Marvel’s WandaVision is now streaming episode 3 on Disney+, and it is leaving fans with more big questions than the two premiere episodes! The show’s retro sitcom format is peppered with some disturbing hints that something sinister is lurking beneath the happy-go-lucky TV facade. That includes WandaVision’s signature faux commercial breaks in the middle of each episode. Episode 1 featured a Stark brand toaster; Episode 2 had the Strucker watches.; and now Episode 3 brings us a mysterious new product: The HYDRA Soak Body Bar. Obviously, all of these names have major ties to the backstory of Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, making it clear that these commercials hold some important clues as to what is truly happening in WandaVision’s twisted reality.
Warning: WandaVision SPOILERS Follow!
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The first commercial for Stark Industries’ “Toastmate 2000” timed toaster comes with the obvious connection between Tony Stark/Iron Man and Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen). In Avengers: Age of Ultron we learn Wanda and her brother Pietro (aka Quicksilver) hate Tony Stark because their house was hit with Stark-brand mortars. The first mortar killed Wanda’s parents, but she and her brother were trapped in the rubble for two days, staring at a second Stark mortar that never detonated.
If you watch the Star Industries toaster commercial closely, you’ll notice the beeping sound it makes is familiar; it’s the same kind of beeping sound Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) hears in the first Iron Man film’s opening when a Stark mortar lands and detonates near him.
That connection suggests this toaster commercial could be Wanda’s traumatic memory of the moment her family and life were (literally) blown up by Tony Stark. That logic carries over into WandaVision episode 2’s faux commercial for Strucker Watches:
The Struckers are also a prominent (evil) family in the Marve Universe, but in the MCU Wanda’s connection is with HYDRA commander Wolfgang von Strucker (Thomas Kretschmann). Strucker took Wanda and Pietro Maximoff and made them undergo the experiments with Loki’s scepter/Mind Infinity Stone to unlock the super-speed and psychic abilities in Pietro and Wanda (respectively). The exact details of those experiments haven’t been seen onscreen, but since they resulted in a mass grave of Sakovians being buried, and Wanda and Pietro being the sole survivors, it would make sense that it would be another extreme trauma memory for Wanda, with the clock being connected to the length of her painful treatments, time in a cell, etc.
The commercial for WandaVision Episode 3 is for “HYDRA Soak,” a body bar. The commercial she’s the actress from the previous two play a ’70s housewife that’s completely overwhelmed by her kids, pets, and chores. The HYDRA Soak bar transports the housewife to a Grecian paradise setting, where she bathes in a lavish bubble bath with attendants fanning her. The commercial offers consumers a way to travel to a new life within their own minds, as provided by the HYDRA bar, with the added tagline that. the woman “Find the Goddess Within.” The reference to HYRDA clearly connects to Wanda’s history with the group and the power they helped her and Quicksilver discover. This new one is especially curious, as it seems the most direct reference to the events happening in WandaVision. Wanda has retreated into a world of her own imagining to avoid the traumas of loss and grief – could the “goddess within” be a hint to her mutant gene?
These WandaVision faux commercials, by nature, seem to be momentary interruptions in Wanda’s faux reality, spurred on by traumas that simply can’t be fully ignored by her subconscious, while carrying suppressive messages about time, and moving on. The other clue is the actors who appear in the commercial: the same man and woman, always wearing the same expressions on their faces (a smirk and grave stare, respectively). The theory is these are Wanda’s parents (or adoptive parents, if we’re leaving that X-Men connection door open…); that makes sense, as Wanda’s parents would be the other part of her mind she can’t bury.
Week-to-week, it will be curious to see how erratic these WandaVision faux commercials get, as Wanda’s fantasy breaks down. The other big life traumas waiting in the wings are the death of Wanda’s brother, Quicksilver, the death of Vision, and of course, being dusted by Thanos. Seeing X-Men’s Evan Peters show up as a hokey commercial version of Quicksilver would be really fun.
WandaVision is now streaming on Disney+.
