Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about VisionQuest instead? Maybe? Pause…
So far, VQ evokes contradictory feelings in me; in
fact, the entire trilogy does. Why? Because Wanda is not coming back. In theory,
this trilogy – WV, AAA, and now VQ – should be about a family broken and
re-connected to each other, Wanda and Vision as a couple were about a bond
between a magical witch and a scientific not-quite-a-robot, who couldn’t be
together despite all odds – but they did.
Then Vision died, of course, and Wanda went insane;
she drew an entire New Jersey town into her crazy mindscape, and Agatha came
along to make it worse. Of course, she was handled, the town of Westview was
freed from Wanda’s mind and mindscape, and-
-and enter the ‘Dr. Strange 2’ movie, where Wanda was the main antagonist and she
died, leaving the further family narrative described above completely
redundant. Without a mother, a family can be, yes, but it is not the same, plus
there’s the matter of generations – without a parent, actual or surrogate, it
all falls apart. Re-Enter Agatha Harkness?
Well, as we saw in AAA, Agatha remained lazy and
irresponsible even after Wanda had her way, and she was in no way fit to be
Wiccan’s surrogate parent or mentor. The latter is especially pointed, as the
duo were accompanied by other witches, or would-be witches, and almost all of
them died, (except for one… who hadn’t appeared in MCU ever since). Agatha just
is not good for any sort of leadership or responsibility, I would say, but she
and Wiccan keep on together, even if Agatha pokevolved into a ghost now, and is
sort of mentoring Wiccan in his new role as a witch (warlock?). So?
So flash forward to now, to VQ, where Vision is on a
quest alongside his estranged son, Speed, (Wiccan’s twin), and his even more
estranged father, Ultron. For some reason MCU decided to make Ultron’s human
incarnation look Jewish. How lovely. First Mephisto played by Sacha Baron Cohen
with his specific appearance, and now Ultron (“Mazel Tov!”). Someone in MCU has
rather particular ideas, I would say.
That said, this bit aside, VQ is shaping up as a
family quest, a parallel to AAA and its… not-a-family quest. Agatha might have
her own partner and child, but their role in AAA is more secondary, in the end,
it is her and Wiccan, and neither is clear how they feel about each other. In
VQ, it is going to be Vision and Speed and Ultron tagging along, a trio of neither
human nor robot men, trying to bond and outrun their enemies. Pause?
Here is the thing. There is no reason why ‘the
trilogy’ of WV, AAA, and VQ have to come to a shared end. However, without a
shared end, there is no point to a trilogy. Just like the unrelated (for the
moment) ‘Wonder Man’, AAA can be safely removed from the MCU timeline without
any ripple effect – you want to watch a MCU show with sexual minorities here you
go, you don’t, then you won’t miss on anything. Disney has mastered this sort of
a corporal fence-sitting by now – for example, in the ‘Frozen’ franchise, Elsa
swung from being traditionally heterosexual in the first film, to cautiously
homosexual in the second, to… the unknown in the upcoming third. Disney are
almost honest to admit that they don’t want to ruin their blue-eyed blonde
franchise, by alienating either the hetero- or the homosexual crowd, so odds
are that in the third film Elsa will be just a bachelorette, and the new characters
from ‘Frozen 2’ won’t appear in ‘Frozen 3’ at all. Pause.
Let us start again. With Wanda around, the WV, AAA,
and VQ trilogy would have been a workable cinematic trilogy with connected
characters who eventually re-form a family. Without Wanda, the trilogy begins
to unravel, and MCU’s decision to replace her with Agatha is not really a
replacement, it is a placeholder, and an intentional one. Consequently, this
makes the would-be family trilogy… not a family trilogy, effectively derailing this
train, but so what?
That you cannot have it both ways, that is what. VQ
is shaping up to be a series about family values, that has a direct connection
to WV, but not to AAA. It is intentional, as Disney/MCU made AAA so that people
who dislike same-sex values can safely skip it and go on enjoying the MCU… but
it unmakes WV, AAA, and VQ as a trilogy, no matter what Disney/MCU proclaim. VQ
is not a bad show, not at all, given how much trouble Vision already is, and
how masterfully the cast do their part, but it is not a part of a trilogy. It
is a part of a duology, with AAA tacked on as a compromise that probably won’t
affect the events of VQ or anything else that comes along in MCU (cough,
Doomsday, cough), but wait, egad, gadzooks! Speed and Wiccan are the next
generation of the Maximoff twins! They have to be together, right? …Well, we have
not seen them in the Doomsday-related material, so we will have to wait and
see, pardon the pun, what happens to them in VQ and beyond. After all, it is
not real life, so it possibly will not suck.
For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!
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