Welcome to what is a strange event.
The first live sitcom taping in Marvel Studios history.
I didn't know that I was gonna be able to do anything like this,
so it just feels like an incredible gift.
Moving through to the '60s and the '70s now,
and, as we dove into the '80s and '90s, is really fun.
And then, ending up in a big Marvel,
full widescreen format is the best.
We were first really terrified,
and now I think we're just so excited.
The first time I heard about the concept,
I thought it was brilliant.
We're putting together so many different genres of television,
and we are putting our own spin on it.
That is something special, baby.
I just think it's gonna be
so shocking, and confusing, and exciting
for our fans to dissect what we're doing and why,
and for them to try and get steps ahead of us.
And that's just very cool and it's very satisfying.
This is for us.
So let me handle it.
What is outside of Westview?
I got a call from Kevin to come see him in his office.
When I went, "Oh, I'm getting canned".
And I went in, and, much to my surprise,
they pitched this bonkers idea for a show.
And I was immediately in, of course.
And the show has only grown more bonkers.
You're the new clown?
At least you're already in makeup.
Welcome home, sir.
It's so nice to see you finally coming out of your shell.
- It's been a crazy ride. - That was a good one.
Jon Favreau rung me up and...
We had made a movie together called Wimbledon.
He rung me up and he said,
"I'm making this movie with Robert Downey, and he's Iron Man.
And I need sort of a really boring, personality-less voice
for the computer that runs his world.
And I immediately thought of you, Paul".
Rendering periodic table, sir.
How do you say no when you're asked so nicely?
Anyway, and it was a great gig.
They'd shot everything and whatever still needed clarification,
you could always just have JARVIS
say, "The baddies are coming!"
Sir, it appears that this suit can fly.
Duly noted. Take me to maximum altitude.
And then, I don't know how the next bit happened.
I guess Joss Whedon had seen me in some movie,
and figured out a way for me to actually work for a living,
if you can call it work.
So, then that happened. That was Age of Ultron.
Starting with Ultron,
Marvel really was so excited to bring Wanda into the MCU.
And was only really teeing me up for possibilities
that we didn't know if we would actually
fulfill those possibilities or not.
I looked in your head, and I saw annihilation.
Look again.
So, we would place Easter eggs in certain places,
whether it's just a glance too long with Vision or just...
We were trying to play around with that in Age of Ultron.
I feel like the hand-off to different directors
have been completely different experiences
for this character specifically.
I think the Russo Brothers were very honest about,
"You know, I really want this to be something that you shepherd
and that you take full ownership of".
And I was like, "Okay".
So, I had to choreograph with this choreographer, Jenny White,
who we brought on in Age of Ultron.
Bring in that energy and throw it back out.
We just had to figure out our own place at the same time
while Wanda was trying to figure out her own place
in the Avengers compound
and finding solace in Vision.
Tell me what you feel.
I just feel you.
And I think Paul and I, we both really believed,
as much as it's fun to be part of the humor
and the playfulness of the Avengers,
we've always... my character specifically,
has also always, in our relationship together,
we've kind of just created just an emotional foundation
that doesn't play around with irony, really.
Which is kind of odd in these movies
when so much is ironic and funny and fun to watch.
But it's also kind of lovely
that it's told through their strange love story.
We are out of time.
I can't.
Yes, you can.
It shouldn't be you, but it is.
I love you.
And then moving on to the show
with Mary Livanos, our producer, and Jac Schaeffer, our creator,
they really honed in on all these things that were in my head,
and all these inner monologues and threads
and arcs that I kind of just created.
And they just really took it in such a deep way
and created such beautiful arcs.
Morning, wife! Morning, sons!
Morning, unfamiliar wet animal.
Who's this?
It's such a homage to the sort of American sitcoms
throughout the 20th century.
What kind of housewife would I be
if I didn't have a gourmet meal
for four just lying about the place?
Jac Schaeffer has done such a great job.
It's such a little beautiful puzzle box.
I was lucky enough to be invited to look at the materials
and sort of digest it and think about it.
And there was so much that was already there.
This is Kevin Feige's baby.
He loves the show and had some really distinct ideas and visuals
and things that they all wanted to achieve.
Matt Shakman is just the person to direct
a complicated Rubik's cube of a show like this.
He runs the Geffen Playhouse back in LA.
