If you are into the Marvel Cinematic Universe or simply exist on earth, I am sure you have had your ears flooded with comments about the ending of the show “WandaVision.” While it was intensely seasoned with bittersweet emotions, and the philosophical discussion about the ship of Theseus may have saved the franchise, it also reveals the backwards nature of Disney+.       

To understand the ridiculousness of Disney+, I first need to go over how the “streaming wars,” or different networks fighting over streaming services, have impacted Disney. It is no surprise that streaming has taken over how we as consumers have absorbed our TV. Nowadays, my first thought is always what’s on Netflix rather than first going to Xfinity on Campus, which Brandeis provides, to browse through channels (unless of course it is “The Bachelor” because I am on that every Monday). But streaming is revolutionizing how we take in TV programs and, when Netflix had the rights to the Disney movies, a CNBC report from 2019 found that Disney was losing upwards of a billion dollars a year. So naturally the most important thing for Disney to do to stay in business is increase its share in streaming industries and create its own. Disney improved ESPN+ and increased its share in Hulu to over 30 percent to become the majority stock owner. However, the hidden issue with the streaming world is that it is incredibly expensive. 

Running a streaming service comes with the cost of buying servers to house the show data and running studios to create exclusive content. It is a money pit to operate a streaming service, but once one becomes sizable it can bring in a profit and drive other services out of town. Disney+ was launched in 2019, and Disney knew it would operate on losses at first, but once it got a large enough subscriber base, it would begin to make back what it lost from Netflix.

So here we are in 2021, with a number of streaming services all competing for our money. The only issue is that Disney+ is playing dirty. Buying the rights to Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios allowed Disney to entangle those iconic studios into its corporate vine. Studios which produced movies that the three most recent generations can all say were defining moments in cinema and imagination for them. My dad was so enamored by Star Wars and by watching the run through the Death Star by the X-wings as a kid that he won a county fair for his C-3PO costume. Speaking personally, I loved “Iron Man 3” so much, as well as all the different suits, that I used to have dreams about being in one of them, and I even made little kid drawings as to how I was going to build one (presumably out of sticks and broken glass from outside). The point I am trying to make here is that Disney now owns a part of the public’s nostalgia. If we want more content for the movies and characters we love, we need to go through Disney.  

This is how Disney+ plays dirty. They know we want more Star Wars and MCU action, so now we cannot continue in the movie trilogies without watching their independent TV shows. If we want to know what Finn has to tell Rey in episode nine, we need Disney+. If we want to be able to watch “Dr. Strange 2: Multiverse of Madness” and understand what happened before it and after “Endgame,” we need Disney+ to watch “WandaVision.” If we want to be up-to-date with the series and characters we love, we need to play by Disney’s rules and buy their service.      

That is downright unfair. For some people it is simply not within their budgets to be subscribed to so many streaming services at once. It may only be $6 a month, but for some families struggling through the pandemic on unemployment benefits, it’s not a good call to make to be deciding between TV and food. Every family will choose food over TV, but now the series which they love and use to entertain their kids at home while they look for work is forsaken. Stories which carry such optimistic messages and can inspire hope through these tough times are unattainable. It seems simply unfair for a corporation which makes shows that inspire us to keep fighting to now hold them from us, lock and key, showing no remorse for being the exact opposite and putting people down. Disney needs to step up and realize that some features, no matter the profit, can hurt people more than they intend—we need better access to the characters that raised us and are raising all the kids at home in quarantine right now.