You’ll get by in the early going of Valheim with leather armor made from Deer Hide, but if you want to explore Viking purgatory in a meaningful way, you need to enter the Bronze Age. Bronze Armor offers a significant upgrade in protection, and you’ll need Bronze tools to access a lot of new materials. Making Bronze isn’t easy, though–which is why we’ve got a complete guide to help you find the materials you need, make the right crafting stations, and start blacksmithing.
What To Do First
To start harvesting the things you need to make Bronze, you’ll need to venture into the Black Forest biome. This is a step up in difficulty from the early game location of the Meadows, where you’ll mostly deal with boars and Greylings. The forest houses much tougher enemies, including a variety of Greydwarf types, Skeletons, and Trolls. You might run into them in the Meadows, but going into the Black Forest is a pretty big risk early on.
To handle it, you’re going to at least need Leather Armor–but if you can get Troll Hide Armor, you should. But to make the weapons needed to succeed in the Black Forest, you must first deal with your toughest early-game challenge so far: Eikthyr, the Meadows biome boss.
Eikthyr is the major impediment to smithing Bronze–you need its antler to make a pickaxe strong enough to mine Copper and Tin.
Defeat Eikthyr
The first boss in Valheim is Eikthyr, and if you can, you’ll want to attack the giant rampaging stag boss with a team of Vikings. You can summon the boss from its altar (the location of which is marked on your map when you interact with a rune at the altar where you first start Valheim) with two Deer Trophies.
You’ll want to craft a Wood Shield to block Eikthyr’s attacks and to go at him with either a Flint Spear–which allows you to melee him in between his attacks–or by peppering him at a distance with a bow. Note that you’re going to need a lot of arrows for that second approach, but if you keep moving, the boss is pretty easy to dodge.
Eikthyr has electricity-based attacks, shooting bolts of lightning at you from its antlers. It does a lot to telegraph those moves, though, so you can generally strafe sideways to avoid them. It’s possible to block his melee strikes if you stay close to him, allowing you to stab away at him with your spear until he’s handled. Make sure to bring food and eat three different food items ahead of the fight to get your health up to maximum; you should also try to sleep before the fight to get the highest Rested bonus you can.
When Eikthyr is destroyed, it drops an item called the Hard Antler. You need this to move from making items out of sticks, rocks, and leather to crafting real gear made from metal. Use it to craft the Antler Pickaxe.
Look for domes of Copper sticking out of the ground in the Black Forest. You’ll know it from the veins of bronze-colored metal running through it.
Where To Mine Copper And Tin
With the Hard Antler, you can craft the Antler Pickaxe, an essential item for moving forward with mining. The pickaxe can break up rocks and cut them into Tin and Copper deposits. These two metals are what you need to advance to the next tier of crafting capabilities.
First, you’re going to need to locate the two metals. Look for small Tin deposits poking out of the ground near waterways and around the coast; you’ll find them in both the Meadows and the Black Forest biomes. Tin will always show up in small silvery nodes, so you’ll have to hit several to get what you need–but luckily, you need a smaller amount of Tin to advance. On the other hand, Copper factors heavily into all the metal work you’re about to do, so you want to mine a lot of it.
Head into the Black Forest to find Copper and look for big bulging deposits of it. They’ll look like large boulders sticking out of the ground, and you’ll spot them from their copper-colored veins and rivulets poking through the green of the moss covering them. It’s a good idea to start marking Copper locations on your map as you explore the forests because you’re going to want to find your way back to these places.
Once you start mining these deposits, you’ll wind up with Copper Ore and Tin Ore. You won’t be able to use them in this state yet, though–you need to build two new crafting stations to get them into shape for making armor, weapons, and tools.
The Kiln and Smelter are essential for making metals you can use for crafting, but you’ll have to hunt down Surtling Cores to make the structures.
Find Surtling Cores For A Kiln And Smelter
To get the ores into shape to work them as metals, you need to smelt them, and to run your Smelter, you need Coal, which you can make with a Charcoal Kiln. To build both structures, you’re going to need 40 Stones in total–which you can mine out of the ground anywhere with your handy new pickaxe–and 10 Surtling Cores in total. These are a little tougher to come by.
You can locate Surtling Cores in Burial Mounds, those small stone dungeons scattered around the Meadows and Black Forest. They’re usually guarded by Skeletons, so proceed with caution. Surtling Cores are the glowing red and black cubes you can often find in the dungeons, and you’ll usually pull a handful from a single Burial Mound, so you’ll probably have all you need after checking two or three.
(It’s worth noting that Surtling Cores are also essential for making Portals, which you can start doing soon, so stockpile any extra cores for later.)
Once you build your Kiln, you’ll have to feed it Wood to create Coal. Put the Coal in the Smelter along with your ores, and you’ll start to get pure versions of Copper and Tin, which will open up new crafting recipes.
Your next goal is to build a new crafting table, the Forge, where you can make most of your metal gear. To build it, you’ll need a Workbench, 4 Stones, 6 Copper bars, 4 Coal, and 10 Wood, so focus on smelting Copper in the near term. You’ll need both Copper and Tin to make Bronze, but the ratio is generally two to one Copper to Tin, so plan your smelting accordingly.
You’ll need a Forge to craft metal gear–make sure to put a roof over it.
Make Some Bronze, Craft Some Stuff
We’re finally to the part where you actually achieve Bronze and start making stuff out of it. To make Bronze, bring Copper and Tin to your Forge. You can combine them into Bronze bars, which are necessary for most (but not all) of your metal gear. A few things can be made out of either Copper or Tin, like the Forge, a few items for your base, and the Cauldron crafting station, but you’ll mostly need Bronze from here on out.
Once you make Bronze for the first time, you’ll unlock a bunch of new recipes for tools and armor, among other things. One of the first items you want to make is a Bronze Axe (requiring 8 Bronze and 4 Wood), which will be strong enough to cut down Birch trees and Fir trees. Birches, found in the Meadows, yield Fine Wood–you’ll need that for Portals, a bunch of building upgrades, boats to leave your island, and the Fine Wood Bow, which is a big step up from the Crude Bow you can make from regular wood.
