When you think of TV shows with cool horror scenes, what comes to mind? Obviously, shows like Creepshow, The Haunting of Hill House, and Ash vs Evil Dead would fit the bill, but do any superhero shows come to mind? What about superhero shows on Disney Plus? For most people, that probably seems like an easy no, but the new MCU show WandaVision has changed the game. It initially presents itself as the farthest thing from horror, but it actually has some of the best horror scenes I’ve seen outside the genre in a long time.
It has some creepy monsters, one surprisingly effective jump scare, and a few really atmospheric scenes that make you feel like you’re watching a legit horror movie. It’s not at all what you’d expect from a superhero show on Disney Plus, but that’s what makes it so exciting. You expect great horror from a horror show, but when you get it from another genre, it’s a really pleasant surprise. So without further ado, let’s take a look at five of the best horror scenes in WandaVision and see what spooky treats this show has in store for us.
Episode 1
The first cool horror scene in WandaVision comes in the very first episode. For about the first twenty minutes or so, the episode seems like a pretty conventional 1950s sitcom, but that all changes when the titular couple have Vision’s boss Arthur and his wife over for dinner.
During the meal, Arthur starts to choke on his food, and his wife tells him, “Oh, Arthur, stop it!” At first, it seems like she just doesn’t realize that he’s genuinely choking, but then she keeps repeating the phrase “stop it” even as he keels over and almost dies. She does it with a laugh on her lips and a smile on her face, and she seems to get happier every time she says it.
It’s a really short sequence, but the complete mismatch between Arthur’s brush with death and his wife’s increasingly cheery response is absolutely chilling. It’s a great little bit of horror in an otherwise very upbeat episode, and it lets you know that there’s something truly terrifying going on in the perfect town of Westview.
Episode 4
Next, let’s skip ahead to episode four. After Wanda banishes Geraldine from Westview, Vision goes back inside the house and asks her where Geraldine is. She tells him that Geraldine left, and when she turns around to face her husband, she sees him as he was at the end of Avengers: Infinity War: dead and with the mind stone ripped out of his head.
This brief vision (no pun intended!) only lasts a few seconds, but it’s really shocking. It comes completely out of nowhere, and it’s not something you’d expect from a comic book show on Disney Plus. It catches you completely off guard, and that alone makes it one of the best jump scares I’ve ever seen.
See Also: Seven Jump Scares That Have Never Lost Their Impact
But that’s not the only cool thing about this shot. It also manages to make dead Vision look way creepier than any deprogrammed android should. You wouldn’t think that a hunk of inanimate metal could be as chilling as a regular human corpse, but this one is. It’s absolutely terrifying, so in my opinion, it’s hands down the most effective horror scene in all of WandaVision.
Episode 7
Let’s skip ahead again and go to episode seven. At the end of this episode, Wanda retreats to Agnes’s house after a stressful encounter with Monica Rambeau, and soon after she arrives, she goes down to the basement and finds out that her neighbor is really a witch named Agatha Harkness.
This scene is great because it’s not just a brief moment or a surprising jump scare. It’s an extended sequence, and it plays out like a scene from a real horror movie. Agnes was supposed to be watching Wanda’s kids, but they’re nowhere to be found. Instead, when Wanda sits down, she just sees half-eaten sandwiches on the table and a children’s show on the TV, so it’s clear that something is very wrong.
As she comes to this realization, the cinematography and background music all of a sudden become super atmospheric, and the tension continues to build as Wanda goes down to the basement looking for her boys. The further she goes, the creepier the house begins to look, until Agnes finally meets her there and reveals her big secret. This sets up a magical showdown in the final two episodes, and you know that WandaVision is going to keep embracing the horror from here on out.
Episode 8
Episode eight opens with Agatha Harkness being brought to trial in seventeenth-century Salem, and at first you think she’s being tried for witchcraft. However, a few moments later you realize that’s not the case. She’s actually being tried by her fellow witches for breaking their coven’s rules, and they try to use their power to kill her. But Agatha is too strong for them. Instead of being harmed by their magic, she drains it from them, and they all turn into shriveled husks and drop dead.
See Also: Four Terrifying Scenes from Non-Horror Movies
This scene isn’t exactly scary, but it’s really cool. It’s atmospheric, it features some legit horror characters, and the dead witches look ghastly. Everything about it is great, but I appreciated the shriveled up witch corpses most of all. They didn’t have to look like that, but Marvel did it anyway, showing that the studio is willing to go all-in on the horror when it fits the story.
Episode 9
In the final episode of WandaVision, we return to the great opening horror scene in the previous episode, and this time, it’s even better. As Wanda and Agatha are fighting, Wanda takes them both back to Agatha’s trial in Salem over 300 years ago, and she revives the shriveled witches to attack her enemy. However, she gets a big surprise when Agatha turns the tables and directs the dead witches back at her, so she has to dig deep and find the strength to fight them all off.
Since this scene is a return to the opening of the previous episode, it has pretty much the same strengths: it’s atmospheric, and it features some cool monsters. The big difference comes in its use of the dead witches. The last time we saw them, they had just died and become shriveled corpses, but this time, they become something much scarier. They’re essentially zombies, and when they rise up and attack, they’re really creepy. This shows once again that Marvel is more than willing to inject their stories with genuine horror, so we genre fans should be eagerly looking forward to their upcoming horror-centric titles like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Blade.
