Why Do Marvel’s TV Shows All Want Me to Go to Therapy?

I feel like Marvel‘s first two Disney+ are trying to tell me something. Okay, maybe not “me,” per se, but people in general. The Falcon and The Winter Soldier and WandaVision might feel like radically different shows, but they are both championing therapy. Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) doesn’t conquer her powers in WandaVision until she is forced her to process her grief, while The Falcon and The Winter Soldier straight up puts one of its title characters in therapy. All in all, Disney+’s Marvel shows feel like they’re trying to tell their audience to get to a psychiatrist stat, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

Although Marvel has made television shows before, the series created for Disney+ are the most high-profile series to date. Overseen by the likes of Kevin Feige and starring actual Avengers, WandaVision, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, along with the upcoming Loki and Hawkeye, are giving audiences an intimate look at characters too often given short-shrift on the big screen. And what we’re learning is that being a superhero isn’t a fun or glorious thing. No, it’s downright traumatic.

So far we’ve only seen shows set after the events of Avengers: Endgame. That means that everyone we meet on screen either went through the horror of being dusted by Thanos (Josh Brolin) in the Blip or they had to endure five stark years of pain. WandaVision even features a tense argument between Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and SWORD Director Tyler Hayward (Josh Stamberg) about how both groups had it raw. Monica may have been sucker-punched by the news that her mother died while she was dusted, but Hayward wants her to understand how brutally awful it was for those who lived through the fallout years. So timing-wise, it makes sense that grief and trauma are at the forefront of these series. After all, the characters are all reeling from the events of the Infinity War.

However WandaVision went deeper than just looking at a general sense of PTSD. WandaVision Episode 8 follows Wanda as she is forced to confront each of her most heartbreaking memories. Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) uses magic to put Wanda back in the shoes of her childhood self swooning over sitcoms in Sokovia or in the moment that she falls hard for Vision (Paul Bettany). Wanda resists reliving these painful moments, prompting Agatha to eventually say it’s “good medicine.” “The only way forward is back,” she says, immediately reminding me of my mean grief counselor who forced me to talk about not fully grieving my father’s sudden death during sessions meant to focus on a close friend’s passing.

If WandaVision metaphorically depicts the emotional journey that therapy puts a person on, then The Falcon and The Winter Soldier does that show one better. We actually sit in on James “Bucky” Barnes (Sebastian Stan)’s therapy sessions. The Winter Soldier has survived wars and endured torture, but nothing hurts like being asked to open up about his feelings. In Bucky’s case, he is being forced to attend therapy sessions as a part of his pardon. Worse, he’s suffering from PTSD and guilt over the crimes he committed for HYDRA as the Winter Soldier. (Oh, and then there’s the anomie of finding himself, a 1940s man, in the post-Blip 2020s.)

Watched back-to-back, WandaVision and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier depict superheroes in crisis. Pain permeates every moment and trauma demands to be reckoned with. And honestly? It’s simultaneously cathartic to watch and eerie to the extreme. As we ease out of a global pandemic, confronting our own demons, our superheroes are doing the same thing.

Obviously Marvel was planning on telling these stories regardless of the pandemic, but watching WandaVision and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier now feels all-too-timely. They feel like superhero shows speaking directly to this moment in time. We are carrying both a collective trauma and our own personal pain. Marvel’s superheroes are dealing with the same damn thing. And how are they conquering their demons? Through therapy.

It’s perhaps fitting that the man Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) wanted to be the next Captain America first introduced himself as a veteran focused on rehabilitating the mental state of our country’s soldiers*. Heroes resonate most when they themselves embody the concerns of the time. The Falcon (Anthony Mackie) isn’t just a Black superhero, but someone empathetic to mental health struggles. And judging by Marvel’s latest slate of storytelling, our culture’s big bad isn’t a space alien with a fancy gauntlet, but our repressed trauma.

So are we supposed to get our butts to therapy or something, Marvel?

*Yeah, that was the Falcon’s day job before he embraced financial ruin by becoming an Avenger!

Where to stream The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

Where to stream WandaVision