Characters In WandaVision With More Meaning Than You Realized

Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is off to a decidedly strange start. With the Black Widow movie and the Falcon and the Winter Soldier Disney+ show delayed due to COVID-19, our first foray back into the world of the MCU comes in the form of WandaVision, a show's whose "homage to previous eras of television" premise is nearly as strange as the fact that one of its lead characters is dead. WandaVision is a show about the fragile nature of reality, particularly when you have magic superpowers, but it's also a show about secrets, dropping the reader without warning into a version of the MCU that doesn't exactly make sense and where nothing is as it seems.

As a result, not only do we have the inevitable parade of cameos and Easter eggs that simply come with the territory with Marvel, but there are also characters being introduced for the first time, characters who turn out to be other characters, familiar MCU faces in new roles, and Marvel Comics veterans making their onscreen debuts. It's time to unravel the mysteries of WandaVision to determine which characters are more than meets the eye — and which are hiding in plain sight.

WandaVision's second episode ushers in a character who, after a moment's hesitation, introduces herself as Geraldine. Her hesitation is warranted — as we find out a couple episodes later, "Geraldine" is actually none other than Monica Rambeau.

While MCU fans might not recognize the debuting Teyonah Parris, Monica is a character we've met before. It's just that she was a little bit younger in Captain Marvel. The daughter of Maria Rambeau, Air Force pilot and best friend to Brie Larson's Carol Danvers, Monica plays a direct role in the events of Captain Marvel, even facilitating some important color changes in Danvers' already iconic costume.

It's no surprise that a grown-up version of Monica has been introduced in the MCU — Marvel Comics readers know her a superhero in her own right under the name Photon, and she herself has also worn the mantle of Captain Marvel. In fact, Parris is scheduled to reprise the role of Monica in Captain Marvel 2, alongside Iman Vellani, who will portray Ms. Marvel in her own Disney+ series.

Time moves strangely in the world of WandaVision, particularly when you're trying to track trimesters. Episode two begins with Wanda and Vision suggestively turning off the light in their bedroom, and ends with Wanda pregnant, and already showing, after a single day. By the end of episode three, she's given birth to not one but two boys, who the couple name Tommy and Billy.

As of right now, Tommy and Billy are a little young to be donning spandex, but it's impossible to ignore the connotations of those names. In Marvel comics, Tommy Shepherd and Billy Kaplan are, in fact, the superheroic children of Vision and Scarlet Witch, brought into being via an extremely complicated series of events involving witches, reincarnation, and Marvel's version of the devil himself. Tommy, a.k.a. Speed, has powers inherited from his uncle Pietro, who also gets a mention in WandaVision's third episode — he was killed in 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron. Like Pietro, Tommy can move at incredible speed, something his "father," Vision, is also seen doing in episode three. Billy, meanwhile, has reality-warping powers akin to his mother's, and goes by the name of Wiccan.

Wiccan and Speed are both members of the adolescent superhero team the Young Avengers, and considering that the MCU is getting ready to introduce other young heroes from the comics such as Kamala Khan and Kate Bishop, an MCU version of the Young Avengers, complete with Tommy and Billy, appears to be in the making.

The fourth episode of WandaVision is the first to break from the show's early format, stepping outside the in-universe sitcom to show viewers what's been happening in the world beyond Westview. In addition to providing more to the story of Monica Rambeau, this also allows WandaVision to re-introduce us to FBI agent Jimmy Woo, played by Randall Park. The MCU version of Woo first appeared in 2018's Ant-Man and the Wasp, where he's been charged with making sure Scott Lang remains securely under house arrest and with tracking down Lang's associates, Hank Pym and Hope van Dyne. His primary accomplishments over the course of the film involve badly explaining Scott's situation to his young daughter, Cassie, and being inspired by Lang to try his hand at magic tricks. In WandaVision, he at least appears reasonably competent, though he hasn't strayed too far from his roots as a comedy character.

Of course, the Jimmy Woo of Marvel Comics lore is hardly a punchline. He first appeared in 1956 as part of the short-lived Yellow Claw series, published by Atlas Comics, which would later evolve into Marvel. One of comics' first Asian-American heroes (and a direct descendant of Genghis Khan), he's been bouncing around the Marvel universe ever since, becoming part of S.H.I.E.L.D. and leading multiple superhero teams. It's unclear if the MCU's Jimmy Woo will ever take on the significance of his comics counterpart, but his inclusion in WandaVision could suggest a larger role to come.

Jimmy Woo isn't the only familiar face who shows up in episode four of WandaVision. The show has officially brought back one of the oldest characters in the MCU, Darcy Lewis, who first appeared in the franchise's third film, Thor, in 2011. Played by Kat Dennings, the snarky intern was one of the best parts of the movie, and Dennings reprised the role in 2013's Thor: The Dark World. But she hadn't been seen since — until WandaVision brought her back, giving us a look at what Darcy has been up to in the last decade of MCU continuity.

