Marvel’s WandaVision Episode 9: MCU Easter Eggs and Reference Guide

WandaVision episode 9 is as full of Marvel Easter eggs as you would expect, and directly sets up at least two upcoming MCU movies and several Disney+ TV shows. Here's what we found...

Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff and Paul Bettany as Vision in Marvel's WandaVision Episode 9
Photo: Marvel Studios

This article contains WandaVision spoilers.

The final episode of WandaVision is here, and it’s 45 minutes of big screen Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbuster chaos magic action…but on the small screen. And while pound for pound it’s a little lighter on Marvel Comics and MCU Easter eggs than what we’ve seen in previous weeks (let alone sitcom references, now that we’ve left that world long behind), there’s still PLENTY to dig in to and fun things you might have missed.

In particular, this episode sets up at least two upcoming big screen adventures with both Captain Marvel 2 and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But there’s elements from WandaVision that will also resonate in future MCU TV series on Disney+ as well.

Let’s get to work…and if you spot anything we missed, let us know in the comments!

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The Scarlet Witch from WandaVision

Scarlet Witch

  • Wanda gets her first official, full blown Scarlet Witch costume in this episode, and it looks really great.
  • Wanda goes back to her creepy, “sneak up on you and whisper in your ear and do witchy hand gestures” thing that we first saw her do in Avengers: Age of Ultron. We’re all about making Wanda a little scary again.
  • It seems that whoever holds the title of “Scarlet Witch” is more powerful than the Sorcerer Supreme, so Stephen Strange had better take notice.
  • At the end of the episode, in the second of the two post-credits scenes, we see Wanda in a tiny cabin at the foot of a beautiful mountain. This is almost certainly Mount Wundagore, the place where Marvel Comics canon indicates that Wanda and Pietro were born, and a place that continues to loom large in Scarlet Witch history.

Vision

  • Did they MAYBE miss a trick by not having White Vision’s voice come out as James Spader’s Ultron voice? Maybe. But this scene works so well in practice that it’s really hard to ask for MORE Marvel references than we’re already getting.
Marvel Comics The Vision
  • Right before Vision discorporates as the Hex ends, he sheds a single tear. This is a reference to one of the most famous Vision (or Marvel Comics in general) moments of all time. In Avengers #58, various members of the Avengers give Vision a rousing endorsement, particularly citing his heroism and humanity, before inducting him into the team. Vision excuses himself and sheds a single tear in private as further proof of that humanity.
  • In the un-Hexed version of Westview, one of the movies showing at the theater is Tannhauser Gate, a reference to the famous “tears in the rain” monologue at the end of Blade Runner. Fitting, considering the monologue came from a synthetic man accepting his own death in his final moments.

Billy and Tommy

  • Wanda makes an odd comment to the boys: “thanks for choosing me to be your mom.” Does this mean that they aren’t purely just creations of her own magic? Did she pull them from elsewhere in the MCU? Or somewhere else in the multiverse entirely?
  • During the second post-credits scene, Wanda hears the twins call out to her for help from …somewhere. Maybe they are still alive, but this smells an awful lot like bait to us. There are several villains we can think of that would try to lure a powerful being like Wanda into another more dangerous part of the multiverse, but let’s not start throwing “Mephisto” around again just yet.

Agatha Harkness

  • The whole banality of the setting for the big fight between Agatha and Wanda is particularly comic book-y in its own way. In most superhero movies or TV shows, the big fights are happening in big cities or battlefields or cosmic spacescapes. Having these two godlike beings throwing down on an ordinary suburban street kind of drives home the “anything can happen anywhere at any time” ethos of superhero comics.
  • When Wanda smashes a car into Agatha and crashes it into a nearby house, she initially only finds Agatha’s boots underneath the wreckage. This is yet another Wizard of Oz reference, namely how the Wicked Witch of the East appeared after being crushed by Dorothy’s house. There’s something else Oz-centric that comes up a little later.

Pietro and “Ralph Bohner”

  • Fietro having his own mancave lends itself to Fox Quicksilver’s basement dwelling in X-Men: Days of Future Past when he’s first introduced.
  • Agatha is revealed to have been living in Ralph Bohner’s home all along. Going back to the third episode, Agnes was giving Vision some info about Geraldine in order to make her seem suspicious (new in town, no home). In the end, she was secretly describing herself. Does this make her Agnes Bohner permanently?

