How WandaVision Connects Back to Spider-Man: Far From Home

The first installment of Disney+’s long and expansive slate of Marvel shows arrives today in the form of WandaVision, which stars Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff, a superhuman with telekinesis, telepathy, and reality-bending powers, and Vision (Paul Bettany), Tony Stark’s trusted A.I. sidekick turned sentient android. In the films, the two ex-Avengers fell in love; the new series finds them living happily ever after in a post-Endgame world. Or so it seems.

On the surface, WandaVision is both a homage to and parody of traditional, Golden Age era sitcoms: The first two episodes are in black-and-white; one plot is built around a classic case of miscommunication that leaves the two scrambling to impress Vision’s boss with a dinner party involving an impromptu dinner. But of course, this isn’t just going to be an I Love Lucy riff. There’s something mysterious, maybe even nefarious afoot.

As a refresher: in the film timeline, we last saw Wanda mourning Vision’s death by Thanos’ hand. The two episodes that dropped today (there will be seven more weekly installments), are mostly concerned with wacky marital hijinks and concealing the duo’s powers from the townspeople, but the final moments of each episode are permeated by a lingering, weirdness that hints at what’s to come: We see a person watching Wanda and Vision on television and an ominous man in a beekeeper suit climbing out of a sewer, whose presence terrifies Wanda. Both of these people wear clothes emblazoned with sword iconography. That might not mean a lot to most viewers, but for fans of Marvel Comics, it’s a signifier of a new player in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Ladies and gentlemen, meet S.W.O.R.D.

Obscure by even comic book standards, S.W.O.R.D. is a secret government organization that guards planet Earth. Not only do the references to it seemingly tease the future of WandaVision, they also provide some context for the end credits tag of Spider-Man: Far From Home. Let’s take a deep dive into WandaVision’s first big easter egg: the emergence of S.W.O.R.D. and the ramifications it could have for the future of the MCU.

What is S.W.O.R.D.?

S.W.O.R.D. might sound familiar because it’s easy to confuse with S.H.I.E.L.D. (aka the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division). That’s the government organization that Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) led in the first nine Marvel films, responsible for bringing together Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and the Hulk to form the Avengers. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it was revealed that HYDRA (a radical Nazi splinter group) managed to infiltrate not only the highest branches of the US Government but S.H.I.E.L.D. too. These events culminated in the disbanding of S.H.I.E.L.D., left Fury without a job, and placed the Avengers under U.S. government control.

In Marvel Comics, S.W.O.R.D. — the Sentient World Observation and Response Department — guards the planet against extraterrestrial enemies. Introduced by Joss Whedon and John Cassady in the mid-aughts during their Astonishing X-Men run, S.W.O.R.D. is an extension of S.H.I.E.L.D. that operated out of an orbital space station known as the Peak. The organization is helmed by the half-alien half-mutant Special Agent Abigail Brand.

S.W.O.R.D.’s role in Marvel Comics has been limited in scope over the years, used almost exclusively in X-Men-related stories. A solo S.W.O.R.D. series written by Kieron Gillen and drawn by artist Steven Sanders was canceled after five issues in 2009. However, a new volume of S.W.O.R.D. comics dropped in December 2020 as part of a massive overhaul of the entire line of X-Men titles. Brand is back in charge, alongside classic mutant characters, including a younger version of Cable (Jean Grey and Cyclops’ son) and Magneto.

What is S.W.O.R.D. doing in WandaVision?

Considering there aren’t any aliens in WandaVision (yet), the MCU version of S.W.O.R.D probably has a different objective than its comic book source material. Sure enough, a digital trading card for the show has confirmed that S.W.O.R.D. will instead stand for Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Department. The change to “sentient weapon” stands out, as Wanda has long been positioned as one of the most powerful beings in the MCU. Remember how easily she mind-controlled the Avengers in Age of Ultron? Or how she went toe-to-toe with Thanos during Endgame?

It stands to reason that post-Endgame, Wanda and her powers, which came as a direct result from Hydra’s Wolfgang von Strucker experimenting with the Mind Infinity Stone (von Strucker also gets a small shoutout in one of the fake 1950s-style commercials that pop up as interstitials during WandaVision episodes), are something government officials would want to keep an eye on. Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) might also be prime for observation. Not only did she also put a hurting on Thanos, but Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige said, “she is as powerful a character as we’ve ever put in a movie.” S.W.O.R.D. might have also kept tabs on Vision before his death; after all, Vision is, uh, a sentient robot.

What does S.W.O.R.D. have to with the MCU’s future?

Outside of its involvement in WandaVision, there’s a pretty good case that S.W.O.R.D. will take over S.H.I.E.L.D.’s role as the governing agency in the MCU. At the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, we saw Nick Fury walking around some sort of orbital station. Could this be the Peak and the home of S.W.O.R.D., with Fury running the show like he once did with S.H.I.E.L.D.?

Further evidence of S.W.O.R.D. supplanting S.H.I.E.L.D. might lie within a voice we hear in WandaVision. During the second episode, we hear someone’s voice break through The Beach Boy’s “Help Me, Rhonda” to ask Wanda if she’s okay. It’s a clever joke, but more important is the voice behind it, as it belongs to Randall Park, who appeared as FBI Agent Jimmy Woo in Ant-Man and the Wasp. Park is set to show up in person on WandaVision at some point— you can spot him briefly towards the end of this trailer — so perhaps it will be as a part of S.W.O.R.D.. It’d be nice to have Park take over the Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) role we saw back in the early days of the MCU as an on the ground liaison to our heroes.

Whether or not S.W.O.R.D. will be friend or foe, however, remains to be seen, but it’s clear from just these two episodes that the organization will have a significant role to play in the rest of WandaVision — and maybe even beyond.

Originally Appeared on GQ