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Marvel Studios planned for The Falcon & the Winter Soldier to lead its Disney+ slate, then WandaVision exploded

For Paul Bettany, WandaVision was supposed to be the "weird cousin" to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+

An image from WandaVision — Image credit: Disney+

News by Jules Chin Greene, Staff Writer

Published on Thu Sep 10 2026

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WandaVision was the Disney+ hit that Marvel Television wasn't expecting to be the hit that it became. By the time the show began streaming on Disney+ in 2021, we had been keeping up with Wanda and Vision for 6 years in the MCU. While the two had become integral parts of the MCU's Avengers team, they hadn't yet taken center stage in a project. And WandaVision marked the beginning of a greater investment from MCU fans in stories about Wanda and Vis. Not to mention, the show also garnered immense critical acclaim, earning 23 Emmy nominations and 2 Golden Globe nominations.

In a recent interview with Empire magazine, Vision himself, Paul Bettany, addressed how the success of WandaVision came as a surprise to him and his castmate, Elizabeth Olsen.

"When we made WandaVision we felt no pressure, because initially [The Falcon and The Winter Soldier] was going to come out before us so we thought we were like the weird cousin... It was just very niche, you know, [and it was] for the outsider kids like I was at school... Lizzie [Olsen] and I felt very much like we were making it for them. So for that to have landed so big was a real surprise," Bettany said.

WandaVision isn't a straightforward superhero show like The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, because it dabbles in the tropes and aesthetics of different sitcoms from various time periods. At the show's core, it questions how viewers are conditioned to accept tropes and aesthetics in media as reality, which plays into Wanda Maximoff's reality-bending abilities with her Chaos Magic. It's all very meta.

Hopefully, Bettany and co didn't feel any pressure when making the VisionQuest show that will be out on October 14.

Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:

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Jules Chin Greene: Jules Chin Greene is a journalist and Jack Kirby enthusiast. He has written about comics, video games, movies, and television for sites such as Nerdist, AIPT, and Multiverse of Color.