The Dog In WandaVision Episode 3 Is More Meaningful Than You Think
Contains spoilers for WandaVision episode 3
It's like Mark Twain always used to say: "With every newly released episode of the hit Disney+ streaming show WandaVision comes a new wave of possible connections to the comics." This week, viewers got a good, long look at a weird, short pregnancy, throwbacks to Viz and Wanda's comic book children, and most notably, a dog.
During this week's installment of the show's trademark surreal commercial segment, we get a brief glimpse at a misbehaving pup. It's all innocuous enough, only this is the first dog we've seen in WandaVision. Anyone who read the Vision miniseries from a few years ago can tell you that canines in the periphery of the mechanical man's suburban bliss have a bad track record for staying, from a technical standpoint, alive. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Particularly enthusiastic fans may have already drawn some connections between the show's pooch cameo and the source material. Let's take a quick trip down the WandaVision fan theory rabbit hole, and revisit Vision's favorite pastime — playing K'Nex with the nervous systems of recently deceased animals.
Could WandaVision's commercial dog beget Sparky?
It's not easy being a parent. Often, you'll be tasked with tackling issues that feel outside your scope of control. There will be some days when you'll have to explain the fleeting nature of existence, or grapple with the morality of the Santa Claus mythos, or discover that the neighbor's dog has been violently electrocuted after digging up the body of a supervillain that your wife murdered and buried in the backyard. These are the day-to-day issues that the parenting books just can't prepare you for.
If you're Marvel's favorite synthezoid Vision, you'll be well aware that the solution to one of these problems is as easy as it is breezy. One man's dead dog being another man's treasure, Viz took the opportunity to upcycle his neighbors' deceased pet in the pages of his self-titled mini series. Frankensteining the brain of the pupper into a new synthetic body, he created Sparky, the bright green animal companion which, like all pets acquired in a moment of familial turmoil, completely fixed everything back home and in no way just made things more complicated.
Now, yanking the brain out of a dog's skull is a little on the bleak side for a streaming service that's also trying to bring back the Muppets, but it seems like Sparky, in one form or another, is headed to WandaVision sooner than later. His doghouse has already been spotted in teaser footage, and creator Tom King, when pressed on the subject of a Sparky appearance, has recently tweeted — and this is a quote — "Woof." Will Vision travel to the Commercial Dimension and get his hands on a poorly housetrained puppy brain?
Maybe. Maybe Dottie is secretly Mephisto. Who knows what this show is doing?