‘WandaVision’ writer on grief, Fietro, Mephisto, and more: Interview

There never, was nor will there be, a show like WandaVision.

The nine-episode live-action-superhero-sitcom-pastiche-now-also-with-witches closed out its first and possibly only season on March 5, but it will be a long time before its joy, frustration, and catharsis leave our minds. Mashable spoke with head writer and executive producer Jac Schaeffer about the challenges and rewards of WandaVision and the series’ massive popularity.

“We knew that it would have what we perceived as the regular amount of fan engagement, like with any project — there was no way to anticipate this level,” Schaeffer told Mashable in a Zoom interview. “It’s directly tied to the year-long gap in Marvel content and the fact that everybody is house-bound. It exceeded all of our expectations, and I think we’ve all been pretty shocked by it.”

Part of the reason WandaVision sometimes stumped viewers is it was never only one thing. It’s a nine-part Marvel movie, yes, but much of it is a classic American TV comedy — sincerely, not just as a gimmick. Schaeffer approached the pilot like a proper sitcom episode, in which the humor comes from what audiences already know about the characters. 

“It was odd to sort of look at what was established in the MCU and be like, ‘Wow, that’s not really that much. We’re gonna build the whole show,'” Schaeffer says. “Those first lines — ‘My wife and her flying saucers,’ ‘My husband and his indestructible head,’ like, that’s all I got! … I credit Paul [Bettany] and Lizzie [Elizabeth Olsen] for filling in the gaps of who these people are, and embodying them so fully. They’re extraordinary performers, of course, so even though the screen time was low, the complexity that they brought to the screen was evident and so fertile for us.”

“The challenge was: So they’re funny, what does that look like?” she adds. “We want [viewers] to really attach to this world and feel in it, but without it being like performative and silly in a way that keeps the audience at arm’s length. Those were the complicated things.”

That approach proved helpful in WandaVision‘s other unexpected burden: It was the first MCU story with a woman at the center since 2019’s Captain Marvel.

“She’s a person, you know?” Schaeffer says, with the air of one who has answered countless “strong female character” questions. “She’s a person and we tried to write her well, we tried to write all the people on the show well. I think that’s the secret of representation: putting as much of a cross-section as you can on screen and then just writing them authentically.”

“I didn’t know who Mephisto was until I started doing press… We were very clear that the big bad is grief.”

When you step back and view WandaVision through the comedy lens, it explains a lot — specifically, all the things that weren’t explained within the show’s run, or that popped up in fan theories and comic deep dives but ultimately didn’t make it to screen. And things like Ralph Bohner.

“We knew that it was gonna blow people’s minds,” Schaeffer says with a laugh. “What I didn’t anticipate was that it would be like, ‘Well, if they’re giving us Evan Peters they’re gonna give us Michael Fassbender.'” (Wanda’s father in the comics is Magneto, last played in X-Men films by Fassbender.)

“But what I respect about Marvel is the constant switchbacks,” she adds. “You think you’re looking at one thing and then it has the potential to be something else. So Fietro has been really fun.”

It is at once galling and brilliant that the biggest shock of WandaVision was ultimately a comedy bit. Schaeffer and producer Mary Livanos always wanted to cast Peters for the thrill of it. Meanwhile, fans geeked out over the multiverse, sniffed out references to Reed Richards, paused their TVs on Wanda’s fireplace grate in case it carried hints. Schaeffer says many red herrings are unintentional, and that some of the real clues were added by set design or VFX (she politely declined to elaborate on which). But she did respond to the other devil in the details:

“There was never any conscious intention on my part to create any Mephisto red herrings, because I didn’t know who Mephisto was until I started doing press.”

Wait…what?

“Why did we talk about the devil so much? That’s a real coincidence,” Schaeffer says. I’m skeptical, but I like her explanation: “He wasn’t ever part of our storytelling conversations. We were very clear that the big bad is grief. And then the external bad is Agatha. So as a viewer and as a lover of the show and the characters, I didn’t want anything more than that.”

Grief looms heavy over WandaVision, an evident theme made even more resonant by the broken world which greeted it. Schaeffer’s writers never expected its prescience during a global pandemic, but grief was top of mind as they fleshed out the series. They shared personal experiences with grief and vulnerability, even consulted with a grief counselor.

“We just all tried really hard to put ourselves in her shoes — which is bizarre because she’s a superhero and part of being in her shoes is imagining what would be like to have the mind stone come for you,” Schaeffer says. “But more than anything it was about those intimate moments, those very personal moments with you and the people that you love.”

“It’s been a horrendous time,” she says of COVID-19 and how it re-contextualizes the show. “We’ve all lost so much. There is a very powerful, palpable sense of collective grief. People have told me really beautiful things about how this show has given them…something to look forward to. It’s actually the most meta piece of it, that the show itself has been an agent of therapeutic processing for people in the world.” 

“This is a project that was that was very charmed, and kind of fated and serendipitous. The immensely talented and creative people who participated in it made something beautiful and special, and it landed in the world at the moment that people needed it. I feel very grateful to have been a part of that.”

You can watch all of WandaVision on Disney+.