing crime (Johnson, 2008).

Although Beirne (2019: 235) points out the ‘impossible choice’ between productiveness and useful status frames mental illness as being the responsibility of the character, women’s mental illness is often represented in serialised drama as a lack of agency and self-control (Baglia and Foster, 2015: 235). In her criticism of the House of M, Williamson (2021: np) compares Wanda’s mental breakdown and her own:

Wanda’s breakdown is meant to be the worst moment of her life, an expression of the immense grief she’s experiencing in that moment. As a mentally ill woman, I am not who I am when I have a breakdown — those are my lowest moments. While I’m responsible for my actions and the people I may hurt in those moments, it’s not a reflection of who I am in my everyday life.

Williamson’s reflection suggests a key perspective inherent to viewing WandaVision. Instead of being an origin story of the supervillain that Wanda becomes as the Scarlet Witch—setting off on a path of destruction that will end in the death of many and lead to her own demise in Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (2022)—WandaVision focusses on the role of sitcom television in her life as a source of comfort and strength. Wanda’s PTSD, combined with her magical-reality warping powers, brings into question the televisual framing device of the sitcom. The sitcom in WandaVision, as we will explore, is not simply used for escapism; it does not only represent Wanda's dissociation from reality. The sitcom is the primary framing device for the series and represents a conscious effort of resilience and Wanda's taking responsibility for her mental health. However, the sitcom is also used to engage with broader and longer debates about the relationship between the overconsumption of television and its role as a source of comfort and wellbeing.

Binge-watching and comfort TV

There is a long-standing tension between the morbidity of unhealthy amounts of television viewing and the role of television in the rituals of family and social bonding, self-care and mental wellbeing associated with the concept of comfort television or ‘comfort TV’. In trying to increase viewer ‘stickiness’ with the launch of its new SVOD platform, Disney released WandaVision in serialised form over subsequent weeks. This ‘drip’ format was used instead of the ‘drop’ method popularised by Netflix, which typically makes an entire series of episodes available for immediate binge-watching. The weekly gap between episodes was a return to the traditions of the legacy broadcast media paradigm in attracting audiences to a specifically scheduled day and time, which simultaneously provides a regular interval-based social media marketing strategy. This broadcast technique is emphasised by WandaVision’s televisual framing device in which the narrative of each episode is partly communicated through a pastiche of different periods of American sitcom television. The series pays homage to a different set of distinct televisual styles and associated aesthetic and production devices each week that also have embedded narrative implications. However, the attraction of Disney+ and other ‘on-demand’ platforms is the ready availability of this content at any time post its release, regardless of platform or device, which is a core requirement of ‘comfort TV’. Castle (2019: 39) describes watching comfort TV as an act of self-care, a form of ‘instrumental viewing’ that understands ‘television as a form of emotional digression’. Castle (2019: 39) argues that comfort TV is used by viewers to ‘manage emotion and compensate for threats to personal continuity’.

Historically, binging has been socially discouraged, and even Netflix executives have noted that ‘binge’ sounds pathological (Rodriguez, 2019). The etymology of the word ‘binge’ means ‘to soak’ (Hoad, 2003), and as a binge-watcher, the view can be completely absorbed in a series of episodes or shows. Binge-watching extends early discussions around television and its impact on health, which has been criticised for ‘keeping you up too late’, ‘ruining your eyesight’, and ‘stopping you from going out in the fresh air’ (Campbell, 1962: 19). More recently it has been argued that:

[…] taking viewers through so many emotional highs and lows may result in viewers’ emotional taxation, leading them to be less receptive to the emotional and intellectual benefits of the show (Flayelle et al., 2017: 309).

In the past, excessive television watching was considered dangerous and lowbrow. However, binge-watching has become a normalised and acceptable practice in the public eye (Case, 2017). Emil Steiner and Kun Xu observe that claiming to be a binge-watcher is not a confession of weakness but a ‘proclamation of your cultural and technological bona fides’ (2020: 85). Creating ‘bingeable’ texts is now a practice as honourable as writing a ‘page-turning’ novel or producing an ‘unmissable' album (Campbell, 2017).

