We Live in the World of "WandaVision"

If--like Wanda Maximoff--you've been living in your own reality, distant from all things in 2021, you may not have heard about "WandaVision," whose first and only season ended on March 5th. The immensely popular show, from Disney and Marvel Studios, follows Wanda, a.k.a. the Scarlet Witch, an Eastern European refugee with "chaos magic" powers, and her husband Vision, a synthezoid (android) who died in the events of the Marvel movie "Avengers: Infinity War." Nearly all nine episodes of "WandaVision" depict the pair in what appears to be domestic suburban bliss. Nearly all take plots and visual style from one of the sitcoms that Wanda watched for solace during her bleak wartime youth, from the black and white of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" to the faux-reality vibe of "The Office." These anachronistic, self-contained sitcom scenarios fall apart as people from the outside world break in.