WandaVision is full of references and jokes that will soar over the heads of young comics
readers and MCU fans.
But the adults watching will know what's what — especially if they grew up glued to their
TV sets.
Here are a few things only adults likely noticed in WandaVision.
The Dick Van Dyke Show is one of the most influential sitcoms of all time, but kids
today likely don't know much about it, considering it debuted way back in 1961.
Comedy writer Rob and his wife Laura, played by TV legends Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler
Moore, have a chemistry similar to that of Wanda and Vision's, especially in the Disney+
hit's first two episodes.
The living room and entryway of WandaVision's black-and-white suburban house is even laid
out the same as Rob and Laura's, with the kitchen on the far right, and the front door
on the far left.
There's one obvious Dick Van Dyke Show allusion in WandaVision that younger viewers likely
missed: In the faux-sitcom's opening credits sequence, Vision carries Wanda over the threshold
and nearly trips on a poorly placed chair.
Instead, he glides right through it, because as a synthezoid, that's something that he
can do.
On The Dick Van Dyke Show, Rob typically fell over an ottoman as he entered the house each
week, but sometimes he dodged it.
By Episode 2 of WandaVision, we're firmly in the 1960s, and the connection to The Dick
Van Dyke Show is even more clear.
Wanda has dropped her demure dress, apron, and heels in favor of sleek black capri pants
and more comfortable shoes.
Add her stylish flip hairdo into the mix, and she looks just like Mary Tyler Moore as
Laura.
Another vintage sitcom that adults are more likely to be familiar with is Bewitched.
The high-concept sitcom, which ran from 1964 to 1972, concerned a witch named Samantha
who married a befuddled guy named Darrin.
"I am a witch."
"What, um, what makes you say that?"
There was no way that WandaVision, a sci-fi story told through old TV comedy tropes in
which one of its two main characters is a witch, wouldn't send up or embrace Bewitched.
With a point of a finger, Wanda changes the "for sale" sign on a chosen house into "sold,"
a very Samantha act of instantaneous magic.
Also like Samantha, she uses her amazing powers to accomplish household tasks, like doing
the dishes and making dinner, the latter of which she accomplishes by manifesting objects
out of thin air.
When his boss comes over for dinner, Vision virtually transforms into the hapless Darrin.
Just as that character was often left desperately trying to keep hidden the fact that his wife
was a witch, Vision vamps, sings, and tries other distraction methods to make sure his
boss and his wife don't see pots, pans, and food floating through the air in the kitchen.
In Episode 3 of WandaVision, the action shifts to the early 1970s.
More specifically, their world turns into a detailed re-creation of one of the most
definitive sitcoms of the era: The Brady Bunch.
From the beginning of the opening sequence, viewers old enough to remember the adorably
cornball comedy about a huge blended family are bombarded with a bunch of Brady-like bits
back-to-back.
"Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!"
The title sequence depicts Vision engaging in mid-century suburban activities like grilling
burgers and putting together a swing set, and he's doing them both outside, past a sliding
glass door in a tiny, unnaturally well-lit yard atop fake grass — it's a very Brady
yard.
The inside of the house also invites Brady comparisons, such as the double front doors,
brick and stone walls, and open, platform-style stairs.
The plot of WandaVision's third episode revolves around Wanda's sudden, unexpected, and extremely
rapidly progressing pregnancy.
As that occurs in the environment of a classic sitcom, the show embraces and sends up the
many tired clichés frequently foisted upon pregnant characters.
Like many sitcom dads-to-be before him, Vision tries to prepare for the baby's arrival with
logic and knowledge, devouring books on pregnancy.
He's a good source of info for Wanda, teaching her about things like breathing exercises
to deal with pain — just like other comedy characters who would attend a Lamaze or general
childbirth class.
"Mucus plug!
In your face, pal!"
In decades past, the big dramatic moment in soaps and sitcoms that lets the audience know
the birth is imminent is when the mother's water breaks, and that happens to Wanda, although
WandaVision subverts the idea — it comes in the form of a torrential indoor rainstorm.
The fifth episode of WandaVision takes place in the '80s, and the sitcom of that era it
most explicitly emulates is Family Ties, the smash hit about the Keatons, former '60s hippies
who move to the suburbs to raise their conservative and superficial '80s kids.
"This is a travesty!
This is a sin against Capitalism!"
WandaVision's set in this episode is dressed to resemble the Keatons' Columbus, Ohio, home,
what with the dark wood flourishes, small glass windows, and central yellow couch.
Vision even rocks Steven Keaton's usual wardrobe of a plaid shirt tucked into jeans.
One of the most memorable elements of Family Ties, for those old enough to remember, was
an opening sequence in which a line drawing portrait of the Keatons is slowly filled in
with paint.
WandaVision's credit sequence re-creates that, albeit with an independently moving magic
wand-like brush doing the painting.
Family portrait painting aside, the opening sequence of the '80s-sitcom-style episode
of WandaVision is all about another hit show from that period: Growing Pains.
That show, ABC's answer to NBC's The Cosby Show, is also about a wealthy Huntington,
Long Island family in which the father is a doctor.
Older WandaVision viewers will remember Growing Pains' opening credit sequence, which the
MCU show re-creates while lovingly poking fun at the whole thing.
Set to a theme song like the one from Growing Pains, with mawkish and overly sentimental
lyrics about family and love sung over bright electric guitar riffs, the visuals consist
of photos of Wanda, Vision, and family growing up... just like its '80s sitcom inspiration.
