WandaVision Explained: All the Easter Eggs in Episode 8

White Vision! They’re actually doing White Vision! I mean, we did talk about all those callbacks to John Byrne’s run on The West Coast Avengers, but we didn’t think they’d actually do it on WandaVision. Talk about a deep cut.

So, let’s not waste any time and get right into it…

Season 1 | Episode 8: “Previously On”	46 minutes
Director | Matt Shankman	Writer | Laura Donney
Wanda embarks on a troubling journey revisiting her past for insight into her present and future.

Why the Hell is Vision White?

1. During the mid-credits tag, we finally learn of Acting Director Hayward’s sinister plan. He didn’t just want to decommission and dismantle “the most sophisticated sentient weapon ever made,” he wanted to reactivate Vision and exploit him for his own (nefarious?) ends. So just who or what is White Vision?

2. In John Byrne’s 1989 “Vision Quest” story arc from The West Coast Avengers, Vision is dismantled and left for dead. When Hank Pym (the original Ant Man) finally reassembles the synthezoid, he finds it impossible to restore Vision’s mind, leaving him a mere shell of the man he was. White Vision was a cold and unfeeling android with no memory of his life with Wanda.

3. Vision would eventually revert back to his usual self, but the whole “Vision Quest” saga was an incredibly heartbreaking story that eventually led to the disappearance of Wanda and Vision’s children and the dissolution of their marriage.

4. Here’s what we think might happen in the final episode. There’s going to be a big old MCU smackdown between “Westview Vision” and “White Vision.” “Westview Vision” will win and end up taking over White Vision’s body as a way to finally be free of the prison that is “the hex.” Wanda and Vision live happily ever after?

Okay, But Why Does the Episode Begin in Salem… in 1693?

5. If it wasn’t already clear, Agatha is an actual witch. She’s been alive for hundreds of years and that introduction kinda implies that she’s been trying to amass power for all that time.

6. In the comics, Agatha Harkness isn’t quite a villain. Let’s call her chaotic neutral. She was first introduced as Franklin Richards’ governess in Fantastic Four #94. And she finally revealed herself as a witch while fending off the Frightful Four when they came to abduct young Franklin.

7. After she was done nannying for the Fantastic Four, her next gig was to mentor the Scarlet Witch. In the comics, she would teach Wanda the ways of the mystic arts.

8. Over the years, despite their complicated and sometimes contentious relationship, the both of them would go on to form a real familial bond.

9. What is clear from WandaVision, however, is that Agatha has been using Wanda and trying to sap her power/energy like she did with her own coven (including her mother!) at the beginning of the episode.

You’re supposed to be a myth. A being capable of spontaneous creation, and here you are using it to make breakfast for dinner.

10. At the end of the episode, Agatha confirms what we suspected from last week, that Wanda is indeed a Nexus Being. This essentially makes Wanda the most powerful hero in the MCU. It makes her Godlike. It’s going to be really interesting to see what this means for the stories in Phase 4.

11. What this series is doing is introducing the idea that Wanda already had powers long before Hydra started experimenting on her with the Mind Stone. Which brings up the question as to whether or not the Maximoff’s were her real parents. Were she and Pietro also adopted like in the comics? Go on Marvel, you know you want to bring Bova into the MCU.

12. This scene from Episode 5 of WandaVision, “On a Very Special Episode…”, also makes a lot more sense, as Agatha too was learning the extent of Wanda’s powers. She was genuinely shocked when she asked: “You can do that?”

13. We still don’t know if Agatha is the big bad of this series. She seems to be in it for purely selfish reasons, and it looks like the greater villain here is, in fact, Hayward. Wanda, in her overwhelming grief, may have manifested this artificial reality, but she still doesn’t quite understand the extent of her powers.

Is Hayward Mephisto?

14. Honestly, we didn’t think they’d actually go down the whole Mephisto route because it’s all a little bit comic book silly. But they’ve done everything else, so yeah, maybe Hayward is Mephisto.

15. Given that Hayward doesn’t exist in the comics, it’s entirely likely that the writers are using him as a surrogate for Mephisto. God knows they don’t just introduce random characters for the sake of it.

16. How does Hayward know the extent of Wanda’s powers? No one else, not even Agatha, seems sure of what she’s capable of. And yet, at S.W.O.R.D. headquarters, Hayward tells Wanda:

Not everyone has the kind of power that could bring their soulmate back online. Forgive me. Back to life.

17. What we do know, however, is that Hayward is a duplicitous little shit. Wanda didn’t steal Vision’s body. Wanda wasn’t on some kind of grief stricken rampage. He lied when he said told Wanda he was merely dismantling Vision. He was, instead, trying to figure out what makes him tick, in order to bring him back online. Maybe he’s trying to build an army of Visions.

