Mythology Gag / WandaVision

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When your Halloween costume evokes your comics costume.

As par for the course for works by Marvel Studios, WandaVision pulls elements from various comics and other stories in order to tell its own.

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Multiple Episodes

• The energy field surrounding Westview is in the shape of a perfect hexagon, and each "episode" appears to Iris Out in the shape of a hexagon, alluding to Wanda's "hex powers" in the comics. Come Episode 5, and Darcy even nicknames the anomaly "The Hex" because of it, proving it isn't accidental.
• "Pietro" being played by Evan Peters alludes to him playing a similar character (Peter Maximoff/Quicksilver) in the X-Men Film Series.
• The Vision's corpse at S.W.O.R.D. HQ seen in Episodes 5 and 8 looks like a similar scene from West Coast Avengers, down to Vision's skin being removed, made only of wires and stretched in a star shape.
• The outfits Billy and Tommy wear throughout the show are colored the same as the superhero costumes they eventually wear in the Young Avengers comics, with Billy in red and black and Tommy in green and white.
• The tradition of a witch's name ending in the letter 'a' is continued here with Wanda but slightly subverted in that Agnes' is really Agatha.

Episode 1 ("Filmed Before A Live Studio Audience")

• The floating wine bottle that Wanda pours out at the dinner table has a label that looks very similar to the House of M logo, and the brand name "Maison Du Mepris" translates from French to "House of Contempt"... Or "House of M" for short.
• The episode takes place on August 23rd, also written as 23/8. The Avengers #238 is a comic about bringing Vision back to life. Additionally, one of said issue's lead characters is Monica Rambeau, who also features as a central character in WandaVision.
• Agnes says that her wedding date is on June 2nd. June 2nd, 1692, was when the Salem Witch Trials started. In the comics, Agatha Harkness claims that she is a survivor of the Salem Witch Trials.

Episode 2 ("Don't Touch That Dial")

• In the intro, when the animated Vision phases down through the floor, we see the several bones and the Grim Reaper's helmet. In the comics, the Grim Reaper hates the Vision, seeing him as a cheap copy of his brother Wonder Man, and in The Vision (2015) he ended up attacking the Vision household, then getting killed by Vision's wife, Virginia, and buried in the backyard.
  • Also in the intro, when Wanda's at the grocery store, an advert can be seen in the background advertising "Bova Milk." In the comics, Bova was the uplifted cow who served as Magda Maximoff's midwife. There is also an ad in the Supermarket for "Auntie A's Cat Litter". In New Avengers #26, an amnesiac Wanda ^note who later turned out to be a Doombot tells Clint Barton that she is under the care of her "Aunt Agatha", said Agatha also having a cat called Ebony.
  • Again in the intro, Wanda and Vision's house has a simplistic statuette of The Whizzer on a table. In the original Earth-616 continuity, Whizzer was a Golden Age hero with superhuman speed due to receiving a blood transfusion from a mongoose to treat a cobra bite while on safari in Africa. He was thought to be Wanda's father in the comics for several years and was killed off in an issue of the first volume of The Vision and the Scarlet Witch. Whizzer himself appeared in the second season of Jessica Jones where he was an IGH experiment.
• For their magic show, Wanda and Vision used the stage names Glamour and Illusion. This references the characters Illusion (Ilya Zarkov) and Glamour (Glynis Zarkov), Wanda's neighbors in the second volume of The Vision and the Scarlet Witch.
• The image painted on the Cabinet of Mystery resembles the Mind Stone.
• There is a "57" on the water cooler in the animated opening and on the helicopter that Wanda finds. The Avengers Vol. 1 #57 is where Vision makes his first appearance.
• Agnes' rabbit is named Señor Scratchy, referencing Agatha Harkness' son, Nicholas Scratch, in the comics. Alternatively, "Old Scratch" is yet another euphemistic name for the Devil.
• The Strücker watch in the commercial is set to 2:42. Issue #242 of The Avengers (first series) had Vision getting a new body. Given the shape of the hands on the watch, them being in that position also makes them resemble Loki's Scepter.
• Wanda wears a sexy stage magician ensemble similar to Wanda's first costume in the comics, and the costume is even shown to be red in BTS footage.
• The man in the beekeeper suit doubles as a Red Herring. Readers of the comics will think his appearance is a hint that the whole thing is orchestrated by Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM). AIM Mooks typically wear protective yellow suits that are derisively compared to "beekeeper outfits" in and out of universe.

