WandaVision’s Elizabeth Olsen Nearly Lets Spoiler Slip About Marvel Comics Inspiration

WandaVision star Elizabeth Olsen stops short of giving away a spoiler about the Marvel Studios series when she reveals it merges “two different comic series as inspiration.” Olsen previously told EW how Marvel chief Kevin Feige sold her on WandaVision by referencing Scarlet Witch-centric stories from the Marvel comic books — but declined to disclose which ones because of spoilers. The first Marvel Studios series follows “unusual couple” Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and the supposed-to-be-dead Vision (Paul Bettany), who are living their idealized suburban lives until the superhero spouses begin to suspect everything is not as it seems after the events of Avengers: Endgame.

“Kevin told me he wanted to merge two different comic series as inspiration. He explained the series would show how Wanda is originally from an Eastern European country and grew up on American black-market products like television,” Olsen told Emmy Magazine, which notes the Marvel star “cuts herself off to avoid revealing spoilers.”

“I was a little bit nervous about Marvel doing something on television, because what does that mean and how could it possibly intertwine?” Olsen said of Feige’s plans to have the film and television sides of the franchise intersect like never before. “But I got so excited when I heard that nugget of the idea.”

Seminal sitcoms like The Dick Van Dyke Show and Full House influence WandaVision, which pulls from Tom King’s The Vision comic book. There it’s the synthetic android Vision, not Wanda, who envisions a picturesque life with a nuclear family in suburbia until reality creeps through.

The other comic book story inspiring WandaVision appears to be House of M, a Marvel Comics crossover event taking place after Wanda’s reality-bending breakdown during the events of Avengers Disassembled. It’s during this event that a new fantasized reality is created, upending the mainstream Marvel universe with one tailor-suited to mutants.

Classic comic books like Vision and the Scarlet Witch find their way into WandaVision, including the “nosy neighbor” (Kathryn Hahn) believed to be the centuries-old sorceress Agatha Harkness. Marvel appears to be drawing primarily from The Vision and House of M for WandaVision, part of a loose trilogy with Spider-Man 3 and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — all of which are connected by their ties to the infinite multiverse.

Starring Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Teyonah Parris, Kat Dennings, Randall Park, and Kathryn Hahn, WandaVision premieres only on Disney+ on January 15, 2021.