WandaVision ending: where was Wanda hiding on the MCU map?

WandaVision ended with Wanda Maximoff in a mysterious mountainside spot, studying the Darkhold with her astral projected self while her physical body sipped tea. The question then was simple: where in the MCU was she? To answer it, I went through the places the MCU had already established and some it might visit later. I think it was the perfect time to look at the map, because the MCU was carving out its own little countries. I love that, and I thought it was an exciting time.

WandaVision (2021), starring Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany, left her location open. The best bet from Marina Mastros, who joined me for the discussion, was Sokovia.

Real world MCU locations: New York, Berlin, Lagos, London and Siberia

The first pins go in places that exist in our world. New York is where the Battle of New York happened and where Steve Rogers and Peter Parker began, Steve in Brooklyn and Peter in Queens. It also has a Sanctum Sanctorum. Berlin was a target for Red Skull, who had it marked, ready to bomb his own Nazi backers. In the MCU, Berlin is also where the big Civil War airport battle took place, home to a joint counterterrorism task force, and Spider-Man: Far From Home went there too.

Lagos in Nigeria is where Wanda accidentally killed a group of people in Civil War while the team went after Crossbones. London has its own Sanctum Sanctorum, Steve Rogers spent time there, and Jane Foster was there during Thor: The Dark World. Siberia has the Hydra base where Bucky was kept before he was deployed.

Marina has been to Berlin and London. I've been to London and New York, but not Berlin. Her favorite thing about Berlin is its separate sidewalk and bike lane, so pedestrians and cyclists don't compete. As someone who lives in Los Angeles, that blew her mind.

Westview, the Avengers compound and SWORD headquarters

Westview, the town at the heart of WandaVision, is somewhere in New Jersey. It seems to be inland, because we never see a coastline. Its population is 3,892. Many people compare it to Leonia, New Jersey, the real town where Vision and Scarlet Witch lived in the 1980s comics, and there is an unincorporated community called West View, two words, next to Leonia. In the penultimate episode, titled Previously On, the New Jersey zip code shown corresponds to Annandale, New Jersey.

The new Avengers compound is upstate New York, somewhere along the Hudson River. It was once a Stark property where Howard Stark kept his things, and the Avengers moved their headquarters there after leaving the city. By the current timeline, Thanos's forces had flattened it in the Battle of Earth.

SWORD headquarters was new to the map in WandaVision. We aren't given a firm location, but the swampy coastline suggests the east coast of Florida, probably near Cape Canaveral, since it looks similar to the launch pads there. The cars in the parking lot appeared to have Florida license plates.

Sokovia, Wanda's homeland and a strong candidate

Sokovia appeared briefly in WandaVision and is Baron Zemo's home. It sits in central or southeastern Europe, bordered by Slovakia and the Czech Republic. It is where Wanda and Pietro's parents were killed, and where the Hydra research base stood in which von Strucker experimented on them with the Mind Stone. Ultron was put down there, though he might still be alive.

Because the terrain where Wanda was seen was mountainous, Sokovia stood out. She might have gone back and found a cabin where she could rest. Asked whether she would return to her birthplace after something so dramatic, Marina said she had been thinking about exactly that after WandaVision ended. Wanda has had so many traumas that it would be understandable if she had turned bad, but her family was happy and she was raised by good people.

Marina's view was that most people want to go back where they're most comfortable, so it struck her as a very high possibility that Wanda would return home, find a spot in the woods, and process her grief in a healthy way. I agreed. Her trip to Westview after SWORD was a search for what home meant to her, in the place Vision wanted for them. With the compound wrecked, her connection with Hawkeye might have pointed her to Missouri, but Missouri doesn't have those kinds of mountains.

Camp Lehigh and Madripoor

Camp Lehigh is near Westview, an army facility in Wheaton, New Jersey. It appears in The First Avenger, The Winter Soldier and Endgame, and Arnim Zola's mega brain computer sat there, working to ruin the world from a basement.

Madripoor was the new location at the time, tied to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It is near Singapore in Southeast Asia. In the comics it sits in the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia and is heavily based on Singapore, but split between a super wealthy elite of crime lords living above and an impoverished lower level of traffickers and dealers. It is a haven for criminals. Maria Hill was said to have been stationed in Madripoor as a SHIELD agent, according to the SHIELD Files book.

Wanda seemed unlikely to be there. Madripoor's warm climate doesn't fit snow-capped mountains. Its ties to the Hand did prompt the thought that Shang-Chi could be set there, opening up a side of the world we hadn't seen.

Wakanda and New Asgard

Wakanda is a landlocked African country, somewhere near Uganda, that is the most advanced nation on Earth thanks to its technology and the evolution of its society. It is built around the vibranium meteorite that crashed there and formed Mount Bashenga. Director Ryan Coogler stated his depiction was inspired by the kingdom of Lesotho, which is isolated but rich in culture.

