Loss and Wandavison

Disclaimer: potential spoilers ahead. This is the first in a series of posts looking at media (mainly TV and films) from a perspective of mental health. I’ve been watching Wandavision and what seems to be unfolding asks a very interesting question regarding loss. To provide some context, Wanda Maximov - the main character - unfortunately lost her android boyfriend Vision a couple of movies back. She also watched many of her friends sort of die (although some came back - Vision didn’t).

Now, her powers are not clearly defined although are listed as ‘psychokinesis and telekinesis’. She can move stuff around and make people think things. So, knowing that she has experienced some rather complex loss and she has these abilities, the show seems to ask what would happen if you could bring the dead back to life.

Without going into plot details, she has basically recreated an idyllic situation where she lives with her husband and has two children. She seems to be manipulating everyone around her using psychokinesis. She shows signs of distress, anger and confusion. Is Westview the creation of a superhero who has recently lost her soul mate? This makes me think of the stages of grief theorised by Elisabeth Kublar Ross, the first of which is denial. Denial is the shock absorption stage, which allows you to survive the loss. It is defined by a feeling of not being in reality, rather living in a preferable reality. Denial allows you to pace your grief, instead of becoming completely overwhelmed all at once. There is a lot of information to process and denial is an unconscious process that slows this down.

“The five stages - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.”
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Concluding thoughts

This post may not age well at all. Maybe the show is all a set up for a galactic supervillain and not a deep character study of loss. Perhaps I am expecting too much of a comic book TV show, but it still gets me thinking. The concept of psychological or emotional difficulty combined with super powers is not a new concept, however it is still an intriguing look at loss under extremely difficult circumstances.

References: Kübler-Ross, E. and Byock, I., n.d. On death & dying. 4th ed. p.94.