Growing Pains' visual style makes one more appearance toward the end of the episode.
Wanda, not wanting to listen to Vision confront her about her cruel manipulation of time,
space, and lives, makes her TV life's credits roll, and they're in the same typeface as
those from Growing Pains.
In Wanda's concocted sitcom world of Westview, much of the mystery focuses on her twin sons,
Tommy and Billy.
The twins exist in the comics, but on WandaVision, especially during Episode 5, they're a vehicle
to send up the presentation of children in '80s TV comedies.
At the beginning of the fifth installment of the series, Tommy and Billy are infants,
by the middle they're kindergarten age, and they're ten years old by the time the episode
concludes.
Their rapid growth is both a function of Wanda's magic and reflective of how sitcoms in the
'80s routinely did this.
For example, Andrew Keaton on Family Ties and Chrissy Seaver on Growing Pains both went
from baby to wisecracking grade-schooler in just a few months, and their rapid aging was
never acknowledged.
Speaking of twins, the most popular '80s sitcom involving identical children is definitely
Full House.
Episode 5 of WandaVision includes a few references to that family-friendly hit.
When anybody does anything sentimental or cute on WandaVision, the studio audience emits
a treacly "aww," for example, and toddler-aged Tommy and Billy are reminiscent of Nicky and
Alex, Uncle Jesse and Aunt Becky's tiny twins.
In the opening credit sequence, Wanda, Vision, and their kids run through the rolling field
in the town square toward the camera and end the sequence with a picnic, captured in a
wide shot.
Both of those moments are instantly recognizable to viewers of a certain age as straight out
of the Full House opening.
This is all amusing on another level, too.
Michelle Tanner on Full House was portrayed by twins Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, the older
sisters of Elizabeth Olsen... who stars as Wanda on WandaVision.
By Episode 6 of WandaVision, Wanda Maximoff is still living in a television-based alternate
world of her own creation, which evolves each week to correspond to an increasingly recent
real-life sitcom.
In this installment, the show moves from the '80s and early '90s tropes of Family Ties
and Growing Pains to get to the edgier, rougher, single-camera, laugh track-free comedies of
the 2000s, particularly Malcolm in the Middle.
The beginning of WandaVision's sixth episode is packed with references to the Fox hit,
which debuted in January of 2000 — a bit before younger viewers' time.
The opening sequence of the older show featured harried mom Lois caught in a towel, and WandaVision's
intro segment — also shot frenetically and with lots of video feedback and footage discoloration
— finds Wanda brushing her teeth, not thrilled about getting captured on a camcorder.
Character names, presented as credits, appear in a similar font as the one utilized on Malcolm.
Then, once the action of the show starts, Billy and Tommy break the fourth wall and
address the audience directly, a device employed by Malcolm throughout that series' run.
Jaunty ska-flavored music plays lightly on the soundtrack as they do, a nod to Malcolm's
similar score.
WandaVision also emulates Malcolm's visual style here, employing the use of quick wipe
cuts and odd camera angles.
Because WandaVision is a sitcom — or at least a show set in an artificial, sitcom-derived
world — it gets a Halloween episode.
The MCU series' sixth installment finds Wanda, Vision, the twins, and Pietro celebrating
the big fall holiday, and they dress up for the occasion in form-fitting, brightly-colored
Halloween costumes.
Their outfits are too cheap, cheesy, and flashy to not be designed to catch older viewers'
attention, and to make them search their brains as to why those outfits seem so familiar.
The reason is also an in-joke for Marvel Comics fans.
Wanda, a.k.a. Scarlet Witch, and Vision, mostly hiding their superhero identities, don't often
appear on WandaVision in anything like a superhero costume.
But on Halloween, they dress up in re-creations of the superhero costumes they wore in Marvel
Comics adventures published long ago.
In print, Wanda wore a pointy headpiece, cape, and leotard, just like she does here, while
Vision's green bodysuit and yellow cape is also comics-appropriate.
Even Pietro gets in on the fun, donning a blue T-shirt with a silver stripe and hair
fluffed upward, resembling the inked version of his super alter ego Quicksilver.
The term "breaking the fourth wall" refers to when an actor addresses viewers directly,
dissolving the invisible barrier between worlds.
It can also be used to describe that thing in 21st century mockumentary sitcoms where
characters appear in confessional segments to explain their thoughts and actions, or
turn to the camera to react to the behavior of others.
Those are all tropes of Modern Family, and the seventh episode of WandaVision, "Breaking
the Fourth Wall," is full of homages to the Emmy-winning ABC smash.
Wanda is starting to crack under the pressure of maintaining a faux sitcom world, and she
decides to grab some "me time," all of which she discusses by talking right to the camera,
which fidgets ever so slightly and jaggedly zooms in on her face every so often to mimic
the handheld style of Modern Family.
Her "talking head" segment is delivered from a striped chair that WandaVision producers
seemingly took right off the set of Modern Family, which also inspired this episode's
look, with its chic interior design and expensive-looking furniture.
The jazzy big-band drums on the soundtrack also remind older viewers of that popular
sitcom, as do Vision and Agnes silently expressing alarm over Wanda's actions for the benefit
of the viewer.
The opening credit sequence borrows Modern Family's typeface at the end, but the style
— with rapid-fire examples of "Wanda" appearing on real-life objects — comes straight from
Happy Endings, a sitcom that once came on right after Modern Family.
It also brings to mind the US version of The Office, another famous fourth-wall-breaker,
with the "I Heart Wanda" mug and the similar theme song.
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