He's worked on Game of Thrones.
He's worked on countless sitcoms
and, in fact, starred, back when he was younger,
in sitcoms as a child actor,
and he is just the Swiss Army knife of a human
that we need for a show like this.
Hart goes back in. Door slams.
He goes to the phone!
We pause here. All right.
And let's continue on with our ladies over here.
It blew my mind when they pitched me the concept for the show.
More than just because the idea is outrageously fun and new,
but also because it felt like it hit all the parts of my life.
I grew up being on shows from the '80s
like Facts of Life, and Diff'rent Strokes,
Growing Pains, et cetera.
But I've also directed a lot of large-scale spectacle.
And so, the idea that there existed a project
in the Marvel Universe,
which I'm also an enormous fan of
and dressed up like superheroes
from the Marvel comic books when I was a kid
until they told me I had to stop,
the idea that I could combine
all these things that I've always loved
into one crazy project was almost too hard to believe.
It's too good to be true.
All right, ready, Janell?
- Yeah. - All right, let's do it.
And action!
We're starting in the 1950s,
so it was always our dream that if we did a true multi-camera show,
we would have a live audience.
And we knew it was a risk, we knew it would be an expense,
almost an indulgence,
but for the actors, for the energy, and for the crew,
it will be really exciting.
I've been playing to the audience, so...
You tell me where the camera is,
and I'll start playing to the camera.
So you're on our sitcom stage for the first episode.
Over there is Vision's office, where he works,
and he works for a guy named Mr. Hart.
Mr. Hart and his dear lady wife, Mrs. Hart.
That's what I just said. What's wrong with you, son?
- Have you got a * loose? - Oh, no, sir, *s all tight, sir.
And then over here, right to your right,
is the house where Wanda and Vision live.
This is their kitchen, over here to the right,
this beautiful blue kitchen.
But when you see it on the actual show,
it's gonna be in black and white,
so you won't actually get to see the color of it.
And then over here is their living room.
So what's a single gal like you
doing rattling around this big house?
Behind you is our live audience seating.
We wanted it to feel period,
so that's why we have the old wooden chairs
and we've matched the railings and how it all looks,
because so much of it is about the audience's experience.
Kevin Feige and I had a lovely lunch with Dick Van Dyke
shortly before we started pre-production on the show,
so we could really get in touch with how they did it
and to be as authentic as we could,
not just in how it would look and feel,
but in how it was put together,
the style, the way they rehearsed,
the way they approached blocking and shooting.
Wanda would technically go to a quick change.
She's not gonna do it now.
We'll get the living room dressed. It's happening.
And then we would light the candles right at the very end,
and we would go.
The Dick Van Dyke Show really was theater.
They put it up.
They shot it once in front of the audience,
like a play, all the way through.
You can feel it when you watch that show.
The audience is in it, like when they're in the theater.
The adrenaline, the audience, and the actors feed off of each other.
And that creates something that you can't imitate.
That's why we're going to these great lengths.
And our actors have been wonderful.
I'm a little anxious about the whole live...
I haven't been in front of a live audience since 1884.
- Oh, is that right? Oh. - Yeah.
So, I'm a little anxious about the whole thing.
Yeah, I would be too.
Still, I just, you know...
Hundred-plus years ago.
- Hundred-plus years ago. - That's a long time.
Welcome to WandaVision. Thank you so much, guys.
We're so excited to have you guys.
We've been working hard the last two weeks
on making this happen for you all.
If you guys can give us all the laughter
and all the natural reactions you have
to what we're doing, we would be most grateful.
And then you will probably hear yourself,
especially if you're one of those loud laughers...
... when you actually watch the show later on.
Now, I would love to introduce you
to the characters you're gonna meet today.
David Lengel.
Asif Ali.
Debra Jo Rupp.
Fred Melamed.
Kathryn Hahn.
The Vision himself, Paul Bettany.
And, as Wanda Maximoff, Elizabeth Olsen!
I mean, I've done theater before,
but shooting a TV show in front of a live audience
was like a strange meta experience for me
because I grew up on the Full House set
watching these live tapings on Fridays,
never thinking that that would ever be a form of reality for me.
Guess who?
Oh.
Is that my host behind me?
It certainly is!
- Lovely to make your acquaintance. - Yes!
Doing sitcom gave me so much joy every day.
