"I have what I want, and no one will ever take it from me again."
--Wanda Maximoff, WandaVision (season one, episode five)
Philosophy is not something foreign to superhero lore in the Marvel Universe. Because of this, it is only natural that at least shards of explicit philosophical concepts make their way into some entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Captain America: The Winter Soldier dealt with very timely issues of navigating national security and personal freedom. Doctor Strange, without presenting any logical proofs that are ultimately accessible to everyone, addressed the distinction between consciousness and matter. The first Iron Man film touched upon the moral issues associated with selling weapons even if the protagonist reacted to abuses of his company's weaponry with slippery slope fallacies.
Until WandaVision, however, nothing in the MCU had ever tackled more strictly abstract concepts about epistemology, metaphysics, and personal desire with an almost exclusive focus on them. The new show has jumped into thematic and artistic waters that the most unique MCU movies have avoided. Initially set up like a mid or late 1900s sitcom, even to the point of the first two episodes almost completely taking place in black and white, it presents Avenger Wanda Maximoff as having a seemingly blissful life with Vision, an android who had been her romantic partner before his death. The two of them enjoy marriage in a town populated with strange neighbors who sometimes appear on the verge of admitting a grand secret.
Wanda, otherwise known as Scarlet Witch outside of the film universe, suffered multiple losses even before the first episode of WandaVision portrays her. Her twin brother Quicksilver was killed in their debut film Age of Ultron. Her dating partner was killed by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War because one of the Infinity Stones was embedded in his forehead. WandaVision gradually bestows clues to viewers that, in the aftermath of Thanos's invasion and eventual defeat, Wanda felt such pain at the loss of Vision that she constructed a fantasy world as a coping mechanism. In the fourth and fifth episodes, it becomes clear that Wanda has actually altered a town in the real external world and is holding its inhabitants hostage via her ability to override other minds.
Even this reveal leaves the vast majority of WandaVision's events ambiguous. The metaphysical and perception-based abnormalities have even led to the appearance of an alternate universe version of Wanda's dead brother Pietro--or at least what seems to be an alternate universe version of her brother. The scope of her powers appears to tamper with the multiverse, but, without looking into his mind, she has no way to truly know if Pietro is her brother from another universe or an imposter who seeks to manipulate her for its own gain. In either case, Wanda's retreat into her own whims has profound consequences for her charade and perhaps the universe as a whole.
Wanda has become so fixated on letting her preferences dictate her life that she prefers an abusive illusion that involves the mind control of an entire town and the manipulation of a corpse to simply accepting that her android partner is dead. She is aware of what she is doing (even with the reveal that "Agnes," or Agatha Harkness, is behind much of the situation, Wanda still participates in maintaining the illusion at the cost of others): she forcefully prevents others from saying or doing things that undermine her egoistic deeds and goes so far as to reveal herself to inquiring outsiders beyond the town as a warning. Since Wanda has mystical powers that can manipulate physics and even the phenomenology of other people, she can genuinely change some aspects of reality to fit her whims, although no power can change the laws of logic.
It has already been announced that WandaVision will have in-universe ramifications that shape the stories of upcoming MCU films, one of which has to do with the multiverse (the Doctor Strange sequel). Regardless of how exactly it sets up more of the MCU's Phase Four, WandaVision boldly takes a slower approach to storytelling that directly tackles matters of metaphysics and personal psychology. Ordinary humans might not be able to exert mental control over other minds or external events, but Wanda's feeble attempts to permanently hide from her own emotions and circumstances mirror how some people act as if willpower structures reality. Some ambiguities, like the epistemological relationship between sensory perceptions and external matter, remain even in ordinary life nonetheless, making WandaVision more relevant to everyday philosophical matters than some might think.
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