The Ship of Theseus

The Ship of Theseus is indeed a real thought experiment that has haunted philosophers for thousands of years. While the WandaVision explanation of it is perfectly succinct and accurate, it doesn’t make sense to get into the deeper MCU implications of it here, which is why we wrote a whole ‘nother article about it.

The Darkhold

The Darkhold has shown up in Agents of SHIELD and Runaways prior to this, but it had a very different look to it. While this could just be a retcon of its appearance, it also might be a statement that we shouldn’t consider those shows part of the MCU proper anymore now that we’re getting rolling with the Disney+ shows.

Monica Rambeau and the Skrulls

  • Monica discovers her Hex-rewritten form can now absorb the kinetic energy of the bullets Director Hayward fires at Tommy and Billy. It’s one of many powers she will have as she develops her superhero abilities, and we will no doubt see more of them in Captain Marvel 2 whether she adopts the superhero code name of Spectrum or Photon.
  • The first Disney+ MCU show ends with a hero being recruited by Nick Fury (albeit remotely this time), much like Iron Man, the first movie in the MCU. Basically, Fury is summoning Monica to join him in space, where we last saw him at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home. It’s also worth pointing out that WandaVision takes place about six months or so before that movie.

Doctor Strange 2

  • Sam Raimi, director of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (which Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda will play a significant role in) once directed a film called Oz, The Great and Powerful, which is playing at the Coronet Theater in Westview.
  • The post-credits features a zooming into a cabin filled with all sorts of dark magic going on (looks like there are subtle runes everywhere, too). Interestingly enough, this is to hype up Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, directed by Sam Raimi. Sam Raimi got his start directing Evil Dead and later its sequels. The first two of those movies centered around a demonic cabin and were filled with plenty of over-the-top zoom shots. We write about how this Evil Dead connection specifically sets up Wanda’s connection to Doctor Strange 2 here.
  • When we see Wanda in astral form reading a big book of magic, that’s something we’ve seen Doctor Strange do in his own film.

Squeaky Shine

At one point, Agatha is perched in front of a billboard for a cleaning product named Squeaky Shine, which boasts its “all natural formula using the power of Mother Earth.”

This is a bit of a reach, but the author of the Darkhold is said to be the demon Chthon. The name Chthon derives from the word “chthonic” which usually implies some sinister, “underworld” connotations (it’s a creepy looking word, isn’t it?), but it can also sometimes just mean that things are of the natural world. The Greek goddess Persephone ruled the underworld at the side of Hades… and Persephone is one of the mythological earth mother symbols or…Mother Earth.

Miscellaneous Marvel Weirdness

  • The visuals on the superpowers in these fights were more interesting than they usually are. Vision’s beams had a cool spiral thing going on, very reminiscent of Piccolo’s Special Beam Cannon from Dragon Ball, while Wanda’s underhand hex bolt slinging had a very Johnny Cage’s arcing fireball from Mortal Kombat thing going on.
  • Wanda tells Agatha, “I’ll be seeing you,” which is one final TV deep cut. On the classic show The Prisoner, in which a former secret agent was forced to live a “perfect” life in a creepily pre-fabricated and controlled town, everyone’s way of saying goodbye was an ominous “be seeing you.”
  • Jimmy Woo puts in a call to someone at the FBI named “Cliff” but that’s all we get. There’s a one-off character from Marvel Comics named Cliff Randall, a SHIELD agent who appeared in exactly one story (which nonetheless had some alien overtones). In this case, it’s probably all a coincidence. Also, Randall Park as Jimmy Woo is delightful and needs to be in everything going forward and basically be the new Agent Coulson.
  • The episode features a slightly different version of the utterly tedious “hero’s choice” that we see in every superhero movie and TV show on the planet and which needs to be retired immediately: “save innocents or catch me, bwaahahahaha!” But in this case, it’s more nuanced, where Wanda can have a life with her family, thus damning the citizens of Westview, or she can do the right thing and save them.
  • This isn’t an Easter egg, but Darcy’s “have fun in prison!” was priceless.

And that’s it for our series on WandaVision Marvel Easter eggs! Thanks for joining us these last couple of months, and we’ll see you soon for similar deep dives into The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Spot anything we missed? Let us know in the comments!

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