Episode 3 ("Now In Color")

• The hexagons in the opening theme are blue and red. Billy, in the comics, has more or less the same power set as his mother, but the magic appears blue rather than her red. Vision appears to have Super-Speed for the first time in this episode, which also alludes to Tommy's power set.
• While discussing the baby, Vision offers naming him Billy, after William Shakespeare. Vin, his son from The Vision (2015), was similarly fond of Shakespeare.

Episode 4 ("We Interrupt This Program")

• Monica is consistently referred to as Captain Rambeau, alluding to the comics where she was the first human to take on the name Captain Marvel, following the death of its originator Mar-Vell.
• As in Captain Marvel (2019), Maria’s Air Force call sign is shown to have been “Photon”, which was one of Monica’s superhero codenames in the comics.
• Much like in Episode 2, Monica's drone has the number 57 painted on its side, Avengers Vol. 1 Issue #57 being the first issue The Vision appeared.
• The corpse Vision has Monochromatic Eyes similar to Vision's appearance in the comics.
• The beekeeper outfit from episode two turns out to have started out as a hazmat suit, which is what members of AIM wear that other characters refer to as "beekeeper outfits".

Episode 5 ("On A Very Special Episode...")

• The family adopts a dog in episode 5, naming it Sparky, a reference to Vision's synthezoid dog from The Vision (2015). Additionally, Agnes claims he died from eating too many azalea leaves, similar to how in the comics Sparky died shortly after eating a leaf from a Wundagore Everbloom.
• Hayward expresses confusion over Wanda's lack of alias, referencing the fact that at the time, she still hadn't been called "the Scarlet Witch."
• "He will always be your brother." In the Young Avengers, the teenaged, reincarnated Billy and Tommy, despite being born into separate families and finding each other in their teens, accept each other as brothers once they discover their past life relationship.
• Monica mentions needing lead protection from "photons", referencing one of her monikers from the comics.
• Monica's dislike of hearing about Captain Marvel is one to the fact she was Captain Marvel at one time. Comics!Monica did not like hearing that Carol took up the name without talking to her about it.
• Wanda's showdown with the S.W.O.R.D agents is very reminiscent of Magneto's famous confrontation scene with the police during X-Men. Appropriately, Magneto was her father for much of her publication history.
• When Monica is X-rayed, the images don't show anything inside her body, not even bones or internal organs. All it shows is bright light in the image, a reflection of her having been a being of pure energy in the comics.
• The wardrobe in this episode pretty closely resembles the common attire on Full House. Elizabeth Olsen's sisters starred in this show, and she even made a cameo appearance in the final episode of it.

Episode 6 ("All-New Halloween Spooktacular!")

• Because it is a Halloween Episode, it allows Wanda, Vision, Pietro and Billy to wear costumes that reflect their classic comic book appearances, albeit with a Cheap Costume vibe. Wanda identifies her outfit as a "Sokovian fortune-teller" (doubling as a reference to one of Wanda's more revealing costumes supposedly being designed to reflect her Romani ancestry) and Vision considers himself a luchador. Lampshaded: Billy says that Halloween is about getting to be someone else for the day... while wearing the costume of his own comics counterpart.
• The first issue of The Vision and the Scarlet Witch also took place on Halloween, with Vision and Wanda wearing their Avengers costumes instead of actual outfits.
• Pietro being called a manchild, as well as his enjoyment of pranks, junk food, and video games, more closely resemble the X-Men Film Series' Peter Maximoff.
• Wanda asks Pietro if he remembers a kid at the orphanage with "a skin thing," possibly referencing Toad, their former teammate in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
• When Billy and Tommy go to get candy, Pietro yells to them, "Unleash hell, demon spawn!" In the comics, Billy and Tommy are revealed to be shards of the demon Mephisto’s soul, figuratively making them demon spawns.
• A metagag that doubles as reflecting Character Development, in past episodes of the Show Within a Show, Wanda and Vision reflected the idealized suburban couple. As Dysfunctional Family became more commonplace for sitcoms like Malcolm in the Middle couples like Lois and Hal were much less glamorized than Lucy and Ricky. Wanda and Vision reflect this as they are not on the best of terms with each other.

