WandaVision's Creepiest Details Reveal a Horror Story About Wanda Being Consumed by Her Own Grief

Now that we know the big picture of WandaVision, we can look past the week by week sleuthing, and the even creepier details show how all nine episodes represent a plunge into darkness as Wanda's lifelong inner demon consumes her. The result is what I think is the most unnerving horror title the MCU has made to date.

So let us go episode by episode, past the Easter eggs, into how this is a story about a cursed witch being dragged through hell. That curse takes the form of a television set. By whom or by what? The answer may surprise you.

WandaVision Episode 1 Hides a Poltergeist, a Poisonous Plant and a Rosemary's Baby Scream

Right away I spotted something new in the Marvel Studios title card. Wanda was moved from her usual Phase 3 spot, marching out of those doors in Age of Ultron, to an isolated island in the moment she nearly killed Thanos in Endgame. When Wanda is isolated on an island is when she is most dangerous. The shift to black and white, a 4:3 aspect ratio and condensed audio mimics an old television set, and the titles riff on The Van Dyke Show, whose star actually consulted on the series. Instead of tripping over the footstool, Wanda and Vision phase through a chair. But they are dancing exactly where that chair would normally sit. Who moved it? Poltergeist.

We later learned this setup comes from Wanda's earliest memories of The Van Dyke Show season 2 episode It May Look Like a Walnut, in which Rob wakes up in a Twilight Zone scenario where a scary TV program has become real. Their licence plate reads 0102, as they are the first and second stars of this reality. In 2021 a lot of speculation was wasted on every number being a comic reference. The real Easter eggs are the creepy ways the sitcom medium is used to gaslight Wanda. This is better understood as a Truman Show style deconstruction of the American sitcom than an adaptation of comic mythology.

Wanda jokes about Vision's "indestructible head" after she last destroyed it, and she fuses the pieces back together the way Thanos used the Time Stone, resurrecting her love just so she can kill him again. Ads push new televisions, and a newspaper headline about a baby's first word pushes the other subliminal message: have some kids. Agnes, named from the first and last syllables of Agatha Harkness, brings a plant with a purple ribbon, which I'm pretty sure is dumb cane, poisonous to dogs. Her cameo brooch shows the Three Graces, taken from her mother Evanora, suggesting this coven's eternal beauty might be an evil dating back to ancient times.

Agnes mentions an anniversary of June 2nd, the day the Salem trials began in 1692. A Stark Industries Toastmate 2000 makes the Iron Man repulsor sound and blinks red like the Stark warhead that destroyed Wanda and Pietro's home. At dinner, the word children seems to set Wanda off. Mr. Hart's fork is suddenly in his hand without time to take a bite, a sitcom gaffe that is really a glitch: her grief intervened to choke him. Mrs. Hart begs "stop it" as her eyes sob and her mouth smiles, the real Westview woman underneath. Debra Jo Rupp's breakdown evokes Georgina's in Get Out, and the closing credits scream echoes Rosemary's Baby.

Episode 2 Puts the Hydra Lab on Wanda's Wallpaper

The Bewitched style intro begins with six stars forming another hexagon. The magic cabinet carries the Mind Stone design. Maybe it's just me, but the dining room wall is the Sokovian mountain Hydra lab where Wanda was experimented on, sitting in plain sight like the Overlook in The Shining or the demon face in The Exorcist. A toy helicopter appears in colour with a SWORD logo, an invasive drone her hex turned into a toy, recalling the Twilight Zone episode It's a Good Life.

Matt Shakman confirmed the original plan was for Señor Scratchy to be Agatha's familiar, transforming into a demonic form guarding the Darkhold. When Wanda suggests she could "just be myself", Agatha is clearly threatened. Wanda controls Westview, but not fully and not always consciously. She is being manipulated by two forces above her: Agatha and her own grief. It logically follows that Agatha must have a secret connection to that grief. Using this episode's magic act metaphor, Agatha is the audience plant.

The "devil's in the details" line made the whole internet lose its mind. It wasn't intended as a literal Mephisto setup, but it shows Agatha's misdirection, making Wanda more afraid of Dottie. The baby propaganda makes this a Rosemary's Baby plot; any cosmic force whispering make babies so you can lose them is arguably worse than the devil. The radio plays Help Me Rhonda, and Jimmy Woo asks who's doing this, suggesting it is not fully Wanda's doing. The piano turns from three dimensional to flat with no visible cut, like a magic act that worked too well.

The beekeeper, really SWORD's Franklin, is what I call unexplained arbitrary horror, like Kubrick's dog costume man in The Shining, which the novel explains but the film never does. Rather than being frightened, Wanda rewinds the scene, turning it to Technicolor like Dorothy, revealing a garishly red outfit: the bloodstains she kept seeing had stained her head to toe.

Episodes 3 and 4: Vision Looks Straight at Us, and the Corpse Was Real

In the Brady Bunch episode, Vision quotes As You Like It, a monologue comparing life to a theatrical performance. His Kitty Karry All doll references a Brady episode about a lost toy, foreshadowing Wanda spending more time seeking her lost sons than being with them. Right before Vision says something's wrong, his eyes dart and for one frame he makes direct eye contact with us, and that triggers the edit. His phrase "uncharted waters" sets up the ship of Theseus. Closed captions reveal Agnes knows the pregnancy is fine; what isn't part of the plan is Monica, and Herb was probably about to say they were all trapped.