18. What the mid-credits tag confirms is that even traces of Wanda’s magic is powerful enough to do some real resurrecting.

What About the Children?

19. We don’t know what’s going to happen to Billy and Tommy (heck, we don’t even know if they’re real!), but can we please not go down this route. We think Wanda has been through enough, don’t you?

Other Easter Eggs and Wild Speculations

20. Once again, we called it! With regards to why Wanda was channeling her grief through classic sitcoms, we speculated the following back in our Episode 6 Guide for the Casual MCU Viewer:

We don’t know really. On the face of it, the narrative wants us to believe that Wanda, using her immense reality manipulating powers, has created this weird television utopia where Vision is alive and they are living a perfect, all American existence.

Why sitcoms? That’s unclear too. One theory is rooted in our own experience of America, and how we here in Malaysia consumed their popular culture. Being from the third world herself, Wanda’s only exposure to the idea of America may have come from the kind of television sitcom that is perennially in syndication. Growing up here in the 80s and 90s, our TV stations would often fill up their respective schedules with reruns of wholesome and relatively inoffensive American content.

That (faux) representation of the ideal nuclear family (something she and Pietro never had), neighbourly suburban living, and an all around peaceful, non-superhero existence, is something that Wanda craves so much that she seemingly found inspiration in the sitcoms she might have watched as a child.

All of that also feeds into this week’s Malcolm in the Middle homage and the evolution of the American sitcom over the years. As Wanda begins to lose control over what’s going on around her, it makes sense that the sitcoms that she’s simulating become more anarchic.

21. At 46 minutes (including the credits), this is the longest episode of the season so far. There has been some speculation about the last episode being an hour long, which makes sense given how many plot threads there are to tie up.

22. The episode of WandaVision begins with the traditionally red Marvel Studios logo turning purple, likely reflecting the shift away from Wanda to Agatha.

23. Stop toying with us Marvel! Come on now! Runes that just happen to look like Magneto’s helmet?

24. So Fake Pietro, or “Fietro,” is just something Agatha conjured up. She tells Wanda that necromancy was a non-starter since the real Pietro’s body was on another continent. So was this just a bit of fan service and stunt casting on the part of Marvel? Or is there more to Evan Peters showing up?

25. In a clever twist, the rest of this episode of WandaVision plays out as a reverse of what happens in the comics. There, Agatha erases Wanda’s memories in order to protect her from the trauma of losing her children. Here, Agatha takes her on a journey through Wanda’s memories as a way of getting her to reconnect with the various traumas that led her to this point. It’s basically the In Treatment episode of WandaVision.

26. Much like Billy and Tommy, young Wanda and Pietro are also wearing their comic book colors.

27. The episode of the Dick Van Dyke show the Maximoffs are watching is called “It May Look Like a Walnut.” In it, Rob watches a scary sci-fi movie and then lives in fear that a walnut will steal his imagination and his thumbs. Relevant much?

28. Correct us if we’re wrong, but is Wanda the first human in the MCU to have naturally occurring superpowers? (Hawkeye, Rhodey, Black Widow, and Sam don’t have any powers. Strange is essentially a magician. Peter was bitten by a radioactive spider. Cap and Bucky were super-soldiered. Carol got hers from the Tesseract. Hulk is gamma. Black Panther ate a flower. Scott and Hope have supersuits. Thor and Loki are gods. Starlord is the son of one. The other Guardians are aliens. Vision is a robot. And Tony Stark is rich.) Is she a mutant and not a mutate?

29. In the Hydra flashback, when the bad scientists force Wanda to confront the Mind Stone, she sees the outline of the classic Scarlet Witch floating down towards her. Is it a vision of her future self?

30. Will they go the way of the comics in implying that there always was – and there always will be – a Scarlet Witch?

31. Wanda and Vision are watching an episode of Malcolm in the Middle where the house collapses on Hal. That’s an unnecessarily grim callback to her tragic past!

32. ?

32. We finally know how much vibranium makes up Vision. Three billion dollars worth!

33. ???

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34. On the property deed, we see the name Kate Weddle. She works in the art department of WandaVision.

35. As Westview “begins,” we see another quick reference to “The Snap!”

36. Stretch it out? Like Mr. Fantastic stretches it out? Okay, fine, now we’re just stretching it out.

37. The movies at the theatre change to “Big Red” and “Kidnapped.” Has Wanda (Big Red) been kidnapped? By whom?

38. And there you have it, the first ever reference to “The Scarlet Witch” in both WandaVision and the MCU.

39. And finally, all great sci-fi must have a Blade Runner reference.

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

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

WandaVision is now streaming on Disney+.