WandaVision creator Jac Schaeffer reveals the high-stakes scene she envisioned to give the Marvel Studios original series its own “Thanos snap” from Avengers: Infinity War. In the premiere episode, “Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience,” newlywed couple Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) scramble to impress Vision’s no-nonsense boss Mr. Hart (Fred Melamed). When Mr. Hart interrogates Wanda and Vision about their hard-to-remember history, he begins to choke on his dinner, and Mrs. Hart (Debra Jo Rupp) grows more and more distressed as she repeatedly tells her husband — and then Wanda — to “stop it.”
“That choking bit, I remember the day that it sort of occurred to me. The idea of it was so delicious: in a Marvel property, can you make a human being choking horribly just sort of macabre and meaningful? And have the stakes feel as high as Thanos snapping away half the universe?” Schaeffer said on THR’s TV’s Top 5 podcast. “I don’t know if that’s actually what it is (laughs), but the goal was always to lull [audiences into the sitcom]. When we shot it on the day with the live audience, it was so satisfying and validating because they had sort of been lulled into the sitcom thing, and then when that moment happened, you could hear a pin drop.”
The surreal scene is the only time the WandaVision premiere breaks from the situational comedy of The Dick Van Dyke Show. But it’s not the last: eeriness continues to seep into Wanda’s “TV Land” reality in “Don’t Touch That Dial” and “Now In Color” as Agnes (Kathryn Hahn) and Geraldine (Teyonah Parris) begin to clue into the strange goings-on in Westview.
“The first couple episodes of WandaVision are very specific to the time period and the sitcoms. And what’s interesting in these first couple of episodes is that you do feel something’s amiss, something’s not quite right. Many characters are taking note of that; characters aren’t able to remember things, they aren’t able to quite put their finger on a thing,” Parris told TVLine about the slow-burning mystery of WandaVision. “Watching all of that unravel, and then come together later in the series, is going to be quite a ride.”
Parris added, “And I hope that you all tune in and ride this thing with us because it will be well worth it. I know there are so many questions in the first couple of episodes, and just no answers, but we will get to it, I promise.”
Starring Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Kathryn Hahn, Teyonah Parris, Kat Dennings, and Randall Park, new episodes of Marvel’s WandaVision premiere Fridays on Disney+.
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