Elizabeth Olsen on WandaVision finale - Variety interview

The falseness of our pregnancy thing on television, just perpetuating these blissful birth sequences that last seconds long. Welcome to Variety's Dream Teams, the series that reunites the collaborators who caught lightning in a bottle and breaks down how they did it. My name's Adam Bivari, and I'm here today with WandaVision star Elizabeth Olsen and head writer Jack Schafer. Let's start at the beginning. When did you both first meet? Jack, when did we meet? Was it, it was at the Marvel office. I don't know a date though. I don't know a date either. It was early because we very early on needed to let you know the scope of everything. So I think my memory is you came in. Yeah. We pitched you the thing, and then we had that fabulous Mexican dinner. Yes, the second time. And that was when, so we had given you the full scope of like the whole narrative and the grief journey and the acceptance and what the whole thing was going to look like and heard from you about your experience playing her and your hopes and dreams. It was the first time though, that it felt like the creative really understood what was in my brain about Wanda and her life and acknowledgement of these little anecdotes and moments she has had throughout the MCU and then like blowing them up. And then it became this thing that these fabulous women, Jack and Mary, it felt like you were being seen or something for playing this character for such a long time and then creating this incredible opportunity. So what was that? What were your hopes and dreams Lizzie that you wanted for this character and that you were hearing Jack sort of maybe reflect back to you as you were talking about the character? Well, it was about this story of this young woman who has really had to make her way through so many difficult traumas without having the time to understand them, but really being forced and propelled into making the best with what she had and actually creating a real culture that has a nursery rhyme or like really making this fake country tangible. It's a special day. Perhaps an evening. Great significance. To us both. Naturally. Obviously. Exactly. Count on us. I desperately loved this idea of the suburbia aspect and the family aspect and what it would mean if this woman got to give birth to her children. And I just didn't think I was ever going to get to do that. So Jack, if you could talk to me about as you were coming to this and you were seeing what Lizzie was doing already with the character and what the comments had established, as Lizzie just referenced, how you wanted to synthesize all that into one. So producer Mary Lovanos and I spent so much time poring over the scenes that were in existence in the MCU of Wanda and of Wanda and Vision and just like obsessing over all the little details. I mean, that Paprikash scene is like this classic scene that's held up and for good reason. Is that Paprikash? I thought it might lift your spirits. There's so much intimacy in that scene and it's this little pause in the middle of all the chaos. Haha, chaos. And that's what we wanted to zone in on. Before I even knew Paul and Lizzie, it just seemed to me that they had their own little world as performers and as characters inside of the MCU. And that's what we were chasing. And obviously it linked up with this notion of suburbia and with the sitcoms, all of that just complimented itself over and over again. And with the comics, I am not a comic reader and that is what I've loved about my collaboration with Marvel, with Mary Lovanos, Kevin Feige and all the incredible producers there, that's their everything and they know it all and they're walking encyclopedias. And so ideas would come up, we would circle things and it would be like, oh yeah, it's just like this comic, this story, this image, you know? And eventually we were putting various sort of cells up on the wall to be like, this is our touchstone for this moment and this is what we're thinking for here. Could you give me some examples of what those touchstones were? Witch's Road, we looked at quite a bit for the visuals of power and women and witches. And so my memory is there were some of those up on the wall that had to do with the finale and with those pieces. And then of course, the earliest comics where Wanda and Vision are in suburbia, Wanda's pregnant and there's all those sort of cutesier home moments that feel very 50s in the artistic execution. We had those up. Just that seeing Wanda with a pregnant belly in the art was just, forgive me, so fertile. Like it was just so, we're like, that's what we're after. We wanna see these superheroes in a domestic sphere and authentically. Paul and Lizzie were so grounded in the performances, they were living that marriage and that's what we were after. One of the trickier elements of the show, I would imagine for both of you, is that at first, Wanda shares the audience's confusion about what is actually going on. I would love for you both to talk about how you threaded that element of the show. It was sort of two things with the design of the show is the notion of Wanda creating the hex. So in order to make it interesting for the viewer, this idea of a non-linear structure that would feel like a puzzle, feel like a mystery to unpack. Like the linear story, if you were to do that, actually starts with episode eight and then it's episode four