ViShawn vs Vision: how Twitter reacts to the finale of TV series WandaVision with spreading memes creating by Black Twitter
Fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) around the whole world were all looking forward to the ending of WandaVision last Friday. The Disney Plus miniseries released its much-anticipated final episode on March 5th, with the tag of the same name #WandaVision ranking first on the world trend again. While people were shedding their tears for the story ending of the two super hero characters Wanda Maximoff and Vision, Black WandaVision fans began to reimagine Vision as “ViShawn”, creating another phenomenal trend with a display of black identity.
Based on the Marvel Comics characters Wanda Maximoff Witch and Vision, the TV series WandaVisionshares continuity and close relationship with the series of American superhero films produced by Marvel Studio, which draw great attention from MCU fans. Set after the events of the film Avengers: Endgame (2019), the TV series has a sad tone with a focus on the growth process of Wanda, during which she endured the successive loss of her loved ones, from her parents, twin brother to her lover, Vision.
Though failed to meet many people’s expectations and anticipation of the appearance of more Marvel characters, the series still received amounts of positive comments for fully forming the character of Wanda. Fans expressed their sad feelings for the character and the most used emoji on twitter reacting to #WandaVision comes to be the Loudly Crying Face.
However, contrary to the sadness and heartbreaks spreading among fans, another trend with a nickname “ViShawn” for Vision and comical memes created by Black Twitter were hitting the social media. The image of Vision wearing a black and fitted turtleneck in the finale were edited by memers to feature other fashion accessories associated with the African American community, including golden chains, headwraps, teeth grills and gold rings.
While celebrities from black community were tweeting with the memes receiving thousands of retweets and favorites, the hashtag #ViShawn even trended in the United States on March 7.
Correspondently, the coverted version of “LaWanda” was created for the female character with long black braided hairstyle.
While doubts and worries of racism exists, the word cloud of tweet text under the tag #ViShawn showed a rather positive attitudes toward creations by black twitter, with words including “hilarious” “laughing” “lmao” “funny” frequently used.
While people are tiptoeing to avoid the criticism of racial discrimination and being politically correct, the black community on Twitter continuely create laughable memes and hashtags with black identity and expand their influence over social media platform as well. Just as what the African-American twitter user commented replying to the doubts under her post, “I really have nothing to promote but love and kindness.”
