WandaVision's Mailman Might Have Huge Implications Moving Forward
We're now more than halfway through WandaVision's nine-episode run — entering the endgame, if you will — and the show has firmly established itself as MCU fans' new favorite cache of Easter eggs in need of gathering. Check any message board and you'll see the shenanigans: Every frame is referencing something, and each seemingly meaningless background prop holds potential answers.
This Fox Mulder-adjacent, audience-wide dedication to pulling at threads has led to some wild fan theories. Maybe Ultron is making a comeback. Maybe Mephisto is behind it all. One particularly crazy idea is that Pietro Maximoff might show up again, this time played by the X-Men franchise's Evan Peters, which would, ha, you know, ha ha, be insane.
But if everything on WandaVision is related to something else, then one question is burning in the minds of its viewers: What's up with that mailman, huh? We've seen him a couple of times, played by character actor Amos Glick, and he's always carrying two things: heavy dramatic undertones, and mail. What could a postal service employee have to do with the Marvel universe at large, and why does this one keep popping up?
We'll have to wait at least another week to find out for sure, but there's a theory about his real identity, and the conspiracy goes all the way to the top. Or, at least, all the way to the lobby of the Baxter Building.
WandaVision's mailman: Willy or won't he?
Behold, Willie Lumpkin, an American success story if ever there was one. From humble beginnings in Glenville, Nebraska, he moved up in the world, relocating to the Big Apple in pursuit of a career carrying correspondence to and from the denizens of the greatest city on Earth. Lumpkin started out as a comic strip character co-created by Stan Lee, before immigrating to the budding Marvel universe in the pages of Fantastic Four #11 in 1963.
Lumpkin went on to become a familiar face to Fantastic Four aficionados, serving as Marvel's First Family's preferred mail carrier and unofficial fifth member. He even tried to join the team early on, citing his remarkable ability to wiggle his ears. He's traveled with the team to visit the Moon, helped to defeat the Mad Thinker, and created branching alternate realities through time travel — not bad for a guy from Cornhusker State. Notably, he's appeared onscreen before, in 2005's Fantastic Four, delivering bills to Reed Richards at the Baxter Building and looking suspiciously like Stan Lee.
Now, we know that the MCU is gearing up to introduce the Fantastic Four in an upcoming project, and WandaVision has been playing it fast and loose with FF trigger words like "cosmic radiation" and "manned space missions." But what points to the show's friendly mailman as potentially being the new Willy Lumpkin? Honestly, not a lot. There just aren't many other postal workers in Marvel comics. Finding out whether or not Willy's making his MCU debut seems like it'll just be a matter of (clobberin') time.