Why Marvel Fans Are Taking A Closer Look At A New WandaVision Poster
Marvel's WandaVision has swiftly outgrown its humble beginnings as a sitcom about a robot and a trauma survivor living a blissful suburban existence. Thanks likely in equal parts to the show's mystery box story structure and its status as fans' first hit of that MCU good stuff in over a year, it has now become a weekly exploration of the same part of the human brain that makes people search for Bigfoot in footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Kevin Smith thinks that he's found the Fantastic Four in the program and the internet is abuzz with the possibility of mutants making their MCU debut. Essentially, WandaVision has become a franchise-spanning case of face pareidolia where, episode by episode, viewers become more and more convinced that they see Namor the Sub-Mariner in their grilled cheese sandwiches.
Well, don't touch that dial. A new poster for the series that dropped this week is turning heads thanks to — what else? — a small, small detail. It's the kind of thing that probably would have gone unnoticed if it hadn't been attached to a cinematic universe with fans who never saw a frame of footage that they couldn't tie back to a West Coast Avengers panel from 1985.
WandaVision fans may have spotted a deviled Easter egg
"The Devil's in the details," they say, and as Wanda's neighbor Agnes points out, that's not the only place he is.
According to some eagle-eyed fans, he's also in the wallpaper behind WandaVision's main characters, just in between Vision and Agnes's heads. And yes, killjoys, there's a chance that this is just the visual trickery that occurs when a bunch of shapes are reflected symmetrically. Or, and this is perfectly reasonable, it's a callout to a character introduction that many viewers have been championing as inevitable since the show was first announced.
It's been well established that Mephisto, Marvel's Faustian not-quite-Satan, is a shoe-in for WandaVision's shortlist of potential hidden antagonists. In the comics, the devilish scofflaw has been deeply embedded in Vision and Wanda's lives for years, and was even responsible for Wanda's twin bouncing baby boys, Thomas and William. The groundwork is there, even if the introduction of a semi-literal devil would be a considerable play for Marvel's Disney+ offerings to make right out of the gate.
Whether it's a sign of things to come, a coincidence, or another in the ever-growing monumental stack of Easter eggs you missed in WandaVision, we can all agree on one thing: That's a heck of a wallpaper design, isn't it?