WandaVision‘s fourth episode turned everything we thought we knew on its head. The stunning mid-series shocker demolished a ton of theories and added building blocks for even more. But for series creator Jac Schaeffer, it was the moment she’d been waiting for. We chatted with the writer about the massive reveals, keeping track of Easter eggs, and a man called Simon Williams.
Nerdist: So episode four really turns everything upside down. Could you talk a little about your journey to that reveal and how long you knew you wanted that to be the big moment?
Jac Schaeffer: I love episodes that really flip the script, especially from the very first sequence. I love it when I feel like I have a hook on a show and then an episode starts and my immediate reaction is, “Wait, where are we?” I live for that sensation. So we very much wanted that out of this episode. I knew from my pitch that the character that would eventually become Monica would be sort of booted from the “situation” and we would have an episode that followed her. Everything leading up to that moment, we’d get to experience that moment in time, with more context and more elaboration. It was one of the things that I was most excited about and felt like it was really going to be right for the show.
Now that the episode is out there, was there one moment that you were really excited to see fans react to when it hit?
Oh my god! So many! How much time do you have?? It’s taken all of my self control not to scream from the rooftops, “Wait for episode four! Wait for episode four!” The opening, for sure, especially because Marvel dropped a trailer that showed Monica at the energy field and people knew that Jimmy and Darcy were coming. So I wrote it in a way that I imagined it being just a cold drop, but of course Marvel releases content so people were a little bit primed for it, but nobody saw the opening coming—the blip in the hospital and Maria. So I think that’s the thing I was looking forward to the most.
Then I really was very hopeful that the fan base would embrace Dr. Darcy Lewis and card trick Jimmy Woo. I was hoping that the audiences would pick up on how they’ve evolved, with all their personal and professional growth. Everyone wants to know what the mystery is but that texture, I was really pleased to see people picking up on it and enjoying it.”
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With a series like WandaVision that has so many references, nods, and Easter eggs baked in, how do you keep track of them all? Is there an Easter egg archivist? Or is it a collaboration?
It’s a little bit of both. I would say that the Easter egg ambassador on the show is our producer, Mary Livanos. We were in the writers room breaking the mystery of the show, so the sort of larger Easter egg pieces were from there. Then you know once we hired a director and hired department heads, then those people brought their artistry to it. When we’re writing the script, we don’t have to write down the license plate of a car, right? Opportunities present themselves, and some are Easter eggs and others are just things. Sometimes they’re in-jokes from the writers room, a tip of the cap to people that mean something to us in our personal lives, so it’s a mishmash of all the things.
We have to ask this even though we know you can’t reveal too much. In a couple of the featurettes you’re in a room with a Wonder Man poster behind you. So while we know you can’t tell us if Simon Williams will turn up, would this be a good time for WandaVision fans to pick up a Wonder Man comic? Can you give us a little insight into why the image was there?
What I can say is, in that clip, I’m standing in a place in the room that shows you a tiny sliver of the room. Maybe someday we can show it because that room was heavily photographed. We had a very exciting writers room. That was the first thing I did when I got the job. We started interviewing people for staff, and Mary and I immediately started papering the room with our influences.
So we had these huge walls that were just covered in everything from the current shows that just influence me and the tones we were going for and the movies and none of it was MCU. And then we had our comics wall and all of the comic images that were sort of foremost on our brain, and then we had like concept art and whatever. So I’ll just say that the piece that everyone’s picked up, I love the fans for noticing it. But it was an insane room to begin with…
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