‘Wandavision’ Director Felt Like Fan Theories Were a Distraction From Show — ‘I Didn’t Want the Focus To Shift From What Was Important’
Marvel’s hit series Wandavision has been wildly popular. Starring Avengers cast members Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany as Wanda and Vision, the Disney+ series has been extremely entertaining for Marvel fans.
Wandavision’s unique narrative style and mysterious subject matter left countless fans in awe on a weekly basis, with many turning to social media and online discussion boards to share theories about what different plot points meant.
And while it may have been fun for viewers to throw around ideas about what everything meant, Wandavision’s director wasn’t so happy. According to director Matt Shakman, he felt the fan theories were a big distraction from what he was intentionally trying to do with the story.
‘Wandavision’ director Matt Shakman felt fan theories distracted viewers from the story
Shakman shared his feelings on the Wandavision fan theories during a recent interview with the Fatman Beyond podcast.
“Some of them might find [that] charming and wonderful the fan base is so smart and knowledgeable that they can create theories that are better than the ones that we created in the room, of course, but we’re building to this rover set piece, which I have worked my butt off on for well over a year,” Shakman said. “Creating this rover, and all of a sudden, everybody wants to know who’s going to meet her there and I know it’s going to be this wonderful actress who’s playing Major Goodner. And it’s not going to be Reed Richards.”
Shakman wanted to viewers to pay attention to the story he was telling on screen, instead of projecting their own interpretation onto his intentions.
“I want people to be interested in what is the origin story of a different character that Monica Rambo is becoming, and instead we’re being distracted by somebody else,” Shakman said. “So yeah, the director, or producer, in me is like, ‘Oh, don’t run with that one,’ because I didn’t want the focus to shift from what was important [which is] the story of Monica traveling through that axe.”
The production crew made a lot of changes to ‘Wandavision’
Even though a few fan theories were technically correct, Shakman noted that several last-minute changes to the show made them irrelevant.
“Things were constantly changing and getting rebroken. The story was changing, especially a lot of the real-world stuff and the finale,” Shakman added. “There was a lot of experimentation going on and sort of trying different things out.”
In fact, there were originally supposed to be 10 episodes of Wandavision, but the finale was scrapped for the sake of the show’s rhythm.
“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,” Shakman said. “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.”
