WandaVision Director Revealed a Deleted Finale Scene That Turned Señor Scratchy Into a Demon

Director Matt Shakman revealed a deleted scene that would have recharacterised Señor Scratchy in a horrifying way: Agatha's rabbit transforming into a big demon in her basement. The sequence was actually filmed, involving Darcy, Monica, the kids and Ralph, before it was set aside.

With the series completed, the directors could open up a lot more in their post interviews, as is normally the case at Marvel Studios, and talk about what they wanted to do, what they achieved and what they were happy with. This reveal came directly from the director himself.

Matt Shakman described a full demon Señor Scratchy sequence in the Darkhold scene

The reveal came on the Fatman Beyond podcast with Kevin Smith, just days after the finale. In a clip where the conversation turned specifically to Señor Scratchy, Shakman jumped in to say there had been a longer sequence and explained it in full. He said there was more planned for the rabbit that ultimately could not be done, because the finale already had so many chess pieces on the table.

As he described it, Darcy, Monica, the kids and Ralph all meet up in Agatha's house and think that maybe they should steal the Darkhold, because the kids had seen it in the basement while Agatha was holding them hostage there. They go down, reach for the book, and the rabbit hops up. Thinking it is Señor Scratchy, they reach over to pet him, and he hisses.

From there, Shakman described an American Werewolf in London style transformation in which "the rabbit turns into like this big demon right it's like her familiar". A Goonies style set piece follows as the group tries to escape from the rabbit and the basement. He was clear that this was not just an idea on paper: "we actually shot the scene it was a lot of fun everyone was great in it but we ended up moving it aside because it was this sort of huge detour from everything else we had going on".

Why the Señor Scratchy scene ended up on the cutting room floor

I think there are multiple players in the answer he gave, because several things were going on. Other reveals that surfaced the same day indicated that some production cameos and other material were originally planned and then cut, a lot of it because of Covid restrictions. It was also known that the team was trying to finish the visual effects right up until the last moment.

They might even have had to delay the finale had the first three episodes aired simultaneously, the way they originally intended. That is how down to the wire they were. When you think about that, adding the effects work needed to turn Señor Scratchy into a demon, for a sequence that did not play into the narrative, becomes a hard sell.

This is quite common, not only for Marvel movies but for movies in general. There are rewrites on set, lines that do not hit right, and scenes that may be awesome but do not work in the context of the story. A lot came out about Avengers: Endgame, which had originally planned extra content such as the Living Tribunal, but at the end of the day it did not work in the context of the story being told.

A demon may have been a misstep for Disney Plus's first Marvel series

I think this is interesting because of something I said a couple of times, mostly when people were talking about Mephisto at the beginning of the series. Whether or not it could sell in China was a totally different conversation. My main question was whether Disney, being such a family oriented company, would really let Mephisto, the devil, be the first villain in its first Marvel series, one that was bringing in new viewers who had never seen any of the Infinity Saga.

On that same note, would Disney really be willing to have a demon in one of the first series it ever put out on Disney Plus? It would have been totally different if other shows had already been released, perhaps Falcon and the Winter Soldier, or kid friendly material like Ms. Marvel, or if some of the movies had come first. Much in the way that Deadpool as an R rated franchise is going to be an outlier on Disney Plus, I feel having a demon show up in the first series, while capturing all these new viewers, might have been a misplay in and of itself.

You have to imagine that a couple of people on the sidelines who oversee these things, mostly Kevin Feige, might have had something to say. Even though the sequence was awesome, if it did not fit in the context of the story, it was scratched anyway, pun totally intended.

WandaVision hinted at the occult without showing a full devil figure

Not seeing Mephisto during this series did not mean, as I saw it at the time, that he would never appear in the MCU. As fans of Doctor Strange from the comics will tell you, one of the only things missing from that first Doctor Strange film was signs and signals of the occult, which has always been part of Strange's story.

I am not saying WandaVision did not hint at it at least a little. It showed the resurrected witches recognising the Scarlet Witch, and it referred to the Darkhold as the Book of the Damned. The hints were there the entire time. But there is an enormous chasm between innuendo of that kind and presenting a full on devil figure like Mephisto, or even a fleshed out demon, in your very first Marvel series on Disney Plus.

From analytics I could see, these shows were reaching, as Disney intended, a much wider audience, wider both in age and in world region. That is the sort of thing Disney wanted to achieve with the service. I think it might have been a bit of a misstep to put a demon, or any real devil symbols, in a series whose story was not about that in the first place. Although that may be where the story ends up going, it was not needed here.

WandaVision left too many storylines unresolved for me

There were too many plot holes for me in the first place, and too many storylines that seemed to go nowhere. Maybe now we find out that is because of the Covid restrictions, rewrites and things that had to change. Still, the series barely showed any of Monica's powers or explained them at all.

It also barely let us know who that engineer was even though she calls him a him. There was a lot of other setup that I feel did not pay off, and Darcy's story did not really wind up in the finale at all. There was a lot more that could have gone on.

Either way, we did get a complete story. Marvel had spoken loudly about wrapping up its shows with a bow, and while there were no huge cameos, they are not needed as long as the story stays true.

How would you have felt if WandaVision had shown Señor Scratchy as a full demon, and do you think Mephisto still has a place in the MCU?