The reason Wanda Maximoff knows her old American TV shows on WandaVision

WandaVision is full of homage to classic sitcoms, while most episodes so far (except for the episode 4 interlude) pay homage to another era of American television. It’s a fun setup that provides interesting downtime for the characters that are normally caught up in other people’s stories.

The program also raised two burning questions if my Twitter feed is an indication: How do Children understand the references in the audience these days? And why did Wanda Maximoff, who grew up in the fictional southern European country of Sokovia, have such an intimate knowledge of American television?

What some Marvel fans tie as a plot hole, I see as a remarkable case of fridge glare, the tropics mentioned for realizing that something initially questionable in movies or TV actually makes clicks when the full details are investigated. I can not move between all millennials and generation Z these days, but I am familiar with older sitcoms. And my experiences in Eastern Europe are the reason why – that’s why Wanda’s perspective makes perfect sense to me.

I visited my grandparents in Croatia many summers, before the country was a leading holiday destination in Southeastern Europe (and previously Game of Thrones was filmed there). And like every other bored kid, I killed time by watching a lot of television.

This is the thing about American television abroad: the more popular a program was originally, the more expensive the syndication becomes in another country. But at the same time, there is no point in paying for a show that no one has watched. A series still needs to achieve decent success to be worth the cost.

Therefore, international syndication offers are often entered into for off-network shows, which are significantly cheaper to license than shows currently on the air, and which are mostly a proven factor. Many of the programs I watched during my childhood in childhood were ultimately one that was no longer off the air for years. Alf, Married with children, and Do not shoot me.

Photo: Disney Plus

Admittedly, I only really started paying attention to shows that were not cartoons when I was a little older, around the late 2000s. (Yes, I’m young). In that particular period, that meant I watched a lot of shows from the 80s and 90s. Of course, nowadays, with Netflix and streaming and the internet (not to mention piracy), there is not such an astonishing delay in the consumption of new media. Globalization is rapidly expanding around the world in 2020, but Wanda Maximoff did not grow up in the days of Disney Plus and easy internet access. We now formally know that she was born in 1989, which means she most likely spent her childhood and adolescence to see the eras of American sitcoms we’ve seen so far. WandaVision.

This may not be intentional on behalf of the writers – after all, it’s just as likely that Wanda camped in Avengers Tower and watched Voltal on Hulu. But as someone who has learned most of her American television cultural canon from overseas in Eastern Europe, this is specifically consistent with my own experiences. WandaVision is full of homage to older sitcoms, references and Easter eggs to Marvel comics and movies, and perhaps in this case a little brilliant nod for a specific real-world look.