Next up, you’ll likely want Bronze Armor, which will make exploring the Black Forest a lot easier. The Bronze Armor set consists of the Bronze Helmet, Bronze Plate Cuirass, and Bronze Plate Greaves–each requires 5 Bronze to make, plus 2 Deer Hide. While these pieces are stronger than your Leather and Troll Hide gear, they’re also heavier and will slow your movement speed somewhat.
FX’s award-winning comedy series Atlanta will soon begin production in Europe on Seasons 3 and 4, according to Deadline. For those who need a refresher: Season 2, which aired all the way back in 2018, ended with Donald Glover’s Earn and Brian Tyree Henry’s Paper Boi on a plane to embark on the rapper’s first European tour.
Deadline is reporting that the cast is traveling to Europe on March 23, where both seasons will be shot concurrently, with a projected start date of April 5. FX Chief John Landgraf had mentioned in 2020 that Glover and his writing team benefited from an “unexpected boon” of productivity while in quarantine. Season 3 of Atlanta was originally expected to air in January 2021–but it looks like the wait will be worth it, according to Glover. In November, the multi-hyphenate actor declared on Twitter that the upcoming seasons “are going to be some of the best television ever made. Sopranos only ones who can touch us.”
Production will reportedly begin in London before continuing in Amsterdam and then Paris. All that’s known about the filming is it won’t exclusively take place in Europe.
Meanwhile, it was recently announced that Glover will be teaming with Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge for an upcoming 2022 Amazon series that will serve as a re-make and re-imagining of the 2005 Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie film Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
Somewhere in Harvest Moon: One World there’s a really interesting seed of an idea for a new take on farming sims, which would be much appreciated after 25 years of very similar games. And in the right hands, turning a farming simulator series into a plot-driven, exploration-focused adventure game sounds like a brilliant idea. And yet One World fails in just about every way to do anything interesting or innovative with this new idea other than layer it on top of a deeply mediocre farming sim.
Unlike its numerous Harvest Moon predecessors and competitors, One World does not have you inherit an old farm in a dying village and spend years rebuilding them, getting to know your neighbors, and generally settling down. Rather, you’re handed a portable farm (your scientist neighbor turns up on your doorstep and says “Look, I made you a portable farm” and that’s the end of the discussion) in the first 10 minutes and sent off on an adventure across its world, through five different towns with their own climates, hazards, and problems. You’ll park your farm in one spot for a season, finish whatever local plot is in front of you, and then move on.
But the one world of One World is boring in every way. Everything looks bland, except for the named character models, which are exactly fine. Towns are dull and empty with just a couple identical houses each, the areas between them are mostly long and same-ish paths, and everything just looks flat and simple. There’s no detail, no personality – just long stretches of empty space, maybe with a tree thrown in if you’re lucky.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=There’s%20no%20detail%2C%20no%20personality%20%E2%80%93%20just%20long%20stretches%20of%20empty%20space.”]It also sometimes does not work correctly. Sound frequently sputters when you’re moving from area to area. Characters and objects appear and disappear from existence – sometimes on purpose according to their respective schedules, but sometimes just because they’re not loading in fast enough. It’s especially bad when you’re riding your horse. As much as I despise calling anything “X-era graphics,” the GameCube version of Harvest Moon was far more detailed and exciting to look at than this. (But then, that was before the original developer went off to make Story of Seasons instead).
The aesthetics of One World are not where the mundanity ends. Unlike other Harvest Moon games where you get to know a town of distinct and personable neighbors, there are few actual developed characters in One World outside of its roster of bachelors and bachelorettes and one other named character in each area. The vast majority of the cast is made up of same-looking individuals with names like “Awkward Man” or “Thoughtful Woman” whose only personality trait is sending you endless mail to ask you to bring them random items. And that’s a terrible idea because again, these characters tend to disappear completely at certain times of day, sometimes right in front of your eyes, and sometimes as you’re about to turn in a quest.
The bachelors and bachelorettes have a bit more going for them in the personality department, but are still largely pretty samey in the end. They all care about their respective towns, they need your help saving them, and they think the main character is neat. For the most part, they are distinguished almost entirely by their looks and what town they hang out in the most. Marrying one is inconsequential, seeming almost like an afterthought gated behind a lot of time spent in the extremely boring mines and, for some reason, finishing the main plot – you can’t get married until then. You can have a kid eventually too, but your offspring take after your spouse’s side of the family in that they do nothing interesting whatsoever.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Marrying%20someone%20is%20inconsequential%2C%20seeming%20almost%20like%20an%20afterthought.”]Oh, and you can’t be queer, despite Harvest Moon’s competitors Story of Seasons and Stardew Valley having recognized what year it is already. The developers say this feature was missed due to COVID-19, and that it will be present in future games, but it’s still massively frustrating when so many other games offer it. And since One World doesn’t really signal to you who is and isn’t dateable for quite a while, I spent a lot of time handing gifts to Kirsi for no reason.
With an empty world and a soulless cast, that leaves the actual farming to carry One World… and it doesn’t. The Harvest Goddess is, as usual in Harvest Moon games, absent, which has caused everyone in the world to just forget how farming and seeds work. So instead of buying seeds at the store, you have to hunt them down. Harvest Wisps scattered throughout the world will hand you one seed per day per wisp, meaning much of your ability to actually use your farm is also tied to exploring the world.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=One%20World’s%20farming%20has%20several%20interesting%20new%20ideas%20that%20might%20have%20made%20for%20an%20exciting%20new%20direction.”]And like the exploration angle, One World’s farming has several interesting new ideas that might have made for an exciting new direction had it been handled differently. For instance, each crop has certain seasons and regions of the world it grows better in. You can still plant crops off-season or in other areas, but they’ll grow more slowly – or become different crops entirely. Eggplant grown outside of its favored zone might become a White Eggplant, or a Tomato may become an Ice Tomato in the snowy region.
There’s a lot of potential here for fun experimentation with where you put your farm and what you grow and when, but it’s never realized. The problem with all this is that nothing is ever really explained. After 20+ hours into One World, with the Harvest Goddess resurrected and the main story finished, I’m still not entirely clear how they work. There’s no real log that indicates exactly how to get which mutations even after you’ve already obtained them, and even if you plant the same crop in the same region at the same time, it doesn’t always seem to mutate. I’m sure there’s a trick here I’m missing, and while mutations are largely inconsequential (I’ve been able to find seeds for all the mutations I’ve made so far separately as well), it’s really frustrating if you’re trying to grow, say, an Asparagus from regular Asparagus seeds for a quest, but keep getting Purple Asparagus instead and have no idea why.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Even%20if%20you%20plant%20the%20same%20crop%20in%20the%20same%20region%20at%20the%20same%20time%2C%20it%20doesn’t%20always%20seem%20to%20mutate.”]One World lacks clear instruction throughout, often placing you into frustrating situations without a way out. One later quest that’s critical to the story wanted me to gather four of a certain kind of sheep wool… but there were only three slots in my barn at the time and they were already taken up by a cow, a horse, and a regular sheep. No matter what, I would need to purchase the special sheep required to get this wool and wait multiple in-game weeks for it to become an adult and produce the wool. But I would also either have to get rid of one of my other animals to make space for it in my barn, or expand my barn – which I had no idea how to do at the time. Barn expansion turns out to be gated behind a long series of fetch quests that give no indication building expansion is at the end of them.
That was just one example, but this obtuse quest and upgrade design became a frustrating hindrance repeatedly throughout One World, with many progression quests requiring specific seeds or tool upgrades and no hint at all as to where those might be found. Your best bet, outside of a guide online, is just to talk to everyone constantly and repeatedly and do every single quest possible until you accidentally stumble over the thing you’re looking for.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Why%20can’t%20my%20dog%20go%20outside%3F”]I haven’t yet mentioned all the many small annoyances that cropped up as I played, none of which are worth a paragraph on their own but all contributed to my growing ball of frustration with One World. Why can I not have more than one stack of a single item in my storage or inventory at a time? Why does my stamina drop constantly just from walking around? Is there any point to giving gifts to random nameless NPCs? Why can’t my dog go outside? Why does keeping my animals happy seemingly do nothing at all, and why do they drop dead after a year or so automatically?
The best I can say about One World is that it’s fine – something you can mindlessly play on mute with a podcast on and feel not-horrible about. That said, with two Story of Seasons games out within a month of this and Stardew Valley’s 1.5 update on top of that, I can’t think of a reason why anyone who loves the Harvest Moon tradition should play One World. It’s lacking just about every possible forward-moving feature any similar games have, and its attempts at doing something new with the series are half-baked and frustrating.
Here’s a rare thing: Apple Watch SE is on sale for $20 off at Amazon right now. This is the first meaningful discount we’ve seen so far this year on the mid-tier model of the company’s smartwatch. For many people, the SE hits just the right balance between features and price. Apple Watch SE typically starts at $279, but right now you can grab most colors and sizes on sale at Amazon for $20 off.
Feature-wise and price-wise, the Apple Watch SE sits in between the high-end Apple Watch Series 6 ($399 and up) and the still-available Apple Watch Series 3 ($199 and up).
The SE has the S5 chip, which Apple says is up to 2.5 times faster than the chip in the Series 3. It has most of the same sensors as the Series 6, including an accelerometer, gyroscope, and altimeter. It also has fall detection. It includes a pixel-dense Retina display, as well as the same design as the Series 6.
Apple Watch Model Feature Comparison
For a closer look at the difference in features between the three models that are currently available, see the above chart pulled from Apple’s Apple Watch page. As you can see, the main features the more-expensive Apple Watch Series 6 has that the SE lacks are the always-on display, Blood Oxygen app, and ECG app. If those features are important to you, you can save $25 right now on a Series 6 at Amazon.
Alternatively, if you don’t mind a slower device with fewer features, you can pick up a Series 3 on sale for $169 at the moment. But for me, I think the SE hits the sweet spot between price and features.
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Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert at IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.
2001’s animated classic Shrek is back in the news, as Universal has announced the movie will release on 4K for the first time when it arrives for video-on-demand on May 11. It will also release that day on 4K Blu-ray and DVD. This is all happening to celebrate Shrek’s 20th anniversary.
Included with the new version are more than four hours of bonus material, including 10 shorts and a separate disc that comes with five episodes of The Adventures of Puss in Boots TV series. The bonus features also include deleted scenes and commentary from directors Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson. You can see the full rundown of extras below.
Shrek won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, beating out Monsters Inc. and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius that year. The film features the voices of Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and John Lithgow as the main characters. Chris Farley was lined up to voice Shrek, and even recorded voiceover, before he died from a drug overdose in 1997.
Three sequels would follow in the main Shrek series, while the franchise overall would go on to explode with multiple TV series, video games, theme park rides, and countless other merchandising opportunities.
Arcade1Up is well known for its large, 3/4-scale arcade cabinets, but it also makes smaller countercade cabinets, and one of them is on sale at a ridiculous price. The Galaga countercade cabinet is only $49 at Walmart, down from its regular price of $130. That’s a massive $80 discount, one that’s definitely worth taking advantage of if you’re a fan of the classic intergalactic shooter.
The Arcade1Up Galaga countercade features both Galaga and Galaga ’88, playable with the built-in arcade-like joystick and buttons on its 8-inch LCD screen. The countercade cabinet is also adorned with the iconic Galaga artwork seen on the original cabinet.
If you’re looking to add another cabinet to your home arcade, the Arcade1Up Ms. Pac-Man cabinet is $349 at the moment, down from $400. It’s a 3/4-scale cabinet that features Ms. Pac-Man, Pac-Mania, Pac-Man Plus, and Galaxian.