I think it gave all of us so much actual joy.
It's really different.
- High-octane. - It's very authentic,
you know, late '50s sitcom, and it feels very different.
You have to swing for the fences and hope that you...
We're playing for an audience.
And I feel like in the Marvel films, it's a cinematic universe,
and this we're playing for laughs.
I've never been allowed to be funny.
This is my first time getting to be funny as Wanda.
What a gas.
I'm very funny.
- She is enormously funny. - I'm very funny.
I think I have another idea.
- And... - And then I change.
Every member of the crew was dressed in costumes.
Everybody got into the spirit of it.
And then the audience came in, and we just went for it.
It was nerve-racking, but I think it was so rewarding and so funny.
Us running backstage,
bumping into me, bumping into Kathryn Hahn,
and making her drop her props or whatever.
Everybody's getting ready behind doors to come out.
And it was so much fun.
Oh, my!
That was just a dream.
The costumes are so fabulous.
Mayes, the designer, is such a genius.
That dress!
Yes, the dress! It's... It's so...
It's Sokovian, is what it is! Yes!
It is my favorite period for clothes
because it shows off a waist if you have a waist.
I have a waist. I have no limbs.
I'm very short, but I have a waist,
so I really like the '50s. So, that was great.
I kind of like the hair and I have a magnificent hat.
They had a little table with a whole bunch of hats,
and I just went,
"Could I have that hat, please?"
And it was perfect.
But the '50s undergarments are
not the most comfortable things,
but they help with your posture.
Yeah, I got my Spanx on. My lifts in my heels.
I've got my Spanx on. I've got my flats on.
- Ready to go. - But I'm ready emotionally.
You wanna talk about your *?
Yeah, I did want to talk about my *, for a second.
I wanna talk about my dress first.
Um, it makes me have better posture.
And it makes me wanna walk like this and...
I have exactly the same thing, but with my fake *.
- With your fake *. - Yeah,
it makes me stand properly, and makes me wanna do this too.
- This? - Yeah.
We knew that when we started this show,
the way that we were going to
sell it authentically to an audience
would be with every level of recreation.
So, that includes the camera lenses,
that includes the set decoration, era-accurate lighting.
Jess Hall, who's a brilliant DP,
looked at old original prints of these television shows,
and he was able to try to match
how closely as we could possibly get to what it looked like then.
You truly are a pioneer!
Action!
Freeze! Swap!
Action!
Oh, no, too much!
We wanted to make sure we approached it
with authenticity and not parody,
and to that end, we wanted to shoot it the way they shot it.
That means visual effects
that would have been done as special effects.
Luckily, Dan Sudick, who's our special effects coordinator,
when I first had my call with him, when I started this
and I laid out this idea,
I didn't know if he was going to like the idea
or he's gonna be like, "What're you talking about? I blow things up!"
He actually loved it. He started laughing.
He said, "I came up under the guys who did Bewitched.
you feel so stupid when you're in college. You're like,
"When am I ever gonna do this? No one makes this anymore".
And so, getting to use all those tools
I think what it did was it
made me think I've wasted my life.
I should've been on a sitcom all these years.
I... I just loved it.
I should have prefaced, I'm a very shallow person,
so I really rely on people... people applauding.
Part of the challenge in producing a show like this
is that we really are making one
giant movie in the way that we shoot.
Each day, each week, we're shooting
pivotal moments of the series,
we have to make sure that
the larger story, as a whole, is seamless.
Raspberry or cheese-filled?
Oh, neither for me, thank you. I don't eat food.
We got the Davids. We have Asif. We have Emma.
So grateful we have Debra Jo,
who is sitcom-gold
and gets to be a part in our wacky show.
My, um, great nephew basically said
if I did not take the job, he would never visit me again,
so, I... Well, here I am.
She loved getting to film
some of the more Marvel-y stuff that we did in the finale.
She just thought it was fabulous.
I got to do this thing.
Oh, my God! I got to do this thing where you...
I don't know what it's called.
It's a body scan, okay? And so you stand...
I took pictures. It's amazing.
But I won't show them to anyone, Marvel.
Kathryn Hahn.
I don't know how I went so long never working with her.
I've had the greatest time.
You're, like, a monologue early, Kathryn.
I was feeling left out.
The journey with her consistently throughout the decades
and how the Nosy Neighbor is so prominent.
