This past Sunday we were treated to the trailer for the first of Marvel’s Disney+ series: WandaVision. The series will see the return of Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff/The Scarlet Witch and Paul Bettany as Vision and it is at this time I should note we’re going into some Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame spoilers so if you haven’t seen those, I’d suggest watching them first.

The initial promotional images and clips showed this series seeming to be set in the 1950s in a classic sitcom format with Wanda and Vision as a married couple, and besides the bizarre setting the number one question was: “How is Vision alive?”

Vision was previously killed by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War following the removal of the Mind Stone from his forehead (and if all that sounded like a lot to take in, congratulations, you now know what being a comic book fan is like.) The new trailer seemingly answers this question with a character informing Vision that he is indeed dead, and the answer for his return may lie within the original comic texts.

So for background, in the comics Scarlet Witch’s powers we’re initially vaguely defined as “hex powers.” These were used to make random events take place, usually hand waved as manipulating probability. Since the character had debuted as a mutant and as mentioned in a previous installment of this column: mutant powers are whatever the writers want them to be. Later writers began to explore her powers as instead the manipulation of chaos magic and since magic in storytelling is basically a do-all, do-whatever ability, those abilities too were retconned into being reality warping abilities.

The most famous storyline to showcase these powers was House of M. In it Wanda had altered reality to a state that granted many of the Avenger’s their hearts’ desires.

Based on the trailers there does appear to be an inherent “wrongness” about the whole situation with a character even straight up telling Vision that he is dead. So from what I can surmise it seems we are dealing with some altered reality or at least a simulated one. Now whether this is all set up by Wanda herself unknowingly or if some outside force is manipulating events and Wanda herself, it is too soon to tell. I do however feel that there are some possible comics characters that could be stoking the flames.

The first is Agatha Harkness, a literal witch from Salem that served as Wanda’s magic teacher and is believed to be the true identity of Katherine Hahn’s character in the show. The second and admittedly less likely suspect I believe is Mephisto. Mephisto in the comics is literally the devil, or rather “a” devil as comics tend to operate on an “all myths are true or alien” assumption. Mephisto is a character that has far reach throughout the Marvel universe, with some of his more infamous outings including: trying to claim the souls of Thor and the Silver Surfer, having a hand in the creation of Ghost Rider, making a deal to erase Spider-Man’s marriage (really, it was dumb) and more pertinently, being part of the cause of Wanda’s breakdown in the comics.

You see, Wanda in the comics had used magical means to allow herself and her husband Vision to have children, twin boys, a lot like the pair we see in the trailer for WandaVision. The big twist was that her children didn’t really exist, instead being fragments of Mephisto himself.

There is some precedence for the supernatural in Marvel with the introduction of Doctor Strange and sorcerers in the MCU films, things like The Hand in Daredevil, and Ghost Rider’s appearance in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but I’d say Mephisto being in the MCU is more wishful thinking than anything, but one interesting tidbit I’d like to add is that Elizabeth Olsen is slated to appear in the Doctor Strange sequel: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. So I wouldn’t be surprised, given the outthere supernatural of Doctor Strange’s corner of the Marvel universe, if we don’t end up with some combination of House of M and several other storylines, since that is what Marvel typically does.

Regardless, we’ll see in December just what Wanda-Vision has in store for us, but regardless it looks to be one of the most interesting properties the MCU has put out to date.