What WandaVision's Auntie A And Bova Milk Ads Really Mean
WandaVision, the newest entry in the MCU and Marvel's first step in the direction of Phase 4, has already carved out a reputation as the studio's weirdest offering to date. Equal parts I Dream of Jeannie and every episode of Black Mirror, it's also making up for lost time. Comic book fans haven't had a new Marvel Studios production in a year and a half, and everyone's antsy for new material to dissect. Thankfully, WandaVision provides in this regard.
Considering all the Easter eggs you probably missed in WandaVision, it's certainly worth going back through episodes 1 and 2 with the pause button handy. The series has already given viewers two heaping scoops of background references, and two of the funkiest by far pop up during the second episode's animated opening title sequence. Itself calling back to the classic sitcom Bewitched, the minute-long cartoon is jam packed with hidden callbacks to the comics, including a pair of innocuous-looking advertisements emblazoned in the background of the grocery store: one advertising "Auntie A's Kitty Litter" and the other "Bova Milk."
If you're a comics fan, then you already know that there's something fishy about those very specific fictional brand names, but it takes a special sort of attention to the source material to know what they're referring to. In one case, it's an honest-to-goodness witch. In the other, it's ... complicated.
Auntie A is here to stay
Starting out with Auntie A's, the kitty litter with the grinning, dark-furred cat mascot.
Plenty has already been said about Kathryn Hahn's character, Agnes, and how all signs point to her being some sort of reimagining of Agatha Harkness from the comics. Harkness, a remarkably powerful witch, plays a special role in the Avengers' lives. Through her tutelage, Wanda learns to better control her magical abilities; Via her intervention, the hero Wonder Man is brought back from the dead; And, thanks to a merry bunch of mishaps, she sort of accidentally sets in motion the series of events that gets Wanda supernaturally pregnant with two boys — Thomas and William.
In a sneaky nod to the comics, the "Auntie A's" advertisement is referencing Agatha Harkness's beloved familiar, Ebony the cat. Ebony is, to paraphrase Korg, "not like a real cat, like a freaky cat," capable of transforming into a black panther. In other words: She probably needed, like, a ton of kitty litter.
"Big deal," you might say. "Marvel Comics has a cat that can turn into a bigger cat. They've got a Norse god that turns into a frog, too. That's not so weird." Alright, well, you asked for it. Let's talk about Bova Milk.
Bova milk helps weirdos grow up big and strong
So, remember back in Age of Ultron when the best explanation of Wanda Maximoff that Maria Hill could come up with was "she's weird?" It turns out that she really hit the nail on the head.
In the comics, Wanda and her brother Pietro have had their backstories painted over and reimagined a couple of times, and one of the funkier examples of this came in Giant-Size Avengers #1 back in 1974. There, it was posited that the twins were actually the children of World War II-era heroes Miss America and — enormous sigh — the Whizzer. As guests of the High Evolutionary, the couple experienced a top-tier delivery when Miss America went into labor, complete with Jack Kirby-esque sci-fi surroundings and, most pertinently, an anthropomorphized cow named Bova lending a hoof.
The twins' genesis has had a fair number of facelifts since the '70s, but — against all odds — Bova the artificially evolved bovine nursemaid has stuck around, occasionally popping her horns up to care for the Marvel universe's young folk and infirm. While the character was murdered gruesomely in the pages of New Warriors a few years back, her backstory remains largely unexplored. All we can say for certain now is that, in some cartoon dimension, she started selling her bodily fluids in grocery stores. Comics are bonkers.