The Grim Reaper Easter Egg You Didn't Notice In WandaVision

Contains spoilers for WandaVision

As the internet at large may have pointed out already, WandaVision's got Easter eggs, and it's got 'em bad. Week one of Marvel Studios' first television entry in the MCU has already offered its more enthusiastic viewers plenty of reasons to pause the show and excitedly explain sixty years of comic book minutiae to their significant others, from the significance of the program's hexagons to the real meaning behind Agnes's houseplant. While the relationships in question are unlikely to recover, WandaVision only becomes stronger.

One of the program's most blink-and-you'll-miss-it references comes during the second episode's animated opening sequence. This sequence is the same place where you can spot callbacks to Agatha Harkness's shapeshifting cat and the anthropomorphic cow that delivered the Maximoff twins — both throwbacks to the good old days when comic book writing was a heated competition to see who could make their book the least accessible to new readers. Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the narrative spectrum, the animated scene also gives a brief shoutout to Tom King's The Vision limited series. And it's this Easter egg which we're zooming in on. 

The comic, widely theorized to be the basis of WandaVision when it was first announced, revolves around Marvel's favorite synthezoid, his attempts at living a normal suburban life ... and the way that even the noblest of intentions can end in a dead C-list supervillain.

In the first issue of The Vision, the eponymous Avenger has settled down with a family of his own design: a wife, Virginia, and twin children, Viv and Vin, each created roughly in his image. Unfortunately, their domestic bliss is short lived: comics being the super-powered lovechild of soap operas and professional wrestling plotlines that they are, the house is broken into by the supervillain known as Grim Reaper, who has become violently obsessed with the Vision clan. Grim Reaper stabs Viv through the torso, inspiring Virginia to violently beat him to death. Virginia, fearing the repercussions of her actions, asks her son not to tell Vision what happened, and buries Grim Reaper's body in the family's backyard, setting off a sequence of heartbreaking events that would go on to win the series an Eisner Award and, flying in the face of decades of tangled narratives, convince new readers that Vision was a relatable character. 

It's a remarkable story, and it gets a single, winking nod in WandaVision, as seen above, when Grim Reaper's distinctive headwear is seen lodged in the floorboards of the cartoon household, alongside cobwebs, pipes, and a pile of bones. Once you see it, you can't un-see it, because nobody else but Grim Reaper would ever dare to wear a helmet like that.

Now, it's unclear whether the inclusion of this image was a hint at what's to come for WandaVision, or just a fun detail thrown in for the fans. However, with less than a second on screen, it definitely drives home one point: fans of the series will need to avoid blinking if they want to keep up with the show.