Arcade1Up has a bunch of awesome cabinets that feature games from the ’80s and ’90s, and we’ve tested two of them. You can check out our reviews of the company’s BurgerTime machine and Marvel vs. Capcom cabinet.
The latest movie in the Candyman franchise hits theaters later this year. It’s a direct sequel to the classic 1992 supernatural chiller, and is produced by Jordan Peele.
The original Candyman was an adaptation of the short story The Forbidden, by Hellraiser and Hellraiser creator Clive Barker, and directed by Bernard Rose. The film focused on the legend of the Candyman, who was originally the son of a slave but grew up as a successful businessman in the late 19th century, before his relationship with a white woman led to horrendous death at the hands of a mob. Many decades later, the vengeful, hooked-handed, bee-summoning ghost can be conjured up by anyone who dares to say his name five times into a mirror.
The movie was only a moderate success, but nearly 30 years later, it stands as one of the best horror films of the decade–an intelligent, scary, and beautifully-made chiller that has stood the test of time. Two sequels followed–Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (1995) and Candyman: Day of the Dead (1999)–but they were inferior follow-ups that contained little of the original’s mix of scares and powerful social commentary.
In 2018, it was announced that a new Candyman movie was on the way. The film was originally scheduled for release last summer but like almost every big movie due in 2020, it has had its release date pushed several times. The film is now set to arrive in August, so while we wait for it to finally be released, here’s everything we know to date about Candyman.
When will Candyman be released?
Candyman hits theaters on August 21, 2021. This is the film’s fourth release date. It was originally scheduled for release in June last year, and was subsequently moved to September and October, before being pushed back an entire year.
Who’s the director?
Candyman is directed by Nia DaCosta. This will be DaCosta’s second movie as director, following 2018’s thriller Little Woods, which starred Tessa Thompson and Lily James. She also directed two episodes of the British TV drama Top Boy. In August last year, it was announced that she will helm the Captain Marvel sequel for Marvel, which has a November 2022 release date.
Who are the producers and writers?
Get out and US director Jordan Peele is one of the main producers of Candyman, through his production company Monkeypaw. He’s producing with Win Rosenfeld (Hunters, Blackkklansman), and the pair have written the script with DaCosta.
Is there any footage or images?
Since the movie was only three months from release when it was first delayed, a trailer had already been released. This first trailer revealed the basic plot alongside lots of scary imagery. Even more impressive was the promo released in June, which was a short animated film that told the tragic backstory of Candyman using shadow puppets. The third trailer followed a few weeks later, which mixed footage from this video with new footage from the movie.
What’s the story?
Candyman isn’t a remake of the original movie, but a direct sequel, which ignores the two earlier sequels. 30 years later, the previously deprived area of Chicago’s Cabrini Green has been gentrified and turned into a desirable and expensive place to live. The movie focuses on visual artist Anthony McCoy, who appeared as a child in the original film, and sees him return to the area with his girlfriend Brianna. An encounter with one of Cabrini’s older residents leads Anthony to start investigating the legend of Candyman as inspiration for his work. But inevitably things start to get very scary when the hooked-handed ghost makes his return.
Who’s in the cast?
Aquaman and Watchmen actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II takes the lead role as Anthony, with WandaVision star Teyonah Parris as Brianna. The cast also includes Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Misfits) as Brianna’s brother Troy, and Colman Domingo (Fear the Walking Dead, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) as William, the older Cabrini Green resident. There are also a couple of actors returning from the original film–Vanessa Estelle Williams as Anthony’s mom Anne-Marie, and of course, Tony Todd as Candyman himself. Todd is yet to be seen in the trailers, but they do feature his distinctive–and scary–voice.
What has DaCosta said about the movie?
One of the most impressive aspects of the original film was the way it weaved a strong social commentary into a scary ghost story. Unsurprisingly, the new movie will also deal with some heavy themes alongside the horror. “It’s so much about identity and about what violence can look like,” DaCosta told Slashfilm last year. “It’s not just this very graphic lynch mob, it can also be the force of gentrification, or the micro-aggressions inside of trying to negotiate what your next art piece is going to be. It has many forms, so that’s part of what we wanted to talk about in this film as well. And that’s a big reason why [Anthony] fits in the art world, because he can really show that in an interesting way. Our points of view are about the multilayered ways that violence can take form and can kill in America, and that’s where the film will be.”
After a couple of weeks off, the Trials of Osiris is back in Destiny 2 this weekend. As every weekend, the map for Trials and the rewards you can earn have changed, so here’s a complete rundown of what you’re facing in the Crucible this weekend and the loot you can get for taking part in Destiny’s toughest competitive challenge.
There’s a host of new gear in Trials this season, including new armor and weapons. This weekend’s Trials event actually continues to the Tuesday weekly reset on March 16, so you’ve got a little extra time to earn rewards and spend tokens with Saint-14.
Trials of Osiris Map And Rewards (March 12-16)
Map: Midtown
3 wins — Hunter, Warlock, or Titan Gauntlets: Pyrrhic Ascent Grasps, Gauntlets, or Gloves
5 wins — Igneous Hammer, Solar hand cannon
7 wins — Sola’s Scar, Solar sword
Flawless run — The Messenger (Adept), Kinetic pulse rifle
The Trials of Osiris is Destiny 2’s weekend competitive multiplayer event, which takes place from Friday to Tuesday every week. The Trials are Destiny’s toughest challenge–your goal is to rack up as many victories in the mode as you can before you suffer three total losses, which forces you to reset your run. You’ll earn loot along the way as you rack up more and more wins, but the best rewards in the event come when you go on a winning streak of seven matches in a row–a “Flawless” run.
Going Flawless sends you to the Lighthouse, a special social space only accessible to players who go Flawless, and earns you exclusive rewards and recognition. In the Beyond Light expansion, opening the Flawless chest can earn you an “Adept” item, which comes with extra stat boosts unavailable on any other loot in the game, as well as powerful Adept mods that are likewise unavailable anywhere else.