Binging diverges from marathoning, whereby the extended viewing of a film franchise or television series is a celebratory activity in the cinema or on network television. Binge-watching distinguishes itself by offering greater autonomy to the viewer. Excessive binge-watching elicits a form of escapism—a well-known motive for television watching— however fears over binge-watching hold that it is addiction to escapism that causes people to dissociate into ‘a state of mental inaptitude’ (Wallans, cited in Marcus, 2015) and depression. This is analogous to Wanda’s mental break, in which she creates a reality bubble, bringing Vision back to life and eventually having children. She envelopes herself in a fictional sitcom-inspired world, and those on the outside can only see the internal world of Wanda’s delusion as a sitcom television broadcast, beginning with the black and white reimagining of The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961). Wanda’s overindulgence is the essence of binging, which is perceived as harmful to human health (Pena, 2015; Nield, 2017; Case, 2017; Rodriguez, 2019; D’Souza, 2020). The current DSM does not include a ‘binge-watching disorder’. However, the editor of the psychiatric handbook (DSM-5), John Wallans, warns that, like any overindulgence, a binge-watching habit can develop into a disorder (cited in Bostock, 2018).

Alternatively, certain degrees of binge-watching can be considered an important source of mental healthcare and described as comfort viewing, or ‘comfort TV’. The term comfort is long associated with nursing, and its contemporary usage signifies ‘acceptable standards of care’ (Kolcaba and Kolcaba, 1991: 1301). Individuals find comfort while meeting a range of unique needs, but there are common patterns for accessing the experience of comfort (Kolcaba, 1995: 288). Comfort is a state in which the human mind and body are at ease, experiencing alleviation of pain, grief and suffering. Nursing historically frames comfort as a respite to the diseased body or mind (Morse et al., 1994: 189). However, the concept has become associated with general well-being and satisfaction (Tutton and Seers, 2003: 690). The term comfort is often used to communicate the enjoyment of commodities, practices and hobbies, from cooking to fashion and modes of relaxation. Similarly, people will often engage in televisual texts to avoid quietness and use the sound of television as ‘company’ that adds to their sense of comfort (Darian-Smith and Hamilton, 2012: 34).

Comfort TV has become an umbrella term encompassing a range of genres and types of televisual experiences (Alexander, 2016; Hughes, 2016; Romanowski, 2018; Meimaridis, 2021). Comfort texts are often recruited because they are familiar, simple, and undemanding. Screen audiences access comfort through SVOD services that extend the modality of agency, accessibility and individuality afforded by the power of personal televisual programming associated with the VHS, DVD, digital recorder and internet piracy technologies. The cinematic experience of comfort is often defined by the technical experience of seats, thermal regulation, high-definition screens and sound, and co-viewing with others. Whereas the televisual experience of comfort is typically accessed through mobile screens where familiar stories, favourite programmes, faces, directors, genres, scenes or places can improve a situation of stress, unhappiness or anguish in a domestic setting.

Comfort TV can include consuming traditional broadcast media and new forms of streaming content or short-form access to favourite moments, highlights and clips, often in an unauthorised form via sites and services like YouTube and TikTok. Comfort TV, suggests Castle (2019), typically involves familiarity, predictability and a sense of continuity, achieved by returning to stories, people, places and things. The concept of comfort TV was popularised in news media and blog sites alongside the increased availability of SVOD services, and it became a particularly common concept during COVID-19 lockdowns (Martin, 1996; McMillan, 2011). As more people were required to stay at home, they turned to televisual content, both old and new, which provided a sense of freedom, relaxation and an easing of tension during the uncertain times of a global pandemic (Gilbert, 2020; VanArendonk, 2020). Indeed, Janet M. Martin describes comfort TV as the experience of watching something that ‘soothes and lulls’ (1996: 21).

