WandaVision Explained: All the Easter Eggs in Episode 6

Another week brings us yet another jam packed episode of WandaVision. This time, in TV-land, we’ve zoomed forward to the late 90s/early-naughts with a fourth wall breaking, Malcolm in the Middle style sitcom. Meanwhile, outside in the real world, S.W.O.R.D. Acting Director Hayward has gone full General Buck Turgidson in his efforts to take down Wanda. It’s also Halloween in Westview and the spectre of death looms large.

As always, the episode was full of fantastic little references, callbacks, Easter Eggs, making for yet another enriching viewing experience. Let’s break them all down…

Season 1 | Episode 6: “All New Halloween Spooktacular“	38 minutes
Director | Matt Shankman	Writers | Chuck Hayward and Peter Cameron
Disturbances on Halloween separate Wanda from Vision, who looks into anomalous activity in Westview.

1. The opening credits were a dead giveaway to this week’s theme. Fox’s Malcolm in the Middle, which premiered in the year 2000, revolutionized the sitcom with its breaking of the fourth wall, offbeat visual look, and great use of extreme close-ups and slick editing. It is something that Episode 6 of WandaVision employs to great effect: from using the idea of a Halloween special to address themes involving death and loss to Vision’s own Hal-like misadventure away from his family.

2. Wanda and Vision’s Halloween costumes are of course a nod to their classic comic book looks.

3. Billy and Tommy are both wearing versions of their respective comic book costumes for Halloween as well. Billy is dressed as Wiccan, and Tommy as Speed. The both of them also begin to manifest their respective superpowers in this episode. In the comics, Wiccan has his mother’s powers while Speed has his uncle’s.

4. An additional deep cut: in the comics, Billy is gay and Tommy is bisexual. Would this then be the first LGBTQ superheroes in the MCU?

5. Heh, Pietro says that he has the “XY chromosome.” In Marvel Comics, a mutant is a human being that possesses a genetic trait called the X-gene. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Get it?

6. Tommy says Billy is secretly afraid that Uncle Pietro is a vampire. Friend of the site, and super geek, Dr. Marc DiPaolo, has a theory that the villain of the piece might be an energy vampire who is tricking Wanda into using all her power to maintain Westview so it can suck up all of her life-force. (Which also kinda ties into this week’s in show commercial.) Mephisto? Nightmare? N’Astirh? It could even be currently inhabiting the body of either Ralph or Pietro. Possibly even Hayward.

7. WHERE HAS Wanda been hiding all the kids?

8. This week’s commercial might be the most out there one yet? Taking inspiration from an old school Lunchables ad, it doesn’t really make a reference to Wanda’s past, but might be a wink at who is doing this to her. Is an energy vampire snacking on Yo-Magic Wanda?

9. In an interesting VFX decision, Marvel decided to use the speed effect seen in Avengers: Age of Ultron and not the one from Fox’s X-Men movies.

The energy inside has re-written your cells on a molecular level twice. It’s changing you.

Darcy Lewis to Monica Rambeau on why she can’t go back into “the hex.”

10. But what is it changing her into? Did WandaVision just give us a backdoor origin story to mutants in the MCU? Will anyone who has moved in and out of “the hex” begin manifesting superpowers?

11. Now that Darcy has been sucked into “the hex,” does that mean she’ll get superpowers too?

12. Why doesn’t Vision remember who the Avengers are or that he was a part of the team?

13. Agnes dressed as a witch for Halloween? Finally! Just call her Agatha already.

Damnit, if Westview, New Jersey isn’t charming as Hell…

Pietro/Peter Maximoff

14. Vision finds himself at a literal crossroads. The devil references run deep in this series. Maybe it is Mephisto who is pulling all the strings.

Other Easter Eggs and Wild Speculations

15. The lyrics to this week’s theme song are:

Wanda
Wanda Vision
Don’t try to fight the chaos
Don’t question what you’ve done
The game can try to play us
Don’t let it stop the fun
Some days it’s all confusion
Easy come and easy go
But if it’s all illusion
Sit back, enjoy the show
Let’s keep it going
Let’s keep it going
Through each distorted day
Let’s keep it going
Though there may be no way of knowing
Who’s coming to play

16. The lyrics seem to provide more meta-commentary by asking just to just sit back and enjoy the show.

17. Tommy claiming to be the “cooler twin” seems like a burn on both Billy and their mother.

18. Pietro seems to be sporting a tattoo that says “MOM.” Multiverse of Madness anyone? Or it could just be the actual tattoo that Evan Peters has in real life.

19. Tommy describes maximising their candy acquisition as “kick-ass.” Wanda then repeats, “Kick-Ass?” questioningly out loud. Both Aaron Taylor-Johnson (the MCU Quicksilver) and Evan Peters (the Fox Quicksilver) were in the movie Kick-Ass.

20. Before they run off, Pietro and Tommy say, “I feel the need for speed!” Which is a popular line from the movie Top Gun, but also a reference to Tommy’s superhero alias.

21. While out trick or treating, Pietro tells Billy and Tommy to “unleash hell, demon spawn.” This is a reference to the boys’ origins in the comics, as they were created using parts of the demon Mephisto’s soul.

22. When talking about his death, Pietro says that he “got shot like a chump in the street for no reason at all,” making reference to a popular fan gripe about how regular bullets shouldn’t have been able to kill Quicksilver.

23. That theatre in the background is showing The Incredibles and The Parent Trap. The former being about a superhero family relocating to the suburbs in order to live a normal life, while the latter is about reunited long lost twins. (Both movies are also available to stream on Disney+.)

24. The Coronet is also a poem by Andrew Marvell (get it?) and tells about Christ, the devil, and the sins of man. It’s all very fitting.

25. They were also screening Night of the Living Dead in the town square. A movie about zombies? This might very well tie in to our theory that everyone in Westview is actually dead and being reanimated by Wanda.

26. When Vision breaks through “the hex,” the showrunners frame his death in a similar manner to how it happened in Avengers: Infinity War.

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27. The “All New” in the title is likely a reference to the way Marvel sometimes brands their comics. What’s more, in 2015, following the events of Secret Wars, they rebranded their main line of comics as part of an “All-New, All-Different Marvel.”

28. And finally, in a quick aside, the series makes knowing reference to Wanda’s accent slowly disappearing over the course of the Marvel movies.

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You can check out all of our explainers for WandaVision here.

WandaVision is now streaming on Disney+.