Even if you don’t go Flawless, you can still get a lot out of playing in the Trials of Osiris. Loot is dolled out for notching three, five, and seven wins in total, even if you have losses–so you don’t have to be a PvP god to get something out of the event. Once you lose three matches total, however, you’re forced to restart your Trials run from the beginning. To access the Trials, you’ll need to see Saint-14 in the Tower to purchase a Trials card.
You’ll also earn Trials tokens as you play in the event and complete Trials bounties, which you can spend with Saint-14 in the Tower’s Hangar for more loot. However, Trials tokens expire at the end of each Trials event, so you have to spend them during the weekend you earn them. Double-check that you’ve spent them all before you stop playing.
Created by Jac Schaeffer, Marvel Studios’ first streaming show places B-tier Avengers Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) in a seemingly idyllic suburban town, with six of its nine episodes mimicking different eras of American sitcoms. At its core is a tale about Wanda’s grief — Vision was killed in Avengers: Infinity War and remained dead through Avengers: Endgame — and the show often succeeds at capturing her anguish, thanks in large part to Olsen’s performance. In a cinematic universe that frequently relies on dialogue to advance its stories, WandaVision is also one of the rare entries where visual storytelling is vital to the premise.
However, the show’s visual deftness often finds itself in a tug-of-war with storytelling instincts which run counter to its conceit; namely, its penchant for deflating exposition delivered from outside Wanda’s dream-realm, and its sudden, late-in-the-game reliance on lore and shared-universe concepts, both rooted in the comics and newly invented for the show.
World, Interrupted
Like in many a Marvel comic — especially 2004’s Avengers: Disassembled and its follow-up, House of M — the world of the series is a fabrication created by Wanda as a means to cope with Vision’s death. It’s denial made physically manifest, with Wanda retreating into the comforts of a TV universe and using comedy’s return to a safe, familiar status quo to avoid facing harsh realities. The first entry, “Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience,” uses the aesthetics of a 1950s-1960s sitcom as short-hand for quirky hijinks wherein nothing ever truly goes wrong — that is, until the end of the episode, when one of Wanda and Vision’s guests, Mr. Hart (Fred Melamed), asks too many questions about their life before Westview. The couple either can’t answer these questions, or they don’t want to.
As if through supernatural interference, Mr. Hart begins choking on his food. His wife Mrs. Hart (sitcom veteran Debra Jo Rupp) plays it off as tomfoolery, at least in terms of dialogue. Her desperate expression however, and the scene’s eerie presentation, tell a different story. The lighting grows harsh, engulfing the dining room setting in shadow, as the camera creeps in on close-ups of each character, employing a longer lens for the first time, which turns the background hazy and draws focus entirely to the actors’ suppressed concern. Shots of the characters gazing at Mr. Hart, as he chokes on the floor, feel especially uncanny. It’s the first time the camera has been at anything other than eye level. There’s no longer any pleasant music or studio laughter. Just a ticking clock.
What makes the scene especially chilling is the way this aesthetic clashes wildly with the rest of the episode. Sitcoms of the era had a reliable look and feel, which series director Matt Shakman accurately imitates. The lighting was often bright and flat, owing to a multi-camera set up capturing things from different angles. If the camera moved at all, it was usually a pan to follow characters walking across the sound stage, or a slight push in or out to re-adjust the frame as people left or entered the scene. Early domestic sitcoms like The Honeymooners (1955-1956) rarely moved in tighter than a medium shot, even during emotional moments. I Love Lucy (1951-1957) helped set the template for “situational comedy” and its camera largely hung back and captured the environment, and the characters’ interactions with it. Perhaps the episode’s biggest influence — confirmed later in the series, through Wanda’s childhood flashbacks — is The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966). Wanda models her kitchen after that of Robert and Laura Petrie (Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore), and the specific episode she draws on, Season 2’s “It May Look Like a Walnut,” is a Twilight Zone parody which downplays Robert’s nightmarish anxieties and flattens them into easily-digestible sitcom fare.
WandaVision’s first episode doesn’t step outside its sitcom setting, but it establishes the series’ thematic conflict with the larger world. The show’s comforting status quo can, in fact, be threatened and broken. And since everyone in this realm seems to be playing specific parts, that conflict isn’t one that can be explained through dialogue (at least at first). Instead, the threats to Wanda’s reality take the form of jarring breaks in established tone. Wanda’s relationship to this environment is key, and like the viewer, she notices when things feel surreal and out of place. As the show goes on, these aesthetic interruptions grow more frequent and more noticeable, but the series also begins to shy away from this dynamic as its primary storytelling tool — for better and for worse.
WandaVision breaks with the late 1950s/early 1960s sitcom approach (left) when Mr. Hart starts choking and things get creepy (right).
The second episode, “Don’t Touch That Dial,” follows the first’s 4:3, black and white look, but transposes its design to the mid-1960s, following shows like Bewitched (1964-1972) and I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1970), with their animated openings and tales of women with supernatural abilities. The talent show premise even mirrors the Season 1 Bewitched episode “It’s Magic,” and the eventual color transformation reflects both shows moving to color in 1966. However, unlike WandaVision’s first entry, its second can no longer rely entirely on tools like close-ups and longer lenses with shallow focus to make things feel out of place. By the mid-1960s, sitcoms had begun to incorporate these elements, albeit not quite as frequently or starkly as feature films. And so, the second episode begins to augment them with other, more literal interruptions, like a message on the radio (during which Wanda is filmed in a Dutch angle), or the sudden presence of color (à la the movie Pleasantville), or the arrival of a mysterious beekeeper, who Wanda deals with by rewinding the episode altogether and preserving its blissful fabric.
By Episode 3, “Now in Color” — which draws on family shows like The Brady Bunch (1969-1974) — the interruptions revolve around Wanda losing control of her powers, even though the show still plays this premise for laughs (for instance, a painted stork in Wanda’s nursery comes to life and runs loose around the house). However, the cracks in Wanda’s façade are truly opened during the episode’s closing moments, when Geraldine, aka Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), brings events from the real world crashing through Wanda’s fantasy as she sings to her newborn children. The exchange may be rooted in dialogue, with Monica reminding Wanda that her brother Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) was killed in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but the scene’s tension is built through its framing and editing.
