- The name “Sparky” refers to Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta’s brilliant Vision story, in which Vision and his ‘family’ (not the Maximoffs) move to the suburbs and try to live a ‘normal’ life. Part of it contains a synthesoid dog named ‘Sparky’. There, too, he did not reach a good end. Stop letting dogs die in our stories, you monsters! It’s too sad.
Lagos
This week’s ad is for Lagos Brand Paper Towels, with the catchy slogan: “Because if you make a fuss, you would not.”
It refers to the opening scenes of Captain America: Civil War, when Wanda used her powers to stop Crossbones from detonating a bomb in a busy market. While she generally reduced the number of casualties, a number of innocent civilians were still dying when he exploded. This is the first indication that Wanda’s grief and trauma in Westview is driven by much more than just the loss of her lover.
The Lagos ad is also another reference to the Infinity Stones. Previously we had the toaster (Power), the clock (Time) and the Tesseract-shaped bath powder (Space). Here we have a red liquid spill in a sly nod to the Aether (Reality). Only the Mind and Soul stones are gone – which means two more ads.
X mans
These are definitely not the only X-Men references in the episode (of course), but we come to the big one below …
- The scene in which Wanda confronts SWORD agents seems to have been directly inspired by the scene in the first X mans movie where the police try to take down Magneto. Like Wanda, he uses his powers on their guns, causing them to aim at the police themselves before escaping. Considering the payoff of this episode and the role of Magneto as Wanda and Pietro’s sometimes father in the comics (not to mention Peter’s decided father in the X mans films), it is probably set.
- Vision says he read Charles Darwin’s “The Descent of Man” to one of the twins, a book about evolution. (David Bowie voice) “Must make way for the gay superior!”
The twilight zone
- Serious Twilight Zone “It’s a good life” in the episode, especially when Agnes is visibly amazed by Wanda with her “take it from above” (unless she deliberately takes it with everyone), and the postman for the twins says: “your mother has won not leave [Sparky] come far. ”
- While we discuss the topic of The twilight zoneAgnes appears to be living on the corner of Maple St. and Sherwood Drive. ‘The Monsters are Due to Maple Street’ is a notorious paranoid outburst of suburban paranoia.
Westview
The opening credits include a “Greetings From Westview, NJ” postcard in a fairly common format, but one is best known on the cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Greetings From Asbury Park” album.