WandaVision: The Compete Series - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray SteelBook

With so many films and shows in recent years, it’s actually rather difficult to catalog what’s been going on through Marvel’s Phase Four and Phase Five. Truthfully, I don’t think that KEVIN robot from She-Hulk even knows. After the incredible final moments Avengers: End Game and the fitting epilogue Spider-Man Far From Home, The MCU entered Phase Four with big aspirations and high expectations from fans. Where are they going to go from here? How are they going to top what they've accomplished? The big brains at Marvel started rolling the ball in a tantalizing and mysterious new direction with their first Disney+ series WandaVision. 

Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and her husband Vision (Paul Bettany) are the perfect idyllic American family living in the quintessential American suburb of Westview. Their home is perfect. Their children are the best on the block. Their lives are amazing. Why shucks, even their neighbor Agnes (Kathryn Hahn) is the best neighbor anyone could ask for! But nothing is quite what it seems. Something is a little off with this world. As Wanda and Vision probe the reality of what’s going on, the truth is a dark and scary place that even Wanda may not want to explore. 

I gotta say, I like it when Marvel lets their directors and showrunners get weird with their material. We don’t always need the wiz-bang explosive superhero action sequences to get our attention. One episode at a time, one odd-ball era of American sitcoms after another, WandaVision was a bold new trajectory for the MCU. I liked that in the short episodic bursts this limited series wasn’t in a rush to answer questions before they were even asked. Spread over nine episodes with seven excruciating days in between, we were teased by a big mystery with only brief reveals slipping into the story - often right before the end credits - leaving us entertained, intrigued, and frustrated by the wait. 

When the show decided to pull back the curtain, series creator Jac Schaeffer and director Matt Shakman had one hell of a reveal. It was all a big bag of crazy, but it worked. We had implications for the MCU of the future, but we also got teased at the multiversal possibilities of a Marvel Universe of ages past folding into the proper MCU. Characters from any tangential film or show could now come and go and we wouldn’t know what that meant. By the end, we were all aboard for Wanda’s exploration of the Darkhold leading directly into Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness. But that was but one thread explored. There are quite a few left dangling.

Could we someday see where White Vision will pop up next? Could we possibly see some kind of an X-Files-styled continuation of the investigative adventures of Randall Park’s Agent Jimmy Woo and Kat Dennings Darcy Lewis? How would Teyonah Parris’ Monica Rambeau enter the super-powered scene? Fans were ready for more (or at least I was). And it was a frustratingly long wait to go film after film, series after series, without any sign of these threads being woven back into the big patchwork Marvel quilt. 

Rambeau finally returned for the latest MCU box office underperformer, The Marvels, and apparently, we’re still due for an Agatha series so that’s at least some sort of continuation of what this limited event started. But as we saw with the rest of Phase 4 and Phase 5, the MCU is all over the place, and not all of the efforts have been worth the time or as good as WandaVision. This is where the Writers' and Actors' strikes may have actually been a good thing for Disney's over-bloated Marvel universe. It actually forced them to press pause on the whole thing and figure out what was worth going forward with and hopefully, once again deliver a product people get excited about. WandaVision set a pretty high benchmark and few have matched it since. 

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
WandaVision tunes into 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray in a two-disc 4K UHD Blu-ray set. Split between two BD-100 discs, the discs are housed in a stylish SteelBook case without being stacked. No digital slip is included is a packet with three art cards. Each disc opens to the standard Disney language menu before giving you the option of playing all of the episodes or moving along the main menu.

Here we are, the second of Disney+’s series to finally make it to physical media and I have to say this series makes for a damned lovely 2160p HDR10 transfer on disc. From the early black-and-white episodes to the later full-color carnage of this little mystery box series, the visuals never falter. Now those early black and white episodes are quite something. While there’s a good deal of detail to absorb, there’s also an attempt to replicate the look of an aged series that gets sharper, clearer, and more colorful with each episode. I especially loved how the series' visuals updated from classic four-camera sitcoms to the more modern single-camera shows. Facial features, practical makeup effects, and the attention to detail in the various costumes are sharp and clear. The HDR grade is a lovely accent for each episode highlighting everything from the black-and-white photography (with some choice color splashes) to the full-color hijinks for the later episodes. Black levels are nice and deep with brilliant whites giving the image a terrific sense of depth and dimension I didn't feel the streaming version could match.

Each episode of WandaVision sports a Dolby Atmos mix - but not every episode uses it the same. One of the fun aspects of this series is the sound design and how it expands one episode at a time. The first episode could feel flat and restrained but if you listen closely those surround and height channels are used in sporadic but very specific ways to draw your attention. The next episode gets a little bigger and a little wider, and it progresses like that right through to the thrilling final episodes. Throughout each episode, dialog is clean and clear, music cues are right on point, and levels are never an issue. An around great audio mixes for every episode.

On the bonus features front, WandaVision is given a decent assortment of extras. The first disc’s content is a bit on the thin side, more EPK-style behind-the-scenes fluff with the usual suspects of Gag Reel and Deleted Scenes. The real meat comes in with the hour-long Assembled segment that nicely sets up the characters and Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany’s first appearances and how their characters developed after Age Of Ultron giving this Disney+ series the most care and attention. 

Disc One:

• Through The Eras (HD 7:01) 
• Gag Reel (HD 2:36)
• Deleted Scenes (HD 1:01)
• Ankle Bracelet
• Mouth to Mouth

Disc Two:

• Assembled: The Making of WandaVision (HD 57:07)

WandaVision is the one that got the big MCU Disney+ ball rolling - for better or worse depending on how you look at it. The series started out on such a huge exciting note being something unique and different from anything else in the MCU. But then as Phase 4 and 5 rolled out, the MCU is now in a precarious position of spiraling out of control. On its own WandaVision is a great series, a mystery box show that knew how to tease its dedicated audience but also deliver a worthwhile payoff. Now as the second Disney+ series to arrive on 4K UHD, it’s another beautiful entry for the physical media collection. The transfers and audio for each episode are fantastic. The bonus features are a tad thin, but there are some good meaty bits in there to gnaw on. As a series on its own - Highly Recommended

Order your copy of WandaVIsion on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray