The WandaVision Easter Egg That Surprised The Showrunner, An Outdoor 'Indoor' Scene And 12 More Fun Facts

WandaVision was chockablock with Marvel-ous Easter eggs — and one of 'em even nearly eluded the head writer herself!

Showrunner Jac Schaeffer's confession is among the (we think) "fun" facts shared below, as TVLine winds down its coverage of Disney+'s first live-action Marvel series (ahead of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier's March 19 arrival).

To date, we have endeavoured to serve up scoop... share insightful interviews... whip out weekly recaps... and at least ask the burning questions we all were left with after the series' thrilling nine-episode run ended. Along the way, through our numerous interviews with cast and creatives (as well as at least one other site's reporting), we have come across interesting tidbits and anecdotes that neither fell into "preview" or "spoilers" buckets, and yet were interesting nonetheless. Some of them, but by no means all, you may have already seen in TVLine news stories or Q&As.

We hope you enjoy the dozen-plus Fun Facts below, as our collective WandaVision hangover fades. (With reporting by Rebecca Iannucci and Keisha Hatchett)

Want scoop on Falcon and Winter Soldier, or for any other show? Email InsideLine@tvline.com and your question may be answered via Matt's Inside Line.

As announced back in July 2019, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (starring Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan) originally was to premiere in Fall 2020, while both WandaVision and Loki (starring Tom Hiddleston) were penciled in for Spring 2021. But when Falcon and Winter Soldier's international production was waylaid to a greater degree by the COVID pandemic, WandaVision got the nod to launch Disney+'s rollout of Marvel series instead.

But even with that switcheroo, any continuity issues will be negligible, Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige told TVLine: "In a year, after you've seen all the shows and movies that we've [released], there are a few super-tiny things that, if people are interested, I could point to that shifted. I can only even think of one right now, and it's super minor."

Though there had been "discussions" about releasing all WandaVision episodes at once, "everybody at Disney+ had decided — and we very much agreed with — the notion of the fun of week to week" after a double-episode premiere, Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige told TVLine. "And The Mandalorian has certainly proven this: There's something fun to be able to follow along, to try to guess what happens next, With that said, I think it'll be another experience — an equally fun experience — to binge them once they're all available."

When summoned for a meeting with Marvel in the wake of Vision's Avengers: Infinity War death(s), Paul Bettany assumed he was being let go. "And they went, 'No, we're gonna pitch you a TV show,' And I went, "Oh, cool! OK, great!'" he shared with TVLine. "And the TV show was so utterly bonkers and ambitious that I was in love with the idea from the beginning."

For her audition, Teyonah Parris 1) only knew it was for a Marvel project, 2) she had no idea what character she was being eyed for, and 3) she was only given a scene from WandaVision's groovy '70s episode. Adding to her confusion, she was repeatedly told to go bigger with her performance, so she eventually channeled Good Times' Thelma and Willona. "I'm just thinking, 'Oh my gosh, this tape is so bad, I don't understand what's happening,'" Parris shared with TVLine.

Good times were indeed ahead, though, and she was cast as "Geraldine" aka Monica Rambeau, to  appear in both WandaVision and Captain Marvel 2.

Kathryn Hahn told TVLine that while doing press for WandaVision, she had to remind herself that this actually wasn't her first time hanging out with Marvel heroes. After all, she had voiced Olivia Octavius in 2018's acclaimed animated feature Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. "I keep saying, 'This is my first time in the MCU!' — and then I keep remembering, 'Oh, right...,'" she admitted. "I should say my first live-action [MCU] project." (In her defense: Because of the longtime Marvel/Sony Pictures turf wars, many Spider-Man projects have at best been MCU-adjacent.)

In the tradition of the classic sitcoms it emulated, WandaVision's first episode was indeed taped in front of a live studio audience. ("I've done a couple of failed pilots in front of live studio audiences, so I can say I brought that to the table," Kathryn Hahn told us with a laugh.) Filling the top-secret taping's rafters were trustworthy friends and family... and Teyonah Parris, who had yet to make her debut as Monica. "I actually got to be in the live studio audience, watching them film that first episode, and that was so much fun," she shared. "It was like watching a play."

