WandaVision, this big reveal and the future of the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse

Uncle Jesse shattered the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Or at least a loving pastiche of the Full house heartthrob did what many fans expected of Professor X and Magneto.

A few days before WandaVisionThe fifth episode of Disney has aired, the Disney marketing apparatus has gone into overdrive. Series chief Elizabeth Olsen has promised fans a twist on the level of Luke Skywalker appearing in season 2 of The Mandalorian. From there, publications began to circulate olsen clip discussing the 2005 comic House of M– a mini-series of eight issues which strongly presents the X-Men. It all sounded like a calculated blitzkrieg meant to draw viewers in for the type of big splash that escaped WandaVision in its first four episodes.

During weeks, WandaVision lovingly (and precisely) 50s, 60s, and 70s sitcoms, but when the time came to delve into an 80s-90s sitcom like Full house, no character on the Marvel show has played an Uncle Jesse type. That’s until a knock hits Wanda’s door more than 30 minutes after this week’s episode started. “Wanda, who is this?” Vision asks as a stunned Wanda watches a white-haired Evan Peters, donning a leather jacket appropriate for the time. “She recast Pietro?” the show’s substitute audience, Darcy, asks in amazement.

Depending on your level of fandom and patience, you were confused by this twist or foaming in your mouth. Wanda’s brother Pietro Maximoff, also known as Quicksilver, last died in 2015 Avengers: Age of Ultron, had returned from the dead. But instead of Aaron Taylor-Johnson reprising the role, he was replaced by Peters. And to even record why this imported, you should be aware that Peters was chosen as Pietro in three X Men films released by 20th Century Fox before Disney acquired it. The X-Men moment for the MCU has come way ahead of schedule though WandaVison’s The last minute twist is true.

“It will take time,” Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said. io9 in 2019 about one of the mutants appearing in the MCU. “It’s just started, and the five-year plan we’re working on, we were working on before this was all established. So really, it’s a lot more, for us, less a question of the specifics of when and where now and more simply the “comfort factor” of the X-Men being “back home” again under Marvel. “But it will be very long.”

According to Jac Schaeffer, WandaVision chief writer, Feige needed to be convinced to implement the surprise. “We loved the idea of [bringing Pietro back]. And then we were like, how the hell are we going to make that sense? Like, how do we justify this? Schaeffer said in an interview with Marvel. “I think Kevin [Feige] wanted to be sure there was a reason for it, that it made sense.

Peters’ Quicksilver debut at the end of WandaVision potentially increases this timeline. Earlier this year, Feige shared that Ryan Reynolds dead Pool The franchise would also enter the MCU with its R rating intact. So far, the future of the X-Men seems to resemble its past. If you were a fairly popular mutant in the Fox Universe, there’s a good chance you could appear in the MCU anytime.

To fully appreciate mutants inhabiting the same world as Thor and Spider-Man, not only would you need to know the value of 23 movies in Marvel history, but you would also need to have some knowledge of 13. X Men films that started in 2000. If rumors are true that the third Tom Holland Spider Man will star the previous Peter Parkers Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, it may also need to binge on five more films.

Over a decade of fandom, world-building, and consolidation created a maze of content that a new fan would take months, if not years, to navigate. The MCU Machine has spent most of its existence turning big-budget movies into television, and now with the release of its debut Disney + show, the house Feige has built is attempting to reverse engineer the cinematic show within the confines of the television. With the potential arrival of the X-Men in the MCU, it’s hard to say whether the interconnected nature of the 20+ movie monster is its greatest strength or a levee that’s about to break.

As much as WandaVision is a loving ode to the sitcoms of yore, it’s also a show on other shows, a collection of fandom-fueled possibilities disguised as plot progression. In many ways, that’s the MCU’s promise since Nick Fury wanted to talk with Tony Stark about the “Avenger Initiative” after the 2008 credits. Iron Man. With each successive Marvel movie, codas and Easter eggs have created a cottage industry of content and fandom. Predicting what was to come was more important than what you just watched. It was a new take for an oppressed film studio that was selling a vision of a future franchise that no one had seen before. But within the confines of a weekly TV show, the constant nods and winks at a plot thread that will be developed into another movie or MCU show start to sound like commercials.

Every week on WandaVision a new character reveal or new plot twist now has implications for franchise building. Does Peters’ appearance signal an X-Men franchise? Are Wanda and Vision’s twins destined to be young Avengers? Can stir up outcry for a “fun X-Files“– whatever does that mean – starring Jimmy Woo has become a thing? It didn’t matter that episode 5 of WandaVision was among the best of the season, as he ultimately tested how far Wanda would go to protect his simulated life. The emotional climax between a confused Olsen and an enraged Paul Bettany was irrelevant by the time the meta-revelation opened the door.

Comic book movies are now fully entrenched in the era of the multiverse – a framework created out of necessity to handle the diverse stories told by a range of disparate writers and artists. It’s a concept that makes sure everything counts (for example, a beloved Pietro Maximoff in Evan Peters existing in two disparate franchises) and makes sense if you squint hard enough.

The multiverse was popularized in 1961 Flash no. 123, who revealed that the modern Barry Allen Flash and the WWII original Jay Garrick Flash lived on two separate worlds. In the 1980s, Marvel shared that its comic book world was one Earth among many, specifically Earth-616, in a David Thorpe series of Captain Britain comics.

“The wonderful and awesome thing about Marvel Comics is the fact that over generations it’s basically like one big, big novel written by a lot of different people – probably hundreds and hundreds of different writers and many other artists. And they all need to be consistent internally. And if they’re not, you tend to get someone somewhere to write to you and point it out to you, ”Thorpe explained last year. “This idea of ​​consistency can be a bit limiting. As Marvel has grown, and billions and billions of pages of ink have been spilled, then it is inevitable that things will happen that were not originally intended.

It’s only natural for comic book movies to take this idea and use it to juggle the various actors, characters, and franchises being built for screen and streaming services. 2018 Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse introduced audiences to a black and Puerto Rican Spider-Man, a Talking Spider-Man, and a black Spider-Man, all of whom have existed in different universes. Last year DC revealed it is launching a multiverse to reconcile the reality that multiple Batmen and Jokers will soon be running simultaneously. Doctor Strange’s next film bears an insignificant title Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness after the concept was teased by the Elder in the 2016 entry. The multiverse of madness Elizabeth Olsen also happens to reprise her role as Wanda Maximoff.

But one of the main reasons the physical comic book market continues to weaken as comic book movies thrive is because of what the multiverse has inevitably produced. If you go to a comic book store in the United States and ask to buy a Vision and Scarlet Witch comic, you will inevitably get a hundred different responses. Do you want a story from the 616 Universe, the Ultimate Universe, a 1980s miniseries, or something newer? Depending on who reconnects what, Wanda could be a mutant, Magneto’s daughter, or none of the above. Vision could be alive, dead, a teenage Iron Man, or the father of a group of child robots he built.

For better or worse, the MCU looks more like its source material than ever. The biggest challenge of all will be whether the movies can succeed where the comics continue to fail. Managing the Marvel Cinematic Universe is one thing. Shepherding the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse will be something completely different.