WandaVision Trailer Breakdown: 10 MCU Secrets & Story Reveals
Vision and Scarlet Witch continue to get weird in the second and final trailer for the Disney+ series WandaVision. Here's our breakdown.
The Scarlet Witch and her synthezoid partner are back in the final WandaVision trailer before the Disney+ series' January release. Starring MCU familiars Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany, the new WandaVision trailer continues to promise a "Visionary New Age" for Marvel Studios, nodding to some of the strangest stories found in the pages of its comic book source material.
The superpowered couple have been in something of a limbo since the events of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, which sees Vision dead at the hands of Thanos and Wanda misplaced after awaking from the Mad Titan's Snap, and her resultant disintegration. Scarlet Witch's powers, though largely undefined, have been teased as some of the universe's most formidable; however, the final WandaVision trailer is really amping up the Wanda's comics-accurate reality-bending and magic-using history.
This makes sense considering Marvel's upcoming slate, which includes other seemingly weird projects such as a timeline-hopping Loki series, a multiverse-traversing Spider-Man 3 (which will reportedly bring characters from Sony's previously Spidey-centric franchises into the MCU), and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which will feature Olsen's Wanda in a prominent role. While there are far more questions than answers regarding what's to come in WandaVision, judging by the clues and Easter Eggs from the trailer, it is certain that the upcoming series will serve as a crucial pivot point for the larger MCU.
The WandaVision trailer begins with a puzzling exchange between Wanda and Kathryn Hahn's "nosey neighbor" character (rumored to be the witch Agatha Harkness), in which Hahn refers to Wanda as a "single gal" - a characterization at odds with the first trailer, which features Wanda in a wedding dress and the couple driving down the street in a car boasting a "Just Married" sign. Wanda gives a brief confused expression but quickly asserts that she is indeed "married to a man...a human man" before the scene is punctuated with discordant canned laughter. The WandaVision trailer seems to suggest that Hahn's character immediately accepts this information as fact, indicating that Wanda may be consciously or unconsciously influencing the world around her while those in her presence fail to notice.
The Monkees' popular song "Daydream Believer" - sung by Davy Jones - plays throughout the WandaVision trailer; however, it is given an unusual and appropriately psychedelic treatment. Vision's first shot in the trailer is accompanied by the lyrics "But it rings and I rise, wipe the sleep out of my eyes," perhaps referencing the android's unexpected awakening from his Avengers: Infinity War death. However, Olsen's many quizzical expressions and double takes could hint that the words also relate to Wanda's foggy and fractured mental state. This version of the tune really contributes to the trailer's eeriness as Wanda and Vision's mundane world grows increasingly unsettling.
While in their 7o's Brady Bunch-esque inflected reality, Wanda utters the WandaVision trailer's most meta line, which surely voices the feelings of many fans waiting eagerly for the series to drop on Disney+. However, based on the shot of Wanda and Vision which precedes Olsen's delivery, the two titular heroes appear be similarly disoriented by their continually changing and strange surroundings. In frame, the camera lingers on Wanda and Vision as the room around them morphs from black-and-white to color, and both observe in wonder. Unlike other shots in which Wanda appears to be consciously altering reality (her hands are often raised in ways seen previously in her film appearances), this change looks to be happening on its own. Is it really Wanda's doing and she just doesn't know it yet or are she and her lover just along for the ride as someone with more sinister machinations toys with them?
In a brief shot, the colorful mobile hanging over the crib of the couple's children springs to life and forms a cluster of fluttering butterflies. This may be another example of the show's mind-bending bizarreness, but it may also be a tiny Easter egg meant to indicate more magical implications. Memorably, in Avengers: Infinity War, Doctor Strange is shown using his sorcery to transfigure Thanos' deadly attack into a harmless swarm of butterflies. Additionally, Strange's first out-of-body meeting experience with the Ancient One, he pauses long enough to reach out to a single orange-winged monarch. If the insect is meant to be an indicator of magic, this would be huge for Wanda's power set within the MCU, since she - unlike her comic book iteration - is yet to tap into her skills as a sorceress. The fact that the potentially magical butterflies hover over the crib is also significant, as in the comics, her children Billy and Tommy are more-or-less conceived by magic and Strange himself is present at their births.
