‘WandaVision’ Review: Marvel’s First Disney+ Series Is Good, All-Too-Fleeting Fun

Over the first three episodes of “WandaVision,” it’s both easy to see and hard to defend why the first Disney+ series set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe needs to be a series at all.

Arguing in favor of its format, the limited series is very much about TV. Wanda Maximoff, also known as the Scarlet Witch (and played by Elizabeth Olsen), finds herself living through a version of ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s era TV sitcoms, alongside her atypical romantic partner, a synthetic android named Vision (Paul Bettany). The couple constitutes a classic pair: a homemaking housewife and an office drone husband; she frets over fitting in with the neighbors, and he stresses over a promotion being dangled at work. Early episodes air in black-and-white, a “live” audience can be heard laughing at the rat-a-tat banter, and everything is framed in the ol’ box top’s 4:3, rather than the now-standard widescreen format.