Spoiler alert!
She nailed all of the layers
that were required of her and then went beyond.
- Cut! - One more!
- One more! Still rolling. - Ready?
This character is like a blooming onion to me.
I mean, the fact that I was able to start on the outside
and kind of move into the center
as the episodes go on was, like, such an actor's dream.
I keep saying it was like a Tracey Ullman...
And the fact that her true center
was this fantastical, incredible witch, was like...
Who gets to do that? I remember when it was pitched to me...
And it's so exciting to be able to say this out loud to somebody
'cause I have not been able to say it to anybody. Um...
But when it was pitched to me, I was like
I could not imagine a part in the Marvel Universe
that I would have wanted to play more.
Oh, good times!
- Good times! - And cut!
- Did you hear that? - No.
It was like a... a chattering sound, like...
Oh! Like a...
Yeah.
That's my new ice maker, built right into the fridge.
Oh!
You're fancy.
I have wanted to be in the MCU since the MCU debuted.
I didn't even know what I was auditioning for.
We all know Marvel is very top secret.
And I was just sent some sides.
I think it was the '70s episode. So, I was very confused.
It didn't say it was '70s, but it's high farce.
And I was like, "What do I do with this? I'm not sure".
Because it's not Marvel as my mind can process.
And so they sent notes like,
"Just overact. It's okay, just go for it.
We don't care that you don't feel that it's grounded.
That's not what we're looking for".
So, I was like, "Okay".
And I did some very great overacting.
Oh, sugar.
Before they even told me what it was,
I said to my agent, I was like,
"Oh, my gosh, what if it's Monica Rambeau?
What if it's Monica Rambeau?"
And then it was Monica Rambeau, and I lost it.
And I practically tried to jump off a set of stairs
'cause I thought I could fly. I was so excited.
So, when we leave Captain Marvel, Monica is a young girl.
She's got her whole life ahead of her.
- You have to go! - Monica!
You've a chance to fly the coolest mission in the history of missions.
And you're gonna give it up to sit on the couch
and watch Fresh Prince with me?
I just think you should consider
what kind of example you're setting for your daughter.
And when we pick up with her in WandaVision,
we find out she now works for S.W.O.R.D., as a astronaut,
and I feel like we've gotten to a really
great origin story for Monica.
Having the opportunity to play Monica Rambeau is truly an honor,
and to have a Black female superhero
be on a screen is monumental.
Why didn't anyone tell me the plan?
It's been so amazing to bring Darcy back,
especially in kind of an unexpected way.
You know, the last time we saw Darcy, she was
still Jane Foster's intern
and kind of her friend.
We weren't really sure what's going on with her.
Apparently, she's just been going to college this whole time.
And now she's an astrophysicist.
My equipment registered an extremely high level of CMBR. That's...
Relic Radiation dating back to the Big Bang.
Yeah, entwined was a broadcast frequency.
So I had your goons pick me up a sweet vintage TV.
And when I plug this bad boy in,
the cathode ray tube inside plucked the signal out of the air
and decoded it just like in the olden times.
Voilà, sound and picture.
Randall Park, obviously, is Jimmy Woo,
and it's been really fun to kind of have us together in scenes.
They kind of have us with Teyonah Parris.
There's a lot of dark, serious drama,
and it's fun to kind of have that little break.
You can't go back into the Hex.
Worst case scenario,
Wanda removes my free will and puts me in ultra-low-rise jeans.
I feel like it's like a family.
It's like a big family.
Just to be a member of the family, it's really cool.
I mean, when I did Ant-man and the Wasp,
I was just happy to be there.
I thought it was gonna be a one-off.
Your school has rules, right?
Like, you can't draw on the walls.
Well, your daddy went to Germany
and drew on the walls with Captain America.
And that was a violation of Article 16,
paragraph 3 of the Sokovia Accords.
Just to have Jimmy come back is such a thrill for me
because I just love the character so much.
And to have so much of the character
we established in Ant-man and the Wasp
with the magic and the tendency to want to connect with people
and tell stories about his life,
even when it's not necessarily asked for.
Like all those little things, little seeds
that we planted in Ant-man and the Wasp,
they all kind of get to blossom in WandaVision.
This isn't a missing person's case,
Captain Rambeau, it's a missing town.