There have been persistent concerns about people watching too much television for decades, but this narrative was subverted during the COVD-19 pandemic through the endorsement of comfort TV. This extends the ongoing debate around whether binge-watching is harmful or helpful. More generally, binge-watchers are no longer perceived as passive ‘couch potatoes’ (Perks, 2014); instead, binge-watchers of SVOD services are seen as active participants ‘in a complex alchemy of audio-visual matchmaking’ (Hallinan and Striphas, 2016: 117; Pilipets, 2019). SVOD platforms now represent the cumulating application of devices and practices that have enhanced viewer agency over time, from the remote control, video home system (VHS), digital versatile disc (DVD) and Blu-ray box set, and digital video recorder (DVR). VHS recorders and DVD box sets meant viewers could enjoy serialised content of their choice without disrupting ad breaks (Jenner, 2018), providing the solace of repeated viewing. The DVR similarly allowed viewers to enhance time-shifting and personal programming through automated recording (Schwartz, 2004; Tryon, 2013). The autonomy enabled by these technologies contributes to binge-watching. However, it also provides viewers with various means of comfort, including viewing favourite episodes and moments and being in the presence of familiar sounds and voices that alleviate loneliness and anxiety. The success of Netflix has meant a proliferation of SVOD services, each with its promise to maximise viewer agency. While services like Netflix and the Australian SVOD platform called ‘Binge’ seek to prolong viewing time, Disney+ is also built around the curated experience aesthetic unique to its well-known animated features and serials as well as its high-profile acquisitions, including Marvel and Star Wars, that bring many comforts to fans.

The concept of comfort TV is particularly useful for unpacking the narrative world of WandaVision. Wanda, as the protagonist, retreats into a magical manifestation of comfort texts from her childhood and adult life to alleviate the emotional and psychological pressures resulting from the cumulative deaths of her family and partner, Vision. Although it is somewhat unclear in the early events of the series exactly how aware and responsible Wanda is for the nostalgic setting the characters find themselves in, it becomes notable towards the end of the series that she has gained influence over the situation, if not complete control. In the first episode, ‘Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience’, the newlywed couple, Wanda and Vision, are unable to remember the meaning of a heart drawn on a specific date on a wall calendar. The pair cannot recall their history prior to their arrival in the town of Westview, and while the black-and-white setting and cliché plot ‘shenanigans’ of I Love Lucy (1951-1957) and The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966) mixed with the ‘magical’ hijinks of Bewitched (1964–1972) and I Dream of Jeannie (1965–1970) is suitably benign, the underlying mental instability of memory loss, becomes the focal point of the conclusion, in which disturbing events resolve without conflict.

WandaVision exemplifies technologies of comfort TV, bringing it directly into the narrative while offering a contradictory position to its veneration and warning about succumbing to unhealthy degrees of television consumption and addictive escapism. A key example is Episode Eight, titled ‘Previously On’, where the young Wanda Maximoff and her family are shown taking comfort in the availability of the DVD box set. Wanda seeks out the nostalgia of a time she has never known in the classic American sitcom. However, outside the window, Wanda’s mother observes gunfighting in the streets of Novi Grad, the capital city of Sokovia, a fictional Central-South-Eastern European country. The family enjoy Wanda’s favourite episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show (Series 2, Episode 21) until the apartment building is bombed and her parents are killed. Although the scene shows Wanda basking in the sitcom content, it also spends time lingering on the selection process, drawing attention to the importance of the material ‘box set’ (see Figure 2) and the assembly of the family around the television. However, the civil war outside breaks through the family’s cocoon, shattering the fragile tranquillity of the family’s televisual sharing. Drawing attention to the role of television in building and maintaining familial bonds, WandaVision puts into question the ideological resonance of televisual content, both itself and the shows that are its subject: is the young Wanda identifying with the content and its ideological message of the sitcom as glorifying utopian mid-century Americana? Or perhaps she is identifying with the process and technique of comfort TV, watching together as a family, especially during a time of strife. Is the message that escapism into comfort TV is unhealthy in a time of geopolitical upheaval or simply just tragic?