and then like that. From the very beginning, from my first pitch, I tracked the narrative according to the stages of grief. So it seemed really like a very exciting place to start that Wanda is with the audience and is in legitimate denial. And that obviously it's a metaphor for human grief, but it also works for the narrative structure of the show in this crazy MCU superhero kind of way. But in the scripts, the format even would tell you when you were in sitcom mode in terms of like screenwriting structure and screenwriting like aesthetic. And when you stepped out, it would look different on the page, which was meant to sort of tell everybody, department heads, Matt, everybody sort of where we are in the story. But I think, Lizzie, what I love, one of the many things I loved about working with you was it wasn't sort of like a monolith of here's denial and here is anger. Those sort of like incredibly delicate transitions in and out of those moments and the slow burn of being with you on your discovery is what I think is what makes it all so beautiful and so relatable and human. And the thing that I also loved as this added element of how you structured the story, the actual decade itself and how that decade you sitcom to tell aesthetically these stories of aspiration is very connected to where our character is. Like she is losing it in modern family for a reason. As punishment for my reckless evening, I plan on taking a quarantine-style staycation. A whole day, just to myself. That'll show me. And it's not in the 50s where she's losing it because the 50s is everything's tied together and we're just, you know, we don't see anything that's happening. We're post-World War II and we're like a suburban family and we are having a kick-ass economy kind of thing. And that's one of my favorite parts about this show. It's just that added element that maybe you see it and maybe you don't, but it is completely necessary to the story which decade we're in. For a Marvel Studios production, there's a certain expectation for visual effects, for action sequences. How did you balance that against, you know, this really deep exploration of Wanda's grief and the ways that grief can manifest in a person's life? We always knew we were sort of gunning toward this big finale. That was sort of part of my promise to Marvel. We would pull out all the stops with the finale. So I felt a lot of confidence in that and confidence in Marvel and Kevin Feige and Mary Levanos to do all of that spectacle. As a storyteller, I was very intrigued at the challenge of can we tell a small story and can we cultivate a scenario in which when Wanda looks at Vision and has a sort of a hallucination of him with his head caved in, that that could pack, you know, the same emotional punch as like Thanos snapping his fingers. Can we, if we do our jobs well, can we make small moments have the weight of all these other things? It was so fun to sort of find the moments where the world frays and where the MCU and the creepiness like comes up around the edges. And I think we were just all united in wanting to see if we could rise to that challenge and make it have that kind of impact. Lizzie, could you talk to that about that, about how you, how this compared and have it be the same person. You're playing the same person through all of that. It's so funny because I do feel like the difference of my experience on a Marvel film is different for Paul, is different for everyone. And I think I really, I really love telling a story and knowing I'm a part of a story. I did this show right after doing season two of Sorry for Your Loss and I'm a producer on that. And I really started to feel this ownership of character and story and leading a set. And I was really excited to finally have that opportunity in a Marvel space and have Paul by my side with that. And the allowance for it to be a fully character piece was a relief for all of us, I think. And then to also just relish in the Marvel aspects of it was a joy. It wasn't like a, you know, I'm not calling it a burden, but it wasn't like, oh, well now we're doing this other thing. It was like this joy to merge the two once we completely fleshed out these character journeys together. And to go from, again, to go from decade to decade, I just assume that I am the same person just in a different tone. And we really wanted to stay authentic to those tones. So I never thought of her as being like a separate character. It was just trusting that it was Wanda just in a different aesthetic. So when Evan Peters shows up on the show, it broke the internet, broke my brain. It got a lot of people speculating that you guys were going to be going into the multiverse. Long lost bro get to squeeze his stinking sister to death or what? Recast Pietro? Did you have a sense that that would be one reaction that people would be having? And then second, how did you feel about just how intense a lot of that speculation became? That was one of the most exciting things I found out when we heard that Evan was going to do it. My mind was blown. I was like, this is the first time we're merging. Like, this is crazy. And then to use it in such a clever way as Jack does was so satisfying. And working with Evan playing this version of Pietro was just so fun and weird and funny. And oh God, Jack, I loved it so much. I'm so grateful for that. Yeah, I mean, it was an early idea that Mary Lovanos