WandaVision Borrows Thor’s Trick To Explain MCU Magic Powers

WandaVision borrows a trick from Thor as a way of explaining magic in its latest episode. Airing weekly on Disney+, Wandavision is the first content to release from the MCU’s Phase 4. As the name suggests, it’s a series starring Wanda Maximoff and Vision – a character who died in Avengers: Infinity War and whose return has yet to be explained. WandaVision‘s episodes heavily parody sitcoms of past decades, and there have been several hints this alternate reality is something Wanda has created with her powers. The most recent episode of WandaVision offers further proof that Wanda is the one in control, with her forcefully propelling Geraldine (aka Monica Rambeau) out of town and back through the barrier.

Wanda first receives her powers when Hydra experiments on both her and her brother using the Mind Stone. Since then she’s demonstrated abilities like telekinesis, telepathy, psionic energy manipulation, and most recently in WandaVision, reality manipulation. The MCU doesn’t strictly refer to her powers as magic, but they are similar to the mystic arts practiced by Doctor Strange or the magic of Asgardians. Those magics often come paired with some scientific explanation – the Bifrost Bridge being another name for a wormhole, for example – and on WandaVision, Wanda’s magic is now receiving its own scientific explanation.

In WandaVision season 1, episode 4 “We Interrupt This Program,” SWORD sets up camp outside of Westview, and to study the strange phenomenon they enlist a group of scientists. One of them is Darcy Lewis – a character first introduced as Jane Foster’s assistant in Thor, but who is now herself an astrophysicist. When she arrives on the scene, her instruments begin picking up large amounts of cosmic microwave background radiation or CMBR. This is electromagnetic radiation left over from the Big Bang, and faint remnants of it can be found all throughout the universe. Here, however, Darcy discovering a high concentration of CMBR may point to it being a scientific explanation for Wanda’s ability to create and control an alternate reality – a tactic the MCU has been using to ground their versions of magic since Thor, but also more recently in Doctor Strange.

In Thor, the God of Thunder describes magic and science as being the same thing to an Asgardian, implying that what humans consider to be magic is simply still undiscovered science. In Doctor Strange, the Ancient One explains magic as the harnessing of energies from other dimensions in order to conjure and cast spells. Now, WandaVision is using a combination of the two, introducing a scientific concept – CMBR – and hinting that Wanda’s magic may either harness this energy or create it as a byproduct. Whatever the case may be, the MCU is setting CMBR up to be at least a partial explanation for Wanda’s incredible abilities.

And that may not be all CMBR is used to explain. This WandaVision episode also includes what may be a hint to the Fantastic Four – characters Kevin Feige has promised are coming to the MCU and who in the comics receive their powers after being hit with a blast of CMBR. Monica Rambeau, too, may have received a power-up from the CMBR, granting her the energy-based superpowers she has in the comics. And finally, the Eternals, immortal beings set to soon star in their own movie are also described as having cosmic energy superpowers. This isn’t to say any of these characters will have powers similar to those of Wanda, but it does mean the MCU is using WandaVision to introduce the concept of CMBR, potentially laying the groundwork for even more magic users and cosmically-powered heroes.