Figure 2.

WandaVision characters Darcy Lewis and Jimmy Woo eat chips while watching and discussing what is happening in Westview (Marvel Studios, 2021).

Later in the episode, we see a flashback to events following Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), in which Wanda’s brother is killed amidst Ultron’s attack on Novi Grad, as Wanda and Vision bond over an episode of Malcolm in the Middle (2000-2006). Wanda is shown in her Avengers HQ bedroom. Vision sits on the bed; the plain grey and white room is framed like a 90s sitcom with the audience directly positioned in the fourth wall. The shot (see Figure 3) highlights Wanda’s collection of DVD box sets just out of focus in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. Wanda explains to Vision that nothing will bring her comfort, and yet watching her favourite sitcom with Vision and hearing his insight into the connection between love and grief, visually bring her relief. Comfort TV is depicted as more than neoliberal capitalist consumption; it is part of a lifelong history of Wanda’s strategies of resilience.

Figure 3.

The DVD box set is a nostalgic of comfort TV from Wanda’s childhood, WandaVision Episode 8 ‘Previously On’ (Marvel Studios, 2021).

Resilience, argues Gorton (2021: 240), reflects vulnerability but also brings hope:

One of the strengths of television is its ability to dramatise the length of time characters must endure, adapt and keep going. Their unwillingness to give up allows the audience to see and even feel that struggle and various narrative and visual strategies invite audiences to compare the characters’ struggle with their own.

Wanda’s vast magical powers as a witch and superhero/supervillain role in the MCU and the Marvel comic universe are valuable in Disney’s modern mythological morality tale. WandaVision, however, presents the more personal, intimate, and domestic qualities of that hero’s life and shares Wanda’s vulnerability as a woman, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a wife and a mother. Her use of comfort TV is depicted as part of a lifelong strategy of resilience, represented by the affective impact of classic sitcoms on the female viewer, demonstrating the value of taking pleasure in televisual media (Gerrard, 2022). However, a later scene in Episode Eight depicts the connection between mental illness and escapism, implying the danger of shifting from comfort to obsessive escapist fantasy. After visiting Vision’s dead body, Wanda is shown travelling to Westview, New Jersey, where Vision had purchased a block of land to build their future home together. Wanda is shown to experience overwhelming grief and possibly a dissociative disorder as she activates her powers. She escapes into her reality bubble, where she recreates Vision in the image of Dick Van Dyke, recasting herself as Mary Tyler Moore. Wanda and Vision are then shown sitting on a couch in their fictional 1960s home. The couple kiss, and Vision clicks the TV remote, signalling a complete retreat into the dangerous abandonment of the real world.

It becomes clear that each setting in Episode Eight operates as a narrative device illustrating how Wanda moves from using television to processing and ‘working through’ her grief to eventually retreating into obsessive escapism and the unhealthy denial of reality. However, it also reveals that the schedule for this process is manipulated by the series antagonist, Agatha Harkness. Agatha’s persistent interruption to Wanda’s story is synonymous with how the television viewer perceives ad breaks. Indeed, Jacobs (2011) refers to ad breaks as ‘pollution’ interrupting otherwise ‘pure’ televisual texts because, like Agatha, they fracture the aesthetic coherence and flow of the television programme—or in this case, the story Wanda is telling. However, the interruption is necessary to connect Wanda back to her reality. Like an ad-break, Agatha’s antagonising, particularly toward the end of the series, is symbolic that Wanda’s escapism, like her fictional show is now ‘over’.