Population 3,892.
Why haven't you gone inside to investigate?
'Cause it doesn't want me to.
Tonally, WandaVision runs the gamut.
I can't even keep up myself sometimes.
I'm like, "Which world are we in now?"
For the first episode,
it's the '50s, and it's silly humor,
but it was like really great physical comedy,
and that bleeds into the '60s,
the second episode, which is Bewitched.
Just mind your P's and Q's and you're gonna do just fine.
The tone doesn't change too much.
Darling! Oh!
I think we still allow her
to just become more modern of a woman
instead of trying to play the housewife.
Well, thank you for giving me the strength and the courage.
The thing that we loved so much in the '50s and in the '60s,
between the marriages in those shows,
is that they were like really funny and really honest,
and, like, lovely and beautiful and felt in love.
- Should we put our heads together? - Very cute.
And then we get into the'70s
and it just becomes this, like, Brady Bunch
kinda creepily, like, not grounded anymore.
Strangest thing just happened outside with...
Whoa, Nelly!
It's a surprise initially that she got pregnant.
We didn't know that that was possible.
It's a magical moment
because she's, sort of, suddenly six months pregnant.
If you could lean in as much as...
I have a belly in front of me.
Her pregnancy is progressing at an alarming speed.
You're at about four months now. Is that right?
I was so excited to have an episode
where I went through every single stage
of my pregnancy in one day.
That was fabulous.
It was so perfect and funny.
Vis...
Yes, dear?
I think my water just broke.
We're doing this bit where I'm trying to hide that I'm pregnant.
And so Monica is over, Teyonah's over.
And I'm switching all these coats on and off, like, magically.
And I'm in the kitchen and
everything's kind of going bonkers in the kitchen.
I'm trying to hide my belly from her.
And so, I keep magically changing all of my coats.
So, we'd have to freeze.
And then someone would come on and put on my coat,
then I'd have to freeze again, then I'd have a contraction.
And there's a moment where I had to do a double take
and I kept making it like a triple take,
and a quadruple take.
So, yeah, we have twins, and, uh, they're confusing, too,
because they're born babies, but very quickly, they're toddlers.
Where are the twins?
- Mommy? - Daddy?
Wha... Did y...
And then, very quickly, they are,
you know, sort of ten years old.
We don't think you'll be old enough
to properly care for an animal until you're at least...
Ten.
Ten years old.
Look at each other.
- Well, now, hang on there a minute... - Wait, no, no, no.
- ... you young whippersnappers. - No, no, no!
Let's just hope this dog stays the same size.
This is the '80s, yeah. So we designed one basic layout,
and then we've just changed it through the decades.
So, this is still the Dick Van Dyke set,
inspired by Dick Van Dyke kitchen,
but now this is the '80s
inspired by Full House and Family Ties...
Growing Pains, all the shows that we loved from the '80s.
Now, I know
parents aren't supposed to take shortcuts,
but I think this situation calls for one, don't you?
It's funny now when you look back at it,
it's a beloved generation and it's also a self-parodying era as well
because you look at the hair and the clothes and we all wonder,
"We really thought that was cool?
"How did we ever go outside looking that way?"
It's almost like we're on a date.
Almost.
With two really cranky chaperones.
My memories of the '80s, as a '90s child,
is that I still got to wear these beautiful vests
and things like this
and had lots of beautiful hats with big flowers on them.
I just missed it,
but the '80s were a horrible time of style and hair.
But I really actually am partial to this wig, I have to say.
- I'm... - It's fabulous.
I feel like I'm filled with secrets.
At the end of the episode in the '80s,
to Wanda's surprise,
she gets a knock at the door.
It was not something that she consciously did.
And so she's very confused by it.
And the knock on the door is her brother, Pietro.
But he looks different because it's Evan Peters.
- No! Ow! - Get over here!
And the character he plays is like Uncle Jesse.
Come on!
Like, the cool uncle, who's coming in to stir things up.
Right on, little dude!
Chip off the old Maximoff block.
And that's the trope he uses
as part of his relationship to the sitcom land.
I can't believe what a bad influence you are.
Who beefed in your borscht?
I'm just trying to do my part. Okay?
Come to town unexpectedly, create tension with the brother-in-law,
stir up trouble with the rugrats, and ultimately give you grief.
I mean, that's what you wanted, isn't it?
