This article contains WANDAVISION Episode 3 spoilers, and potential spoilers for future episodes, the wider MCU, and Marvel Comics. We have a spoiler free review here.
WandaVision episode 3 is the first full color episode of the series, and moves the setting from the black-and-white 1960s of the previous episodes to a vibrant Brady Bunch-esque Technicolor of the early 1970s. There’s lots of fun weirdness to find between the lines, both from a Marvel and MCU Easter eggs standpoint and callouts to classic sitcoms of its era.
Let’s get to work…
Let’s start with the big one…
The Brady Bunch
This episode borrows almost the entirety of its aesthetic from all-time classic sitcom The Brady Bunch. Wanda and Vis’s house strongly resembles Mike and Carol Brady’s humble ranch home inside and out. The gorgeous wide wooden staircase in particular is a real tell – as is Wanda’s bold ‘70s attire that seems to be right out of Marcia Brady’s closet in later seasons.
The opening credits title card even adopts the 3×3 grid format as seen on The Brady Bunch. Of course, the Wanda and Vision household isn’t as jam-packed as the Brady’s but there is an undeniable underlying theme of family throughout this installment.
Mork and Mindy
Mork and Mindy was a 70s-into-early-80s show with a weird sci-fi couple, in the sense that the husband is an alien. In the final season, there’s a one-and-done pregnancy storyline episode called “Three the Hard Way.” In it, Mork is the one with child. Due to his alien biology, an egg comes out of his navel and out of it hatches an elderly man, as their people age backwards.
Other Sitcom Stuff…
- When Wanda tries to hide her pregnancy from Geraldine, she holds a small basket of fruit in front of her large stomach. This is likely a playful homage to all of the not-so-creative ways that sitcoms have tried to hide actress’s pregnancies over the years. And funny enough, it seems like the fruit Wanda is eating at various points in the episode corresponds to the fetus size as outlined by their doctor.
- The doctor’s name is “Dr. Stan Nielsen.” As in the Nielsen Ratings. And maybe Stan as in, you know, Stan Lee…
And now for the Marvel and MCU stuff!
Scarlet Witch
In the opening credits when Wanda is reading a magazine on the couch and using her powers to vacuum, she’s reading another issue of Glamorous (which we saw in episode one). This magazine features a woman in a red bathing suit, kind of like some of the skimpier Scarlet Witch costumes Wanda has worn through the years in the comics.
Vision
Similarly, the scene of Vision barbecuing on the patio shows him wearing an era-appropriate shirt in his comics colors of green and yellow. The swingset he’s struggling to put together is also in his colors.
Wanda’s Pregnancy and the Twins
- When Wanda gave birth to her kids in the comics, something similar to what we saw here happened: nobody, not even the doctors, were aware that Wanda was carrying twins, so the arrival of the second child was a surprise to everyone.
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- The way Wanda’s pregnancy rapidly progresses through the episode feels like a reference to Avengers #200, one of the most hated issues of any Marvel comic. In the comic, Carol Danvers is discovered to be suddenly pregnant and goes through the entire process over the course of a day or so. Nobody really bats an eye at this and all the creepy, questionable parts are handwaved as a good thing.
- When Wanda’s pregnancy starts causing chaos, she and Vision strike a pose based on The Vision and the Scarlet Witch #1.
- Not particularly relevant right now, but in the comics, none other than Doctor Strange delivered Wanda’s twins. Given all the ways that this show is supposed to tie into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (some of which we think we’ve already spotted), this is just worth a mention.
Billy and Tommy
The twins are named “Billy and Tommy” just as they are in the comics. They were later reincarnated as Billy Kaplan and Tommy Shepherd. You likely remember them as Wiccan, the First Gentleman of the Kree-Skrull Alliance, and Speed…uh…his best man?
Very briefly, because a full discussion of this would take a while: Billy and Tommy were born to Wanda and Vizh in 1985’s Vision and Scarlet Witch. They were unmade when it was revealed they were figments of Wanda’s powers and imagination, imbued with shards of Mephisto’s soul and reabsorbed into Master Pandemonium’s arms in West Coast Avengers. They reappeared as heroes in the first Young Avengers series, and reunited with their mother in Avengers: Children’s Crusade. That is an extremely quick summary of what might be the most Gordian continuity knot in the entire Marvel Universe.
