WandaVision finale after-credit scenes hint at a multiverse of madness

WandaVision episode 9, the final episode of the season, doesn’t leave much hope for a WandaVision season 2: Running with the title “The Series Finale,” the final episode concludes the saga of Wanda Maximoff’s recreation of Vision, encounter with the magic-wielder Agatha Harkness, and discovery of her own “Scarlet Witch” identity.

That all came to light in the previous eight episodes. The finale wrapped the drama up with a bow, and in Marvel tradition, used two after-credits scenes to tee up the next chapters in its characters’ stories. Yes, unlike episode 7 and 8, viewers need to stick around for both a mid-credit moment and a final post-credits bumper before ducking out of Disney Plus. And while cryptic, both connect the dots between Marvel Studios’ announced movie plans — and even some of the future stories on Disney Plus.

[Ed. note: This post contains major spoilers through the ending of WandaVision episode 9]

The first Wandavision finale after-credits scene

Photo: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios

In the first, mid-credits sequence, Monica Rambeau, now fully powered as a nascent version of Photon, runs point on the clean up of Westview and the arrest of SWORD’s Tyler Hayward (who despite season-long rumors, did not pull of his human-mask to reveal Mephisto or some other villainous entity — he just sucked!). Then, while Jimmy Woo attends to G-man matters, a random agent pulls Monica aside in the local movie theater to talk shop. But much like we discovered by the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, there are tons of service folk working the streets on Earth who are actually aliens in disguise! Our new badge-wearing friend reveals herself to be a Skrull, saying she was sent by “an old friend of your mother’s.” The old friend wants to meet. In space.

There aren’t too many people in the Marvel Cinematic Universe who could recruit Monica from the stars. As we also learned from Far From Home, Nick Fury is currently lounging off-planet at a base many assumed was SWORD property before SWORD was even introduced in WandaVision. Fury may pop up in a future Marvel movie, but the studio is also gearing up for an adaptation of the Secret Invasion storyline, a comic arc that deals more with a villainous variant of the Skrulls and shapeshifting mishegoss on Earth. It’s unclear how faithfully Marvel plans on adapting the material, but it’s guaranteed Fury will need some assistance as he and Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) snuff out hidden bad guys. Here’s what Kevin Feige recently told Collider about the series:

We’re interested in the political paranoia aspect of Secret Invasion and really showcasing the stars with Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn, two amazing actors that you want to have in any series, and we’re very lucky to have them for that. That’s the sort of primary focus of that and, of course, it will tie into other things and the Skrulls in ways you haven’t seen before, but yes, anything could be anything. Wise words … But we wanted to do that as a series because it would allow us to do something different than we’ve done before.

Of course, Monica actress Teyonah Parris is also slated to appear in Captain Marvel 2, so even if Fury is hailing her to his base, the scene could be serving whatever director Nia DaCosta (Candyman) is cooking up for the sequel. It’s even possible the “old friend” is Captain Marvel herself. We don’t know where Carol Danvers went after the events of Avengers: Endgame — besides Tony Stark’s funeral — but with basically unlimited power, she may also be fighting her old faction, the Kree, alongside the Skrulls and SWORD somewhere in space.

Wandavision’s second after-credits scene readies us for Doctor Strange 2

Image: Marvel Studios

From the minute at the 2019 Comic-Con when Kevin Feige announced the sequel Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, and that Wanda actress Elizabeth Olsen would appear in a pivotal role, fans prepared themselves for a big WandaVision cameo by Benedict Cumberbatch. Feige himself fanned the fires by reminding people that, yes, Marvel’s first Disney Plus show would directly funnel into Doctor Strange 2 when it was all said and done. So there may be an air of disappointment to the final scene of WandaVision, when the Sorcerer Supreme does not pop out of the shadows Nick Fury style, nor does anyone say “welcome to the multiverse, Wanda!” What we get is a subtler tease — if you can call screams from the grave subtle.

