Despite making these past nine Fridays something to look forward to, Marvel’s ‘WandaVision’ has unfortunately ended. With the appropriately titled ‘The Series Finale’ airing yesterday, it’s time to take a look at the finale itself and how it altered the overall quality of the show. Was it the finale you expected? Probably not. Did it wrap up the central core of the story being Wanda and Vision? Yes, yes it did.

Considering how viewers are accustomed to getting their Marvel dose in two hour batches twice a year, ‘WandaVision’ proved to be a unique experience for any Marvel fan watching. Every cliffhanger, reveal and small detail contributed to the immense hype this show has garnered. It became such a beloved ritual to tweet your own theory on Twitter as soon as the aggravating ‘Please Stand By’ credits start rolling. Everyone had a different idea about how this finale would look like, what it would end with, who would appear in it and basically, every single rumor got debunked. There was no Mephisto, Doctor Strange, Fox-Version Quicksilver or multiverses opening, at least… not yet. Instead the finale was a rushed, action-heavy episode with a somwhat satisfying conclusion.

There is this debate online that if you didn’t like the finale, it was because you expected all of your theories to become reality and that’s not completely true. My disappointment with the finale lies within how it lessens the impact of what the show buult up so strongly towards to. It really wasn’t Agatha all along, was it? Agatha felt like a waste of potential in this episode. She has her own villain theme and the most villainous thing she did was kill a fake puppy. She never posed a big enough threat to match the show’s view of her. Not to mention that the show’s budget restraint for it’s rather ambitious finale was showing many times throughout the fight between Agatha and Wanda in the beginning. She came off looking like a Disney Channel villain, a very specific one but that joke has already been made. Katheryn Hahn has done such an amazing job with this character that seeing her reduced to such a typical Marvel villain in this episode felt really anti-climactic. In fact that’s how I would describe most of this episode.

Personally, the involvement of a huge character like Doctor Strange of Mephisto would not have made the finale any better for me. because this isn’t really the type of show for that. That being said, the Ralph Bohner joke was a huge punch to the face. I don’t think a single viewer on this planet enjoyed that revealtion. Why bring in Evan Peters to play a character he played in the Fox verison of the X-Men only to waste him as a boner joke? It made no sense whatsoever. They could’ve introduced him as a mild effect of the multiverse breaking open, there was so much potential and it got wasted in such a tragic way. It wouldn’t have altered the tone of the show unlike the finale which was this huge, unnecessary action piece. The White Vision felt incredibly out of place and unnecessary, of course it was setting something up but the pay-off will happen in the future. It felt like a rehash of ‘Age of Ultron‘, in that sense. It was definitely disappointing to see Marvel have such a wonderfully written show about grief, loss and love up till the penultimate episode only to then deliver a mildly effective finale.

It’s safe to say that Marvel was incredibly nervous about this show not having enough action so they decided to slap on a typical MCU third act for the finale. It is a huge shame that we never see the aftermath Wanda deals with in terms of the Westview townspeople, she shamefully walks past them then flies away after tormenting them for a couple days. It’s honestly very odd for them to take this route because they have proven many times throughout this show that they know how to write an emotionally effective scene. Wanda saying goodbye to her family was heart-shattering, it was easily the most devastating scene in the entire show and yet I never really felt that bad because knowing this franchise, they will probably all come back which really defeats the purpose of this show.

In the grand scheme of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, ‘WandaVision’ will be looked at as an incredible step in creativity and storytelling. However as a stand-alone mini-series, the show falls apart during the last episode, literally. We don’t get closure to Wanda because of the rushed ending and Agatha gets imprisoned after doing the bare minimum as a villain. As a character, Wanda goes throuh some incredible development but the finale puts that to a stop because she has to appear in ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’. What I’m saying is that basically ‘WandaVision’ doesn’t really get an ending, it feels more like an arc in an ongoing story than it does it’s own separate thing. Marvel did a wonderful job making ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ and ‘Avengers: Endgame’ feel like two different movies which you can watch separately and still feel a sense of satisfaction. ‘WandaVision’ doesn’t feel like it can stand well enough on it’s own as a story because it needs the movies to complete it. The finale feels less like an actual finale but more as a step-off point for the upcoming movies which is great for the MCU as a whole but it ultimately weakens the impact of the miniseries as a stand-alone story.