The following contains spoilers for the first two episodes of Marvel’s WandaVision.
“We are an unusual couple,” Wanda repeatedly proclaimed in trailers for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first offering through the Disney+ platform. Now that the first two episodes of the series have dropped, the audience can see for themselves just how WandaVision works. Using classic sitcoms as inspiration, the first two episodes of the series see Wanda and Vision trying to blend in to a typical suburban 1950s community. Eagle-eyed fans will also notice that blending in to that community is a whole lot of Easter eggs.
Some of them allude to other corners of the MCU, while there are some that hint at what’s to come in the show, as well as just what inspiration has been taken from the comics.
The series premiere sees Wanda and Vision unable to remember why there’s a heart on the calendar on August 23, or 08/23. Some fans might think that date interesting if they remember that Disney D23 Expo in 2019 fell on the same day, featuring quite a few Marvel announcements – including some about WandaVision.
Comic book fans might also read a bit more into that date as issue 238 of the original Avengers run is an interesting one that could provide some hints for the show. In the comic, Vision sees himself reanimated after having been shut down. It involved passing through a specific energy barrier. Though WandaVision doesn’t reveal how Vision is now alive after the events of Avengers: Infinity War, if the date is a comic book reference, it might provide a clue to what surrounds the suburb of Westview.
In classic sitcom style, both episodes feature a commercial as an act break. Both are nods to the wider MCU, but more specifically, to Wanda’s own past.
The first commercial features a new state of the art toaster created by Stark Industries. The toaster, when the button is depressed, actually sounds a little like the Iron Man thrusters when they’re in use. It also beeps a countdown for the toast being made, sounding suspiciously like a beeping bomb. Fans will remember that Wanda and her brother were trapped in the rubble of their house at a young age with a Stark Industries bomb. It was a formative experience for her that led her right to the commercial in the second episode.
The second commercial is for a watch, though it’s being called the Strucker in a nod to Baron von Strucker, the same Hydra scientist who experimented on Wanda and Pietro. In fact, the watch even has the Hydra logo on the face.
SWORD is a comic book organization responsible for monitoring the planet for threats coming in from outer space, though WandaVision marks its first time in the MCU – or a live action Marvel TV show. A recent poster for WandaVision indicates it’s getting a slight change for the MCU; the acronym stands for Sentient Weapon Observation Response Division here instead of Sentient World Observation and Response Department. It could be a reminder that the government sees Wanda as a weapon, not as a person. The symbol for the organization is present in a few places in the first two episodes.
Fans get a glimpse of it at the end of the premiere when it’s revealed that someone is watching Wanda and Vision on a monitor. The symbol also appears on the red and yellow helicopter that Wanda finds in her bushes, and on the back of the beekeeper’s outfit when he emerges from the manhole in the middle of the neighborhood.
Fans wondering if the names that appear when SWORD is revealed to be monitoring are significant will have plenty to think about. While most of them don’t appear to be significant, Abe Brown is. Abe Brown was a classmate of Peter Parker’s in Spider-Man: Homecoming, though he survived the Infinity War snap and graduated during the five years that half of the population was gone.
While speaking with Dottie, the song “Help Me Rhonda” is interrupted with a message for Wanda. A voice asks “who is doing this to you, Wanda?” That voice will sound familiar to MCU fans because the actor was also in Ant-Man And The Wasp.
It’s Randall Park, who plays Jimmy Woo. In the aforementioned movie, he was an FBI agent assigned to monitor Scott Lang. In Disney+’s WandaVision he might just be a part of SWORD.
The second episode features an animated credit sequence that calls back to the likes of Bewitched and I Dream Of Jeannie. It also features a ton of Easter eggs.
There are nods to Vision’s attempt to live a normal life in the comics. Fans will spot his slippers and even bones to acknowledge the synthetic dog created when he tried to blend into suburbia. There are also bigger nods to a pair of comic book characters important to Wanda.
During the grocery store segment of the sequence, there are signs for “Bova Milk” and “Aunty A’s Kitty Litter.” The former is a nod to a human-like cow created by the High Evolutionary that acted as the midwife when Wanda and Pietro were born. She also raised Jessica Drew (Spider-Woman). Aunty A, however, references Agatha Harkness. She’s a witch who teaches Wanda how to use her powers and even wipes Wanda’s memory of her own children to protect Wanda’s fragile psyche. She also has a cat named Ebony.
Scarlet Witch’s most significant comic book storyline is that of House Of M. In it, she uses her magic to bend reality to her will after realizing that she had two children that were completely erased from existence. She creates a world that will give her a happy ending and attempts to completely erase mutants from existence. While there aren’t mutants to erase in the MCU (yet), there are several nods that WandaVision is the MCU’s House Of M.
One comes in the first episode. When Wanda pours wine for the dinner with the Harts, the label on the bottle indicates the brand is Maison de Mépris. That translates to “house of contempt” or “house of misery.”
Another indication is in the closing credits. The pixelated effect used to create different images related to Wanda and Vision, from their comic book attire to their house in the streaming series, is very similar to artwork in the House of M run. When Wanda alters reality in the comics, people and things are pulled apart, pixelated, and their pieces rearranged or eliminated completely.
When Vision heads into work in the first episode, he makes sure to wear his tie. That tie has a symbol in the middle of it. While it’s not exactly the same as the tie he wears in Tom King’s Vision comic book run, it is similar enough to stand out to comic book readers. On the page, it matched the diamond pattern of his superhero attire, which might make the audience wonder if it’s going to match a specific design here.
The cabinet that Vision and Wanda use for the magic act in the second episode also calls to mind another Vision accessory, though from the MCU. There’s a silhouette on the cabinet that looks like the shape of the mind stone that Thanos pulled from his head.
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