1. Elizabeth Olsen was excited about WandaVision from the very first pitch because she felt like it was the first time a Marvel creative team “really understood” what she loved about Wanda and where she wanted to see her go.Disney+ / Marvel

“[It was] an acknowledgement of these these little anecdotes and moments she has had throughout the MCU,” Lizzie explained. “I desperately loved this idea of the suburbia and family aspect [of Wanda] and what it would mean if this woman got to give birth to her children. I just didn’t think I was ever gonna get to do that.”

ADVERTISEMENT2. Paul Bettany found out about WandaVision right after Vision died in Infinity War. In fact, he thought he was getting called into Marvel because he was getting fired, not because they wanted to pitch him a show.Marvel

Paul told BuzzFeed, “So I went in, I said, ‘Look, there’s just absolutely no hard feelings. It’s been a great run. Thank you so much.’ And they were like, ‘Are you quitting?’ And I went, ‘No, aren’t you firing me?’ And they went, ‘No, we were gonna pitch you a TV show.’ That’s how I found out.”

3. From the very first pitch for WandaVision, showrunner Jac Schaeffer “tracked the narrative according to the stages of grief.” So, while the episodes aren’t linear — technically you could start with Episode 8 — you can still follow Wanda processing her grief.Disney+ / Marvel

“It seemed like a very exciting place to start that Wanda is with the audience and is in legitimate denial,” Jac said. “That obviously it’s a metaphor for human grief, but it also works for the narrative structure of the show in this crazy, MCU superhero kind of way.”

4. The Scarlet Witch Witches’ Road 15-issue comic series by James Robinson inspired a lot of the visuals for WandaVision.Disney+ / Marvel

Jac Schaeffer said a lot of the panels from those comics were on the walls of the writers room and connected to what they wanted to do during the finale.

5. And the moment from the MCU that inspired a lot of Wanda and Vision’s love story in WandaVision was the small moment from Captain America: Civil War when they make paprikash together.Marvel / Disney+

Jac explained, “There’s so much intimacy in that scene. It’s this little pause in the middle of all the chaos. It just seemed to me that they had their own little worlds like as performers and as characters inside of the MCU. Obviously it linked up with this notion of suburbia and with the sitcoms. All of that just complimented itself over and over again.”

ADVERTISEMENT6. Jac Schaeffer’s original pitch for WandaVision included the “rewind” episode being in the style of CSI and an entire episode about Wanda’s work-life balance in the style of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.Marvel / Disney+ / CBS7. Before filming began, director Matt Shakman and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige had lunch with Dick Van Dyke at Disneyland so they could learn as much as they could about how they filmed The Dick Van Dyke Show, since that’s what Episode 1 is based on.Marvel / Disney+ / CBS

Matt explained, “We learned from Dick Van Dyke that their number one rule for how they approached anything was that if it couldn’t happen in real life, it can’t happen on the show. Which is this idea that you need to ground what you’re doing in real-life stories, but then that gives you the permission to be incredibly silly and to fall over the ottoman and do pratfalls.”

ADVERTISEMENT8. In order to get Vision’s skin color just right during the black-and-white episodes, Paul was actually painted bright blue.Marvel / Disney+

In Assembled: The Making of WandaVision, the visual effects team explained that during the ’50s and ’60s, actors would actually use blue makeup and blue lipstick so their lips would appear red, so that’s exactly what had to happen with Vision.

9. All of the magic Wanda does in Episode 1 was done practically on set using wires, rods, and puppeteering.Marvel / Disney+

In Assembled: The Making of WandaVision, Matt Shakman explained that they studied Bewitched and how they were able to accomplish all of the magic elements back then.

ADVERTISEMENT10. One of Paul’s favorite memories from filming the first episode was “running around backstage” alongside Elizabeth and Kathryn Hahn, and just being “so nervous” to perform in front of a live studio audience.Marvel / Disney+

He said it felt like they were performing in a “school play,” and they all would bump into each other at the prop table backstage while filming.

