Even though WandaVision has wrapped up and presumably won't be returning for a follow-up season, that doesn't mean the story is over for Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda Maximoff or her Scarlet Witch persona. As it was made clear ahead of its release, the MCU's first fully interconnected TV series is a direct precursor to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and she may show up elsewhere after that. Even though Benedict Cumberbatch's powerful sorcerer didn't make any appearances in WandaVision's finale, the final post-credits scene hinted at things to come, and CinemaBlend talked to both showrunner Jac Schaeffer and director Matt Shakman about bringing that mysterious scene together.
How WandaVision's Final Scene Was Purposefully Influenced By Doctor Strange 2
WandaVision obviously set up some loose and tangential connections to the mystical world of Doctor Strange throughout the season by introducing various forms of magic within Wanda and Kathryn Hahn's Agatha Harkness. (Not to mention the other Salem witches.) Things got more concrete once the damned Darkhold tome became more pronounced within the story, and it was indeed a big part of those final seconds, with the astrally projected Scarlet Witch poring over the evil-oozing pages as Billy and Tommy's panicked voices rang out.
Even though it may not appear completely tied into Sam Raimi's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, creator Jac Schaeffer fully confirmed that idea by explaining that the scene as is was crafted later than many other scenes because the Doctor Strange sequel's script started coming together well after WandaVision's writing team was taking care of business. Here's how she put it:
Well, Wanda's tag evolved because we were writing before Doctor Strange was being written; like, we were a little bit ahead of them. So that tag, for a while, was kind of a placeholder because we literally didn't know where in the world Strange was and what [he was doing]. So, you know, the top of that movie was a question mark, so to feed right into it, we didn't know what to write there.
So not only will WandaVision's final tag set up part of the storyline for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but it sounds like audiences won't be waiting very long for big connections to be made. There obviously wasn't anything random about where Wanda was hiding out, nor what she was doing while engaging in her solitude. (Everybody needs tea when their supreme witch counterpart is studying up on dark magic.) And if Sam Raimi's first MCU venture immediately starts off back in the same cabin with Wanda before bringing Benedict Cumberbatch's Stephen Strange into it, I won't be too surprised.
How WandaVision's Post-Credits Scene Unintentionally Ties Into Doctor Strange 2
Even beyond just returning to the trippy-ass world that Doctor Strange first introduced, one of the coolest things about the upcoming horror-skewing sequel is that it will be helmed by the iconic Evil Dead franchise director Sam Raimi. (We'll probably see Bruce Campbell in it, too!) Considering the MCU is known for having post-credits scenes handled by directors of upcoming features, it made sense why a rumor started spreading that Raimi was responsible for filming the long one-shot that closed out WandaVision's final minutes.
When CinemaBlend's own Eric Eisenberg asked WandaVision Matt Shakman about the Sam Raimi-ness of it all, Shakman said that he wasn't intentionally aping the Doctor Strange sequel director's filmmaking style. In his words:
I love Sam Raimi. I've been hugely influenced by his work, so probably on an unconscious level. Much in the same way that Wanda Maximoff was influenced by watching Dick Van Dyke and Bewitched in creating her world, I was probably doing that without realizing it. And we obviously paid homage to the great man by putting Oz: The Great and Powerful on our marquee in the final battle. But no, [the final scene] was really just about trying to find Wanda in a place where she was finding some peace and trying to put her life back together. At least that's one half of what Wanda Maximoff is doing. And the other half is in the back room studying up.
It's kind of insane that Matt Shakman didn't connect the deadite dots to consider that his vision for the final WandaVision scene was right in line with Sam Raimi's signature style. A sweeping P.O.V.-style shot that ends up at a secluded cabin where two versions of a single character are inside? That's textbook Evil Dead material right there, even if the WandaVision scene took place during the day.
In essence, WandaVision's post-credits scene was representative of the season as a whole. Definite connections to other projects – Monica Rambeau's return from the Blip and Captain Marvel 2 connections, the magic trick Jimmy Woo learned from Scott Lang, etc. – mixed with ideas that didn't have any connections at all, whether directly intentional (as it went with Emma Caulfield's Dottie/Sarah) or somewhat unintentional (such as all the Fantastic Four speculation).
WandaVision is all done on Disney+ now, but that just means fans can watch all nine episodes over and over again until the currently filming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness makes its way into theaters in 2022. Now to ponder the other 200,000+ theories that are still floating around.