Where sitcoms of the era still used closeups rather sparingly, WandaVision now crosscuts between two different sequences shot almost entirely in closeup: Wanda’s confrontation with “Geraldine,” and neighbors Agnes (Kathryn Hahn) and Herb (John Collins) alerting Vision to the strangeness of the world around him. This prompts him to head back inside — will he make it in time to witness Wanda’s rage? The result of these dueling closeup scenes is more intensity than ’70s sitcoms would normally feature. When Wanda ejects Monica/Geraldine from the town, the series finally shifts in aspect ratio, with TV’s old 4:3 giving way to a more cinematic 2.35:1, and with contemporary color-grading and modern military equipment. It’s a clue as to what’s actually going on; most viewers would have likely figured it out, though surprise isn’t really the point. It establishes an encroaching threat to Wanda’s self-made utopia. However, the largely Monica-focused fourth entry is where the show begins to warp its own premise, in ways that don’t entirely work.
Avengers Ensemble
The opening minutes of Episode 4, “We Interrupt This Program,” offer a poignant, on-the-ground look at events of prior films — Monica, who was “snapped” out of existence during the time period of Infinity War, returns to life five years later to find her mother has died in the interim — but the more the episode goes on, the more it simply becomes a series of inelegant reveals about events from prior episodes.
Characters like Captain Marvel’s Monica (now grown up), Thor’s Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) and Ant-Man’s Jimmy Woo (Randall Park) both provide connections to the larger MCU and take us through the preceding three episodes from an outside observer’s POV. They offer jargon and potential theories to explain Wanda’s TV world, and they treat it as a mystery to be solved from the outside — even when the show has thus far been adept at peeling back each layer from within. This sets up a dynamic for the following three episodes, wherein the sitcom setting is frequently intercut with SWORD and military scenes outside the perimeter. For the most part, these scenes involve characters verbally explaining the show we’re already watching (not to mention recalling intimate details of films we’ve already seen, as if they themselves were part of those stories; they weren’t, but these characters are more audience stand-ins than individuals).
This would, of course, serve a more coherent purpose if Monica were an intrinsic part of the show. She’s set up as a thematic mirror to Wanda, someone dealing with similar grief and lack of closure, but her perspective rarely comes into contact with Wanda’s, and the show merely uses her to set up an entirely different story (either Captain Marvel 2, the streaming series Secret Invasion, or both). Monica mentions her own grief in words, but it’s not something we ever see her confront or struggle with in any meaningful way that impacts the story.
However, despite the drudgery of the military plot, the Westview sections still manage to keep up the show’s momentum and explore the real world/fantasy dynamic in intriguing ways. Primary among them is Evan Peters as Wanda’s brother Pietro, even though his presence ends up being a ruse (rather than the implied introduction of a parallel universe, since Peters played Pietro in the X-Men films). Pietro’s arrival stands apart from the other interruptions. It grounds the sitcom world in an external reality that Wanda, for once, can’t simply shut out.
Episode 5 is titled “On a Very Special Episode…” and it takes after sitcoms like Family Ties (1982-1989), Roseanne (1988-1997) and most notably Full House (1987-1995), which starred Olsen’s older sisters, Mary Kate and Ashley, in the role of Michelle Tanner. Like The Brady Bunch, these shows focused on multiple generations of family, rather than just the adults (as was the case in the inspirations for the first two episodes). Wanda’s rapidly aging twin sons Billy and Tommy, therefore, become a central part of the story. The sitcom world is also invaded by reality early on this time, instead of towards the episode’s end. Vision begins to suspect something is amiss, and when Agnes fearfully asks Wanda if she should attempt another take, the comedy fabric grinds to a halt. The music stops and the studio audience falls completely silent, as the frame focuses entirely on the lead characters’ closeups: Vision attempts to parse the surrealness around him, while Wanda desperately reassures him that everything’s alright.
Vision gets a jarring non-Full House style close-up during a moment of tension in the ’80s/’90s-influenced Episode 5.
’80s and ’90s family sitcoms had their fair share of serious moments — the Season 7 Full House episode “The Last Dance,” in which Michelle’s great-grandfather dies in his sleep, was dubbed “A Very Special Full House” during its marketing — and they would slip into somber scenes sans audience laughter, where the focus remained on the characters’ emotions. But these scenes often announced their arrival, and acclimated viewers to extended periods of closeups as the episode dealt with heavier than usual subject matter. WandaVision, meanwhile, introduces these sequences suddenly and without warning, causing emotional whiplash, to which even Wanda and Vision themselves seem to respond. When Vision temporarily frees Norm (Asif Ali) from his mental prison, Vision is framed in extreme close-up, with his entire face enveloping the screen. It’s an especially uncomfortable moment in an episode ostensibly meant to evoke an easy, breezy tone.
To avoid Vision’s questions about the nature of their reality, Wanda triggers the episode’s end credit scroll. But as the canned audience applause returns, Vision continues pressing Wanda for answers from behind the closing text. It’s all very Too Many Cooks in its winking surrealism, and it leads to the kind of heated confrontation not often seen on such shows.
However, the episode’s most emotionally affecting moment arrives in its final scene. During the episode, Wanda is forced to teach her children about dealing with grief instead of running from it when their dog mysteriously dies, which, of course, is hypocritical given the way she deals with Vision’s death, and how she avoids talking about Pietro’s (“He’s far away from here”). When she begs her sons not to age-up again, the frame lingers on her uncertainty — a far cry from the centered stability of most ’80s sitcom parents as they imparted life lessons. And so when a version of Pietro finally arrives, the framing and performances do all the talking (well, most of the talking; the show still briefly cuts to Darcy so she can comment on the re-casting and break the scene’s emotional tension).