and I had and the writer's room was so behind. It's one of the few things in the series that I was like, yeah, I was expecting a really big reaction. Everything else I've been sort of floored by the enormity of the reactions. But that one, I was like, yeah, that's gonna... It was the thing that I've been like sitting on for two years. Just being like, just wait, just wait. And he's fantastic. He's really, he's great to work with. He's like super game. And we knew that it would, that he would like be on the doorstep that we were gonna end the episode like that. We were like, ah, it's gonna be so good. You know, a lot of the fans really took that to mean something significant for the MCU. Like how did you feel about all of that kind of thing? I knew that there were theories that had to do with people wanting like more surprises and cameos, but I'm not really that aware of what these fan theories were. So I'm kind of learning about it as we go. I know, I know Paul said something about this crazy cameo when he was really just talking about doing a scene with himself. And I know Paul thought that was a really funny joke and I thought it was funny. Cause I was like, but I think people are actually gonna suspect that there is more to come. So I think there are a couple of things in play when people were trying to figure out what happens next. And I guess because of the way we wrap up Evan's character, I'm still quite like, like I didn't know about the multiverse, you know, when we were filming this. So I wouldn't assume that there were, that that's what was happening. I thought it was just a clever way to have a cake. I didn't understand the larger plan of the multiverse and I didn't even know about the multiverse until I started working on multiverse. So one thing that you did get to do Jack, and I think Lizzie, you were, it seems like you were instrumental in helping with is, is establish a new corner of the MCU with Agatha's character and the sort of establishment of the world of magic from a female perspective anyway, separate from the Dr. Strange part of it in the MCU. So what was that like? It was so much fun. And we knew that we really wanted to play, we wanted Agatha to be complex. We knew that she was gonna be the quote unquote villain of the show, but because everyone on this show was united in the portrayal of complex women and in searching for nuance in all characters, but especially women, there's so much in the comics about she's a mentor and like, she's good, she's bad, like in terms of Agatha herself. And we also knew that we were gonna go after this chaos magic thing. It was a very long process of how witchy do we go? What does it look like? But as it evolved, yeah, increasingly, I felt like, holy cow, we're getting our own, as you say, little corner, like we're getting our own little corner of the sandbox that no one's touched yet. And it did feel like we were doing something special and different inside of the MCU that we got to play with a type of magic and a type of superpower that had not yet been seen. Yeah, and I'm not sure if I had much to do with that development as Catherine Han did, because Catherine Han came in like ready to be woman witch. I said once that she's the pelvic floor of our show. I stand by it. She just like brought in this like raw female witchy energy and the only thing that I have done is absorb and steal from her moving forward based on what she did in our show and the world that she had opened up through her character. Well, you say that and that's very true. And we should all give a moment to just give the proper respect to Catherine Han for all things. I did wonder how much of what you do, you talked at all with Catherine about or was brought into this sort of whole idea of witchiness and magic and how that manifests. Yeah, we talked a lot about it and we used the same woman who developed Wanda's physicality from Ultron, Jenny White, worked with Catherine on what she does. And I know for them, they wanted it to look related to, but different from what I do. And I really am so nerdy about it and I like love in my head what everything is, like how everything works. But Catherine's movement, because it was an older physical language based on what her poses are and inspired by her poses in the comics, whereas mine's always kind of like this, hers was always kind of here. They're different, but they're completely related and hers is intentional and learned and mine's instinctual. And so there is a lot of thought that goes into how those relate. And that's when you're like, and we did a character piece and we're in the Marvel world, like those kinds of details. We do take as much care to make specific, even if it doesn't feel as authentic to like character building or something. It totally is. Well, and she conjures, because you don't have to use words. You don't have to use spells. And so we had to come up with like a language for her. Like I wouldn't diminish any of that because I do think it speaks to your separate histories. She did have the community of witches. We talked a lot about that. I mean, her community turned on her, but you were entirely alone in your journey as a witch. And in another version, Agatha and Wanda could be mentor and mentee, could be like sister folk. Like we wanted that to be kind of blurry. I love that stuff. One thing that happens in the finale is, because this is a show about grief, we