It's a regular House of Spoilers below for WandaVision's first two episodes, so be warned!
It's safe to say that Disney+'s WandaVision officially delivered on the bonkers potential that was promised by its attention-grabbing trailers. The show's two-episode premiere unlocked a mentally complex tale whose dark and creepy underpinnings were cloaked in classic TV sitcom sunshine. Viewers already knew that something was amiss with Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda and Paul Bettany's Vision, and comic readers familiar with Marvel's House of M storyline have put much time into speculating about how closely WandaVision will line up with that fan-favorite run. So CinemaBlend put the question directly to Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige, as seen in the above video.
As many Marvel fans might expect, Kevin Feige didn't into just how much of WandaVision's twisty narrative will hearken back to House of M's mind games, he did confirm that it played its part. After first bringing up Tom King's excellent Vision miniseries, our own Sean O'Connell asked Feige if the Disney+ series is their TV take on House of M, to which he replied:
I think you’re to view it as all of the above. What’s amazing is the great, great honor and privilege of working with Marvel Studios is being able to have the greatest long-running fictional universe in the comics at our disposal as inspiration for our shows and our movies. Both of those things, along with many others as it relates to Wanda and Vision in particular, are inspirations.
Perhaps it's to be expected that WandaVision owes only a percentage of its inspiration to House of M, and not the entire shebang. Even if Marvel specifically brought a House of M TV series to life, it would undoubtedly also feature story beats influenced by completely different comic book arcs. I think it's probably safe for viewers to go on theorizing that the events shown in WandaVision are constructs inside Wanda's mind that callback to memories of her childhood. But it remains to be seen whether or not other characters from that arc will show up in the show, such as her brother Quicksilver, in one form or another, and other X-Men characters. That would have seemed kind of impossible just a few years ago, but here we are.
Considering WandaVision has built upon Spider-Man: Far From Home's S.W.O.R.D. reference and mysteriously introduced that major comic book organization, it's safe to say this show will have a big effect on the MCU at large for Phase 4. Not only for the theatrical side of things, but also potentially for Disney+'s upcoming slate of Marvel-based fare such as Secret Invasion.
While Kevin Feige didn't delve too deeply into specific House of M inspirations, he did talk about how WandaVision was directly influenced by Tom King's Vision arc, particularly its visual side. In his words:
You’re right, The Visions was about Vision and was about a family of androids in the suburbs. But those comic covers in particular were very much the inspiration that led us to connecting this sort of childhood unhealthy – I don’t know if it was unhealthy – psychological comfort that I found from sitcoms in my youth, and still do today on MeTV when I can’t sleep at night, and Wanda and Vision and continuing to evolve their story. [It was] those covers of Vision standing in a suburban doorway, the white picket fence and a mailbox with ‘The Visions’ on it, that was the spark for that. And there were still a few other things that we pulled from that run as well. But as is always the case, it’s very collaborative and a melting pot, and is inspired from many runs.
So it definitely sounds like fans can expect to see more from Vision's suburban nightmare than just the picture-perfect cover imagery. Both that story and House of M take several game-changing turns that are tied to characters' grief, or emotions resembling grief, and WandaVision very much feels like it's heading for similarly tragic territory. If Elizabeth Olsen wasn't so damned great at conveying all the emotions all the time, I might be less enthused about seeing her spiral into the remainder of the season. But I cannot wait.
WandaVision is going into the one-episode-a-week release model starting with Episode 3, and you can find them streaming on Disney+ every Friday at 3:01 a.m. ET. Head to our Winter and Spring TV premiere schedule in the meantime to see what other shows are popping up on the small screen soon.
