WandaVision comics: the four runs Marvel said it adapts

Before WandaVision reached Disney Plus, Marvel had already told us a good deal about what the series would be about. It named four comic book runs that the show would draw on. My expectation at the time was that knowing those stories meant we knew a lot about what to expect. I thought combining them into one show made it one of the most exciting Marvel projects ever done. The series has since run its course, with its finale on March 5, 2021, so this is a look back at the comics and what I predicted from them.

At the time, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and movies in general had been through a long drought in content. That was starting to change. Production on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier had begun again, with the crew back on set and leaked clips from the set circulating. Marvel Studios seemed to be restarting many of the projects it had been forced to postpone, and WandaVision, a heavily anticipated Disney Plus series, was one of them. Fans had many questions, chief among them what the show would be about.

Marvel's Expanding the Universe documentary named the four comics behind WandaVision

The answer came from Disney Plus itself. The service had launched only about a year before, carrying a good majority of the MCU films and a range of live action and animated shows, along with some new content. One of those new pieces was a documentary called Expanding the Universe.

In that documentary, we learned that WandaVision would be based on several famous comic books. The four were the iconic House of M series, the Scarlet Witch run by James Robinson, The Vision and the Scarlet Witch, and The Vision run by Tom King. You had to know a little about those storylines to know what you were going to see in the series, so I went through each one and how I expected it to appear on screen.

James Robinson's Scarlet Witch run and the occult side of Wanda

The James Robinson run was very new at the time, around four to five years old. It stood apart because Scarlet Witch comics typically focused on her alongside somebody else, such as her brother or Vision. This one was about her alone, and it centered on the world of witchcraft.

In the run, Wanda travels around the world to investigate the mystery of what has gone wrong with witchcraft in the Marvel universe. Along the way she discovers where she came from and her larger place in the occult corner of that universe.

I felt we had already seen signs of this influence. Leaked photos had shown Agatha Harkness and the Salem witches, so I believed the series would explore more of the occult and the witchcraft side. Marvel Studios had also said that, for the first time in the MCU, we would hear Wanda called the Scarlet Witch. It seemed very clear to me that at some point the series would focus more on her witchcraft abilities. I thought that would be interesting to see, given that she got her powers from the Mind Stone.

Vision Quest and the question of where Vision's body was

The next comic was The Vision, and I tied in Vision Quest as well, since we had heard the show would be loosely based on that too. Vision Quest is about Wanda assembling the parts of Vision and putting him back together. I said that was something we would most likely see in the show.

The open question then was where Vision was after the events of Avengers: Infinity War, because we did not know. We knew that SWORD would play a role in WandaVision, but not exactly why. My guess was that perhaps this was the reason. Perhaps SWORD were the holders of Vision's body, or perhaps they were going to help the Scarlet Witch find him.

Tom King's The Vision and Vision's wish to be human

Where Vision Quest is about Wanda finding Vision, Tom King's run is about Vision wanting to be human and wanting a family. To pursue that, he goes back to the very beginning, the laboratory where Ultron created him as a weapon. There he imagines that he could be more than what he is: an actual man with an actual family.

So he creates one. He builds a wife, Virginia, and teenage twins, Viv and Vin. Both twins look like him, have his powers and share his desire to become human.

Since WandaVision was going to be about Wanda and Vision together, I did not think Vision would create a new family. I did think he would want to be human and want a family. The promos had shown Vision as a human. We had seen something like it in Avengers: Infinity War, where he could partly change himself into a human, but that was only a change of appearance. Vision was coming back in the series, as the small teaser had shown, and it seemed very clear to me that Vision and Wanda would want kids and would have them.

The Vision and the Scarlet Witch: Magneto, a magic pregnancy, Wiccan and Speed

This was where I said things were going to get wild, and why I thought the show would be so exciting. Things grow intense in The Vision and the Scarlet Witch and in House of M.

In volume one of The Vision and the Scarlet Witch, Magneto is the father of the Scarlet Witch and her brother Quicksilver. In 2014, Marvel changed this and said Magneto was not their father, but for about 30 years in the Marvel universe he was. In that first volume, Magneto plans to give up his villainous life.

In the second volume, the Scarlet Witch becomes pregnant. It is not by Vision, because he is an android; magic is what makes her pregnant. She has twin boys, Wiccan and Speed, who from what I understood were already confirmed to appear in WandaVision.

Her story with the twins then takes a darker turn leading up to House of M. It is revealed that the boys are not real. Wanda is using her reality warping abilities to make it seem as if she has children, and whenever she and Vision leave to fight with the Avengers, the boys disappear. They are not entirely unreal, though. Wanda brings them to true life using her powers and soul fragments of the demon Mephisto. When Mephisto returns, he wants those fragments back, and he takes the children away from Wanda and Vision.

House of M: Wanda's breakdown and "No more mutants"

This is where it gets very rough for Wanda. She suffers a mental breakdown and tries to warp reality to recreate her lost children. The Scarlet Witch and Professor Xavier end up creating the House of M reality.

In it, Wanda has her boys back and is with her father Magneto and her brother Quicksilver. The reality grants everybody their deepest wishes. Magneto rules over mutants and humans, Spider-Man is a celebrity married to Gwen Stacy, and Wolverine is an agent of SHIELD. For a while it becomes the main reality, and none of the heroes, Avengers or X-Men can remember the previous one, except Wolverine.

Wolverine tells the Avengers, and Professor Xavier meets with them too. Together they decide they have to kill Wanda. Quicksilver learns of this and runs to tell Magneto. The X-Men and the Avengers attack the House of M, the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and Magneto.

Magneto then learns the world is a lie, created by his daughter. He reacts in anger and kills his son Quicksilver, but Wanda appears and brings her brother back to life. Looking at her father lashing out, she says, "we're freaks mutants you chose this over us and you ruined us daddy." Then comes the famous line: "no more mutants." Everything goes white, and the world seemingly returns to normal, except that millions of mutants have lost their powers.

Many people at the time thought WandaVision could show a reverse of this, with Wanda creating mutants instead of getting rid of them, and that this could perhaps be how mutants entered the MCU. In the comics, the mutants eventually got their powers back, and Wanda's twins were reincarnated. In time, she and Wiccan and Speed were reunited as a family.

What I expected WandaVision to deliver

Taken together, these were the stories WandaVision was going to be based on, and I expected to see many wild things as a result. My list was Wanda discovering the true witch side of her nature and using witchcraft, Wanda finding Vision, Vision coming back to life, and the two of them having a family.

I also expected Wanda warping reality, which we already knew would happen thanks to the teaser. Beyond that, there was the possibility of her losing her kids and possibly having a mental breakdown. Based on those four comic book runs, I believed there was a lot to look forward to, and that the series was going to be very exciting.