11. Teyonah Parris had no idea what she was auditioning for and was simply sent Geraldine/Monica moments from the ’70s episode. And before she even found out what her role would be, Teyonah hoped that it was Monica Rambeau.Disney+ / Marvel

Teyonah explained in Assembled: The Making of WandaVision, “I lost it. I practically tried to jump off a set of stairs because I thought I could fly. I was so excited.”

ADVERTISEMENT12. When casting WandaVision, Kathryn Hahn’s name was one of the first to come up for the role of Agnes/Agatha, and the decision to cast her was basically made instantaneously.Marvel / Disney+

In fact, Kathryn had just a general meeting with Kevin Feige and the Marvel team only a few days before she was offered the job. Also, Kathryn said what drew her to the role was the “idea of working with Lizzie [Olsen]” and getting to showcase a female-driven story about grief.

13. The entire cast did a read through of all the episodes so everyone knew what was going on, but Kat Dennings said she only paid attention to Darcy’s scenes because she wanted to be surprised, and she loved trying to figure things out as the episodes went on, like Darcy.Disney+ / Marvel

Kat joked, “I was in on the table reads, so I knew what happened and what was going on, but I decided consciously to stop reading because I didn’t want to know too much and I’m not a good enough actor to fake not knowing anything, so it could only help me.”

ADVERTISEMENT14. While filming the moment when Wanda and Vision kiss and everything turns to color in Episode 3, Lizzie and Paul had a moment they refer to as “snotgate,” where snot appeared on their lips, and neither of them will confess whose snot it actually was.Marvel / Disney+

Lizzie said it was the first time she and Paul ever got into an argument because she said it was his snot and he got so defensive. Meanwhile, Paul claims it was Lizzie’s snot because when she “gets emotional” during a scene, “her nose runs before the tears come.”

15. Lizzie’s favorite sitcom style to film was the ’70s episode when Wanda is pregnant. She loved portraying the absurdity of Wanda going through her whole pregnancy in a single episode.Marvel / Disney+ADVERTISEMENT16. The writers and producers came up with having Evan Peters play fake Pietro very early on. In fact, they were sitting on this information for about two years.Marvel / Disney+

Jac Schaeffer was “floored by the enormity of the reactions” to WandaVision, but she always knew that Evan arriving at the end of Episode 5 was going to be massive.

17. The small nods to Full House in the opening credits of Episode 5 were a way for the show to honor “Lizzie growing up just behind the camera on that show.”Disney+ / Marvel / ABCADVERTISEMENT18. Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez wrote and composed all of the theme songs on WandaVision, and you probably know them best from their work on Frozen, Frozen 2, and Coco.Disney+ / Marvel

In Assembled: The Making of WandaVision, Robert revealed that he actually went to college with Matt Shakman. Robert and Kristen were so excited as soon as Matt pitched the idea of the different WandaVision theme songs.

19. Each of the theme songs included the same “musical signature” and part of the fun of writing the songs for Kristen and Robert was “hiding” the same melody in every single song.Marvel / Disney+

In Assembled: The Making of WandaVision, they looked at the music, instrumentation, language, and influences in each period to help come up with how each decade’s song would sound. Also, Kristen, Robert, Matt Shakman, and Jac Schaeffer talked a lot about their personal “favorite” theme songs and that influenced the WandaVision songs too.

ADVERTISEMENT20. So, since each theme song shared a common “musical signature,” Kristen explained that is why audiences felt “ready” when “Agatha All Along” appeared, because we’d heard different versions of the same melody in six different songs before it.Marvel / Disney+

Kathryn was told about “Agatha All Along” from day one and it took her about 30 minutes to record the song.

21. All of the moments featured in “Agatha All Along” were planned out from the very beginning, so in the middle of shooting a very “stylized sitcom moment” production would yell, “Okay, now for ‘Agatha All Along,'” and Kathryn Hahn would have to film a small moment.Marvel / Disney+

Matt Shakman explained that the “Agatha All Along” shots were more “cinematic,” so production would completely shift gears to film these small moments in each decade.

ADVERTISEMENT22. In fact, Matt Shakman came up with the idea that Agatha would have a picnic on the front lawn when fake Pietro arrived only “two minutes” before they shot the scene.Marvel / Disney+

“Kathryn [Hahn] had so much fun eating grapes and drinking wine and controlling him,” Matt said.