Kathryn Hahn's character makes numerous appearances throughout the new WandaVision trailer, and in one of them, she is accompanied by a man - identified as "Herb" in the subtitles - who greets her new neighbors. The mystery man's cameo is a brief one, but his name may refer to the comic book character "Herbert Wyndham," more commonly known as "The High Evolutionary," a figure who features prominently in the origins of Scarlet Witch and brother Quicksilver. Though Wanda and Pietro were previously identified as mutants and children of Magento, this backstory was retconned in 2015's Uncanny Avengers, which revealed that they were actually failed experiments of the High Evolutionary, a powerful being who obsesses over the genetic perfection of humanity.
It is becoming clear that the lovers will be spending some time celebrating Halloween, a choice made all the more appropriate considering the 1982 Vision and the Scarlet Witch limited series. In issue #1 (aptly titled "Trick or Treat!") the couple, desperate for a sense of normalcy and a life in the suburbs, move into a simple home - similar to the one shown in WandaVision - on Halloween. However, after opening a mysterious book full of Druidic Magic (a gift from Captain America), three neighborhood children have their Halloween night interrupted as they are transformed into ghouls who attack their new super powered neighbors.
In the first WandaVision trailer, a grown up version of Monica Rambeau (played by Teyonah Parris) was seen being hurled outside of the force field which separated the real world from the dreamlike town within, but the second trailer spends a bit more time with her. Monica, dressed in seventies garb, has a nightmarish exchange with Wanda and, after being asked who she is, a distressed Rambeau replies, "I don't know." Characters having a loss of memory and a sense of distorted reality is consistent with the "House of M" storyline, in which the Scarlet Witch creates an alternate universe where her father, Magneto, is the ruler. Is it possible that Monica, having entered the barrier undercover, lost her memories and was forcibly ejected because Wanda - or someone else - knew she didn't belong there?
Throughout the WandaVision trailer, Wanda and Vision both being to see cracks forming in their oddly perfect home and that growing realization comes to a crescendo with an incoming message via a radio, which attempts to break through their glamor. The speaker, whose voice is distorted, may be unknown, but he hurriedly asks, "Wanda? Can you hear me? Who's doing this to you?" This suggests that those outside Wanda and Vision's constructed reality believe someone else is moving the strings and the comics provide a few possible options. Professor Xavier, a powerful telepath, is key to the Scarlet Witch's construction of the "House of M" (his consideration of killing an out-of-control Wanda contributes to her snapping and braking the main universe). However, since there have been no real X-Men-related announcements, his involvement seems unlikely. Mephisto is another candidate, who played a role in the creation and subsequent erasure of Wanda and Vision's children, an event which shaped much of the Scarlet Witch's character arc in the mid-aughts.
Although he didn't appear in the initial trailer, Randall Park's Agent Jimmy Woo is briefly shown in the second WandaVision trailer. Park previously played the role to hilarious effect in Ant-Man and the Wasp, as an FBI agent and Scott Lang's parole officer. It is still unclear as to how Woo will function in WandaVision, but considering how much time has elapsed since his last appearance, it is possible that in the interim he has transitioned to a new department; perhaps previously-hinted S.W.O.R.D, a counterpart to S.H.I.E.L.D. which deals with larger and intergalactic threats.
If fans thought they had seen the last of the Infinity Stones, the closing shots of the new WandaVision trailer prove just how wrong they were. One of the trailer's most enticing sequences shows footage of Wanda staring wonderingly at the yellow gem as it seemingly reforms itself from mere particles. It is unclear as to whether or not it is being rebuilt on its own or by her own doing, but either way, its continued existence would be a game-changing revelation in the context of the MCU.
The stone was thought to have been atomized by Thanos after his Snap (along with the other Infinity Gems), but it is important to remember Wanda's special connection to the Mind Stone. Both she and her brother were powered by the stone after HYDRA's experimentation which preceded the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Her eventual partner Vision was, of course, kept alive by the Mind Stone's power, and in Avengers: Infinity War, she is deemed the only one left powerful enough to destroy it. Is it possible that she is the only being in the Marvel Universe also capable of reassembling a powerful object? Given the precipice of uncertainty on which WandaVision is teetering, truly anything is possible.