Why WandaVision Had to Revisit the Avengers: Endgame Blip From Monica Rambeau’s Perspective

WandaVision creator Jac Schaeffer reveals the “number one priority” behind a return to the events of Avengers: Endgame in Episode 4, where a grown-up Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) blips back to life. When “We Interrupt This Program” opens on a freshly undusted Monica nearly three decades after we last saw her as an 11-year-old (Akira Akbar) in Captain Marvel, it’s a chaotic scene where Monica learns her mother — Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch), best friend to Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) and the founder of S.W.O.R.D. — died three years earlier in 2020, two years after Thanos (Josh Brolin) snapped away half of all life in the universe. Monica included.

“It was always the design that we would have an episode like Episode 4, that sort of stepped out of what we had been seeing and gave us a lot more context. First, we needed to answer the question of ‘Where are we in the MCU timeline?’ Second, it was important to establish a wildly different tone, and this scene dropping us right into a returning moment would certainly satisfy that, especially setting it in a hospital,” Schaeffer told IGN. “But the number one priority was setting up Monica and her character, and we thought seeing this moment of crisis and trauma for her would give audiences an immediate understanding of who she is as a person and what she’s grappling with.”

28 years after witnessing the rise of cosmic superhero Captain Marvel during the Kree-Skrull war, Maria is “such a special character because of her perspective” as a starstruck pre-teen who grows up to be a high-ranking member of the Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division.

“She saw so many truths of the universe before even some of our Avengers and characters that we look to as sort of being the backbone of the MCU thus far,” Schaeffer said. “But she’s lived her whole life knowing that there are other worlds out there and other entities, so I think that, for her character, what I really think it affords her is an enormous empathy and an ability to see conflicts from all sides.”

Monica is now investigating the reality-bending Westview anomaly with astrophysicist Dr. Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) and FBI Agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park), who work together to unravel the truth behind the WandaVision sitcom starring ex-Avengers Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and the Vision (Paul Bettany).

New episodes of Marvel’s WandaVision premiere Fridays on Disney+.

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