Throughout the series, Wanda is never quite able to enact the idea of a ‘perfectly normal’ family life as it is represented in American sitcoms. While the initial visual aesthetics and plot concessions of WandaVision draw from narratives and characters that first idealised the nuclear family, later influences like Malcolm in the Middle and Modern Family (2009-2020; Wang, 2021) use the subversion of family stereotypes to highlight the emotional function of replayability and the emotional security of televisual pleasure over its ideological content. While we know that Wanda and Vision do not fit neatly into the familial mould these sitcoms portray, the show’s dialogue and events remind us that comfort texts behave as safe and dependable due to their familiarity. Castle (2018) describes comfort texts as ‘malleable’ because they can be utilised in various ways. Castle (2018) interviewed a widower who expressed that ‘particular texts enable him to “recover” some sense of his wife in the present’ a striking parallel to Wanda’s effort, as a recent widow, to restore the presence of Vision (para. 11). While twisted, dark and unethical as it is revealed that she is controlling an entire town, this is a mode of self-soothing for Wanda. Castle (2018, para. 11) also observes that comfort TV might be used to work through emotions. Intimate knowledge of a programme and its characters can inspire ‘feelings of recognition, attachment and closeness’ in such a way that one can feel ownership of the narrative. As viewers discover Wanda created this fictional world for her and Vision to live in, we can see how she is tapping into a familiar resource to ‘hold everything together’ and make sense of her inner world. While there is much that is comforting about Wanda’s new reality, there is also much that is disturbing, as the show gradually reveals its darker and underlying menace, in which Wanda is being reframed from her role as a somewhat reluctant superhero in the MCU to a potential anti-hero and eventual villain in the forthcoming MCU.

Family and serialised TV

The initial weekly release schedule of WandaVision directly contributes to the experience aesthetic of the show on multiple fronts. The first and most overt is the series’ deliberate invocation of sitcom trappings as part of its metatextual framework and the narrative progression through the lens of American ‘family values’ sitcoms, including The Brady Bunch (1969-1974) and Full House (1987-1995). Television studies have long considered the ideological dimensions of the representation of the family. Silverstone (1994: 40) argues that the perception of the family as a system is not unproblematic but provides a framework to describe and analyse a family’s uniqueness as both a viable and vulnerable social unity, and a method of inquiry into ‘the rule- and role-governed nature of family life and into the ongoing capacity of a family to present itself to itself and others as more or less coherent, more or less self-contained, more or less special’ (Silverstone, 1994: 34).

The function of the nuclear family and the role of sitcom families as comfort TV as depicted by WandaVision is not straightforward. As John Ellis (1992) notes, we cannot take the ideological meaning of the family as depicted in the sitcom, old or new, as a seamless whole, but rather seek to explore the ‘constant friction between different kinds of meanings and different beliefs, between new discoveries and old habits, between what goes on in one sector of knowledge and another’ (: 15).

Western comics, especially superhero themed books, similarly have a complex history of reinforcement and subversion of American culture and the dominance of the nuclear family as the organising principle of social cohesion:

Hence, the practice during the Golden Age—without exception, Jesse Moore suggests—was for the hero to protect the American Way, which meant democracy, the nuclear family, upper and middle-class values, and (arguably more implicitly) whiteness (Mills, 2014: 45).

As Anthony Mills (2014: 45) notes, the primary narrative convention of the Golden Age of Comics (1938–1956) was the defence of the ‘normal’ or the status quo, which lacks psychological depth as superheroes merely operated with a mythic function, lacking true personality.

The Golden Age of Comics corresponds to the earliest sitcoms referenced in WandaVision, including I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke Show; while the original shows were progressive and critical in their own ways, WandaVision utilises elements of both shows that did represent the more ‘traditional’ family structure. This situation begins to shift through the ‘magical era’, of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. By the 1970s era with aesthetic allusions to The Brady Bunch and the Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977), which corresponds to the Bronze Age of Comics, the traditional nuclear family was being called more directly into question. WandaVision introduces the representations of expanded and different types of familial relations, as she magically conceives and gives birth to twins with superpowers in a matter of hours (coincidentally highlighting an intriguing point of intertextuality, given that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen—sisters of Wanda’s actress Elizabeth Olsen—shared the role of a newborn in Full House). Marvel’s most famous family, the Fantastic Four are perhaps closest to the nuclear ‘normal’, but other superheroes rarely existed in traditional nuclear family units, their ‘unusual’ and non-normal relationships and associations subverted the suburban unit and questioned the dominant values of their perceived utopian values (Mills, 2014: 28) which crystalised in the Early Modern Age of Comics evolving from the ‘team’ structure to superhero ‘families’.

