WandaVision's Place in the MCU Timeline Is its Most Intriguing Twist
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Want to know the beauty of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)? Depending on which movie or show you flip on, you could be cracking up at vintage Paul Rudd in Ant-Man, riding along an '80s-fueled heist in Guardians of the Galaxy, or... beating up Dark Elves in Thor: The Dark World. (We don't talk about that one.) Or, of course, something completely different altogether.
File WandaVision, which debuted its first two episodes on Disney+ this Friday, into the Something Completely Different category. Marvel is always teasing that each story will take the MCU where it's never been before. But WandaVision might just be the first installment in the MCU's decade-plus-long history to follow through on that. The story follows Wanda Maximoff and Vision, who are seemingly (and unknowingly) trapped in an alternate universe that plays out like a '50s sitcom. Eventually, we find out that someone is watching Wanda and Vision from afar. But to even speculate what's going on there, we need to figure out where WandaVision takes place in the grand MCU timeline—and how characters from other MCU installments will fit into this story.
First of all: Disney confirmed that WandaVision occurs after Avengers: Endgame. Which, you know, happened after Avengers: Infinity War, where Thanos ripped the rock keeping Vision alive right out of his head. He died, Wanda saw it all go down, it was awful. (Vision was not brought back, by the way, when Tony Stark snapped everyone back to life in Endgame.) The trailer for WandaVision confirmed as much—watch the preview and you'll see Kathryn Hahn's Agnes teasing Vision about being dead. (Kathryn: we'll excuse that one, only because you're the best part of WandaVision.) Of course, Vision's a robot and this is the MCU, after all, so a resurrection could be in the works. But WandaVision, timeline-wise, is probably most similar to Spider-Man: Far From Home. Meaning, it's likely an isolated story in a post-snap world.
Now that we have a rough date in mind, let's try to figure out what the hell is going on in the show. Here's one scenario we could be working with in WandaVision. As fans have speculated, WandaVision could be loosely adapting the "House of M" storyline from the comic books, where Wanda created an alternate reality to cope with the death of her children. But that doesn't really account for the voice from beyond the sitcom universe that we hear asking Wanda, "Who's doing this to you?" (This voice sounds a lot like Randall Park's Jimmy Woo, Ant-Man's quippy FBI agent.) That brings up the possibility that a mysterious baddie is tormenting Wanda for some reason, trapping her in the meta-show we're watching in WandaVision. Either way? It's nice to have some genuine mystery in the MCU.
Here's one more MCU nugget. You know the woman Wanda befriends and Vision poofs in the magic-show cabinet? That's Monica Rambeau, played by actress Teyonah Parris. If you dig a couple decades back in the MCU timeline, you'll find her in Captain Marvel. We meet Rambeau as a child in the film, but in WandaVision, she's a full-grown adult who's similarly confused as to how she ended up in the show's sitcom-simulation situation. In the comic books, Rambeau becomes a superhero herself after being hit by extra-dimensional energy. Does that mean that WandaVision's world really does happen in an alternate dimension, and that's what will give Rambeau her powers? Regardless, having a 30-something-old Rambeau in WandaVision is another reminder that we're in a post-Endgame world.
Feel free to disregard all of this, go into WandaVision as clueless as Wanda and Vision, and just watch the show without studying for your graduate degree in the MCU. Enjoy it now, before some Marvel villain from 13 movies ago shows up as the big bad in this story.
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