This new Pietro arrives in the mold of a sitcom guest star (excited audience reaction and all), though instead of the usual medium shots, which allowed viewers to absorb the actor’s presence, the close-ups on Pietro and Wanda ground the scene in their complicated emotional responses. Olsen and Peters’ performances are key here. Pietro’s appearance and demeanor are in the vein of suave smooth-talkers like Full House’s Uncle Jesse (John Stamos) and Family Ties’ Nick Moore (Scott Valentine), but buried beneath his introductory quip — “Long lost bro get to squeeze his stinkin’ sister to death or what?” — is a fleeting look of recognition. Pietro is playing his designated sitcom role, yet his eyes betray an emotional burden, which Wanda seems to share, though neither one mentions it explicitly. Regardless of his hidden motives, his recognition of Wanda’s pain begins to draw her out of her shell, especially in the following episode, “All-New Halloween Spooktakular!”
The early-2000s send-up of zany, visually inventive shows like Malcolm in the Middle (2000-2006) marks the biggest departure from the early sitcom entries. The change in visual style and constant fourth-wall breaking means the show can’t rely on its usual surreal visual oddities, since “surreal” was already the lingua franca of the era. Instead, WandaVision begins to employ a few subtle editing tricks. Shows like Malcolm in the Middle, and single-camera contemporaries with voiceover and cut-away gags like Scrubs (2001-2010) and My Name Is Earl (2005-2009), were incredibly fast-paced, hopping quickly from one joke to the next (funnily enough, My Name Is Earl’s third season featured a similar premise, where Earl responds to head trauma by retreating into a ’50s sitcom world he internalized as a child). WandaVision’s sixth episode recreates their bustling energy, but it peppers the character interactions with moments that seem to linger just a little too long.
Pietro’s cutaway flashback to one of his and Wanda’s childhood Halloweens should not, in theory, be possible — he’s not the real Pietro, after all. When Wanda notices that some details of the memory are amiss, the shot holds on her confused reaction longer than it normally would in such a lively show (and longer than it already has during the episode’s other jokes). This technique crops up a number of times, like when Vision mentions the conflict of the previous episode, and the silent tension between him and Wanda breaks the otherwise snappy pacing.
Of course, by the time the episode ends, the fantasy of Westview has come apart in more overt ways, like Vision’s horrifying discovery that residents on the outskirts of town are stuck in suspended animation. It’s a slow, chilling reveal, anchored by the impactful closeup of a woman repeating pre-ordained actions, trapped in some kind of personal hell as a tear rolls down her cheek. Although by this point, the show has also fallen into the trap of having characters like Darcy, Jimmy and Monica explain everything we’ve just watched, so they immediately discover and comment on the fact that the residents at the edge of town don’t seem to be moving, in a scene that adds little else. It’s a waste of time, and an interruption to the genuine, Twilight Zone-esque intrigue created by the Westview story.
A Westview resident, trapped in a personal hell.
Episode 7, “Breaking the Fourth Wall,” adds a fun wrinkle to the premise, with Wanda alone at home and stuck in a depressive rut, while a now more self-aware Vision makes his way back from the edge of town amidst constant interruptions (including the episode’s “confessional” segments, given its Modern Family influence). It doesn’t advance the plot much, but it allows both leads to reflect on their conundrums without the pressures of having to be a pristine, perfect sitcom couple (if such a thing even exists in modern American comedy). However, the episode’s closing twist — accompanied by the catchy, Munsters-esque musical track “Agatha All Along” — leads to some major story problems.
The Lying Witch and the Wardrobe
The reveal that Agnes is actually the witch Agatha Harkness is practically meaningless in-world, since Agatha and Wanda have no pre-existing history here the way they do in the comics (it’s oddly evocative of Benedict Cumberbatch admitting to being Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness, a reveal long-rumored by fans and met with blank stares from Kirk and Spock). But more than the specifics of who she is, the problem Agatha poses stems from all that she represents and introduces into the series’ fabric, including a strange new focus on Wanda’s comic outfit (which, in previous episodes, had been played as a winking in-joke).
The eighth episode, “Previously On,” features some of the show’s most riveting moments, between Wanda’s flashbacks and her emotional volatility when denied closure and dignity after Vision’s death. Olsen’s performance is tremendous here, equally nuanced and explosive, and she propels the episode to emotional highs seldom approached by Marvel’s films. But these sequences are also held back by Agatha’s presence, and her constant snarking at every aspect of Wanda’s backstory, as if it were an MST3K routine.
Agatha’s plot function is to extract answers from Wanda and then, once we see those answers play out dramatically, to explain the answers a second time in words. In these flashbacks, she hangs over Wanda’s shoulder in every shot, adding commentary that distracts from Wanda’s reflections on why she processes death the way she does.
In addition to sapping dramatic tension, Agatha also introduces, at the end of the penultimate episode, the idea that Wanda is some prophesied being in a larger witchcraft lore, the Scarlet Witch. This was once merely her name in the comics (at most it became a title passed down through her family in the 2016 Scarlet Witch series written by James Robinson and illustrated by Steve Dillon and Chris Visions), but the reveal is scored with the pomp and circumstance of an Earth-shattering twist, as the camera pushes in on Agatha. In the show’s final 40 minutes, it becomes its own major sublot with little to no bearing on Wanda’s tale of uncontrolled grief.
The final episode, “The Series Finale,” sees Wanda’s conflict devolve into sky beams typical of the superhero genre in ways that feel disconnected from the story. In contrast, even though the “White Vision” (made from Vision’s original body) leaves soon after he’s introduced, his battle with the Vision we’ve been following is at least visually inventive and character-centric. The camera glides smoothly alongside both Visions as they phase through one another, before they arrive at a stalemate, and are forced to duke it out through philosophical debate (similar to the 2016 Avengers series by writer Mark Waid and artist Mike Del Mundo).
Meanwhile, Wanda’s big battle with Agatha robs focus from her actual story, at a time when capturing her volatile emotional state is of utmost importance. She’s finally confronted with the weight of her actions when Agatha frees the minds of Westview’s residents, and so she decides to set them free once and for all. But when she opens up the “Hex,” Vision and her children begin to disintegrate. They can’t exist without the Westview illusion, offering Wanda an emotionally harrowing dilemma — which the show doesn’t actually pay off.
