WandaVision: What is Going on With the Beekeeper?
There's a mysterious beekeeper sneaking around the neighborhood in WandaVision. But what's his connection to wider Marvel and MCU mythology? We have some theories...
This article contains WandaVision episode 2 spoilers. We have a spoiler-free review here.
There’s a disturbing moment in Marvel’s WandaVision episode 2 that breaks up the otherwise note-perfect rhythm of sitcom life. Wanda, out on the street in front of her house in the evening, spots a manhole cover being pushed aside…and a man in a beekeeper suit climbs out. He doesn’t seem too pleased that she spots him, either.
It’s a moment that we first saw in one of the recent trailers, but it didn’t make it any less unsettling when it happened onscreen in this episode. So who is WandaVision‘s mysterious Beekeeper and what could he mean for the future of our suburban MCU pals? We have a few theories…
A.I.M.
We’ve known since the trailers that a brand new secret organization would be joining the MCU, which is why we’re thrilled to welcome Advanced Idea Mechanics back to the party. And yes, as some folks kindly reminded me, we did meet AIM in Iron Man 3, but in the comics, AIM are a crooked super-science company founded by Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker, the Avengers: Age of Ultron curtain-jerker and the man who activated Wanda and Pietro Maximoff’s metahuman powers.
Their agents were known for dressing like beekeepers. Seriously, look at these dorks…
Perhaps this is the MCU’s way of…wait…what’s that? You say that’s a very visible SWORD logo on his back? Ahem. Moving on…
S.W.O.R.D.
Let’s try this again. We’ve known since the trailers that a brand new secret organization would be joining the MCU, which is why we’re thrilled to welcome SWORD to the party. In the world of the MCU, SWORD stands for “Sentient Weapon Observation Response Division” and Vision certainly looks and sounds like a sentient weapon to us.
We know that SWORD is monitoring the weird events Wanda seems to be generating thanks to the final shot of the first episode. The SWORD logo on the beekeeper’s back follows on from Wanda retrieving a mysteriously full-color toy helicopter from her bushes earlier in the episode. These are more than just David Lynch-esque touches of weirdness, and seem much more ominous when you consider what might be happening.
Is the “beekeeper” really someone in a radiation-style protective suit, infiltrating whatever zone Wanda has taken over/remade with her powers, and this is just how her tortured mind is choosing to interpret him? More worrisome is what that toy helicopter meant…did she unconsciously bring down an actual helicopter that tried to investigate this area, perhaps inadvertently killing SWORD agents in the process?
Anyway, he’s definitely part of SWORD, but let’s just explore this to its logical possible conclusion…
Swarm
A classic episode of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends that gave ’80s kids nightmares for much of their lives involved a weird creature that formed a body made entirely of bees that chanted the word/his name “Swarm” in creepy fashion over and over again and turned innocent bystanders into extraordinarily creepy bee people.
But the animated version of Swarm had nothing on the Marvel Comics version. There, Swarm was a Nazi scientist and bee enthusiast whose body was devoured by mutated bees, and his consciousness became part of their hive mind. That’s right, a Nazi made entirely of bees menaced the Marvel Universe and Spider-Man in particular on more than one occasion. And you thought 2021 in the real world was off to a weird start.
And then, of course…
The Grim Reaper
Marvel’s Grim Reaper isn’t actually, y’know, THE Grim Reaper. He’s Eric Williams, the brother of Simon “Wonder Man” Williams, and quite frankly, an enormously overdramatic (and stupidly racist) pain-in-the-ass who kept showing up to spoil Wanda and Vision’s domestic bliss.
Why do we think he could be the Grim Reaper? Ummm…no good reason, to tell you the truth. It’s just that “beekeeper” sorta rhymes with “grim reaper” and we figured since ol’ Eric is such a crucial part of so many of Wanda and Vision’s adventures that maybe there was a way they’d sneak him in here. Plus, they snuck his helmet into the Bewitched-esque animated opening of the second episode and…ok, fine, it’s not the Grim Reaper. Please stop yelling at me.
But if the guy under that beekeeper suit is named Eric Williams, you’ll all hail me as a genius later.
Written by
Mike Cecchini is a man with a deep and abiding love of comics published before he was born, low-budget sci-fi, lo-fi garage rock, giant monster movies,…