Avengers: Endgame was a timely and incredible resolution to a decade’s worth of world and character building for Marvel. As the ultimate showcase of the strength of Marvel and Kevin Feige’s strengths, Endgame broke all the records. From the box office, to the sheer amount of online conversation, the film marked the end of an era where carefully places Easter eggs in a couple dozen movies all came together and put an end to a legendary era for Marvel Studios. But what comes next? After nearly 2 years, Marvel has finally put out its first piece of work since Endgame, Wandavision. As the first Marvel series, Wandavision follows one of the most famous heroes, Wanda Maximoff (aka Scarlet Witch) and her robot boyfriend, The Vision.
Wandavision is definitely a “first-of-its-kind” production for Marvel… and not just because it’s a series. The tone of the show is an odd one, where we see our beloved Wanda and Vision in a 50s to 90s themed sitcom series. The show definitely takes a more comedic approach than a heroic one.
Marvel dropped the first two episodes of Wandavision on Disney Plus on Friday. The two episodes were mostly in black and white and left its audience instantly ready for more, mostly because no one could understand what was happening for the entirety of the two episodes. A lot of questions have already been raised as to this new reality presented in the show. How much of it is real? How much of it is Wanda’s own imagination? More importantly, who is behind this?
Here are a few theories so far that hint to the possible explanations for this… [Caution: SPOILERS AHEAD]
After the first two episodes, there’s not much we know. What we do, is that Wanda seems to be stuck in a weird reality, and someone has put her there. Throughout the episodes, we see people observing this sitcom reality. The people observing are often dotting references to SWORD. SWORD is an organization in the comics that deals with extraterrestrial threats (think SHIELD but for space). You may or may not recall that we’ve seen SWORD in the MCU before, in the Captain Marvel film. This means that the explanation for Wanda’s experience can be extraterrestrial.
A second clue is the interlude we get in the middle of both episodes. In typical sitcom fashion, we get retro ads in the middle of the episodes that, at first glance, seem harmless and inconsequential. In reality, digging a little deeper reveals a couple of worrying nods to Wanda’s past. In episode 1, we get the toaster oven ad. A fairly harmless seeming ad, but that gets a lot grimmer as you look deeper. The toaster oven is made by Stark Industries and sounds like a ticking bomb right before the toast pops out. As we know, when Wanda was a kid, she had an encounter with a Stark Industry produced bomb. It killed her parents and left her and her twin brother paralyzed with fear for days on end. In episode 2, we get a more straight to the grim type ad. This one advertises a watch by the brand Strucker and Hydra. We’re very familiar with Hydra in the MCU. An important reminder is that they were the organization responsible for experimenting on the Maximoff twins and eventually giving Wanda her powers. Both ads, while harmless at first glance, seem to be connected to Wanda’s past in some way. Definitely worth keeping an eye on the ads of the remaining 7 episodes.
Episode 3 of Wandavision drops on Disney Plus on Friday, January 22nd.
Cinephile Talks 