23. Due to the fast shooting schedule, the production team had to change the decade in the Westview town square overnight before filming started on the next episode.Marvel / Disney+

In Assembled: The Making of WandaVision, production designer Mark Worthington explained that they had to pre-fit and pre-paint a lot of the set pieces and set dressings ahead of time, so they could just come in and put it all in place in as little as 12 hours in some cases.

ADVERTISEMENT24. The WandaVision visual effects team created the Hex by using “the language of television,” so it’s actually made up of what it looks like to zoom in on an old TV, magnetization on screens, static, and other elements.Marvel / Disney+

In Assembled: The Making of WandaVision, the team explained how they looked at other “film boundaries” in the past, but then ultimately decided to make the Hex a combination of various TV statics as an ode to the importance of sitcoms in WandaVision.

25. Paul helped influence the now iconic “What is grief, if not love persevering?” line. He went to the writers and Jac Schaeffer because he felt like Vision’s grief speech wasn’t quite landing originally, so they eventually came up with this powerful line.Disney+ / Marvel

Paul told Jac that Vision’s speech needed, “to be somehow about the purpose of grief and that grief isn’t all bad.” Jac explained that the line came about through an “enormous amount of collaboration and unity on the show. So many talented women, specifically, came up with it.”

ADVERTISEMENT26. Elizabeth had a lot of input when it came to designing Scarlet Witch’s costume. As soon as she put it on for the first time she immediately tested out if she could do all of Wanda’s “moves” and made sure it felt comfortable.Marvel / Disney+

Matt Shakman explained, “She is so practical that she immediately put it on and she was like, ‘Okay, I can do this move and I can’t do this move. And I need to be able to do this move.’ So then we have to re-engineer it, because those suits are tough. I mean, it’s one thing to look amazing. It’s another thing to actually function. And she knows what she has to do better than anybody, having done this for years now.”

27. And, the first time everyone saw Lizzie in the Scarlet Witch costume it was actually in a field across from the sound stages where the S.W.O.R.D. base was set up. In fact, they had to cloak her and surround her with umbrellas so that paparazzi wouldn’t catch a glimpse of the new suit.Marvel / Disney+

Matt Shakman recalled the moment, saying, “We took off the cloak and there was the Scarlet Witch. That was pretty awesome.”

ADVERTISEMENT28. One of the most important things when planning WandaVision was that at the end Wanda would not only accept that she had to say goodbye to Vision, but also she would accept becoming the Scarlet Witch.Disney+ / Marvel

“We wanted Wanda to say goodbye on her own terms. That’s what was most important and then all the sort of like color and lights and set pieces, it’s all very fun and very wonderful and why we’re all fans,” Jac Schaeffer explained. “But to me, the thing that we always held on to is that at the end, it is her choice, and we also tell the story of her acceptance of herself as the Scarlet Witch.”

29. Originally, there was going to be a scene in the finale when Darcy, Monica, Billy, and Tommy team up in Agatha’s basement to fight Señor Scratchy, who turned into a demon, but the idea was abandoned “pretty early on.”Marvel / Disney+ADVERTISEMENT30. Like most Marvel movies, WandaVision filmed multiple versions of the final post-credit scene where we see Wanda reading the Darkhold. Up until the finished episode, Lizzie and the producers had conversations about whether or not we should hear Billy and Tommy’s voices at the end.Marvel / Disney+

Lizzie explained that she felt it was important to hear Billy and Tommy because she believes having Billy and Tommy has “enriched [Wanda’s] humanity” and will be “more informative of the character she continues to become.”

31. And finally, while WandaVision will directly connect to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Lizzie didn’t know her part in the upcoming movie until she got back to filming WandaVision during the pandemic.Disney+ / Marvel

“We had two months left, and we’d filmed the majority of our show already. Really, I knew nothing until that moment when they pitched [Doctor Strange 2] to me verbally,” she said. “So I tried, as much as I could, almost less so to have it affect WandaVision as have WandaVision affect it. I think that’s really been where the connection is. It’s almost like we’re trying to make sure that everything is honoring what we did [on the show].”