(Spoiler alert: This story includes details from “WandaVision.)
“WandaVision” birthed enough fan theories to fill out the multiverse, with fans filling up Reddit threads with speculation that the Fantastic Four or the X-Men would make their Marvel Cinematic Universe debuts.
But the Disney+ series wrapped up last week with no appearance by Reed Richards (there are other “aerospace engineers” in the world, apparently) nor Wanda Maximoff’s more-famous dad. Evan Peters’ surprise appearance as fake Pietro didn’t herald the arrival of the mutants from Fox’s X-Men world.
“I was impressed by the level of creative thinking happening, which is great. People were really picking the show apart, looking for clues everywhere, coming up with really creative and wonderful theories,” “WandaVison” director Matt Shakman told TheWrap. “We were telling a relatively simple story. So as we went along, and I was hearing about the Fantastic Four and all of these other things, of course, I wanted people to refocus on the core story, which Wanda and Vision, which I think people did by the end.”
While that may have left some fans disappointed, director Shakman said they never meant to tease anything other than a story that centered around Wanda’s (Elizabeth Olsen) immense grief stemming from her tortured history. “There was already a big bad, which was grief,” he continued. “We didn’t need Mephisto to show up. We had something much more important to deal with, which was how do you come to terms with loss? How do you handle grief?”
Shakman and head writer Jac Schaeffer knew from the start that it would end with Wanda fully assuming her “Scarlet Witch” moniker as she heads off to her next appearance in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.”
“We were acutely aware of the fact that the name Scarlet Witch had never been used in the MCU. And we were a little nervous that it would land flat,” Schaeffer said. “We knew that she would have a new kit, because that’s part of why we do this. There’s an upgrade. That that was in the cards from the beginning.”
But there was one “Wandavision” fan theory that kind of made Schaeffer jealous: That each of those fake commercials represented one of the Infinity Stones. “That is really clever. I a little bit wish we had thought of that.”