“WandaVision” ended this past Friday with a finale that has divided audiences. Whilst much of the division has come down to self-generating expectations inflated far beyond the promise of the series, there were some niggling issues with the finale itself.
Namely, it did seem that a lot of the side characters like Monica, Darcy, Jimmy, and the fake ‘Pietro’ seemed to get shortchanged a bit in favor of wrapping up Wanda’s arc. Turns out that was the case according to director Matt Shakman. Shankman has spoken to Kevin Smith on his Fatman Beyond podcast and discussed how he came to helm the entire run of the series.
During this talk, he spoke about the show’s history and how the finale changed over the course of post-production due in part to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. He says the series was reduced from ten episodes to nine, and the release plan was also changed with the first three episodes originally going to premiere all at once (ending on that ‘reveal’):
“Things were constantly changing and getting rebroken. The story was changing, especially a lot of the real-world stuff and the finale. There was a lot of experimentation going on and sort of trying different things out. We also at one point had 10 episodes planned and we ended up collapsing a couple, you know just to make the rhythm feel a little bit better.
But yeah, they constantly changed, and then of course, once we wrapped in Atlanta the pandemic hit and we ended up having months off so then further changes during that we were doing post-production and then ideas would come up and little changes would happen as a result.
He also explained how a whole subplot involving the S.W.O.R.D. trio was cut from the finale – one where they try to find the Darkhold in Agatha’s basement and discover that her rabbit, Scratchy, was actually a demon. That required FX work they ultimately didn’t have time for.
The full run of “WandaVision” is now available on the Disney+ service.
