Marvel’s WandaVision Trailer Explains How SWORD & Thor’s Darcy Fit In

SHIELD may be gone in the MCU, but the WandaVision trailer confirms the existence of a replacement called SWORD – and reveals the role they’ll play in the Disney+ TV series, which includes the involvement of Thor‘s Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings). The MCU has essentially been on pause for quite some time, with a planned breather exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. But Disney has recently confirmed the WandaVision series will indeed come out in December 2020, and has just released a new trailer.

Set photos have already confirmed WandaVision will introduce a successor to SHIELD, with Darcy and Teyonah Parris’ Monica Rambeau working for an organization called SWORD. In the comics, SWORD is the “Sentient World Observation and Response Department,” and they were famously described as making SHIELD look like the Boy Scouts. They deal predominantly with matters of international diplomacy, and are frequently involved in missions and incidents that threaten the continued existence of the entire planet Earth. SWORD don’t tend to be too concerned with questions of morality, and their leader Abigail Brand is willing to bend or break any rule in order to keep the Earth safe.

The WandaVision trailer finally reveals SWORD’s role in the Disney+ show. It seems Scarlet Witch hasn’t rewritten all of reality, but rather has created a sort of “bubble” of altered reality around the town of Westview. SWORD serve as first responders to this crisis, and they’ve set a perimeter around Westview in the same way SHIELD did around Mjolnir in the first Thor film. Kat Dennings’ Darcy is presumably an administrator in SWORD, set up for this role in Brandon T. Snider’s MCU tie-in novel The Cosmic Quest Volume II: Aftermath, while Teyonah Parris’ Monica Rambeau appears to be a field operative. The trailer shows Monica blasted out of Scarlet Witch’s reality bubble, and her eyes then flare with power.

It looks as though SWORD agents are now the first responders to crises like the reality bubble, taking the role vacated by SHIELD after they were shut down in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This is, however, a substantial change from the comics, where they are an entirely separate organization dedicated purely to extraterrestrial threats. Alternatively, it could well be there’s another element in play in WandaVision, as yet concealed by the trailers; an alien presence that is interacting with Scarlet Witch’s own powers.

Meanwhile, it’s going to be exciting to see Monica Rambeau in action as an adult. The younger version of Monica appeared in Captain Marvel, where she was played by Akira Akbar, and her experience with Carol Danvers and the Kree makes her a perfect recruit to SWORD. In the comics, Monica Rambeau became a superhero in her own right, and it’s possible her encounter with Scarlet Witch’s reality bubble will be the source of her powers in the MCU.