When WandaVision premiered on Disney Plus in 2021, it marked a new era for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was the franchise’s first TV series, it was the beginning of what would later be named the Multiverse Saga, and it was the first MCU property to be released after the lost pandemic year of 2020. Simply put, the show was a pretty big deal, but unbeknownst to fans pressing play on episode one, it also marked another, darker beginning for Marvel.

WandaVision was the MCU’s first true foray into horror. Sure, the franchise had dabbled in the genre before. For instance, Doctor Strange featured a bit of low-grade body horror, you could classify the opening of Thor: Ragnarok as horror comedy, and the zombie Iron Man scene in Spider-Man: Far from Home was surprisingly effective. But those were just isolated moments.

In contrast, WandaVision made horror an integral part of its story, so it gave viewers an experience unlike anything else in the MCU. It set the stage for more explicitly horror-centric properties like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Werewolf by Night, but in my experience, it doesn’t always get the credit it deserves. We often forget how groundbreaking this show was, so let’s dive back into it and explore the horrors unleashed by Wanda Maximoff’s unfettered grief.

An Unsettling Dinner Party

When the first episode of WandaVision begins, Wanda and Vision are a happy couple living in the town of Westview, New Jersey, but it quickly becomes clear that something isn’t quite right here. The couple have marked the day on their calendar with a heart, but they can’t remember why. On top of that, when Vision arrives at work, he has to ask one of his coworkers what they all do there.

At first, these quirky lapses are played for laughs, and we eventually learn that Vision’s boss, a man named Arthur Hart, and his wife are having dinner with Vision and Wanda that night. It all seems like a delightful 1950-style comedy, but once the meal begins, the episode takes an unexpectedly spooky turn.

The Harts ask Vision and Wanda how long they’ve been married and where they moved from, but the couple have no idea. Again, their forgetfulness initially seems like just another funny gag, but after a few chuckles from the audience, the scene does a complete 180. The score starts to sound like it came straight out of a horror flick, and the titular couple become visibly concerned.

They realize they can’t remember their lives before Westview, so the situation is more serious than they thought. The whole thing has a very eerie tone, but the worst remains. As Wanda and Vision are racking their brains, Mr. Hart starts to choke on his food, and his wife tells him, “Oh, Arthur, stop it!”

Of course, the man can’t stop, as he legitimately can’t breathe, but Mrs. Hart doesn’t seem to realize that. Instead, she just repeats the phrase “stop it” with a laugh and a smile, and every time she says it, she seems to get happier and happier. It’s almost like she’s caught in some sort of twisted loop, and the mismatch between her reaction and the gravity of the situation is genuinely disturbing.

It turns this already eerie moment into the kind of straight-up horror scene you’d expect from The Twilight Zone or Tales from the Darkside, and after Vision saves his boss from an early grave, the Harts get up and leave like nothing ever happened. The whole thing is just a complete head-scratcher, but unlike the isolated moments I mentioned in the intro, this is just the beginning of the horrors WandaVision has in store for us.

A Chilling Mystery

The dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Hart kicks off a mystery that runs through the next few episodes of WandaVision, and almost every time this mystery comes to the fore, it brings an atmosphere of dread and uncertainty. There’s a scene in episode two where Wanda is talking to her neighbor Dottie, and out of nowhere, the radio starts to get staticky. Then, we hear a voice calling Wanda’s name, and it asks her, “Who is doing this to you, Wanda?”.

This scene has a very noticeable horror feel to it, and it has some alarming implications as well. Most obviously, the voice implies that Wanda and Vision are in grave danger. It’s bad enough that they can’t remember their lives before Westview, but if someone is making them forget, there’s no telling what this unknown villain is capable of and what he could have in store for them.

