Over the course of five films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise, the character of Wanda Maximoff is shown not only to be one of the most powerful characters in a fiction populated by superheroes and supervillains but also one of the most agonized. She loses everyone she loves: her parents, her twin brother, and the more-than-human man she loves.
In that last loss, she must witness the Vision's death twice in the motion picture Avengers: Infinity War. From her perspective, it is only moments later when she faces the villain Thanos full of her rage in the climactic battle of Avengers: Endgame, less than two weeks before she finds scientists of an agency called SWORD studying the Vision's dismantled body, and three weeks before the events of the Disney+ series WandaVision.
Source: Burak K via Pexels, used with permission. The show's earliest episodes depict Wanda and Vision (played respectively by Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany) as a happily married couple living as if in an old sitcom, in the styles of certain programs from the 1950s, then '60s, then '70s. From the fourth episode onward, other characters and the viewers alike learn more about the mystery of why this is happening in a town called Westview.
In her great grief, she appears to have used her powers, perhaps unconsciously at first, to change the entire town and cast its citizens into roles that play out this sitcom fantasy. When her seemingly-back-from-the-dead brother Pietro (Evan Peters) says that she "suppressed a lot of trauma," his words seem to mean much more than the childhood anecdote they're discussing at the time. Does an escape into old family sitcoms suggest a wish to away run from tragic reality and into the comfort of simplified life where problems are mild and can be solved in half an hour? Can such a fantastic scenario say anything whatsoever about real human grief?
People grieve in different ways. A person should be cautious and certainly more empathetic when judging that someone else's suffering is too much, too long, too loud, or too weird. Society can prepare people poorly and offer too little support. It can be difficult for a person who suddenly feels so alone to have any clue as to what they themselves need at the time.
Complicated grief and pathological grief are only a couple of terms applied to those whose mourning has grown maladaptive, interfering with their abilities to cope and adapt to life (Mancini et al., 2015; Schenck et al., 2015; Tofthagen et al., 2017). Reasons for this can include the kind of repeated losses experienced by the character Wanda no less than by real people who have endured loss after loss whether due to war, street violence, accidents, disease, or some series of unconnected causes. Individuals going through maladaptive mourning may show ongoing pain, anger, anguish, sadness, bitterness, destructive toward self or others, or efforts to escape from responsibilities or others who, however well-meaning, do not seem to know what they're going through.
To discuss the power of grief and reality distortion as represented in WandaVision, four psychological professionals (Dr. Jim Davies, cognitive scientist whose specializations include A.I.; Dr. Yoni Sobin, clinical psychologist; Dr. Scott Jordan, cognitive psychologist; Dr. Colt Blunt, forensic psychologist) joined me (Dr. Travis Langley, social psychologist) in the video below to share thoughts on the program's popularity and its greater implications for how human beings may struggle to manage grief and cope with tragic loss (Eisme & Stroebe, 2020; Thimm & Holland, 2017).
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Source: Tom Mossholder via Pexels, used with permission.