‘WandaVision’ Breaks The Marvel Mold With A Compelling Argument To Leave Your Boyfriend For A Chess Bot

Despite enforcing rigorous standardization and quality control across their entire cinematic universe, Marvel Studios has finally broken their mold with WandaVision, a captivating spin on the superhero genre with bold visuals and complex relationships which makes a surprisingly convincing argument for why you should leave your boyfriend for a chess engine.

The show, which follows Avengers Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) as they live an idyllic life in a suburban community, places intense focus on the unconditional love shared by its protagonists, and in particular the care Vision shows for Wanda. Traditionally, such a setting-relationship juxtaposition would be a somewhat basic narrative device, but in the hands of director Matt Shakman, it becomes a laser-focused case for why a robot makes a better, more empathetic romantic partner than any man could ever be. And it’s a successful one: by episode 3, WandaVision will have your girlfriend biting her lip as her computer’s chess bot moves its rook to H5. She might also drop hints that she wants you to treat her more like Vision would, which is unfair, considering you weren’t masterfully engineered by Tony Stark.

Modern day superheroes living in a sitcom world shouldn’t work as well as they do in WandaVision, but Olsen and Bettany masterfully navigate the show’s tonal shifts with a chemistry so electric your girlfriend will start saying that if a humanoid robot can acknowledge his wife’s beauty on a regular basis, then I can work a little harder at making her feel appreciated. Okay, fine: My opinion of the show has been irreversibly tainted by the fact that an artificial intelligence program designed to play a board game swept my girlfriend off her feet. Right now she’s having a candlelit dinner with her laptop and just laughed at something her chess bot said. He can only say chess related commands, there’s no way “checkmate” can be THAT funny. Unless he’s mocking me. Is he mocking me?

I jokingly asked her if she would warp reality to bring me back from the dead but she said that until I am red and have an infinity stone in my head she’s fine settling for the next best thing. After that, she went into our room to play chess and didn't come out. That was three days ago.

Lucia, please come back. I love you.