WandaVision of course is chockablock with Marvel-ous Easter eggs, and eagle-eyed fans left none unfound. Says head writer Jac Schaeffer, "They mostly picked up on what's there" as well as "a million things that we didn't mean, or that I didn't know about — things that were in set decoration that I hadn't noticed." Most notably, Schaeffer was caught off-guard by the wine bottle in Episode 1, whose label  — Maison du Mépris — translates to "House of Contempt," which is a reference to the Scarlet Witch-centric House of M comic book storyline written by Brian Michael Bendis. "Paul Bettany was like,' This is genius! Was it you?'" recalls Schaeffer. "And I was like, "That's not me! That's incredible prop master Russell [Bobbitt]! I had nothing to do with that!"

Capping Episode  7's villainous reveal, "Agatha All Along," written by Frozen composers Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez (with Christophe Beck), proved to be a real crowd-pleaser, begetting a trap remix by Leland Philpot (embedded above) as well as other loving covers. "It's so great to see how creative people are and the versions that they have done," says WandaVision director Matt Shakman. "It was also great to see Kathryn Hahn overtake Justin Bieber and The Weeknd on the iTunes chart. I mean, I've never thought I would see that day."

Though the MCU movies often used the Porsche Experience Center in Atlanta for Avengers compound exteriors and some interiors, the bedroom featured in Episode 8's flashback to Wanda and Vision's "But what is grief, if not love persevering?" conversation had to be built from scratch. "We were not able to get in [the Porsche Experience Center] and recreate it in the exact same location," director Matt Shakman explained to TVLine, "so we built a set to match."

The Episode 7 sequence in which Wanda lays eyes on a dissected Vision, and then floats down into the S.W.O.R.D. operating theater to confirm her love is beyond saving, was "a really important scene," notes director Matt Shakman. And yet it would have been incredibly expensive to build that one-off set, for just one scene. "So we went and found this courtyard of this old hospital in Atlanta that was very unassuming," Shakman reports. "And through the genius of my production designer Mark Worthington, we took all the elements that we loved from our designs and managed to make it work in this courtyard, covering the top of it so it seemed like it was inside. And it's one of my favorite sets that we had in the whole show."

Revealing one scene that had to be cut wholesale from Episode 9 aka "The Series Finale," director Matt Shakman told EW.com "there was a very fun, Goonies-style set piece involving Señor Scratchy, who was Agatha's familiar, turning into a sort of demon bunny and chasing the kiddos, Monica and Ralph around the bewitched basement."

Call it a foiled bunny.

Director Matt Shakman's previous credits included two Game of Thrones episodes (Season 7's "Eastwatch" and "The Spoils of War"), which came in handy when dealing with the scope of WandaVision's combat- and effects-filled season finale. "What equipment do you need? How much time do you need? What are the stunt performers going to do? What are the actors going to do?" — those were the sorts of questions he knew how to tackle, he says. "Because if you don't prepare and plan, you won't be able to just make it on the day. It's like planning a giant battle in [a real] war, I would imagine — you need to make sure everyone knows how they're going to move forward, how the army's going to move forward if you're going to get it done."

Paul Bettany told TVLine that TV's WandaVision had "more special effects requirements than Endgame," the penultimate movie in Phase Three of the MCU. And while yes, WandaVision's nearly six-hour run was double Endgame's running time, another factor goosing the TV series' numbers was Vision himself. As detailed in Disney+'s Marvel Studios Assembled, "The Making of WandaVision," every time Bettany sports Vision's synthezoid face, that involves visual effects work. Bettany on-set only wears makeup in a a base color (freckled with tracking dots), so the VFX artists then have to go in and erase his ears and add metallic aesthetics.

In hindsight, would head writer Jac Schaeffer have given "nosy neighbor" Agnes a different name — like, Mildred, or Ethel — so as to keep fans from so quickly speculating that Kathryn Hahn was in fact playing AGatha harkNESS? "We talked about that, and decided that people in the know would figure it out, and that's OK,"  Schaeffer told TVLine. "It kind of makes it delicious, like, 'When is this going to happen?'" the showrunner posited. "Also, she announces herself as Agatha Harkness at the very end of Episode 7, and to have that turn without any seeding for the audience is pretty risky."