Episode 7 ("Breaking the Fourth Wall")

• The advertisement is about an anti-depressant called "Nexus" that will supposedly stop one from thinking It's All About Me. In the comics, a Nexus Being is someone who is the focal point of parallel timelines in the multiverse, as well as a font of mystical energy — and the Scarlet Witch is one. It also alludes to the Nexus of All Realities, the interdimensional gateway guarded by Man-Thing in the comics.
• Monica's uniform is reminiscent of her superhero costume when she was Photon in the comics. Her glowing eyes, resistance to damage, and ability to perceive electromagnetic waves are also based on her comics' powerset.
• When Monica goes through the barrier again the warping effect distorts the image of one of her sleeves to look like it trails around. Harkening to another one of her costumes in the comics.

Episode 8 ("Previously On")

• Agatha presumes Wanda always had her powers, believing that she kept the missile that fell in her home from exploding for two days by using a probability hex. As previously stated, Hex magic is what her powers were referred to in earlier stories, and her main power before going full Reality Warper was the ability to manipulate probability.
• When the Mind Stone empowers Wanda, she sees a vision of someone (presumably herself) in the full Scarlet Witch costume as depicted in the comics, headgear, and all.
• Wanda constructs her house during the creation of the Hex by conjuring blocks of matter into place. This is reminiscent of how her matter-rearranging reality-warping powers were depicted during the House of M storyline.
  • The above scene is filmed similarly to how Magneto demonstrated his powers in X-Men: Apocalypse.
• The Stinger reveals that S.W.O.R.D. scientists have successfully reactivated Vision's corpse, which is now a ghostly white instead of its original red and green coloring. The same thing happened to Vision after he was disassembled and rebuilt during the "Vision Quest" storyline from John Byrne's West Coast Avengers run.
• The second volume of the The Vision and the Scarlet Witch begins with Vision being held by government agents before Wanda breaks into the facility (blasting the door with her magic) and demanding they let him go. Once they do, the couple heads to the suburbs to live a quiet life. It ends differently, but this roughly describes Wanda's confrontation with S.W.O.R.D.
• Wanda and Pietro as children are seen wearing the colors of their comic costumes: red for her and blue for him.
• In a 1998 issue of Avengers written by Kurt Busiek, Agatha Harkness revealed to her former magic pupil Wanda that her powers were not just probability-altering hexes, but an ability to channel "chaos magic." Here, the reveal is given by Agatha again, but under completely inverted circumstances.

Episode 9 ("The Series Finale")

• When Tommy takes the S.W.O.R.D. agents' guns, he also takes the opportunity to steal an agents' hat and goggles, making him look very similar to his speedster uncle from another universe.
• Wanda's new costume mixes elements of her 1990s and 2000s uniforms.
• The cabin in the wilderness where Wanda settles looks very much like the one where Bruce Banner settled to work on his "anger issues."
• White Vision's modulated voice makes him sound very similar to one of his "dads", Ultron.
• The two Visions talking about the Theseus' Ship Paradox recalls a similar scene from an issue of the 2016-2018 The Avengers run, where Vision discusses the paradox with his future self.
• Vision shedding a single tear at the end of the episode recalls a similar panel from the comics◊, one of his most iconic appearances in The Avengers Issue #58.
• The way Vision and the twins break apart when Wanda first tries to bring down the Hex mirrors the way she kills Clint Barton in House of M - by breaking his body down into blocks of matter.
• 'Pietro' has been assumed by many fans to be Quicksilver in some way, shape, or form - particularly from the X-Men Film Series - but as it turns out, he's just a resident of Westview called "Ralph Bohner" who's been possessed by Agatha to play the part. This is pretty similar to Tony/Rhodes discovering that Trevor Slattery wasn't the true Mandarin in Iron Man 3.

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