WandaVision and House of M: did the theory hold up?

Before the Marvel Studios series WandaVision premiered, I wasn't sure the show itself would be the story of House of M. Instead, I thought it would set it up, with everything that followed in Phase 4 telling that story and blowing open the multiverse. WandaVision and the Phase 4 Multiverse Saga releases have since come out, so this is a look back at what I expected and why.

I made the case alongside Jessica Clemons, and we worked through two questions. What is House of M, and how could WandaVision establish the X-Men in the MCU? And why was Marvel calling WandaVision the start of the Multiverse Saga?

What House of M is, and why it came up around WandaVision

Jessica and I both knew House of M, but not everyone does. House of M is the best and most famous Scarlet Witch storyline in Marvel Comics. If you're going to do a Wanda story on film or TV, that's the one you do.

It begins with Wanda chaotically resetting reality to create a life with the children who were taken from her. It gets too chaotic, so the Avengers and the X-Men hold a very serious meeting and decide they have to kill her. She's their friend, but she's losing control.

Pietro, Quicksilver, refuses to accept that. He intervenes and goes to Magneto. Then everything flashes white and reality is reset. Mutants are no longer second-class citizens; they are running society. The House of M is Magneto's house, and he is now the ruler of this reality.

Wolverine is the only one who remembers how things used to be. He sets out to awaken each hero in whatever new life they have and convince them it's wrong. That leads to a big fight. In the middle of it, Wanda whispers the famous words "no more mutants." Reality returns to normal, except the vast majority of mutants have been erased from existence. It's one of the craziest things to happen in all of Marvel Comics.

Could Wanda say "no more mutants" in reverse?

My thinking at the time was that we might see a version of that moment in the MCU, but reversed. Instead of "no more mutants," Wanda might say "no, more mutants" and bring them in. I thought that would be cool.

Jessica took the idea further. She wondered what would happen if Wanda opened the multiverse and said "no more mutants" at the end of the WandaVision series rather than somewhere later. In that case, she said, it would push you to go and watch the next Doctor Strange and the new Spider-Man just because of how the series ended.

My theory: WandaVision as the overture to House of M

I wasn't sure WandaVision as a series would be the story of House of M. But I thought everything that came after it would be, and that might be what the Multiverse Saga was: House of M blowing open the multiverse to lots of different realities and parallel timelines.

We knew House of M mattered to Marvel Studios. The Infinity War and Endgame screenwriters said they wanted to work it into one of those movies, but those films were too big and didn't have room. It was on the studio's wish list of things to adapt, so I expected it to show up somewhere in the Multiverse Saga.

The discussion also raised the obstacles. The MCU had already taken Pietro out, which seemed to limit how much House of M the films could do, maybe only a little of it. There was also a recommendation to track the comic down and read it, with the warning that it was probably hard to find and pricey with WandaVision arriving, but worth the read.

Another point made was that after Wanda erases the mutants, she starts jumping from planet to planet, making her own life. That echoes what WandaVision seemed to be doing, with different episodes set in different realities. Even so, because House of M is so wild and WandaVision seemed grounded in sitcom tropes, I thought the series would be the overture, the precursor, with the truly crazy material coming in the Phase 4 titles that followed.

The WandaVision wine bottle that looked like a House of M Easter egg

There was also a wine bottle we had been discussing from the show. Its label carried an M as a logo and a name that translates to something like house of misery, though really it's closer to house of contempt.

Plenty of people saw that M as a House of M Easter egg.

Why WandaVision was billed as the start of the Multiverse Saga

This was our big question going forward. I thought it was clear WandaVision was linked to other Phase 4 titles in a three, four or five part event with the multiverse as its backdrop.

We knew Wanda would return in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. That movie would be preceded by Spider-Man 3, which would feature Doctor Strange and some kind of spider-verse plot that Sam Raimi, the director of Doctor Strange 2, was clearly consulting on. We also knew Loki was coming and would deal with the TVA and alternate timelines.

There was also the animated What If series, with Jeffrey Wright as the Watcher, our guide through the multiverse. Marvel Studios had started calling Phases 1 through 3 the Infinity Saga. I thought that, rather than sticking with Phase 4, they would start calling it the Multiverse Saga.

How the multiverse could bring in Blade, Shang-Chi and Miles Morales

My expectation was that every upcoming title would acknowledge the multiverse in some way. Some would be stories about how these worlds connect. Others would be side stories set in an Elseworlds, and that would be how Marvel delivered different genres.

That's how I thought we would get Blade, the kung fu movie of Shang-Chi, and maybe the Eternals. Those projects felt like they belonged to a different world from the one Iron Man 2 or Black Widow was set in, and they could all be Elseworlds. It also gave Marvel the opportunity to bring in Miles Morales, Captain Britain and alternate Sorcerers Supreme.

Jessica agreed. She saw the Multiverse Saga as standing on its own apart from the phases, something she expected to take ten years before Marvel moved on to a different structure. She called it a huge world, and she was eager to know when the Eternals would arrive after it was pushed again, hoping for a trailer soon.

For me, all of this could start with WandaVision, and I said it was going to be very fun.