The Buffyverse and Beyond

“Oh, yeah,” she laughs. “You can’t tell with the roles I take? Its like, is there a fight? Okay, I’ll take it. Seriously, though, that’s the really fun part of it. I get to be a kid and I get to learn new talents. Plus it’s all a good workout.”

Elizabeth Olsen recently appeared on Vanity Fair’s Still Watching: WandaVision Podcast. Still Watching: WandaVison is a weekly podcast focussing on each episode of the show…

“The mystery is completely built into the fabric of who they are,” Olsen says. “Fans who know the MCU and know these characters will have a lot of fun every episode picking out what we’re hinting at.”

When I reached junior high I felt very stupid for wanting to be an actor because I was a good student and I grew up in LA and I felt like it was lame to have that want because I felt like people moved to LA and everyone wanted to be an actor, and I just didn’t like that idea. And you’re in junior high and you’re trying to figure your sh*t out [laughs], and how to be an individual.

“I’m a physical person, and I love doing my own stunts,” Torres says, adding that she filmed this particular scene on her very first day. “They were like, ‘You’re going to climb this rig… and you’re going to get shot at.’ That was Day 1. But pretty soon, I was just like, ‘I remember this! Being outside, having people shoot at you in 110-degree weather, I’ve done this!'”

In the Buffyverse, the Watcher Council often seemed an enemy greater than demons and vampires. Because they were so feared, Buffy was the only one to stand up to them. Therefore, it’s refreshing to see Anya as a former Watcher, defying members of the Council to their faces.

What I realized after watching the movie though was most of my memories of the show itself had been replaced by ones from the movie. On the show, River is a mystery and a bit of an annoyance, save for one or two moments. In the movie, she’s not just the star, she’s an unstoppable force – the badass she was surely planned to be all along, which is how I remembered her. The Reavers; the main villains of the film, are only mentioned in the show a few times and seen once, which clashes with my strong memory of them. And that hat Jayne wears, the one you are guaranteed to see at any comic book convention, is only in the TV show for a few scenes, and even less in the movie. If it never became a “thing” in fandom, you probably wouldn’t even remember it.

Despite the tug of war between Marvel and Whedon during production, and the subdued fan response to the final product, Avengers: Age of Ultron has generated an embarrassment of riches for the MCU in the ensuing years. So many of the threats created in the film paid off in future films in both small and large ways, with the ripple effect extending to the inaugural MCU series WandaVision debuting on Disney+ this week. In the first three episodes alone (which ComingSoon.net was privy to prior to broadcast) there are many nods to the events of Age of Ultron, not to mention the fact that the two title characters made their formal debut in the 2015 film.*

“The one thing I loved about it was the fact that one of the conversations we had with the director, Mikael Håfström, was that we grew up loving the action movies where once you get on a train, you’re on until the movie ends,” enthused Anthony Mackie. “It definitely feels like a 90s action film. Ever since the start of my career, I’ve always wanted to be Wesley Snipes. I felt like this is the perfect Wesley Snipes movie.”

Elizabeth Olsen recently appeared on UK morning TV show, Lorraine to talk about WandaVision. Watch the video below: