The Creepy Details That Turn WandaVision Into a Horror Story About Grief

With Vision Quest now promising to complete the WandaVision trilogy, I'm revisiting the series for its details, Easter eggs, pop culture references and Mephisto theories, as preparation for the hope that Wanda could reunite with her family.

This time I deliberately looked past the Easter eggs that ultimately didn't mean anything and went looking for cooler and creepier horror movie references instead. I think that makes this analysis perfect for October.

The Episode 2 beekeeper is WandaVision's version of the dog costume in The Shining

Wanda stands up with a sudden baby bump, an expedited pregnancy from the couple's moment together at the start of the episode. Then the beekeeper rises from the sewer with a SWORD logo on the back of his suit. Wanda simply says "No" and everything rewinds. We later learn this was a SWORD agent in a protective suit, warped by Wanda's Hex. Is the beekeeping connected to the honeycomb shape of the Hex? Honestly, I don't think so. I see it as what I call, as a horror fan, unexplained arbitrary horror.

The best example of that is Stanley Kubrick putting the man in a dog costume in The Shining. In Stephen King's novel, it refers to the hotel's owner making a man dress up as a dog and do something humiliating. It was still a strange choice for Kubrick, who famously did not care much about King's plot points or the ghosts in the hotel, and the moment is never explained in the film. That's how I choose to see the beekeeper: Shelley Duvall seeing the dog costume. Except Wanda isn't frightened. She live edits the scene back to where she was in control and turns everything to Technicolor, like Dorothy turning Kansas into Oz.

That transition reveals Wanda has been wearing a garishly red outfit the whole time, which is probably what Agnes meant when she offered friendly advice and said, "Yes, but it's too late for that." The bloodstains Wanda kept seeing throughout the episode had stained her from head to toe.

Vision makes eye contact with us right before the Episode 3 glitch

Episode 3 is in color, a 70s episode with an opening inspired by The Brady Bunch. Vision quotes the famous Seven Ages of Man monologue from As You Like It, an extended metaphor comparing a person's life to a theatrical performance, which parallels how Wanda and Vision's lives are a scripted routine in front of an audience. Vision practices changing diapers on a Kitty Karry-All doll, from the Brady Bunch episode where Cindy loses her doll and accuses Bobby before learning the dog, Tiger, took it. That's foreshadowing for Wanda, who will spend more time seeking her lost sons than being with them.

Then comes the terrifying "something's wrong here" moment. I hate it and love it. The edit isn't clean: when we cut back a few seconds, Vision's body contorts through a few poses before he resumes talking. I didn't notice until now, but just before the line, his eyes dart to the side and, for a single frame, he makes direct eye contact with us. He has seen through the reality, and that, not the questioning, is what triggers the edit. His phrase "uncharted waters" also sets up his later Ship of Theseus metaphor about himself as a vessel of repurposed parts.

Closed captions reveal Agnes whispering to Herb. Agnes says that's fine, as if Herb's concern were Wanda's rapid pregnancy, which is part of the plan. What isn't part of the plan is Monica. Herb was probably about to say they're all trapped in Wanda's Hex, but Agatha needs the Hex to continue. Wanda's Sokovian accent returns when she mentions her twin, Pietro, and while her lullaby isn't translated in English subtitles, the Brazilian Portuguese subtitles give the real lyrics.

Episode 4 casts Monica as the outsider cop in a cult horror story

Episode 4 opens with Monica returning after the blip, in a panicked long take of doctors and patients rematerializing. One visitor reappears beside a woman in a bed who must have no idea who he is. Monica runs into a man who appears in front of her, but rewind to the top of the take and he was already standing there. Through Monica, the episode follows the horror beat of outside law enforcement investigating the threat, like a cop in a cult film such as 1973's The Wicker Man. Elizabeth Olsen's breakout role was in Martha Marcy May Marlene, a film I love, as a cult escapee struggling to shake her paranoia.

A news chyron at SWORD says the Pope will speak at 6 p.m. Eastern, which would be midnight in Vatican City. Darcy Lewis detects cosmic microwave background radiation, the oldest electromagnetic radiation in the universe, dating back to the Big Bang. It's the same type of radiation that creates TV static, hence the Hex's staticky border, and the Big Bang connection is likely due to the Mind Stone. Darcy then finds video and audio in the noise, which recalls Contact, where the alien signal echoed back a TV broadcast of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

The residents' IDs use names of art directors on the show, and Agnes has no New Jersey ID because she wasn't originally a Westview resident. Darcy and Jimmy Woo act as audience surrogates, with Jimmy's board asking the questions YouTubers like me had. I love that it gives us a reflection of ourselves as we see the horror unfold through a glowing screen. From Darcy's perspective, the Episode 2 moment is the same abrupt jump cut Vision experienced. And from Franklin's, Westview is in color until he makes eye contact with Wanda, so the town is only black and white in the minds of the perceivers.