What’s more, it also makes us wonder who this voice belongs to and how they’re getting through to Wanda, and all of those unknowns come together to imbue the mystery with an almost Lovecraftian mystique. They play on the horror truism that what you don’t know is scarier than what you do know, so even though nothing horrific actually happens on screen, you can’t help but feel the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

However, as WandaVision goes on, we learn that the truth isn’t quite as simple as we’d been led to suspect. A number of scenes also imply that Wanda herself is behind it all, and one of the most chilling comes later in that same episode. When it begins, Wanda and Vision are in their house, and they hear a loud bang. They go outside to find out what’s going on, and they see a man crawling out of a manhole on their street.

Again, everything about this scene, from the cinematography to the acting to the score, gives it a legit horror vibe, but quite possibly the eeriest thing about it is the man himself. He’s dressed like a beekeeper, and you can see several bees buzzing around him. Now, as a horror fan, when this guy pops up, I can’t help but think of Candyman, so the image is already spooky enough.

But even if you’ve never seen any of the Candyman movies, this is still a total WTF moment. Why would someone be crawling through the sewers around Wanda and Vision’s house? Why would he be wearing a beekeeper’s outfit? And most baffling of all, why the hell would he have actual bees following him? We have absolutely no idea, and those questions just add to the spine-tingling uncertainty of it all.

Then, when Wanda gets a good look at this mysterious intruder, something completely unexpected happens. She says a single word, “No,” and the show rewinds back to a few moments before the loud noise. From there, the episode continues as if nothing ever happened, and our main characters never see the beekeeper again.

This odd turn of events seems to imply that Wanda is in charge here, and that just makes the whole situation more perplexing. If she’s not really a prisoner, why did the voice on the radio think she was? And why don’t she and Vision remember their lives before Westview? It simply doesn’t add up, so you can’t help but wonder what’s actually going on here.

A Town Held Hostage

A few episodes later, WandaVision finally reveals some of its secrets, and we learn that Wanda really is behind the strange occurrences in Westview. She got so caught up in her own hex that she didn’t realize it at first. When a government agency called S.W.O.R.D. (Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division) found out what was happening, they thought she needed help. They tried to contact her through the radio, and when they sent a man through the sewer, the spell turned him into a beekeeper.

Now, on the surface, that reveal might seem disappointing (after all, it wasn’t Mephisto!), but when we learn just what this spell entailed, the horror comes roaring back with a vengeance. See, while Vision and the couple’s children are both illusions that can’t survive without Wanda’s spell, everybody else in Westview is real. They’re simply under Wanda’s control, and she’s having them play the part of perfect neighbors in her sick alternate reality.

In particular, there’s one scene in WandaVision that really highlights just how horrific this all is. In episode five, Vision uses his powers to temporarily free one of his coworkers from Wanda’s control, and the guy starts to freak out. He’s utterly terrified, and he tells Vision, “You have to stop her. She’s in my head. None of it is my own. It hurts. It hurts so much. Just make her stop. Just make her stop!”

He screams that last line in complete agony. So, naturally, Vision immediately puts him back under the Westview spell. He simply can’t take it anymore, and when you watch the scene, you feel the exact same way. Actor Asif Ali does an incredible job of making this character’s pain hit you like a ton of bricks. He makes you see just how much suffering Wanda has caused these poor people, so it’s clear that the woman’s grief has turned her into a true monster.

A Witchy Turn

All that being said, Wanda isn’t the villain of WandaVision. She ends up redeeming herself and freeing everybody she holds captive. The show’s real antagonist is revealed to be Agatha Harkness, a witch disguised as Wanda’s neighbor Agnes. Agatha wants to learn the secret of Wanda’s incredible abilities. After doing a bit of digging, she eventually realizes that Wanda is the Scarlet Witch, a legendary being even more powerful than the Sorcerer Supreme.

That discovery leads to a magical fight between Agatha and Wanda in the final episode of WandaVision, and in my opinion, that alone is enough to make this a horror show. After all, witches are classic horror monsters, so while WandaVision may not be Suspiria or The Blair Witch Project, it still belongs in the genre.