Geraldine
- Teyonah Parris returns as “Geraldine” for this episode, but this time it’s even clearer that there’s more to her than meets the eye. As we’ve pointed out before, “Geraldine” is a cover for Monica Rambeau, the daughter of Carol Danvers’ best pal Maria Rambeau, and someone who will play a significant role in Captain Marvel 2.
- “Geraldine” tells a rambling story about her boss, “Mr. Haddix.” There’s no obvious immediate Marvel connection with the name. However, it might just be part of the motif – the stork tries to eat the fish on Geraldine’s pants, maybe it’s actually “Mr. Haddocks”? We’re still not finding any Marvel connections with this one, though.
- It’s also probably not an accident that Geraldine’s cover story involves her working for an ad agency. The commercials are one part of the show where reality peeks through vividly. Ad agencies are, in a sense, manipulating reality for consumers to make them want a product more, and there’s no shortage of reality manipulation going on here.
- Geraldine is rocking a striking blue and white outfit, with starburst type designs on them that could either recall the log she wore as Captain Marvel, Pulsar, and her other superheroic identities…or possibly dimensional portals.
SWORD
- Geraldine is wearing a SWORD pendant, so it’s pretty clear who she’s working for. Those pesky SWORD agents seem to be everywhere, from our pal The Beekeeper to the folks monitoring Wanda in that command center to…well, who else in Westview is working for SWORD?
- While we’re talking about Mr. Haddocks and Geraldine’s job, the cereal in Geraldine’s work story – Gravity O’s, with the marshmallow moon men – is likely a nod to SWORD’s mission in the comics, when they used to watch space rather than “sentient weapons.”
We wrote more about SWORD here.
AGNES
Agnes’ brooch looks like it has three witches, one holding a scythe. There are a few options for what this might be referencing:
- The obvious one is the three witches from Macbeth who use prophecy to steer the main character to his doom.
- Less obvious and much more unlikely is the Weird Sisters, Quasar villains (!) working for Maelstrom, an Inhuman/Deviant hybrid who has had several run-ins with the Avengers
- And the least likely: Jennifer Kale (from Man-Thing), Satana (sister to Damian Hellstrom and the Daughter of Satan), and Topaz (of Werewolf by Night…fame?), three Marvel witches who starred together in a four-issue Jemas era series in 2004. It’s definitely not this one.
Pietro and Age of Ultron
Geraldine mentions to Wanda that Pietro was “killed by Ultron,” referencing the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron. This is clearly one of the memories Wanda is trying to suppress with her sitcom antics, and it doesn’t go well for Geraldine/Monica…who finds herself “banished” back to the real world of the MCU.
Westview
We actually just wrote in detail about the significance of Westview (which is kind of a real place, too), but here we see the town’s slogan: “Home, it’s where you make it.”
Wanda is indeed “making” her home in whatever image she feels most comfortable with at the moment, so this is a further clue to the House of M-esque shenanigans that seem to be going on with her.
Other Marvel Stuff
- Not strictly a Marvel thing, but the opening credits feature a lot of hexagons, the same kinds of shapes you see in beehives, which brings our creepy beekeeper friend from episode 2 to mind.
- The paint cans in the nursery are from a fictional brand known as “Simser” which promises “a universe of color.” Jeremy Simser who works as a storyboard artist on WandaVision, and who is also doing work on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. So…perhaps “a multiverse of color” might have been more appropriate?
- Dottie’s husband fill is reading a newspaper with a headline that says “TWO FIRE HYDRANTS ADDED ON MAIN STREET” but the paper is folded so it says “TWO FIRE HYDRA” at one point. Also…twins. Note the “twin motif” on Phil and Dottie’s lamp, too.
- Wanda sings a Sokovian lullaby to the twins.
- The episode goes from fullscreen to a more MCU-appropriate and cinematic widescreen when it cuts to Geraldine/Monica back in what appears to be the real world. Not that there was any doubt, but whatever is happening in “sitcom land” is definitely not reality, and time travel has nothing to do with whatever’s going on here.
- The final song is The Monkees’ “Daydream Believer” which was also used in trailers. The title is pretty on-the-nose if you consider the dominant House of M-esque theory about what’s actually happening on this show, and that Wanda is using her powers to manipulate reality.
THE COMMERCIAL
Hydra Soak implores its consumers to “Find the Goddess Within.” We don’t have to tell you what HYDRA is, but what about this “find the goddess within” stuff?
Well, we can kind of speculate that this is a reference to the upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder, in which Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster will end up becoming the new god/goddess of thunder, just as she did in the comics.
Spot anything we missed? Let us know in the comments!