What happened to your accent?
What happened to yours?
I'm thrilled. I'm such a huge fan of the Marvel Universe.
So, I'm, like... I'm just excited to be here.
It's, like, the character is so funny and meta,
Who's the popsicle?
And, yeah, that's my era,
so I am very excited for that. And then also, we're having
our theme songs composed by Bobby and Kristen Anderson-Lopez.
You wander the world with a vision
Of what life could be
WandaVision!
And, you know, all agreed that Bewitched in particular,
um, was a big thing.
But we also looked at James Bond movies,
we looked at Burt Bacharach...
- We looked at, um... - Mahna Mahna.
... what was going on in the pop culture of that time,
and made sure that we were really referencing
sort of that bebop jazz, the cool jazz that was there.
And also, just that Swinging Sixties culture of the time.
WandaVision Wa-WandaVision
WandaVision
The '70s has a touch of tambourine.
Oh, for sure.
Because we were referencing
The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family,
and any family jam band that dresses up in fringe outfits
and travels in a groovy van to their next gig.
But it's groovy and fun
It's me and it's you
Kristen and I have always loved songs that go...
WandaVision
and watch Diff'rent Strokes and Punky Brewster, and...
Right. I mean, our whole family life
was scheduled around Family Ties coming on, or Growing Pains.
The one that they've done for the '80s is by far my favorite.
I sing it all the time.
Crossing our fingers, singing a song
We're making it up as we go along
Oh, and then, with the aughts.
Wanda Wanda Vision
We got to have this wonderful collaboration
with the original riot grrrl...
Kathleen Hanna, the lead singer of Bikini Kill.
And just gives it this wonderful authenticity, punk authenticity.
Easy come and easy go
But if it's all illusion
To jump off the genre blending,
even in the '50s and '60s episodes,
we have moments of Twilight Zone.
And instead of it being moments of today's horror,
we take camera tricks from Twilight Zone
to make you feel off-kilter.
'Cause something has to go wrong
in order to advance to the next decade,
or else why are you changing
the scenario or the given circumstances?
And so we used Twilight Zone tropes for that.
And then, for something like once we get to the Halloween episode,
we're in this idyllic town, it's Halloween,
it's like the perfect type of Halloween.
in these old costumes of the characters.
Why do you... look different?
In Age of Ultron, everyone referenced
certain comic books for me to focus on,
and told me, "Don't pay attention to what she's wearing.
You're not gonna be in a leotard, tights
and a crown on your head. I swear".
And I was like, "Oh, thank God".
And now, the way we incorporated
he, it's just the whole... It's just he's... It's so funny.
Thank you for humoring me and wearing this ridiculous get-up, honey.
There were no other clothes in my closet, so...
'cause it was so humiliating and funny
and I had a pair of shorts pulled very high up around my waist,
and yellow Converse to be my super-shoes.
When Vision goes out further
to where we call "Ellis Avenue",
Don't go past Ellis Avenue.
We know, Mom. We know.
That's the end of the Hex.
And so, the closer you get to the end of the Hex,
the less control Wanda has of the actual town,
and people are just doing things by rote.
People are having these repetitive things,
or hanging up Halloween decorations,
and taking it down, and doing it again.
And characters that you realize
are just less well drawn by Wanda.
And then he gets further out,
and he finds children trick-or-treating,
but they're just absolutely frozen still.
Are those your children?
Are you waiting for something?
And that leads to the denouement of the whole show.
It's so much fun to have gone through
all of these multi-camera sitcom stuff.
You're shooting in a very familiar way, right?
Very static cameras.
And then suddenly, when you cut to an angle that shouldn't be there
or a camera move that would never...
It really, you really feel it when you're watching it,
so it's a great storytelling tool. And then, of course,
in the end, everything kind of breaks down and becomes,
"We're in the real world, in an MCU version of the real world".
- Am I dead? - No.
- Why would you think that? - Because you are.
We are standing at the very front
of what we call "the pop-up base",
which is our military base set up by S.W.O.R.D.
to investigate the anomaly
that Wanda has set up here in Westview.
So that's what this building is about,
a temporary structure
from which to observe and deal with this problem.
We're in the Marvel world,
so in many ways, you'd expect we would
start with something a bit more stylized
and, sort of, you know, sci-fi.