The most notable thing we learn is that Darcy is now a doctor of astrophysics, like her former mentor, Jane Foster. Her personality hasn't changed much, but she's a driving force in helping S.W.O.R.D. (Sentient Weapon Observation Response Division) learn about what's happening in Westview. Darcy is the one who figured out how to tune into the sitcom Wanda has created (and has become, in her own words, invested) and it was her idea to use the radio to try and communicate with Wanda. It's clear she has a major role to play in WandaVision, and possibly the MCU going forward. While the third film in the Thor trology, Thor: Ragnarok, seemed to be something of a disavowal of the first two, the franchise has done an about-face by bringing back Natalie Portman for the fourth chapter, Thor: Love and Thunder. Could Darcy be returning to the mainstream MCU as well?

Prior to WandaVision, MCU fans could be forgiven for forgetting that Wanda Maximoff had a brother. Pietro Maximoff only appeared in one film, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and by the end of it, he was dead. He has gone unmentioned in the movies ever since — Wanda's limited screen time in ensemble films like Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War has been largely devoted to her relationship with Vision, and we had never seen her grieve for the brother she lost. Until WandaVision, that is, which finally reminded viewers of Pietro's death at the hands of Ultron in episode three before having him actually show up at Wanda's front door in episode five. The man known as Quicksilver is back... but with a twist.

If you didn't notice that WandaVision's Pietro isn't played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, as he was in Age of Ultron, Darcy helpfully reminded you by exclaiming "She recast Pietro!" But this isn't just any recasting. The actor in question is Evan Peters, who portrayed a different version of Quicksilver, "Peter Maximoff," in the last three installments of Fox's X-Men franchise. In 2015, the existence of the two characters was something of an inside joke; Quicksilver has been both an X-Man and an Avenger, giving both Fox and Disney a case for including him. Now that Disney has acquired Fox's X-Men characters, the joke has suddenly become a major plot point. Is Pietro the first member of the X-Men to officially break into the MCU?

From her timely interruptions to her mysterious brooch to her dressing up like a witch for Halloween, there had been plenty of clues over the first six episodes of WandaVision that Wanda's neighbor Agnes wasn't exactly what she seemed. And in episode 7, we finally got confirmation: Agnes is, in fact, Agatha Harkness, a character from Marvel Comics with longstanding ties to the Scarlet Witch. As the end of the episode drives home, Harkness is a witch herself, and has been magically manipulating the events of WandaVision since the very beginning.

Agatha Harkness dates back to 1970, when she first appeared in the pages of The Fantastic Four. In contrast to WandaVision's delightfully sinister "It was Agatha all along!" montage, she has primarily been a heroic figure in the comics, fighting alongside the Fantastic Four and the Avengers on several occasions when they had to deal with magical threats. Most directly relevant, however, is her association with Wanda. Harkness was Wanda's mentor and trainer in the use of magic, and she's been a recurring Scarlet Witch side character ever since. She's perhaps best known for originally delivering the bad news that Wanda's children, Tommy and Billy, weren't actually real, a revelation that would have world-shattering repercussions for the Marvel universe when Wanda's grief for her lost family reshaped reality in a story that clearly influenced WandaVision. Of course, in that story, Harkness is murdered by Wanda (though like any good comic book character, she eventually came back).

Like most of the government agencies depicted in films and on television, the MCU's S.W.O.R.D. isn't quite as noble as it wants citizens to believe. As WandaVision viewers discover over the course of the show, Director Hayward has a hidden agenda — specifically, reassembling Vision's lifeless corpse so he can be wiped clean of his humanity and used as a sentient weapon. He gets his wish toward the end of the season, using Wanda's chaos magic to power up an emotionless (and mostly colorless) Vision 2.0.

Of course, Marvel being Marvel, the introduction of the reanimated Vision sets up some nifty battle sequences between Hayward's sentient weapon and the Vision that Wanda has conjured into being in Westview. But more importantly for longtime Marvel readers, it also calls back to an arc from the comics in which Vision "died" and was later brought back — albeit without the brainwaves that gave his earlier incarnation its humanity. Cold, emotionless, and just as pale as the synthezoid seen in WandaVision, this version of the Vision no longer loves the Scarlet Witch, dividing one of Marvel's most popular comics couples even after half of the pairing triumphed over death.

WandaVision viewers familiar with this storyline will know that Vision eventually gets back to his old self — comics stories are nothing if not a series of shocking changes followed by a return to the status quo — and the show seems to take care of that plot development when the two Visions square off in the Westview town library. After receiving a memory transfer from his magical doppelgänger, Vision 2.0 flies off for parts unknown. At this point, there's no telling where or when he'll turn up next, but it seems pretty clear that we haven't seen the last of Vision.