Umberto Eco’s famous analysis of Superman, argues that superhero comics are paradoxical in their narrative temporality, reconciling the predictable demands of the mythic and archetypal role of the superhero with the different demands of the popular romance novel— or in this case, the sitcom. Per Eco, the novel depends on the invocation (yet also violation) of the everyday and ‘typical’, and thrives on unpredictability, ‘the ingenious invention of unexpected events’, and, above all, the possibility of development (Eco, 1972: 148–149, cited in Hatfield, 2013: 138) and resolution. The superhero genre, like the sitcom, is highly effective in both the escalation of the unexpected event and the resetting of normalcy for new events to play out on. WandaVision is explicit in representing this paradoxical complexity. Just as the show reveals the tension between comfort TV and obsessive binge-watching, it plays out the self-subverting archetype of the superhero family. By the conclusion of the series, Wanda’s family is both ‘nuclear normal’ with heteronormative white parents and children, they are also completely subversive. The male-presenting father figure is entirely non-human and non-alive, the twins are effectively super-powered mutants able to adjust their own ages at will, and Wanda is both devoted supermum and anti-hero, the cause of suffering to those caught up in her delusions, grief and mental instability.

Television, argues Silverstone (1994: 29), is part of the spectrum of domestic communication and media technologies that are part of the idealisation and reality of the home. Television can provide both feelings of security, but it can also be a prison (Silverstone, 1994: 29). This becomes clear as WandaVision progresses, both for Wanda’s victims and herself, trapped in the matrix of power, emotion and cognitive energy, which is then preyed upon by Agatha Harkness. Harkness uses Wanda’s reality delusion and her turn to TV’s provision of comfort and security, as a means for manipulating and the attempt to seize her magical powers. While the sedentary behaviour of watching television has been associated with reduced levels of mental health (Hamer et al., 2010), ‘magic’ has often been linked with the ‘recovery work’ of people experiencing severe mental health problems (Laws, 2013). What is interesting about this link, is the connection between magic and delusion and obsession (Laws, 2013: 346), which is concurrent with the representation of Wanda’s magic powers. Through the series, the more Wanda engages in magic to correct the storyline of her fantasy and to manipulate Vision’s memories, the more she inflicts suffering on the victims in Westview and the more susceptible she becomes to Harkness’s subversion of her power, ultimately leading to her stereotypical villainous turn. Conversely, mental health recovery work is antithetical to magic, it is not a supernatural ability, as ‘Sophie’, a participant in Heather Law and colleagues’ (2020: 470) study of young people overcoming mental health difficulties, reports: ‘It’s not this magical unspoken thing, it’s just recovery’.

Conclusion

WandaVision is more than the launch show for Disney+. The series presents us with a unique lens through which we are invited to critically evaluate the impact and interactions between comfort TV, binge-watching, escapism and obsession. The complex narrative framing device of television and the sitcom invites the viewer to examine the relationship between mental illness and mental health and the inherent ideological dimensions of superheroes and the family. The series brings Marvel television content into the MCU’s multiversal aspect, intertwining the comic book and MCU versions of the character Wanda Maximoff beyond adaptation. Their similarities and differences highlight the character’s trauma and strengths, as well as her evolution from superhero to anti-hero and the future of her role in the MCU as a supervillain. This complexity is creatively embodied through WandaVision’s combination of the fantastical elements of superhero narratives with the nostalgic warmth of traditional American sitcoms to present a creative examination of Wanda’s mental illness and her strategies of resilience and drawing on television to help manage her trauma.

