WandaVision: New Hero, New Villains, More Fantastic Four Ties

WandaVision revealed its villain or at least one of them and the Fantastic Four teases continued to pile up in Episode 7. On the heels of a massive cliffhanger which closed out Episode 6, WandaVision came back with a Modern Family themed edition which saw Wanda, Vision, and Agnes talking straight into the camera as character do on the popular ABC sitcom. It resulted in a step back in pacing after things were heating up in the recent episodes but also delivered a new super hero to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, just moment beforee it revealed the villain who has been pulling all of the strings in Westview. Spoilers follow!

In comics, Agatha Harkness first appeared in Fantastic Four #94 in January of 1970. She was around in the 17th Century’s Salem Witch Trials and has been heavily involved in a lot of stories with Wanda throughout Marvel Comics titles and she’s also been a nanny for Franklin Richards, the child of Reed Richards and Sue Storm, not unlike how she has watched Billy and Tommy in WandaVision. That said, she also has ties to Mephisto and is the one who, in comics, explains Billy and Tommy are actually fragments of Mephisto’s soul which had been used to create the children of Wanda and her robot husband Vision. I don’t need to explain to you why there had to be something else at play for a woman to have babies with a toaster.

In Agatha’s basement we really have to bust out the Easter egg goggles. The skulls and other little bits in her cases around the room might be some Marvel references but they’re tough to decipher because of how out of focus they are but we get a clear shot of a book that is glowing with some sort of dark energy. This looks like it could be the Darkhold, which is essentially a spellbook known as The Shiatra Book of the Damned, also known as The Book of Sins. This could be an Agents of SHIELD tie – the Marvel TV show’s fourth season saw the Darkhold play a big role in the characters living in the Framework, which was essentially and alternate reality controlled by HYDRA.

Worth noting: this could be the book that’s missing in Doctor Strange…

With Agatha ahd the Darkhold in play, it also seems like Chthon is going to be involved and that’s who showed up as Pietro. Now, I don’t know why he is wearing the face of X-Men movie universe of Pietro, but Chthon has used Quicksilver’s body to deceive people on the pages of Marvel Comics before. I really hope it wasn’t just Aaron Taylor-Johnson didn’t want to return for a short role as a fake version of his dead character so they got us meaninglessly hyped with by teasing an inter-franchise multiverse story with X-Men’s Evan Peters joining the cast.

In the recent Secret Empire comic story, Chthon possessed Wanda — and it wasn’t the first time — and Doctor Strange had to free her from the possession. This sort of story seems really likely.

Then, there’s Mr. Scratch, Agatha’s little bunny. Mr. Scratch might somehow that might be her son or at least a reference to him, Nicholas Scratch. Nicholas Scratch becomes the leader of New Salem in comics after convincing people that Agatha had betrayed them. He also goes on to lead Salem’s Seven, which is a group of magically mutated jerks, who even defeat the Fantastic Four — so there’s no shortage of Fantastic Four references and ties in WandaVision, just as we’re on the cusp of getting a Fantastic Four movie in the next few years. Going by the comics, Scratch, if he turns out to be more than a rabbit in the MCU, could even be tied to Fantastic Four getting to the Negative Zone with Reed Richards creating the opportunity to travel between universes.

We did not meet the “aerospace engineer who was mentioned twice by Monica Rambeau in the two episodes prior to this one despite here aid squad arriving, unless the random military woman was the contact and we all just overhyped ourselves. I’m betting that someone is still coming and I’m really wishful that it’s Reed Richards but a lot of people are rightfully starting to think it could be Adam Brashear, Monica’s squadmate as a member of the Ultimates.

The Ultimates possibility is furthered by the fact that Monica got her super powers in this episode and it looks like she’s going to be a combination of a couple of her comic book counterparts in this, both Photon and Spectrum are peeking through. This is seen in the powers of being able to see Westview through an energy reading lens of her own eyes and also manipulating energy herself as we saw during her feud with Wanda. Plus, the SWORD get up she’s wearing, clearly a nod to the Spectrum costume in comics.

The commercial in this week’s episode uses the word Nexus, which is a reference to Wanda as a Nexus Being in Marvel Comics.This means Wanda is a being who is essentially the Nexus of All Realities, having connections to other universes, being the focal point of this universe, and having the ability to rewrite reality as she sees fit. All signs point to this commercial acknowledging those traits of hers.

Couple of quick Easter eggs to shout out before we go, thee cereal box is called Sugar SNAPS and that almost certainly makes Thanos very, very proud. The license plate in the opening credits that says WANDA also says 122822 above it, a nod to Marve legend Stan Lee’s birthday of December 28, 1922, and Monica Rambeau totally hit a super hero landing which would get a round of applause from Deadpool when she dropped into Westview with her shiny new powers.

What Easter eggs and references did you catch in WandaVision Episode 7? Drop them in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram and tune into ComicBook.com’s Phase Zero podcast, available now on all major podcast platforms with new episodes every Friday.