WandaVision: What’s hidden in plain sight in Episode 5
By Mike McNulty
The boys and their dog
Darcy is correct about the speed in which Billy and Tommy are aging so quickly, but she doesn’t know how right she is. As discussed before, Billy and Tommy are the real names of Wiccan and Speed from the Young Avengers. Don’t be surprised if, at the end of this series, the twins will become old enough to become the MCU version of that team.
Notice also that, regardless of their age, Billy and Tommy wore color coordinated clothes which match their older counterparts’ superhero costumes. Billy, who is more like his mom, wears mostly reds, while Tommy, who is more like his uncle Pietro, aka Quicksilver, wears mostly greens. It also happens those are the same color schemes both Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver wore in the original Marvel comics, too.
There’s also a comics reference when it comes to the twin’s new (albeit short-lived) dog, Sparky. Sparky was also the name of the Visions’ family dog from Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta’s Vision comic. However, in that series, Vision turned Sparky into a robot dog after he died from electrocution… when he bit the Grim Reaper’s electro-scythe. Here though, there looks be no bringing the pooch back to life, as Wanda says she can’t “bring back dead.” Of course, if that’s true, how is Vision back and without his Mind Stone?
The Lagos Towels commercial
During S.W.O.R.D. Director Hayward’s (Josh Stamberg) briefing, he and FBI agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park) recount Wanda’s backstory. This includes footage from Captain America: Civil War (2016), in which Wanda accidentally blows up an office building full of innocent bystanders when attempting to stop Crossbones (Frank Grillo). It’s this very incident which kicks off the infamous Sokovia Accords, superhuman registration, and the MCU’s version of Civil War. And the city where this happened was Lagos, Nigeria.
It’s a good thing the series reminded the audience of this, because this episode’s commercial was for “Lagos Paper Towels,” an obvious riff on Bounty Paper Towels. It doesn’t take much to figure out this fake ad reflects Wanda’s guilt. Nor is it subtle, either, as the spilled juice is the exact same color as blood, and the tagline is, “For when you make a mess and didn’t mean to.”