Corpse Vision is one of the scariest shots I've seen in the MCU

When Vision comes back in, he isn't red even out of focus behind Wanda. He's his gray corpse form, which creeps me out, because it means this is how he objectively is, not just how Wanda sees him. This shot is for us. With his dead, lifeless eyes and no pupils, it's definitely one of the scariest shots I've ever seen in the MCU. The MCU rarely shows wounds like this, but because he's a robot, they do, and you can see where Thanos's fingers caved in his forehead.

Asking Wanda what's wrong makes him a kind of ghost, unaware he's dead, like the boy in The Sixth Sense who had been shot in the head. Now we wonder how often Wanda has seen this and hidden her expression. The episode ends on Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child and another scene in front of the TV, the cursed technology causing all this. Wanda's eyeline is on the screen, but Vision, who has just been looked at like a ghost, looks above the TV, directly at us.

The Episode 5 babies only cry when the sitcom script demands it

Episode 5 sends Olsen into an 80s set as the mother of twins, the era when her sisters Mary-Kate and Ashley started out on Full House, with Agnes as a Kimmy Gibbler style neighbor. When Vision's mistrust breaks the script, Kathryn Hahn drops her pose, and during those pauses the babies stop crying. The crying resumes only when Wanda and Agnes go back into character. So the crying was part of the scenario, and Wanda, taking direction from Agatha, is cueing her babies to cry and depriving herself and her husband of sleep.

That brings up a creepier side of Hollywood. Through the 80s, to get babies to cry, crews would scare them with monster masks or offer treats and eat them in front of them. It's hard to find reports admitting to it, but they probably also pinched them. Nowadays a handler may pretend to cry so the baby follows, which is also kind of unsettling if you ask me. Wanda is doing that: a performative cry using her own grief, while for the babies it's real. They're mirroring her pain.

The boys age up in a sitcom trope reflected in the Growing Pains style intro, and the same four notes are worked into every era's theme. They used real photos of young Olsen, photoshopping a Sokovian flag behind her as a toddler, while Vision's holiday costumes show him getting more frustrated. Monica identifies the true culprit, saying, "It was grief." Norm, really Abilash, says it hurts so much, feeling Wanda's grief mixed with his own over his sick father. Wanda lets Sparky out, dooming him, and wears her Avengers outfit for the only time in the series to intimidate SWORD.

Wanda tells the boys not to age themselves up to run from feelings, a double standard they call out. The very special episode's life lesson doesn't land, and the couple argue through the credits, like the creepy short Too Many Cooks. Looking back, I believe Wanda when she says she doesn't know how this started; I think her grief hijacked her powers. Evan Peters as Pietro was a meta gag about recasting, probably a misfire of expectations, though on brand for grief's torment. I still can't explain the gray arm reflected in the mirror as he enters. I don't think it's crew or a boom mic; it might be a VFX artifact. On a set this controlled, every smudge feels like it should matter. The series is designed to make us see ghosts where there may not be.

Agatha puppets Pietro in Episode 6 to feed Wanda's grief

Episode 6's Malcolm in the Middle style opening features Kristen Anderson-Lopez with singer Kathleen Hanna, and one of them chuckles on a lyric, kept in as the illusion falls apart and residents at the edge of town freeze. Agnes doesn't join the family outside; she's last shown in the kitchen trying to grab the boys. Pietro eavesdrops in a split focus shot, used for untrustworthy characters, and his odd scare line is probably scripted by Agatha, who, as Episode 7 shows, is puppeting Ralph as Pietro to create conflict with Vision. He even states the plan: "stir up trouble with the Rugrats, and ultimately give you grief."

The twins may be the biggest red herring, the comic arc tying Billy and Tommy to Mephisto. While not confirmed as Mephisto linked, they're certainly manifestations of Wanda's grief, or Wanda's love persevering. A neighbor's house has masked figures with human legs underneath, so we wait for them to pop out. A frozen couple was shot on a split screen, timed to be out of sync, with a VFX shadow added to hide the line. I just love that they did this to make us a little uncomfortable. In the Yo-Magic commercial, the boy lets out a death wheeze beside a fish, echoing Sokovian Halloween and Wanda's pickled herring threat.

