Are Wanda And Pietro Maximoff's Parents In WandaVision?
As promised by Marvel CEO and president Kevin Feige, WandaVision has offered up numerous MCU and Marvel comics easter eggs within just its first two episodes. And among the many theories circulating within the MCU fandom is one that illuminates how important WandaVision is not just for expanding our conceptions of Marvel storytelling but to exploring Wanda's backstory.
More specifically, tucked away inside WandaVision's fake commercials are clues about the series' universe, which many fans have already noted doesn't feel, well, real. As a result, these ads appear to be momentary glitches in "the matrix," if you will, or more appropriately, parts of Wanda's consciousness slipping through. Of the two that have already been shown, the same couple can be seen in them — a smiling man with slicked-back hair and a stoney-faced woman with longer-hair.
One commercial sells a Stark Industries' Toastmate 2000, while the other is for a Strucker men's watch. On the surface, these commercials seem to be just another weird element of this small screen universe. But fans have noticed similarities between the commercials' contents and either the larger MCU or Wanda's past. That includes her brother, Pietro Maximoff, who died in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
And while some of those connections are glaringly clear for longtime Marvel fans, there's a specific insinuation that has fans buzzing and could finally fill in a major hole about Wanda's past and backstory in the MCU.
The WandaVision commercials are making direct connections to her past traumas and origins
After a few watches of both commercials, the connections between their content and Wanda's on-screen origins quickly become clearer. Stark Industries is clearly the multinational tech company founded by Howard Stark — father of Iron Man Tony Stark — in 1940. The Starks have a long and winding history with multiple characters in the MCU, for some most memorably the tragic origins of Bucky Barnes (a.k.a. Winter Soldier). But Stark Industries and the family's involvement in the global military-industrial complex is also directly responsible for the Maximoff twins' origins, at least in the films.
Comics fans may know Wanda and Pietro as the children of X-Men's Magnito, but in the cinematic universe, audiences know a somewhat different origin story. In the second Avengers film, audiences see how the two twins became orphans — a Stark-brand mortar. After their house was hit with two, their parents died, leaving the young duo trapped for days under rubble, forcing them to contemplate possible death as a second mortar sat undetonated in front of them. Some have even noticed that the toaster's beeping sound is similar to the one given off by the mortar that lands near Iron Man in the 2008 film's opening (via Comicbook.com).
The company in the second commercial directly references another person from Wanda's past — Wolfgang von Strucker. MCU fans likely remember him as the HYDRA commander who came into possession of the twins and spent years mercilessly experimenting on them using an Infinity Stone to unlock their power. In the comics, the Strucker family also have evil origins, but in terms of Wanda's backstory, Strucker's time with her results in internal trauma and a mass murder event that has likely — like the death of her parents — left her with a few scars.
Fans think the couple in WandaVision's commercials could be related to Wanda
Based on the clues hidden in just the first two commercials — including a message the very first commercial pushes stating, "Forget the past! This is your future!" — fans have largely come to the conclusion that they point to Wanda's trauma and possibly her damaged psyche. That means that the TV-themed world in which Wanda and Vision find themselves trapped may be a construction of her own making.
All those larger MCU connections to Wanda's past have also stirred up one among several major WandaVision fan theories — that the couple in both commercials has something to do with the Scarlet Witch's family. If the commercials themselves are manifestations of her traumatic memories, perhaps the people in them are, too. "Call me crazy, I think the people in the commercials are Wanda and [Pietro's] parents," Redditor u/thatonekidemmett posted. "Makes sense they'd be the same people in each episode and linked to her trauma. As far as I know, they've never been shown before."
Spinning off that theory, another fan offered more evidence in favor of it by pointing to the similarities between the toaster popping in the commercial and the explosion that left the Maximoff twins parentless at 10. "When the man and woman waited for the toaster 'to explode,' as Pietro mentioned as well, [he] and Wanda were 'sitting in the rubble' waiting for the bomb to go off, as with the people in the adverts," wrote u/xXWhiteTiger02.
All of these hints seemingly point to the possibility that these characters are MCU Wanda's parents — if not her biological ones, her adopted ones. Like all her other traumatic memories, they, too, cannot be buried.
But only time will tell how accurate this WandaVision theory is.