‘WandaVision’: What’s Up With That Claymation Yo-Magic Commercial?

One of the joys of Disney+’s WandaVision is that it’s chock-full of Easter eggs and references to Marvel comics. Some of them are just fun — like Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) saying “Kick-ass” in reference to her two Pietros, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Evan Peters, who both starred in Kick-Ass — and others clearly hold a lot more meaning, like each episode’s format-breaking commercials. There have been plenty of theories about the latter, but this week’s episode was more confusing than usual. So what’s up with that Yo-Magic WandaVision commercial? And is there a Yo-Magic in Marvel’s comics?

The answer to the latter is “no,” there’s no character who regularly teams up with the Avengers in Marvel Comics, using his yogurt-based powers to fight Osteoporosis called Yo-Magic, though I wish there were. It’s also not a catchphrase any of the characters — from Scarlet Witch, to Vision (Paul Bettany) to Quicksilver (Peters) — use at any point. Again: would be pretty fun, though.

That said, there are clear antecedents for the commercial itself, and a possible thread that can be drawn to the overall plot of the show.

First, though, a short breakdown of the commercial. In it, a claymation kid is on a deserted island with a crab. “I’m so hungry, I’d eat anything,” the kid says. At which point, a totally radical shark pulls up on a surfboard. “Hungry? I remember hungry,” says the shark. “I used to be like that all the time.”

“What did you do?” asks the kid, to which the shark replies, “Snacked on a Yo-Magic, bro. Now I have time to hang fin.”

The shark gives the yogurt to the kid, and swims off. And as we watch, the shivering child, unable to open up the yogurt, slowly withers away into a skeleton and dies. The final tagline? “Yo-Magic: the snack for survivors!”

The commercial style is classic ’90s/2000s, whether you’re talking Go-Gurt (the clear parallel here), the California Raisins, or any supposed to be healthy kids’ snack that has a radical animal selling what is usually essentially candy.

But… What the what? Here’s the deal (or at least, what we think the deal is): as my colleague Brett White has so ably broken down before, the WandaVision commercials are all about Wanda’s trauma. Like the sitcoms in the show, the accompanying commercials progress chronologically through Wanda’s life — or at least what we know about it from the movies. The Toast-Mate commercial in Episode 1 is reminiscent of the Stark bomb that killed her parents. The Strücker wristwatch in Episode 2 is a reference to HYDRA’s Baron von Strucker (Thomas Kretschmann), the man who raised Wanda and gave her powers. Episode 3’s Hydra Soak probably refers to Wanda being taken out of HYDRA by the Avengers, essentially getting clean of their influence. Episode 4 took place outside the sitcom-filled Hex, while Episode 5 had a commercial for Lagos paper towels, a reference to Wanda accidentally wrecking the city of Lagos in Captain America: Civil War.

That brings us up to Episode 6, and back to Yo-Magic. If you’re progressing through the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) timeline, it’s possible that this parallels something that happened in Avengers: Infinity War and/or Avengers: Endgame, the next two times Wanda popped up on screen. But far more likely, it’s specifically telling us — or alluding to — what kicked off WandaVision.

It’s important to remember here that Wanda was dusted in Infinity War, after holding off Thanos (Josh Brolin) and having to kill Vision, then popped up in the final battle in Endgame, and three weeks later is in the Hex in Westview (approximately). She’s also, and this is probably another important note, never used magic before. All her abilities, as mentioned multiple times throughout the series, were science based (or “science” based, I guess), and only really included mental manipulation and moving things, not rewriting reality like she’s clearly doing here.

So — and perhaps this is a logical leap, but I don’t think it’s too far of one — someone, represented by the shark, gave Wanda, a survivor, the “snack” she needed to amp up her abilities with what passes for magic in the MCU . That person used to be starving as well, but magic gave them what they needed, or what they think they needed. Same for Wanda… With the potential exception that it may be sucking her dry.

This is a much bigger logical leap, but another thing that’s been mentioned multiple times is the massive amount of energy needed to power the Hex. That power doesn’t come from nowhere. We’ve seen what Vision and Pietro look like when the mask drops (the hollowed out corpse of Vision and Zombie Pietro glimpsed this episode have been two of the series’ most horrifying moments). Is it possible that Wanda isn’t how she appears, either?

And not for nothing, but the little boy in the commercial is wearing a red shirt, and red is the color most associated with Wanda.

So who is the shark, then? Is it Agnes (Kathryn Hahn) manipulating things, like how many suspected before the show even launched? Is it Pietro, or whoever Pietro really is (if he’s not, uh, Pietro)? Or could it be… Satan????

With three more episodes to go, chances are answers to all of this are coming very soon. Until then, grab a yogurt, sit back, and speculate.

WandaVision streams Fridays on Disney+.

Where to watch WandaVision