WandaVision Episode 1 Breakdown: The Hidden Clues Inside Wanda's Sitcom Reality

WandaVision episode 1 launched the MCU's next phase with a quirky sitcom that is actually hiding a horrifying secret. These first episodes don't reveal much about what is really going on inside Wanda's pocket reality, but I am seeing dozens of potential clues hiding in plain sight, so here is my shot by shot look at everything in the premiere that is easy to miss.

Spoilers follow for the opening episode, along with a few references to episode 2.

The Marvel Studios fanfare turns monochrome as reality shifts into Wanda's sitcom

The episode opens with something we had missed for the previous 18 months: the Marvel Studios fanfare. It has been updated with shots from Endgame and Infinity War, including Cap catching Mjolnir, Tony's snap, Black Panther's shockwave, Bucky and Rocket's team up and Doctor Strange's wizard duel.

Notice how every Avenger turns black and white until the whole thing turns monochrome. The aspect ratio shifts to letterbox and the audio condenses as if it is coming from an old TV speaker. All of that reflects this whole reality shifting into an old sitcom inside Wanda's illusion.

WandaVision's opening credits and home set are modelled on The Dick Van Dyke Show

The opening credits are modelled on the theme of The Dick Van Dyke Show, and the home set is based on that show's home set too. Dick Van Dyke himself actually consulted on the slapstick humour Wanda and Vision perform.

The real estate sign carries a 732 area code, which is for New Jersey. That makes me wonder if this pocket reality is actually located somewhere close to Camp Lehigh.

There is a nice beat at the door as well. Vision phase shifts through it but leaves Wanda behind. Inside, though, you can see she learns from this and does a little spell to phase shift with him through a chair.

Vision's "indestructible head" line nods to how Thanos killed him

Notice the opening lines of this show, which are also the opening words of Marvel's Phase 4: "My wife and the flying saucers. My husband and his indestructible head." It is a little wordplay, but also a visceral nod to the precise way Vision died, when Thanos caved in his forehead to pry out the Mind Stone.

It also makes you wonder if Wanda's flying saucers could add up to anything, given that the organisation monitoring them, SWORD, is known to be Marvel's SHIELD offshoot for extraterrestrial threats.

The calendar points to August 1961, the year The Dick Van Dyke Show premiered

The couple are confused by a mystery date on their calendar, and we can actually get a lot from that calendar. It is the month of August, and it starts on a Tuesday. There are only so many years in history where that has been the case, and one of them is 2023, when in the MCU timeline Wanda technically still would have been dusted.

But notice the calendar art. All the little girl in it wants is a colour television. Colour TV was not invented until 1953 and was not a widely available consumer good until around the 60s. The year on the wine bottle later in the episode is also 1953. So I am guessing this is August 1961, which is also the year The Dick Van Dyke Show premiered.

The calendar art also shows some butterflies on the wall. Maybe that is where Wanda will get the inspiration for the butterflies on the baby crib in her future nursery.

Westview's newspaper and calendar suggest the whole town is a Truman Show style fiction

Vision's Westview newspaper carries a front page headline about a baby's first word tickling the child's mother. It is the kind of lifestyle non story that should not be front page news.

Note too that the calendar was released by Westview Appliances. So it seems like everything in this town is part of the same Truman Show style fictitiousness.

Agnes may be Agatha Harkness, and her husband Ralph may not exist

Then we meet Agnes, a name we suspect could be derived from Agatha Harkness, the witch companion to Wanda, who secretly serves Mephisto. Kathryn Hahn's delivery is so specific that it is hard not to see every single one of her lines and gestures as containing some hidden double meaning. When she tells Wanda she is charmed, that could be charmed as in under a witch's spell, perhaps.

Then there is her husband, Ralph, whom she keeps bringing up, joking that Ralph would only remember their anniversary if there were a beer named after it, and that he never wants to eat anything other than baked beans. Nobody asked about Ralph, so I assume he is either a corpse, or never existed, or is her pet named for Mephisto, or somehow all three.

She leaves with "This is going to be a gas." Gas as in gaslighting. Roll your eyes if you like, "But I'm telling you, one of these is going to mean something."

Vision's office plants Yakety Yak, a suspicious trophy and a fired employee

At work, Vision and a coworker are listening to The Coasters' 1958 hit Yakety Yak, with lyrics about a kid being yelled at to do household chores. If you think about it, that is similar to the generational conflict Vision and Wanda find themselves in, having to cook dinner for his much older boss and his wife, who are very much authoritarian parental figures to them.

In the office background is a trophy. I assume this could be one of the bowling trophies that, later in the series, the guys reveal Mr. Hart actually bought at a yard sale in Hackensack.

Mr. Hart has fired a poor employee, whose wife, whom we meet in episode 2, could not impress the boss. Apparently she thought five courses would be sufficient. That firing and Vision getting promoted might explain some of the hostility toward Wanda in episode 2. Or it could just be that Wanda is trapping all these poor souls in her dream bubble, and that is why that wife is angry.

