We just entered a brand new year, but it remains to be seen if Marvel Studios is going to embrace a brave new world or double down on the old habits that have dampened its more recent projects. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man will be giving us a first taste of 2025 Marvel tomorrow, but one luminous newcomer to the mainline franchise has assured us that, going forward, the studio is wise enough to allow finished stories to stay finished.
Speaking recently to The Wrap, Patti LuPone — the musical theater extraordinaire who played Lilia Calderu in Disney Plus’ Agatha All Along — revealed that the pagan-drenched WandaVision spinoff won’t be returning for a second season, noting how showrunner Jac Schaeffer took the possibility off the table from the jump.
There won’t be one. Jac Schaeffer, the creator, came into my trailer and she said, ‘Patti, I’m just here to tell you that Lilia’s going to die,’ and I went, ‘But I wanted a second season.’ [Schaffer] said, ‘I don’t do second seasons.’ She said, ‘They wanted me to do a second season of WandaVision and I didn’t.’ She said, ‘There’s too much to write,’ so she does one-offs and I’m really hoping and praying that someday I get to work with her again because she’s magic.
Say what you will about Agatha All Along (I’ve said plenty myself), but creatives like Schaeffer are precisely the assets that Marvel Studios need to lean on if it wants to garner any sort of real respect from its audiences (which is very different from engagement).
Schaeffer’s WandaVision remains one of the diamonds of the MCU’s television efforts, due in no small part to Schaeffer knowing that its power laid in the specific story it was trying to tell, rather than how efficiently it promised something else down the line. Everyone was so hung up on the lack of a Mephisto reveal, but WandaVision soared because of its intelligent, meta-fictional tackling of grief.
Similarly, the Wiccan reveal in Agatha All Along was nice, but it didn’t come close to topping Schaeffer’s remarkably resonant approach to establishing his queerness — an aspect that’s been core to the character ever since he first turned up in the comics two decades ago.
All of this boils down to Schaeffer understanding that good stories have nothing to do with sensational reveals or any sort of brand presence, and it’s perhaps because of this that her instincts seemed so at odds with what Marvel Studios — who have only gotten more notorious for market-driven storytelling as the years go on — wanted out of Agatha All Along.
Indeed, the two-episode premier held far more narrative power then a fair chunk of the show’s midsection, which regrettably devolved into vibes and set pieces rather than prioritizing a value-driven identity or firming up character arcs and dynamics. The fate suffered by the third act of so many MCU films — in which a massive CGI minion battle is haphazardly inserted into the proceedings — isn’t terribly different.
Mileage may have varied with Agatha All Along, but it’s nearly indisputable that Schaeffer is a boon for Marvel Studios, and if it’s wise enough to rope her back into more projects, it should go the extra mile and write her a blank creative freedom check.
Published: Jan 28, 2025 6:18 PM UTC