Agatha plants Vision's paranoia while grief looms over Wanda

Agatha's roadside moment with Vision is an act; she regains her composure when he turns away, so she plants the caged bird paranoia in his mind, maybe starting with Herb or even her hand wave in Episode 1. Pietro prods Wanda, who remembers only "endless nothingness," which suggests grief is a third party in this. Wanda expands the Hex and catches Darcy, whose swear gets censored, and the episode ends on Wanda's eye with a shadow in it: the future Scarlet Witch the Mind Stone showed her.

Episode 7 brings Modern Family talking heads and a Happy Endings intro. Its threatening message, "I know what you are doing, Wanda," I think is Agatha in the director's chair, provoking Wanda like Kubrick did to Duvall. The houseplant Agatha gifted glitches into a tree, showing her power can resist Wanda's to a certain extent. When a voice asks "Do you think maybe this is what you deserve?" it's Hahn's voice pitched down, and the cut to the antidepressant ad confirms the sitcoms come from Wanda while the invasive commercials are interruptions by Agatha and Wanda's grief, which parallels the relationship between sitcoms and advertising, two things that need each other to survive.

Billy can't read Agatha, and her hand freezes over Señor Scratchy, a familiar planned as a demon. SWORD laptops gain HP logos in reshot moments with different actors, likely a later product placement deal that left glitches in, just like Westview. Wanda sees a cicada as Clarice Starling saw a moth in The Silence of the Lambs, then finds the Darkhold, its cover showing two horned heads for Chthon. I read it as all torment being the friction of two evils, an outer demon trying to get in and an inner demon, grief, trying to get out. Agatha All Along is, I think, the best needle drop we've gotten in the MCU, and while Agatha sits in the director's chair, Wanda, out of focus in the background, looks up at the boom mic. Babies are right that it's invasive.

Episode 8 reveals what grief is, and why I don't call the Multiverse of Madness relapse bad writing

In 1693 Salem, the trial is by witches, not of witches. They de-aged Hahn, though Wanda doesn't in Episode 9. Agatha's purple sorcery drains the coven almost unconsciously, because her union with grief formed too young to know it fully, while Wanda had several waves. Agatha's basement doors, coded by Wanda's hair like the Fates' string, make it a literal haunted house. Sitcoms taught Wanda English and gave her escape, and the Van Dyke episode keeps playing after her parents die. The Mind Stone bends to her power, and the Hydra feed jump cut is her first TV warp. Agnes revealed behind a switched off TV recalls Signs.

Vision's line, "But what is grief if not love persevering?" is the theme of the series and the phase in my opinion. But Wanda's line before it matters too: grief comes like a wave again and again. That's why I don't think it was bad writing to begin Multiverse of Madness with Wanda back in grief. When you're drowning, seeing a lifesaver doesn't make the waves easier, and I think the people with the biggest gripes maybe haven't had enough experience of depression. Agatha's reveal of the Scarlet Witch makes me think one could see her as the protagonist: both lie, but Agatha hurts fewer innocents and acts more, and Ripley threatened babies too.

The Episode 9 finale leaves Wanda forged by grief

Agatha's black fingertips, a Darkhold stain Wanda later shares, are like ink on Jo in Little Women or my hands taking notes in a dark theater. The Scarlet Witch's face is pure darkness, the face of grief. Abilash says sleepers have Wanda's nightmares, which fits dreamwalking. The Ship of Theseus also applies to Wanda: grief may be a rot within us, but it doesn't define us. Agatha wants Wanda to hit her, because the more attention you give grief, the stronger it grows. Wanda wins by transforming it. But she smirks when called cruel, and to me it feels like the bad guy won.

Agatha's "Not if I see you first, hon" is a veiled threat, and she vanishes behind Wanda while still wearing her brooch. Maybe Agatha secretly has her own grief. Wanda's wedding band is the last thing erased, and Matt Shakman added a VFX recomposition with a new line giving her the task of seeking her sons. Elizabeth Olsen later said that on the Multiverse of Madness set they "accidentally smacked my face really hard" and she used it, terrifying the boys, a fear that may have echoed back to Wanda. Phase 4 was linked by grief, and since Thor: Love and Thunder made love sentient, so must grief be. It has taken forms like Chthon and Killmonger's ghost, and soon we will see Mephisto. WandaVision is a tragedy about how vicious grief can be, yet it reminds us grief is our own love persevering.

Which WandaVision detail do you find the most unsettling?