Episode 4 plays like a cop in a cult film such as The Wicker Man, and Elizabeth Olsen's breakout was as a cult escapee in Martha Marcy May Marlene. Darcy finds cosmic microwave background radiation, the same type that creates TV static, plus video signals recalling Contact. The residents' names are art directors on the show, and Agnes has no New Jersey ID. Darcy and Jimmy are audience surrogates. Franklin sees the town turn monochrome only after eye contact with Wanda, so it is black and white only in the perceivers' minds.

But grey corpse Vision in the background is objectively how he is, one of the scariest shots I've ever seen in the MCU, with the dent from Thanos's fingers. He asks what's wrong like a ghost unaware he's dead in The Sixth Sense. How often has Wanda been seeing this and hiding her expression? As Voodoo Child plays, Vision looks above the TV, directly at us.

Episodes 5 and 6: The Babies Only Cry on Cue

When Vision breaks the script with Agnes, the babies stop crying, then resume when the women go back into character. Wanda, taking direction from Agatha, is cueing her babies to cry. Up through the 80s, baby actors were reportedly scared with monster masks, and it's hard to find reports admitting to it, but they probably also pinched them. Wanda uses her own grief to make them cry; for her babies, it's real.

Monica recalls a hopeless feeling "like drowning", correctly identifying the culprit as grief. Norm feels Wanda's grief mixed with his own. Wanda herself lets Sparky out, dooming him, and wears her Avengers outfit only once to intimidate SWORD. She tells the boys not to age themselves up, a double standard, and they call her out: "we can't reverse death." When she asks if Vision thinks she controls everything, I believe her: the hex was her grief hijacking her powers. Evan Peters' Pietro was a meta recasting gag, probably a misfire, but on brand for grief torturing us. I still can't explain a grey arm I spotted in a mirror. This is a series designed to make us see ghosts.

In the Halloween episode, Agnes is last shown in the kitchen trying to grab the boys. Pietro is shot in split focus, the eavesdropper, and is Ralph puppeted by Agatha, promising to "give you grief". The boys were perhaps our biggest red herring for the Mephisto arc, but they are manifestations of Wanda's grief, or her love persevering. Shadowy decorations hide human legs, and a frozen couple was shot on a split screen deliberately out of sync. Wanda's eye shows a shadow: her future self as the Scarlet Witch.

Episode 7 Reveals Two Demons: Agatha Outside, Grief Within

I think the threatening letters are Agatha in the director's chair interfering with Wanda, like Kubrick pressing Shelley Duvall for a traumatised performance. Her plant glitches late, showing her experience lets her resist Wanda's sorcery to a certain extent. "Do you think maybe this is what you deserve?" is Kathryn Hahn's voice pitched lower. The commercials are interruptions by Agatha and grief, as advertising exploits sitcoms. Agatha freezes with her hand over the rabbit, considering activating it. A reshoot added HP logos and Panasonic Toughbooks with different actors, likely late product placement; glitches make their way in.

The Darkhold's cover depicts Chthon, the demon from Multiverse of Madness. All torment is the friction of two evils: an outer demon trying to get in and an inner demon trying to get out. The hex was a partnership between Agatha and grief. Agatha All Along is, I think, the best needle drop we've ever gotten in the MCU, and the baby looking up at the boom mic is right: all this equipment is invasive.

Episode 8 Makes Agatha Arguably the True Protagonist

In Salem, Agatha's purple sorcery drains her coven, a union with grief formed too young to know it fully. Wanda had several waves. The Van Dyke walnut episode keeps playing after her parents die: sitcoms can withstand bombs. Vision delivers the theme of this series and, in my opinion, the phase: "what is grief if not love persevering?" Wanda's line that it keeps knocking her down is right, so I don't think having her slide back in Multiverse of Madness was bad writing. When you're drowning, seeing a lifesaver doesn't make fighting the waves easier. I really think those with the biggest gripes maybe haven't had enough experience with depression.

Agatha hurts far fewer innocents and makes more active moves, arguably the true protagonist. She threatens kids, but so does Ripley, and she earned her spinoff.

Episode 9: Wanda Wins, but Grief Gets the Last Word

Agatha's black fingertips are an ink stain from the Darkhold, a trait Wanda later shares. Its Scarlet Witch has a face of pure darkness, the face of grief. Vision's ship of Theseus question becomes: if grief rots part of Wanda, is she the same? Absolutely; grief does not define us. Agatha wants Wanda to hit her, but the trick is transforming grief, so Wanda uses her own runic barrier. When called cruel, Wanda smirks.

Shakman added a recomposed line, "I'm sorry for all the pain I caused," giving her a task. In Multiverse of Madness, the boys cry "stop it", Mrs. Hart's words. Olsen confessed she was accidentally hit on set and "I felt so bad that I used it as the actor". WandaVision is a tragedy proving how vicious grief can be, while giving us a tool: grief is our own love persevering.

Is Agatha really the true protagonist of WandaVision?