Wanda’s preference for sitcoms as her alternate reality brings into focus the concept of comfort TV, which has been a growing subject of scholarly interest. The series demonstrates the multifaceted relationship between comfort television and emotional resilience, and it highlights the role of television in psychological coping mechanisms that provide viewers with relief, reassurance and company. But it also reflects ongoing concerns about dangerous degrees of screen consumption and the potential pitfalls of escapism, echoing the negative discourse that persists into the era of streaming platforms and the negative aspects of binge-watching. As the boundary of Wanda’s reality bubble expands and she is confronted with the very emotions of grief, pain and suffering that she is attempting to escape, Wanda must continually reset the universe into a different sitcom setting. Her consumption of comfort TV transforms from therapeutic nostalgia to a deep and unhealthy escapism in which others suffer merely for being in her presence during her mental collapse. The dark side of comfort TV is revealed like the magical McGuffin of the series, the arcane tome called the Darkhold, which feeds on Wanda’s obsession, consuming and distorting her emotions further and illustrating the perilousness of excessive binge-watching and disconnecting from the responsibilities of reality. Wanda becomes a cautionary tale, both highlighting the importance of comfort TV as a life-long strategy for mental health care and resilience and serving as a metaphor for media consumption habits in the digital age. The commentary arrived at a particularly poignant time when the Covid-19 pandemic increased media consumption, as many turned to their screens during times of isolation.

WandaVision similarly invites the audience to re-evaluate the underlying ideological dimensions of superheroes and their ties to representations of the family. In the Golden Age of Comics, superheroes were the guardians of social norms, much like the nuclear family, advocating for particularly well entrenched conservative cultural and political values. In later eras, particularly in modern Marvel Comics, diversity, tolerance, and the reimagining of the traditional notions of the nuclear construct were re-evaluated and challenged. However, in Marvel Comics, Wanda represents a deeply tragic and troubled figure, and a terrible handling of the issues of mental illness by her writers. WandaVision does not hide the complexities of mental health or those of prescribed familial ideals. It subtly highlights the dissonance between the rigid, often unrealistic expectations of family life, just as it reveals the traumatic struggles of a female hero struggling with PTSD and yearning for unrealistic expectations portrayed in the very media she is turning to for support.

The series itself inevitably upholds the status quo of the nuclear family and stereotypical representation of supervillains and mental illness, as Wanda is driven further into darkness and insanity searching for the power to bring her artificial partner and children back into her reality. The function of the series is ultimately to drive the narrative of the MCU multiverse forward. However, it does so by crafting a profound exploration of grief, resilience and an involved conversation about family depicted as part of a more human side of the superhero’s journey. WandaVision delves into aspects of the personal, domestic and psychological dimensions of the character that are unseen in either comic book or the cinematic instances, perhaps in a way that only television can provide. In doing so, the series broadens our understanding of both the superhero and the sitcom genres and opens the multiversal portal for further exploration of these concepts in the MCU’s future narratives.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Chris Comerford

Author biographies

Christopher L Moore is a senior lecturer in Digital Communication and Media at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Christopher’s scholarship includes research on internet and social media, digital media and television, analogue and digital games, celebrity, fan studies and online persona. He is the co-author of Persona Studies: An Introduction (Wiley, 2020) and a co-founder and co-editor of the journal, Persona Studies.

Chris Comerford is a Lecturer in Communication and Media at the University of Wollongong. His research covers an array of topics in digital and screen media developments, fan cultures, serious leisure and digital pedagogies. His current project is an analysis of television’s shifting cultural, social and industrial boundaries in the streaming era, as well as how reconfigurations of television and other screen media are understood and explored by creators and audiences. Most recently he has published the book Cinematic Digital Television: Negotiating the Nexus of Production, Reception and Aesthetics (Routledge, 2022).

Ren Vettoretto is a user experience expert. Her doctoral research focussed on understanding the contexts and usage of emerging and disruptive technologies. She currently works at Aristocrat Technologies as a Product Manager, transforming findings on user needs, motives and habits into actionable insights that drive the development of industry leading global products.

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