Wanda in Wakanda would be too neat a piece of wordplay, and the thought was that Wakanda wouldn't want her anyway, for fear of becoming the next Westview. There was also the view that Wakanda should now be the place the MCU world gravitates around, the way stories used to center on New York.

New Asgard is in Tonsberg, Norway, and keeps getting revisited. The First Avenger featured the church where Odin kept the Tesseract, Thor tied it to Odin's history with the Norwegians, and the Asgardians resettled there in Endgame. Norway has huge mountains, but Wanda's spot looked more inland than coastal. It could have been a fjord, though fjords normally sit between steep cliffs, and this looked more like a mountain lake on a field with trees. So Norway remained possible.

Canada and Kamar-Taj

Many people said Wanda's location looked like where Bruce Banner ended up at the end of Edward Norton's Hulk, since both characters want to get away from society, meditate and drink tea. That was in Canada.

Kamar-Taj is the sorcerers' headquarters where Stephen Strange met the Ancient One and Wong. It is in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, and it is linked with the sanctums in Hong Kong, London and New York, acting as a nexus point for all three. It feels like its own secret realm lifted above the city, rather than somewhere ordinary residents know about.

Alkali Lake, Latveria and Genosha as X-Men tie-ins

Alkali Lake is in Alberta, Canada. With mutants sounding as if they were coming to the MCU, Wanda, a mutant in the comics, might head somewhere that remote. Alkali Lake matters for the Weapon X base on the other side of the lake. Wolverine is important to House of M, but his backstory isn't tied closely to Wanda's, so it seemed less likely.

Latveria, Doctor Doom's homeland, is an Eastern European country said to border the area around Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro and the Transylvania region of Romania, though it moves around. There had been thought that Doom could tie in with Multiverse of Madness, with Wanda bringing him in and meeting him there if he allowed her residency. Its mountains include the Carpathians, which made it another possibility and a fun tie-in.

Genosha is a small crescent-shaped island off the eastern coast of Africa, north of Madagascar, where Magneto sets up a mutant society. It ties into House of M, because Magneto brings Scarlet Witch there after a breakdown and Professor X tries to help her before reality begins to shift for everyone. It could have been where House of M started.

Wundagore Mountain and the High Evolutionary

The place I liked best for Wanda's hideout was Wundagore Mountain, because it is important to her origin and ancestry. In the comics she was born in the High Evolutionary's citadel there, it is where the demon Chthon wrote the Darkhold, and Magda gave birth to Wanda and Pietro there.

The High Evolutionary's creations included Bova, the twins' nursemaid, who appeared in the animated intro of WandaVision's second episode. Many people thought the High Evolutionary could come into the MCU in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 as the one who created Rocket, whose past love Lylla is an otter. He might have lived at Wundagore before moving somewhere like Halfworld to create Rocket. I love answering a question from one film by tying it to another area.

Marina Mastros answers two MCU questions

Asked how Tony Stark removed the claw marks from Captain America's shield, Marina explained that vibranium is far more malleable than adamantium, which becomes basically unbreakable once forged. Vibranium can be a shield, a cyber arm, or a fabric-like mesh such as Black Panther's suit. Because his claws and Cap's shield share the material, one could damage the other, like a diamond scratching a diamond. Tony's familiarity with vibranium and his engineering intelligence let him repair it.

On Sam Wilson's wings, Marina traced the history. Before 2014, Sam and his wingman Riley had Stark Industries designed EXO-7 harnesses for pararescue in Afghanistan. Riley was shot down by an RPG, his suit presumably destroyed. Sam's was kept at Fort Meade until Captain America and Black Widow borrowed it, and the Winter Soldier tore a wing off on the helicarrier.

In 2015 Sam got an upgraded EXO-7 with weapons, armor plating, communications, sensors and red trim, which she assumed Tony helped design or fund. Ant-Man damaged it, it gained the Redwing drone in Civil War, a nod to Sam's falcon in the comics, and it proved bulletproof in Lagos. The CIA-established Joint Counter Terrorist Centre in Berlin confiscated it before Sharon Carter returned it. Peter Parker asked if the wings were carbon fiber, never confirmed, but Marina assumed he was right. The suit vanished with Sam in Infinity War and returned in Endgame. Her answer: carbon fiber and Stark tech.

Why Sokovia was the bet for Wanda

Marina's bet for Wanda's hiding place was Sokovia. Wanda had spent so long running from her past, and WandaVision helped her embrace her reality, so now she had matured emotionally enough to go home. Marina liked the emotional arc of a character who can finally return and does.

I agreed and could totally see it. Given that Wanda was looking into the Darkhold, there was the thought that the spot could become the center of where reality starts to get rewritten, or that a giant hell mouth could form in that lake.