While we’re still a few weeks out from WandaVision’s premiere on Disney+, the series’ Twitter account has spent the past few days dropping a series of trippy, cryptic teaser images that appear to be building toward something.
In each of the six posters that the account’s dropped so far, Wanda Maximoff and the Vision are the centerpieces of different sitcoms plucked from various points throughout TV history. With each poster, different elements shift and morph, both reflecting the passage of time and WandaVision’s plot developments. The latest drop might just hold the first tiny glimpse of a deeper darkness lurking in the series’ shadows.
‘50s Newlyweds
The first of Marvel’s WandaVision posters was modest enough at first glance, what with its depiction of an unassuming living room entertainment setup right out of the 1950s, complete with a black and white television set featuring the titular couple gazing at one another.
WandaVision’s first trailer established that the sorceress and synthezoid are poised to make their move to the mysterious town of WestView where they begin building lives together as a married pair living the American dream — a far cry from their days saving the world with their fellow Avengers. But the bit of wallpaper peeling to reveal a static-y reality lurking just beneath the surface was conveying that as WandaVision progresses, things are going to get even weirder than they seem.
‘60s Nesters
Even though the show is set in the MCU’s present day after the events of Endgame, it’s going to be a journey through time of sorts, albeit not in the literal sense. It’s only but so long before Wanda and her husband begin to realise that the monochrome reality they’re living in isn’t exactly fixed in the Golden Age of television, but is malleable and able to reshape itself to mimic the aesthetics and production values of different kinds of television American sitcoms from throughout the ages.
The jump in “time” depicted in the second poster’s somewhat subtle if you only pay attention to what’s on the updated television screen. But when you take in other details, you can see that things within the living room like the wallpaper, the plant, the art on the wall, and the television itself, are also changing. The magician’s hat perched in the television’s corner feels like a nod to Wanda’s vast magical abilities that the series is meant to further develop. It’s also interesting to note that this poster introduces a lamp purposefully centered to reflect the positioning of Vision’s Infinity Stone, the status of which is one of the bigger questions looming over WandaVision.
‘70s Swingers
WandaVision’s jump into Brady Bunch-era TV marks one of the biggest aesthetic changes in terms of how its characters are all styled, and the poster makes clear that at this point in the series, things are going to be in vivid technicolor. Whether there’s any significance to the walls suddenly losing their art and the ever-modernising TV set gaining a bowl of fruit is unclear, but in retrospect, the product feels like a nod to the surprising twist of fate the Visions discover a little down the line.
‘80s Goofball Parents
Of all the wild things that have happened to Vision and the Scarlet Witch in Marvel’s comics, welcoming their children into the world was rather far down on the list of things people expected to see adapted in WandaVision because of how narratively convoluted those characters’ origins are. But a single sight gag tucked into a brief flash of WandaVision’s comedic approach to the ‘80s seemingly introduced the couple’s twins to the MCU. The poster corresponding to this chunk of the plot doesn’t feature much in the way of clues about what to expect, but it, like a number of the other posters, features an unnatural reflection in the background that may or may not point to the “falseness” of the reality being depicted.
‘90s Suburbanites
Wanda and Vision don their classic comics costumes as they celebrate Halloween during what appears to be the ‘90s. It’s here that, in the trailer at least, Vision is apparently aware that there’s something unnatural happening within Westview that involves him and Wanda. The yellow light missing from the poster could be indicative of Vision being somewhat removed from whatever is going on with Wanda, especially as he begins to interact with characters like Agnes more and more.
Avengers of the Aughts
Between the sequential nature of the posters and WandaVision’s story wrapping with its sixth episode, the final teaser image dropped today’s likely to be the last, and it’s fitting that the show it’s depicting is meant to most closely resemble our present-day. The Magic 8 ball sitting beneath the TV console alludes to the “What If”-ness that defines WandaVision’s premise, but what’s especially eyebrow-raising here is the tiny bit of green light reflecting in Wanda’s eyes.
Even with all of the odd clues and details that have been released ahead of WandaVision’s debut, we still don’t know what’s causing all of the chaos in Wanda’s life and how, exactly, Vision’s up and walking again after being destroyed last time he was seen on-screen. That tiny sparkle in Wanda’s face could very well be a hint about the other forces at play within the universe that might take an interest in her evolving powers.
WandaVision premieres on January 15. You can subscribe to Disney+ here.