Marvel superheroes return … in WandaVision on Disney+, a quirky and original black-and-white sitcom

After a long break because of the Covid-19 pandemic that shut down cinemas, Marvel superheroes and the MCU are back – on the small screen

Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany star as Wanda the witch and Vision the android in oddball sitcom WandaVision

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Elizabeth Olsen (left) and Paul Bettany in a still from WandaVision on Disney+, a fiercely original, black-and-white sitcom featuring two characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Wanda Maximoff and android Vision. Photo: courtesy Disney

Published: 11:45pm, 16 Jan 2021Updated: 4:05pm, 10 May 2022

When the Marvel superhero movies reached their box-office-shattering climax in 2019, nobody could have predicted the saga’s next instalment would be a kitsch, black-and-white TV sitcom called WandaVision.

But a lot has changed since Iron Man and friends saved the world in that summer’s all-time record-grossing blockbuster Avengers: Endgame (and mopped up some loose plot points in Spider-Man: Far From Home shortly after.)

The wildly popular franchise of 23 interconnected movies ground to a halt, along with the rest of the world, as Covid-19 closed cinemas, delaying Black Widow and other big-screen superhero sequels.

Meanwhile, parent company Disney has splashed out billions, bringing its biggest franchises and characters to the Disney+ TV platform, as it locks horns with Netflix, HBO Max and others in the spendthrift “streaming wars”.

Here to finally continue the overarching plot of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is WandaVision, an oddball and fiercely original series on Disney+. It stars witch Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), and otherworldly android Vision (Paul Bettany), two B-list superheroes who struck up an unlikely romance across several recent Marvel films.