Executive producer Mary Livanos teases what's to come in the MCU.
WandaVision began much like any project at Marvel Studios begins. In 2018, producer Mary Livanos was assigned by Kevin Feige to "the Wanda and Vision show." "But exactly what that was was yet to be figured out," she tells ET. Livanos had recently come off Captain Marvel, another property with an all-powerful female lead, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 before that, so she had a handle on the out-there, both of which would be called on for this.
Livanos dove into the Marvel archive and read as many comics as possible featuring the titular witch and her synthezoid other half, creating binders full of reference material. The show now had a loose premise -- a series that would be half MCU, half classic sitcom -- which required its own unique sort of research: "Watching Dick Van Dyke for the first time," she says. "Which I hadn't seen!"
"Going back and studying all the sitcoms was an incredible opportunity and gift as a viewer and as a fan myself," Levinos adds. "It's always a bit staggering when you take something on, but as we all figured out the story together, it just ended up being a really special process."
Head writer and executive producer Jac Schaeffer came on board next and assembled a writers room "that knew no bounds and had just one million and one creative, amazing, fun ideas," Livanos says, followed by director Matt Shakman, who helmed all nine episodes. And thus, WandaVision was conjured into reality.
Over eight anxiously awaited, theory-filled weeks, viewers watched as Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) tried to untangle their sitcom reality. By the time the credits rolled on "The Series Finale," Wanda had processed her grief, assumed the mantle of The Scarlet Witch, defeated an ancient enchantress and said goodbye to her husband and their Chaos Magic kids. Then there were the post-credits scenes.
"The ideas for the tags that we have, they came about very early on in the room," Livanos says of the "ever-evolving" process of discovering the teasers. "Up until the moment we film those scenes, we're constantly iterating, brainstorming amongst ourselves and with the other franchise camps. It's really fun to play around with. But at the end of the day, they're [meant] to tease out the core story you built and not hinge on it, so it was cool that we actually landed on versions that came about early in the process."
The first tag sees Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) crossing her T's and dotting her I's on the Westview anomaly when she's shepherded off to meet with an agent -- who reveals herself to be a Skrull. "I was sent by an old friend of your mother's," she tells Monica. The friend appears to be Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), requesting Monica meet him in space.
"It's not Monica's first interaction with a Skrull. Just Teyonah's," Livanos says. The sequence was shot during the pandemic on WandaVision's final day of filming. "It was so cool to see Teyonah interact with her Skrull counterpart, just knowing the crazy Captain Marvel universe that's in store. There's just so much more zany that it's going to get, it's fun to think about."
The second scene after the credits finds Wanda at a remote cabin in the mountains of... well, we don't know where exactly. When she steps inside to take a tea kettle off the stove, we see she's astral projecting as the Scarlet Witch to magically read the Darkhold. "Lizzie is such a powerful presence that it was just so cool to see her step into that whole magic realm," Livanos says. "To think about the potential and all that lies ahead for her, it's pretty staggering."
WandaVision truly ends with Wanda's twins, thought to be lost in the Hex, calling out to her for help from the great beyond. "We knew that Wanda was going to go off into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse [of Madness], so we always knew that we were building towards that," Livanos teases. "It's so cool to introduce and sort of leave these threads that could lead to so many different things."
Until then, Livanos encourages a rewatch of WandaVision with the full knowledge of what will come. "To go back and watch episode one and for Wanda and Vision to be sitting on the couch together talking about their happily ever after," she says, "that'll cut into you, for sure." As for herself, Livanos will join Parris and Monica Rambeau on Captain Marvel 2, her next adventure within Marvel's universe that will no doubt be informed by her time on WandaVision.
"Just seeing the experience that we had creating the show, the collaborative nature of working with our writers, our director, and the talent, the added depth that Lizzie and Paul and Kathryn and Teyonah and Randall, Kat and Evan brought to their characters and what we were able to discover once we were all working together," Livanos says, "that was something really special, and something that I'm excited to continue on doing."
All episodes of WandaVision are now streaming on Disney+.
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