But we wanted to make it a little more realistic,
so we started with ideas
of what kind of military response
is there to a disaster, for example,
if it were a chemical attack,
or nuclear attack, or something like that.
And they actually have these response teams called CBRNs,
which go out and deal with
chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats.
So it's sort of inspired by that.
Now, that said, the building behind me
is a complete hybrid, it isn't...
Nothing exists like this in the air force, in the army, or marines.
So, we made up our own version of it
to make it a little more Marvel-like.
What do we have up?
Radar, lidar, sodar, infrared.
Cycle through.
We're inside the pop-up base
monitoring the Hex, which is what Darcy calls
the magical Wanda-world Westview area.
So, this is all different kinds of military
and space-science people,
and then, there's my little desk back there.
They gave her like her own little corner,
um, where she's basically cracked the "the magic".
So, you're saying the universe created
a sitcom starring two Avengers?
It's a working theory.
Darcy discovers that there's
basically an old television signal emanating from the Hex,
from the anomaly.
And she goes, and she grabs an old TV
with a piece of rabbit ears on it,
and she picks up the TV show
that Wanda's broadcasting out from the Hex.
So, what we do is, in each period
that Wanda iterates within the Hex,
we bring in those period TVs.
So you see late '50s, '60s, '70s, and so on.
Everything might look fake in the TV,
but everything in there is real.
What's fun is just the contrast.
We started in this very, sort of, light sitcom world,
which I had never designed before, so that was fun.
But then, to then dive right into, sort of,
straight-ahead MCU style,
visual style, acting style, script, and all that,
just is delightful after all of that, in a way,
just because, you know, "Is this all in the same movie?" It is.
Which is great, but just the design challenges
of having to go from that to this, that's really fun.
We're at the town square which is in Hollywood,
so basically, we see that in six periods pretty extensively.
So much of it is a design challenge to get all of that right,
to, sort of, express the period, it's sort of unprecedented.
Part of the challenge is that we don't have a shooting schedule
that allows us to shoot for two days, go away for two days,
turn it around, repaint, come back.
We're literally doing overnight changeovers.
Which means that we have to basically define
all of the design changes,
all the pieces you're gonna bring in,
design them, build them, paint them, prefit them probably,
so you know exactly what you're doing,
and everything comes in almost like LEGO in a certain way.
All these parts come in and go up very quickly,
'cause you've only got, maybe, 12 hours
to complete this turnaround.
"For the children!"
The experience of doing the finale
when Wanda, she has to run through town square,
and she's looking for Agnes, or Agatha,
and all of the people in the town start to wake up,
and surround her, and crowd her almost,
like, begging her to let them go.
I can't take this anymore, Wanda, please.
Please!
It was a very long sequence. It had quite a climax.
I mean, who is the boss here, Wanda?
Heroes don't torture people.
Getting to do a wide like that,
it feels like a piece of theater.
It felt really satisfying to do emotionally, I think.
And it just felt epic, like the...
There's some moments when these movies
just feel like so cinematic on the day,
and that just felt really grand.
Go, now, all of you. Go!
Run!
What's so special about this script
is that you don't actually know what is coming from where,
and who is actually the bad person,
and when someone has ulterior motives,
and what's actually happening.
So, sometimes you feel like,
"Well, Wanda is the bad... She's the villain.
She has turned all of these people's lives upside down.
She's the villain".
Then, you find out that, well, Agnes is pretty terrible.
She's got her own thing that she's been brewing the entire time,
and kinda counteracting, counter-magicking Wanda.
And then you have, um, Hayward,
he's pretty not a very good person.
And he's got his own agenda that's throwing...
Everyone has their own agenda,
and what's great is that at some point,
you see it all clash and blow up
into an epic superhero fight, might I say.
Last one to town square is a walking pair of mom jeans.
... burden!
Usually, I'm like one of the only flyers.
Like, I'm the only one on wires often.
That is something I do a lot in these films.
I mean, it looks like a blast.
And so, I feel like it's the first time
Marvel has had to accommodate for so many flying sequences.
And it was a real challenge...
I mean, Kathryn's in a ridiculous costume
that is very uncomfortable to harness and fly in.
But we all just, like, we're always harnessed
like, for the last six weeks.
We've been harnessed quite a bit, and it was so fun.
It was... I love flying.
