Why The Yogurt Commercial In WandaVision Episode 6 Is Significant
Contains spoilers for WandaVision episode 6
WandaVision covets its unsettling moments, carefully scattering them throughout the decade-hopping sitcom tropes trapping the supercouple Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) in the suburban town of Westview. As Wanda finds her control over her happy life in the anomaly slipping, the cracks in the show's idyllic façade are similarly starting to grow. The commercial in episode 6, "All-New Halloween Spooktacular!" was particularly jarring with its bright callback to the cartoonish ads of a late '90s and early 2000s quickly devolving into something unhinged.
In bright, cheery claymation-style animation, the commercial opens with a kid sitting on an isolated island, complaining he's so hungry he'd eat anything. Then, bam! A slick, sunglasses-wearing shark pops out of the ocean riding a surfboard. With all the classic surfer lingo of the '90s, the shark offers him Yo-Magic brand yogurt, but the boy can't seem to get the lid open before he starves and turns into a shriveled husk. "Yo-magic! The snack for survivors," the voiceover says, unfazed.
Each of WandaVision's ads so far have had another layer of meaning connecting them to Wanda's past, so what is the yogurt ad's significance?
Magic is the key to survival, but whose survival?
The other ads, like the Stark Industries Toast Mate 2000 and the Lagos paper towels, have referenced Wanda's traumatic experiences of the past. This one, however, doesn't clearly do that. Instead, it may be more relevant to her present.
There are a few possible interpretations of the ad, but the "magic" of "Yo-Magic" appears to be a clear link to Wanda's magic-like abilities. From there, one interpretation is that Wanda is trying to keep people — say Vision and Pietro (Evan Peters) — alive with her magic, but is failing to truly accomplish that task, just as the "Yo-Magic” fails to save the boy. Or, maybe she's scrambling at the figurative yogurt lid on the depth of her power, hoping that if she can just open it more, she will be able to survive her grief.
"Survivor," as the ad says, can easily describe Wanda, who's survived hardships that her parents, twin brother, and Vision did not. Judging by the commercial, she believes magic is the only thing she has left now that her loved ones have all passed away. It's a grim outlook, but Wanda's problems were never going to be solved in a sitcom's 30-minute runtime.