Why WandaVision's Halloween Costumes Mean More Than You Think

Contains minor spoilers for WandaVision episode 6

WandaVision is back with yet another brain-twisting episode. While the grimness and gloom that have been hiding beneath the surface from the beginning continue to bubble up from the deep, "All-New Halloween Spooktacular" also remembers to milk plenty of fun from its new 1990s setting. 

As Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen), Vision (Paul Bettany), the twins (Jett Klyne and Julian Hilliard), and cool uncle Pietro (Marvel Cinematic Universe newcomer and X-Men veteran Evan Peters) prepare to celebrate Halloween, we see them wearing appropriately wacky costumes. Wanda explains her red outfit away as a Sokovian fortune teller, and Vision's colorful costume is said to depict either a booger (if you ask Pietro) or a luchador (per Wanda, who chose the costume and evidently has a thing for pro wrestlers). However, it's good to remember that WandaVision is a show in which every single minute detail means something, from individual characters to musical choices. You didn't really think the Halloween costumes would slip into the episode without some added layers of subtext, did you?

Here's why the show's Halloween costumes mean more than you think.

The Halloween costumes we see in WandaVision episode 6 are comics-accurate, to the point that they're actually very close to how these Avengers should really look. As befits her role as the apparent god-empress of her hex bubble, Wanda's red costume is arguably the most refined, and her spiky headpiece in particular is very faithful to her classic Scarlet Witch attire. 

Meanwhile, Vision's default look is already a lot like his comic book counterpart, though his colors are quite a bit more muted and his synthezoid surface is considerably more detailed than the relatively smooth uniform he wears in the comics. As such, his colorful Halloween garb is basically a super low-budget cosplay of his garish comic book uniform, which you can easily see when he morphs back into his usual self partway through the episode. Interestingly, the show even puts Agnes (Kathryn Hahn) in a witch costume, a likely nod to the long-running Agatha Harkness rumors ... though her sole scene in this episode seems to cut against this popular theory. 

The crowning achievement of the episode is arguably the way it comfortably puts Pietro in an incredibly accurate comic book Quicksilver costume, complete with a hilariously shameless, gelled-up version of his Wolverine hairdo. Both live-action incarnations of Quicksilver have diverged quite a bit from their comics inspiration. Taylor-Johnson's MCU version wore glorified active wear, while Peters' X-Men version has traditionally favored goggles, street clothes, and the occasional, generic X-uniform. Absurd as his classic costume with its silver lightning sash is, it's amazing to see the character actually wearing it — even if it can only be pulled off in the Halloween episode of the strangest show on Disney+.