A Glamorous magazine could inspire Wanda's magic act name

The magazine Agnes and Wanda read is Glamorous, a spin on Glamour magazine. This could also be the inspiration for Wanda's magic act stage name, Glamour.

The Stark Industries Toastmate 2000 commercial carries a sinister message

These episodes feature commercial breaks filled with MCU Easter eggs. The first is the Toastmate 2000 from Stark Industries, Stark here being Howard Stark, who was into all of his consumer marvels. Listen closely as the toaster warms up: it is making the Stark repulsor warm up sound effect.

The toaster light turns red, giving us the first little splash of Technicolor in the series, and that colour returns pretty much every time we start to question the reality. Notice too how the beeping speeds up, kind of like the ticking of the Strucker watch in episode 2. We could see this as time speeding up for Wanda as she moves forward through the decades.

There is also obviously something to the slogan "Forget the past, this is your future." It is very sinister, and it evokes that idea of Wanda being gaslighted: forget about where you came from, just focus on what you have to do now, which is make babies.

Vision's Sokovian excuse points back to Wanda's origin

When things get awkward, Vision explains the confusion by referencing Wanda's Sokovian background, passing it off as a traditional Sokovian greeting of hospitality. At the time, the trailers told us the series would revisit Wanda's origin with the Mind Stone in that Hydra lab in Sokovia, and maybe the death of her brother Pietro in Age of Ultron.

A "snap" of a menu and a rewound chicken echo Vision's death

Agnes shows up with a full meal ready to cook, saying the menu can be done in a snap. Seriously, snap. I am ready to go with a theory that one of the Endgame snaps warped reality in a way that activated mutant genes, the same way Infinity Stone radiation activated Wanda's mutant genes. Just saying.

Wanda accidentally burns the chicken, then rewinds too far back and turns it into eggs, which is a bit weird because one chicken should come from just one egg. But I am interested in how this parallels Wanda's final moments with Vision. She used her sorcery to cook him to a crisp, but then that cooking got rewound so he could be served up for another purpose, kind of like these eggs.

Fruit, and Agnes's strange wave over Vision's body

During all the goofing around, Agnes shows up again with a pineapple for an upside down cake. Fruit seems to be an important motif in the show: the trailers showed Wanda with orange slices and, later, Vision catching a papaya.

Then there is the little wave Agnes does up Vision's body. The first time Agnes tries to meet him, Wanda slams the door in her face, as if she is trying to protect Vision from her. That wave is similar to the one Wanda does in episode 2 to scan Vision's body, so this could be a kind of witch spell directed inside a person.

The dinner menu may point to House of M

Dinner is served, and it is actually the breakfast Wanda promised at the top of the episode, along with a phrase that, as we pointed out when breaking down the trailer, translates to house of misery, or really house of contempt. It might be a nod to the Scarlet Witch House of M comics that we suspect this is all partially based on, where Wanda reframes reality so that mutants do and do not exist, some of those mutants including her children.

When Jimmy Kimmel asked Elizabeth Olsen about this, she played dumb and credited the art department, saying the prop guy, Russell, would be "a very clever man if he put that in." She was also asked about a theory that the tie design could reflect two people trapped inside while other people peer in on them, the way Wanda and Vision could be in this reality.

Mrs. Hart's questions reveal Westview's obsession with children

Mrs. Hart hits them with a ton of questions at once: where they moved from, what brought them here, how long they have been married, and why they don't have children yet. Children again. As we see in episode 2, this town is obsessed with children. You could argue that all of Westview is really designed to trick Wanda into manifesting children.

I will also note that Mrs. Hart bombards Wanda with questions before she can answer them, the same way Agnes did when they first met, asking her name, where she is from and how her bridge game is.

Mr. Hart chokes, then seems to vanish from the cast

Mr. Hart chokes, and Vision has to reveal his powers to save him. But the Harts just leave as if nothing happened.

I also find it suspect that Mr. Hart does not appear at all alongside Mrs. Hart in episode 2. She actually sits at the table with Agnes instead. It is almost as if he has been removed from this cast.

SWORD is observing, and the credits pixels form Wanda's illusions

In the final scene, Wanda blips some rings onto their fingers. I love that shaky jump cut; it is very Bewitched. Then the credits roll, but these are all fake names, and it turns out this is all being observed from a SWORD research station monitor room.

On another nearby screen are two graphs, one red and one green. Maybe they correspond to Wanda's and Vision's heart rates or their levels of consciousness. But again, Vision is dead, so maybe this is Wanda's consciousness and the consciousness of another undetermined presence.

There are definitely some interesting visuals in the credit sequence as we soar through the red, blue and green pixels of a TV screen. The red ones reshape into new forms: a rose, a house, the town and, finally, two interlocked rings. It is as if to say everything we are seeing is just manifested TV illusions.

So who do you think is really doing this to Wanda: Wanda herself, Agnes, or someone else entirely?