“The Series Finale” presents a “sky beam” conflict straight out of the movies.
Wanda temporarily closes the “Hex” to save her family, but this doesn’t seem to throw an emotional wrench into her decision to free Westview. It merely delays the outcome. There’s no moment following this where she’s forced to finally reckon with the weight of doing what’s right at devastating personal cost. The editing during the climax settles into a rhythm of moving swiftly down a list of plot-points, rather than holding on Wanda’s reactions as she weighs the consequences. There’s no dramatic beat where, after choosing her family, she actually makes the decision to let go of them, in a story all about learning to let go. When Agatha offers Wanda domestic bliss in exchange for her powers, the show doesn’t dramatize anything resembling temptation — a Return of the Jedi moment, where Luke Skywalker reflects on his humanity as he’s lured toward violence — and it ends up narratively un-engaging.
When the climax finally focuses on Wanda’s emotional response, it becomes thematically muddied. Agatha confronts her with taunts of “This world you made will always be broken, just like you,” but Wanda’s reply isn’t connected to her sorrow. Rather, it’s visually grounded in the brand-new subplot about the lore of the Scarlet Witch. “I don’t need you to tell me who I am,” she responds in close-up, but the shot’s focus is drawn to the magical crown from the witchcraft prophecy materializing on her head. The rest of the climax follows suit, obscuring Olsen’s performance behind a wall of light and focusing on a costume change that was, just a few minutes prior, entirely meaningless to Wanda.
“Release your burden,” Agatha says, though the battle’s busy and distant framing limits this statement to the burden of Wanda’s powers, rather than the burden of her pain.
Granted, the finale’s penultimate scene, back at Wanda and Vision’s home, does at the very least give us a moving goodbye between the characters. It rests on some difficult emotional work from Olsen and Bettany, as the camera spins around the characters while their idyllic Westview home disintegrates from all sides, leaving only a barren plot and devastating emptiness.
This emotional conclusion is tied directly to their poignant exchange in the previous episode, where Vision contextualizes Wanda’s grief as “love persevering” (a line evocative of Tennyson’s “Tis better to have loved and lost/Than never to have loved at all” from In Memoriam A.H.H.). But while the show captures Wanda’s mourning, it doesn’t do much to frame the pain she’s left in her wake. Her sitcom illusions aren’t just a metaphor for comfort and denial, but for the destructive nature of pain un-dealt with. The show seems reticent to frame her actions as truly horrifying, even though this has all the makings of a challenging conclusion, where Wanda exits Westview as a villain.
As Wanda heads back to the town center, the visual framing even places her at the center of her now-free neighbors’ reactions, but the way these extras are blocked and framed, and the way their performances are directed, center rage more than fear or trauma. As they creep towards Wanda from all sides, they’re only a few pitchforks short of a mob chasing down Frankenstein’s Monster. And before the episode allows us to consider their torment, they fall into background and out of focus, in favor of Monica’s last-minute assurance that they will “never know what [Wanda] sacrificed for them.”
Eventually, Monica’s grief throughout the series serves no real story function, other than to make Wanda’s actions seem reasonable. Monica’s reaction, and her absolution of Wanda, is granted a final close-up, and far more narrative weight than the fleeting wide shots of Westview’s residents. The show is telling us that their response isn’t as important as that of audience stand-ins like Darcy, Jimmy and Monica, a Greek chorus guiding viewers with unwavering support of Wanda throughout the series, sanding down the edges of a potentially complicated story.
WandaVision is ultimately a conflicted show, where the visual storytelling says one thing, and the dialogue from supporting characters either says the opposite, or re-explains what’s already been said. It begins as a tale of Wanda’s fragile relationship to the world around her, but this conflict with reality soon plays second fiddle to rote explanations of lore, and a villain who rears her head only to extract exposition and provide fodder for visual noise. Which is a shame, since the moments which focus on Wanda’s grief often arrive with the weight of a freight train — but they’re soon followed by extraneous dialogue from characters who exist to set up a larger universe, which just isn’t as interesting as someone who so desperately wishes for emotional comfort that she ends up hurting people in the process.
Capcom employees in Osaka are back in their offices despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic that has claimed nearly 8,500 lives in the region, according to a Business Journal report.
As translated by Kotaku, the Osaka-based company said it is abandoning remote work due to an inability to secure its data, as evidenced last year when Capcom suffered a massive breach.
“We are abandoning the remote network for the time being, and it was decided there is no choice but to come to work,” Capcom said. This has resulted in anxiety inside Capcom.
As a result of last year’s detrimental data breach and Capcom’s inability to secure external networks employees used in their home setups, the company has “forced employees” to return to work. Capcom noted, however, that work hours have been staggered and telecommuting was implemented. Inside the office, masks are required, social distancing is enforced, and temperatures are checked every time an employee enters the building.
The company was hacked in November 2020 by a group called Ragnar Locker. The hacker collective gained access to Capcom’s internal network, compromising 1TB of employee and customer data, including personal information, financial reports, and corporate secrets.
Capcom said that the health of its employees is a top priority even after mandating them to return to the office. The company told Kotaku that it “strives to provide a workplace environment with the utmost consideration given to the health and safety of employees.”
Capcom also said that while there are no unions currently established at the company and there are no talks to form one at present, the company isn’t opposed to employees unionizing. This is especially important since, according to Business Journal, there are larger corporate issues to deal with. One example is flexible work hours being dependent on one’s position.
“While there are none currently active within the company, employees are free to form labor unions,” Capcom said. “Capcom strictly observes all relevant laws and regulations regarding employees forming labor unions.”
In other Capcom news, the company is warning players of email scams containing early access to Resident Evil Village. The email, sent from a ‘no-reply(at)capcom(dot)com’ address, appears to be a phishing scam attempting to gain access to personal information.