I love doing all the flying work, I really, truly enjoy it so much.
But we... I think it's the first time
I think Marvel's really had to create
a full fight sequence in the air.
I think my most gratifying was
when I finally put on Agatha's hero look
and was able to be raised up in those wires for the first time.
- You look amazing. - You look amazing.
And feel those huge fans on me,
even though it was like a hundred
and something degrees outside.
It was like crazy just to feel all the work of all these people
that had gone into collaborating, into helping make her.
You're supposed to be a myth.
A being capable of spontaneous creation,
and here you are, using it to make breakfast for dinner!
To play the good and the bad,
to play the wicked and the playful,
and to play a villain that's also funny,
it's the best.
There's more. I want it all.
When you're on these big films,
and you get all those pieces moving
that are in the world's control, it feels really special.
Thanks for the lesson...
but I don't need you to tell me who I am.
The features, as you know, set a very high bar for the look,
and for the effects to supplement the story,
not overwhelm the story.
That same mandate for the features
was absolutely what they were wanting
to achieve for the streaming service.
Vision himself, he's a digital prosthetic.
Poor Paul, we paint him purple,
and he has to go through the day like that.
But otherwise, all the rest of that is a digital effect.
Every time Vision's synthezoid, that he's got a CG face,
so we would go back to Matt and say,
"Do you know, for this beat,
does he really need to be synthezoid? Could he be human?"
And Matt and Jac would often come back with,
"Well, he's his true self.
You know, when he's in his home,
we want specific beats to be synthezoid
even though they're visual effect shots,
just because it's who he is when he's at home with Wanda".
So, we let the story determine when we'd use the visual effects.
So when we translated Red Vision into black and white,
he didn't really look like Vision.
We did tests using footage from the previous films
as my first week on the job.
We knocked on a colorist's door and said,
"Can we come and see what he looks like?"
And we quickly realized he would have to be blue.
During the '50s and '60s,
actresses would actually use blue makeup,
blue lipstick so their lips would appear red.
And lo and behold, we did the same with Paul,
found the right, uh, shade of blue during some camera tests,
did a little additional tweaking in the DI
and found a really good target.
What we got to was a place where we really keep the performance.
Wanda's world is her safe haven,
so when the Hex takes over the military base,
it turns into a happy thing, into a...
a kind of absurd thing almost, which is the circus, which is fun.
For visual effects, it wasn't necessarily a complicated thing.
You shoot the A side, then you shoot the B side,
and then you augment each.
We knew that the Hex had to be a boundary
that kept the townspeople in,
but that was mysterious to the people on the outside.
We decided early that it would be more mysterious
if it was an invisible Hex.
And so it helped build tension
and we got to make it look quite cool.
We looked at all different manners of film boundaries in the past
and decided that we wanted our Hex
to have the language of television.
So, we studied how magnets were drawn on old CRT televisions
and the magnetization you would get across the screen,
the pixelization you would get
when you zoomed way into an old TV.
The cathodic lines or those skinny lines that you would see
in NTSC old, square TVs.
And so we went to photography,
and we found our favorite images
for what this boundary could be,
using the language of television.
Westview was meant to be Wanda's idyllic town,
so that was a touchstone.
Everything about Wanda's home inside,
outside, and the town they live in,
came from this concept that she recreated the reality she wanted
from her childhood, from those television shows.
Really, it's executing a vision
to the standard that Wanda would have wanted.
As far as TV goes, there is an argument that
Avengers and the Marvel MCU
is the largest episodic experiment ever, right?
Because it's like these shows
that then have spin-offs that are interconnected
and then different... Until we culminate.
Spirits lifted.
It has always been episodic storytelling,
For Marvel to take the opportunity to do a television show,
and for the first show to come out to be an actual love song
to American sitcoms,
is so perfect, and it's so perfect for Wanda's character.
Dick Van Dyke again? Always "sitcom, sitcom, sitcom..."
The thing that I really loved at the end of the journey
is, I think it's the first time
Wanda has really accepted who she is
and actually puts to bed so much pain.
And we find her finally having peace and being okay.
I can't feel you.
I'm so excited now that we've cracked open this other part of her,
so that there hopefully could be more stories to tell.
It's been such a gift,
and so I really loved doing this show.
Cut.
That is a wrap on Lizzy.
But what is grief...
if not love persevering?