Could WandaVision Trailer Easter Egg Set the Stage for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3?

By now, fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have had at least 24 hours to pore over Marvel Studios’ first trailer for WandaVision, one of the outfit’s most unique properties to date. The trailer gave us plenty of first looks, from Kathryn Hahn’s mysterious Agnes to an adult Monica Rambeau, played by Teyonah Parris. Then, there are subtler nods placed throughout — like an apparent tease that could lead directly into Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.

As pointed out by Murphy’s Multiverse head scooper Charles Murphy, there’s a random shot of a cow hanging on the wall of Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision’s (Paul Bettany) residence. Now, unless the two live in the middle of Wisconsin — you know, the cheese capital of the world — why would they have a framed photo of a cow in their living room? The simple answer is that it’s a tribute to Bova, a classic Marvel comics character from deep within the mythos of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. In the vein of Rocket Raccoon, Bova is talking steer that helped raise Wanda and Pietro immediately after they were born because…comics.

By now, you’re probably asking how that leads to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. You see, Bova is one of the many talking animals engineered by the High Evolutionary. Though it’d be a slight alteration to his true comic-accurate lore, many have speculated the animal-experimenting villain could end being the big bad of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 as the creator of Rocket Raccoon. After all, James Gunn himself has said the movie will serve as a completion point for Rocket’s journey, meaning the character will likely receive the necessary closure he’s been after, regardless of how grim it may be.

“When you asked me what was saddest for me when I thought it was gone—and anybody at Marvel can tell you—it’s this very strange and attached relationship to Rocket,” Gunn told Deadline last year. “Rocket is me, he really is, even if that sounds narcissistic. Groot is like my dog. I love Groot in a completely different way. I relate to Rocket and I feel compassion for Rocket, but I also feel like his story has not been completed. He has an arc that started in the first movie, continued into the second and goes through Infinity War and Endgame, and then I was set to really finish that arc in Guardians 3. That was a big loss to me—not being able to finish that story—though I was comforted by the fact that they were still planning to use my script.”

Maybe WandaVision actually manages to introduce the concept of the High Evolutionary to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or maybe Wanda and Vision just really like cows.

WandaVision is expected to be released sometime this year while Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has yet to set a release date.