Monica Rambeau was almost sent to therapy in WandaVision. Originally introduced in Captain Marvel as a young girl, Marvel Studios brought back the character as a full-grown woman in the Disney+ show. Her arrival was preceded by a tragedy — the death of her mom, Maria Rambeau, who died of cancer while she disappeared in the five years after Thanos’ snap.
Due to WandaVision‘s non-linear storytelling, the character first debuted as Geraldine — a resident inside Westview, which Wanda protected with a hex to live the fantasy life she wanted with Vision. After Scarlet Witch realized that she was not an existing inhabitant of the town before she took it over, Monica was pushed out of the pocket reality, making the point person of S.W.O.R.D. in order to understand what exactly was happening in the Maximoff Anomaly. Not truly understanding immediately what was going on, coupled with her own personal grief, the show originally wanted to show Monica going to therapy.
During EW‘s The Awardist roundtable with the cast of WandaVision, head writer, Jac Schaeffer, explained that her original pitch was formatted after the stages of grief. At one point, they planned on giving Monica a therapist in the S.W.O.R.D. pop-up base after she was forced out of the hex by Wanda. Read what Schaeffer said below:
My pitch was mapped to the stages of grief, it ended up being kind of a reductive thing. In early drafts and in the writer’s room, we did a lot… Or, I don’t know if you know this or not, Teyonah [Parris], but [your character] had a therapist in the base, the pop-up base. There were therapy scenes because we, in the room, were very pro-therapy. We saw this show as being really, truly, about mental health. So we were like, ‘Well, we’ve got to have a therapist,’ and then realized that there’s not a lot of time in the pop-up base for Monica to be stepping into her sessions at all.
Throughout WandaVision, there was no therapy involved, and perhaps if Wanda had the support she needed from a therapist or a confidante, she wouldn’t have had the breakdown in Westview that unleashed Chaos Magic. What’s interesting is how the aforementioned storyline was going to affect Monica’s arc moving forward — would it have been much easier for Hayward to cast her aside from the way he did in the show, since he could’ve dubbed him unstable? Would it have allowed Monica to reach out to Wanda earlier than she did in the series, knowing a better way to approach her through her own time in therapy?
While WandaVision‘s finale was disappointing for some due to the lack of cameos or clear set-up for the MCU’s future, the fact of the matter is, it remained faithful to its core story until the end. It was about the grief and trauma of Wanda, and somehow Monica, although lesser explored. But as she moves forward in the franchise, taking up the superhero name, Spectrum, there’s more time for Marvel Studios to further tackle her personal story in the future.
Source: EW
Originally from https://screenrant.com/wandavision-monica-rambeau-therapy-details/