Marvel is known for after-credits scenes, but also ones that might leave the casual viewer a bit mystified. The ending of WandaVision is no exception: After her giant magic-slinging battle with Agatha Harkness, Wanda accepts her supernatural role as the “Scarlet Witch,” dissolves the Hex, watches the loves of her life disappear, then flies off to the (scenic) middle of nowhere to enroll in her own personal Hogwarts. Agatha provided the best tease of where things go from here in her pontificating early in the episode: “Scarlet Witch is forged. No coven. Your power exceeds that of the Sorcerer Supreme!” What a tease.

Steven “the Sorcerer Supreme” Strange will clearly get a taste of Scarlet Witch’s full powers in the future, but in the meantime, Wanda is on her own quest. While practicing spells, she begins to hear the voices of her sons, Billy and Tommy, who by all accounts should not exist. Creations of the Westview mirage, the pair went to sleep on the final night of Wanda’s psychic reign and presumably faded into the ether as the Hex closed in. But here, in the throes of magic, are their voices — so where are Wanda’s kids?

One thing the WandaVision finale made perfectly clear is that, despite the theories, neither Wanda nor Agatha yanked the Quicksilver from the X-Men movies out of his universe to masquerade as Pietro. He’s just some actor unfortunately named Ralph Bohner, under a spell like the rest of Westview’s sitcomy residents. That might have killed the possibility of a true Marvel Cinematic Multiverse, if not for the after-credits scene.

On top of all of their wild backstory in the comics, Wanda’s kids also have a history of running across dimensions with their buddy America Chavez, who is also set to appear in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. To hear them shouting from the beyond suggests that the Mind Stone “inside” of Wanda contains layers of reality far beyond her understanding or that her magic is so powerful she’s connected with versions of her sons in a parallel world. The repeated emphasis on Wanda’s connection to the Infinity Stones, and its place in the Marvel timeline, seems like an inescapable loose end that Doctor Strange is poised to tie up.

Image: Marvel Studios

We don’t know much about the plot of Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness but there are plotty questions MCU has yet to resolve in the wake of Avengers: Endgame. Just as the Infinity Saga finale staged an unconventional heist across the timeline, the final minutes saw Captain America pull the same stunt in reverse, then returned to the present day to live out his dying days. That was all off screen, but the assumption is that if Cap returned to the present, all was well. But a key scene from Endgame has been raising eyebrows over the Infinity Stone drama since it first played out.

When Bruce Banner met with the Ancient One during the replayed Battle of New York, she imparted some wisdom to the Hulk’s spirit: You’re screwing with reality, man. OK, her explanation of what occurs when you remove the Infinity Stones from their organic place in time is a little more elegant (and vital):

The Infinity Stones create what you experience as the flow of time. Remove one stone and that flow splits. Now, this may benefit your reality, but my new one, not so much. In this new branched reality, without our chief weapon against the forces of darkness, our world will be overrun. Millions will suffer. So, tell me, Doctor, can your science prevent all that?

Banner insisted in the moment that the Avengers defeating Thanos wasn’t the end of their mission. The plan was to then use quantum realm time travel to return the stones to their place once more, and restore balance. “So, chronologically, in that reality, they never left,” as he puts it.

In theory, it all worked out. But the promise of a multiverse in the upcoming Doctor Strange 2 suggests that maybe not everything is as linear and concrete as it seems (and perhaps it never was). The idea that WandaVision “sets up” the sequel suggests that the voices of Billy and Tommy are not echoes of a grieving witch’s conjurations. The Marvel universe is more twisted than that. There’s something out there. Wanda’s kids, for sure. Maybe even another Vision.

“I have been a voice with no body,” he tells Wanda before embracing the end. “A body, but not human. And now, a memory made real. Who knows what I might be next?”

There’s also White Vision, newly imbued with the memories of the past. But with reality itself cracked open, there are also an endless amount of possibilities for a relationship that is surviving the test of spacetime.