WandaVision: Marvel Comics Accurate Vision Costume Hints at Mystical Story

The first full trailer for Marvel’s WandaVision dropped during the 2020 Emmys, and with it came a TON of new information about the show. But there’s one quick little nod to comics history that might herald a shift in how the Scarlet Witch and Vision are portrayed in the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe.

For a brief moment, Vision joined his wife the Scarlet Witch in wearing a comics-accurate costume. That’s right: he’s rocking the big yellow cape, the drab green body, and the diamond. Even if it’s only for a second, and clearly during trick or treating, it’s still there, a massive divergence from the (drab, muted, if we’re being honest) MCU standard that he’s been in since Avengers: Age of Ultron.

See for yourself…

That design is straight out of Vision’s first appearance in 1968’s Avengers #57. Vision’s costume design was very of the time: the GIANT collar was how designers coded for mystical characters (see the original Iron Fist costume or Doctor Strange), while the forehead diamond is equally mystical and cosmic (cf. Adam Warlock). This aligns well with who the character was when he first appeared – he was a technological marvel, a synthezoid that was by all appearances and considerations alive (with organs and tears…lots of tears), whose primary power was intangibility, making himself ghostly and, to the Wasp who named him, a bit scary.

He developed quite a bit from there, growing into his relationship with Wanda, marrying her, having children, going insane, being deconstructed and stripped of his emotions, having his babies turned into some dude’s arms, then using his ex-wife’s memory engrams to create a realistic simulation of suburban ennui.

Vision’s classic costume is a subtle nod to that history that adds into the overall discomfort of the entire trailer, one piece of many very small nods to the complicated history of the pair that hints at the troubling direction that Wanda seems to be pointed in. We know that the babies, the couple’s relationship, and the suburban ennui are set to be themes of the show, but it’s those classic costumes and what they represented when they were designed that were, to me, the biggest hint at just how weird this series might actually get. And that’s before we even get to the fact that Kathryn Hahn is very obviously playing Agatha Harkness.

For more on WandaVision, Agatha Harkness, ’70s Marvel costume design, or pandemic-related exurban ennui, stick with Den of Geek!