Sadly for the fans, The Fantastic Four won’t debut on WandaVision, although there were some clever fan theories linking Marvel’s first family to the popular Disney+ series. The creator has put an end to the suspense and debunked the theories.
WandaVision’s viewers were blown away after watching the fourth episode, thinking of the Easter eggs that had been dropped for Marvel’s First Family to be introduced right on the heels of an official Fantastic Four movie announcement.
The episode did two things to fuel this theory. First, it saw SWORD’s acting director Tyler Heyward explain to Monica Rambeau that the space program had seen half of its people erased in the blip and the remaining half losing their nerve. Then, Darcy revealed that she was finding strong traces of CMBR outside of Westview. Looking deeply into those details, Marvel fans can see ties to the Fantastic Four’s origin, but WandaVision’s head writer Jac Schaeffer implies that this was never the intention.
WandaVision is the newest edition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) which premiered on 15 January 2021 on Disney+. The series has been created by Jac Schaeffer, based on the Marvel Comics characters Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch and Vision. Set three weeks after the events of Avengers: Endgame (2019) it shares continuity with the films of the franchise. WandaVision is produced by Marvel Studios, with Schaeffer pioneering as head writer and Matt Shakman as director.
WandaVision is announced to be a nine episode sitcom series, with its first four episodes already released; the other five episodes are scheduled for weekly release until 5 March 2021.
The series creator, Jac Schaeffer, said that there are no plans to bring in The Fantastic Four to the series, and the mentions of CMBR and astronauts were coincidences. Schaeffer quoted:
“I have to tell you that the CMBR, it was a coincidence. When I was putting my pitch together, I was trying to figure like, ‘What’s the science behind a broadcast? How does that even work?’ When I was in college, I had a friend whose thesis was building this machine that was about measuring CMBR. So, I’ve always been really fascinated by relic radiation and the idea of also how television signals in the air work. I’m gonna embarrass myself if I talk about it…I’ve never really understood how TV signals work. I did a little bit of research, we had this expert and she helped me. CMBR was my own original pitch, separate from anything else as my own fascination. The thing about how radio waves are out deep in the universe, they just went out there and they just keep going out there. All of that seems like really fertile ground for a show about two Avengers in a sitcom.”
As for the fifth episode, as seen in the teaser, we can expect things to get unraveled in Westview. Vision is becoming acutely aware that something really strange is going on in their own pocket dimension. It’s implied from the trailer that Vision becomes aware of his past and the fact that he has been living inside of a constructed reality. SWORD is attempting to break Westview to get inside.
In the trailer, Vision is heard asking Wanda, “Wanda, what is outside” of Westview. Wanda also breaks character and becomes Scarlet Witch. It appears Vision is trying to break out of Westview but Wanda won’t let him. At the end of the trailer, we see them both floating in the air, preparing to fight.
Considering how much is happening in WandaVision, introducing a seminal aspect of the Marvel Universe like the Fantastic Four was likely too much for the series to take on. The rights to Fantastic Four are finally back in house with Marvel, giving fans hope that a film version worthy of Marvel’s first family might be right around the corner.