do watch Wanda say goodbye to at least the version of Vision that she created from herself. I did wanna get a sense of how you guys wanted to honor the story of grief while also obviously setting up this new version of Vision that is gonna perpetuate further into the MCU. It was very tricky, the balance of, this is ultimately a story about acceptance, but also paying close attention to the fact that this is the MCU and stories spiral outwards. It was hard. We wanted Wanda to say goodbye on her own terms. That's what was most important. And then all the sort of like color and lights and set pieces, like it's all very fun and very wonderful and why we're all fans. But to me, that was the thing that we always held on to is that at the end, it is her choice and that we were lucky enough to eventually, with the MCU mythology of it, we also tell the story of her acceptance of herself as the Scarlet Witch. For the character of Vision, I was very enamored of this notion that he's been so many things. So I don't think that it's like a cheat or anything that she said goodbye to the Vision that we know and love, who we called soul Vision. I've heard him called hex Vision, which I also really like. She had to say goodbye to the fantasy and she had to fully process her greed. And that's something we talked about a lot, how everything that Wanda had gone through in the MCU had happened to her and it's almost like she didn't have any agency. And so that was a huge part of this ending. And the thing that I love about there's this Vision out there with all of his memories, it just doesn't matter because he's a stranger. The thing that I love so much about the end of this journey for Wanda is a sense of accountability. And she really takes full accountability for what she has done and who she is and has become. And that other Vision that's existing isn't a part of it anymore. You alluded, Jack, earlier to you having at least some foreknowledge of, or current knowledge anyway, of what's going to be happening in Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness. How much did that factor into where you wanted to leave Wanda and what kind of connective tissue you wanted to have between WandaVision and Doctor Strange 2? I mean, truthfully, the connection between WandaVision and where we leave Wanda and then into Doctor Strange 2, it seems to me, from where I'm sitting, that it's been very organic. It's a lovely way to sort of do a handoff. And I've been over here wishing them well in Los Angeles as they're in the UK. Yeah, I didn't know my part in Doctor Strange until right before we got back to filming during the pandemic. We had two months left and we had filmed the majority of our show already. And I really, nothing until that moment when they pitched it to me verbally. And so I tried as much as I could, almost less so to have it affect WandaVision as have WandaVision affect it. It's almost like I'm here and we're trying to make sure that everything is honoring what we did. From all I can put together, the events of WandaVision unfold in a matter of two weeks. It seems like it's very compact. So you go from being a grieving widow essentially to a mother in a matter of days. How was it for you, Lizzie, to have that part of Wanda to explore? And then it seems like we might, that that might factor into Doctor Strange too, because we hear their voices at the end when she's reading the Darkhold. So I haven't watched the finished finale. So I'm not even sure exactly what, because there are multiple versions of all tags, right, in a Marvel world. So that's good to know that you do, because that was a conversation. Should we or should we not hear the boys in the tag? And it, I believe, has enriched her humanity and life. Jack and I have so many conversations about the love-hate relationship of a woman going through nine months pregnancy within a matter of minutes and the falseness of our pregnancy being on television, just perpetuating these blissful birth sequences that last seconds long. But at least we're all very aware that it is not us trying to kind of put a blanket over, this fuzzy, beautiful, aspirational birth experience where she all of a sudden loses the belly immediately. And I think even though it's a short period of time of the two weeks, it doesn't take away from the experience of the potential of it having been actually these 10 years with these children. And I think that's really important to feel as an audience member and for Wanda to have experienced. The ninth episode is called the series finale. But I can assure you that I am not alone in wanting to see more of Wanda's story and whatever this new vision, like whatever this is to continue in what would be another season, whatever shape that would take. Is that something that you also would like to do and perhaps could break that news right here, right now with Variety that you are doing? Who? Oh gosh, I'll just steal what Feige said, which is that's not in the plan. However, we all know not to say no in the Marvel world that anything can be possible, even if it's not the immediate plan when you're making something. Jack, what is your future with Marvel, if you know it already? I don't know it already. I can just say that it has been the highlight of my career working on the show. And I love working with Marvel and I will forever be grateful to them for giving me and us the space to tell the story.