The Marvel Cinematic Universe will now all but miss 2020 altogether, as Disney+ has set WandaVision to begin streaming in January.
Originally set to arrive before the end of the year, WandaVision will instead launch January 15, 2021. Almost all of Marvel’s planned television and film projects fell off of the 2020 calendar, save for the final season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
This will also make Disney+’s first MCU streaming show the first official piece of Phase 4 content. Black Widow and Eternals were originally scheduled to release before the Scarlet Witch-based spinoff, but their theatrical release dates were pushed further into next year.
The series will mix “the style of classic sitcoms with the Marvel Cinematic Universe” to present Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) as “two super-powered beings living their ideal suburban lives [who] begin to suspect that everything is not as it seems.” A trailer released earlier this fall teased homages to shows like I Love Lucy and Full House (on whose set Olsen grew up).
Marvel took the sitcom connection a step further by filming the first episode in front of a live studio audience.
2018’s Avengers: Infinity War saw the couple trying to escape from Thanos and his goons, but android Vision ultimately met his fate when the Mind Stone that powered him was plucked from his forehead. His death fueled an emotional confrontation between Wanda and Thanos in Avengers: Endgame, and presumably the series will continue to deal with her grief as she finds herself reunited with her lost love.
New episodes of WandaVision will continue weekly after its debut January 15, for a six-episode season. Joining Olsen and Bettany in the cast are Kat Dennings (reprising her role as Darcy Lewis from the first two Thor movies), Kathryn Hahn, Randall Park, and Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau (previously seen as a child in Captain Marvel).