Do you want more proof? Let’s backtrack to the revelation of Agatha’s true identity. It comes at the end of Episode 7 “Breaking The Fourth Wall,” while Agnes is supposed to be watching Wanda’s kids. Wanda goes to pick them up, but when she sits down in Agnes’s living room, they’re nowhere to be found. She sees half-eaten sandwiches on the table and a children’s show on the TV, so she knows right away that something isn’t right.

As is often the case in WandaVision, once Wanda comes to that realization, the cinematography and score begin to shroud the scene in a thick horror atmosphere, but this time, we get some cool horror imagery to go with it. Wanda starts walking down to Agnes’s basement, and from there, the tension grows exponentially with every step she takes.

Soon enough, the basement starts to look more like a mystical dungeon, with walls covered in sprawling tree branches, until she finally reaches the heart of the house. Wanda sees creepy carvings on the wall, old bones stored in a cabinet, and a magical book that she later learns is called the Darkhold. The whole scene looks like it came straight out of a Hammer film.

The episode ends soon after that, and the next one starts with even creepier witch imagery. We see Agatha being led out to what looks like a 17th-century witch trial and execution, and to my eyes, the scene appears to be modeled on the opening of Mario Bava’s witchy classic Black Sunday. However, we soon learn that the woman is actually being tried by her fellow witches for breaking the coven’s rules, and they try to use their magic to execute her.

But it doesn’t work. Agatha just absorbs their power and reduces them to shriveled husks, and their corpses are way creepier than you’d ever expect from a Disney Plus show. They look almost mummified, and somewhat surprisingly, WandaVision doesn’t try to hide their terrifyingly withered faces. We get a couple of really good looks at them, so I’m sure they gave plenty of kids across the world a good nightmare or two.

Then, in the final episode, Wanda and Agatha return to that setting during their fight, and this time, the witch corpses take center stage. They come to life and go on the attack, and as you can probably guess, that makes them scarier than ever. They’re essentially zombies now, so they add yet another layer to the unexpectedly fun horror in WandaVision.

A Couple of Jump Scares

Last but not least, I’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about two moments in WandaVision that are straight-up jump scares. First, there’s a scene in Episode 4 “We Interrupt This Program” where Wanda turns to Vision and sees him as he was at the end of Avengers: Infinity War, dead and with the Mind Stone ripped out of his head, and even though it only lasts a couple of seconds, it’s surprisingly effective.

Unlike the lame jump scares we often get in mainstream genre fare, this one doesn’t just startle you. It genuinely scares you as well, and that makes all the difference. Vision’s dead husk is paler than normal and his eyes are a milky shade of white, and that combination makes him look so completely devoid of life that he’s just as creepy as any human corpse. It’s a legitimately terrifying visual that will stick with you long after the credits roll, so this just might be the most effective horror scene in any superhero movie or TV show.

The second jump scare comes in Episode 6 “All-New Halloween Spooktacular,” and it’s very similar. Instead of Vision, it involves fake Pietro, but other than that, it’s pretty much exactly the same. Wanda turns to him and sees him dead for a few seconds, and he has the same pale face and white eyes Vision had a few episodes earlier. On top of that, he also has bullet holes in his torso (that’s how the real Pietro died) and a bit of blood coming out of his mouth, so much like the witch corpses, this is an image I never thought I’d see on Disney Plus.

A True Horror Show

When you put that all together, it becomes clear that WandaVision isn’t just a superhero show. It’s a horror show as well, and the horror is front and center from the very first episode. It has genuine scares, a creepy mystery that conceals a truly horrific act, and some super cool witchy moments, so if you’re a genre fan, you’re sure to get an extra kick out of it.

That makes WandaVision the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first real foray into horror, so like I said before, it broke new ground for the franchise. It opened the door for more explicitly horror-centric movies and series, and now that fans have accepted this darker corner of the MCU, there’s no telling how Kevin Feige and his crew will expand on it in the future.