Rumour: WandaVision will be half sitcom/half MCU movie, will introduce Wiccan & Speed

Out of all the new titles announced for the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there’s none that intrigue me more than WandaVision. This is mainly because the upcoming Disney+ series makes no damn sense. Following the events of Avengers: Infinity War, Paul Bettany’s Vision is no longer in the land of the living (as much as synthetic beings animated by an Infinity Stone could be said to be living), so how can he be sharing the screen with Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff? The clue for me was always in the title, as I suspect the upcoming show will be some kind of “vision” of Wanda’s psyche, using her powers to potentially manipulate reality to bring back her fallen lover.

We got some more hints of this weird non-realistic take in August, when Marvel showed off some key art for WandaVision at Disney’s D23 Expo, accompanied with a sizzle reel of footage from the Dick Van Dyke Show. The comic book TV series will somehow be pulling inspiration from the classic 1960s US comedy show. The artwork (seen below) implied the same with an old-school aesthetic blended with subtle comic book hints hidden in the shadows on the wall: Vision’s shadow has a light spot on his head where the Mind Stone should be and Wanda’s shadow looks like the iconic headgear that her comic book counterpart wears.

A new rumour from reliable scooper Daniel Richtman (via MCU Cosmic) has now seemingly shed some more light on Marvel’s plans for WandaVision, and it’s still very weird. According to the report, the six-episode show will start off being a complete sitcom, with each of the first three episodes having a distinct focus of different time frames. The first will feature just Wanda and Vision, the second will see the couple’s family expand to include two babies (we’ll get back to this bit now), while the third will see the kids all grown up. The final three episodes will then change gears completely and go into full Marvel blockbuster movie mode, with the events playing out there tieing back directly into the MCU.

If this rumour is true, it will make WandaVision one seriously tricky show to balance tonally. And if the other reports are true of Disney+ boasting weekly episodes instead of full-season premieres, it’s not as if you can binge the whole lot to give a more coherent feeling.

For reference this is the actual casting call (Big Red is the working title for WandaVision) https://t.co/Xyf3lE0xOH pic.twitter.com/3rq0UJikse

— Jacob (@CinematicBanter) October 12, 2019

As for those babies, this claim has been backed up by actual casting calls for the production which is currently operating under the codename of “Big Red”. Comic book fans will know that this ties in perfectly with Wanda and Vision’s source material as the comics saw Wanda unknowingly using her reality-warping powers to create twin “sons”. The process of their births was particularly convoluted and comic book-y, but all you need to know is that the two boys, Billy and Thomas, would eventually develop mutant powers of their own and become the young heroes Wiccan and Speed. According to the rumour, the back half of WandaVision will focus heavily on the artificially created Wiccan and Speed being integrated into the bigger MCU and the issues this will somehow cause.

CRAZY THEORY ALERT: What if in creating this artificial life, Wanda loses control of the process and inadvertently creates/triggers the mutant gene across the world? This would be like a reversal of House of M – the comic book event in which Wanda used her reality powers to nearly completely eradicate mutants from the world – and give Marvel an organic way to introduce mutants into the MCU. And seeing as how Wanda is already viewed with some distrust from the public as she was central to the inciting incident that sparked the Sokovia Accords, it would lend itself well into humanity distrusting these super-powered mutants showing up among them.

Even if WandaVision isn’t the first step in introducing the X-Men to the MCU, I’m pretty sure it will be in introducing the Young Avengers. The second Hawkeye aka Kate Bishop has already been confirmed to be in the Hawkeye series on Disney+, and a grown-up Cassie Lang aka Stature (daughter of Scott Lang aka Ant-Man) was included in Avengers: Endgame. With Wiccan and Speed also joining the mix, that would mean that half the team would already be in place in the MCU.

The only missing members would be Patriot aka Eli Bradley, grandson of Isaiah Bradley, the original test subject for the super soldier serum; Hulkling aka Teddy Altman, the shapeshifting son of a Skrull princess and the original Kree hero Mar-Vell; and Iron Lad/Vision aka Nathaniel Richards, a time-displaced teenager that would eventually grow up to become the time-travelling villain Kang the Conqueror. All of these characters could very easily be included into the MCU straight away, with the exception of Hulkling. Mar-Vell was played in Captain Marvel by Annette Bening, so she can’t exactly be his father. Nothing a little tweaking can’t fix.

Of course, even if any of these theories pan out, this is all still way, waaaaay down the line. WandaVision is expected to start filming in the next few weeks but is only scheduled for release Q2 2021.

Last Updated: October 15, 2019