WandaVision director Matt Shakman says Reed Richards' appearance was never on the cards

On March 5, 2021, WandaVision aired its final episode on Disney+ Hotstar. After entertaining Marvel’s fans for over eight weeks now, the show has garnered a huge fanbase ever since it premiered on the online streaming site. As the series started to unfold the story with each new episode, many fan theories started to surface on the internet. One of which was strongly believed by fans was the appearance of Reed Richards as Monica's engineer friend.

According to Movieweb, fans were sidetracked by a throwaway line from Monica Rambeau when she mentioned an ‘aerospace engineer’ who would be up for the challenge to build a fallout shelter designed to get her inside the magical Hex surrounding the town of Westview. The mysterious "engineer" line led to several fan theories about who the engineer could possibly be, with the most popular theory being it could be Reed Richards Aka Mr. Fantastic, the leader of Fantastic Four. This theory was popular because it led many fans to believe that WandaVision could set up the first appearance of the Fantastic Four in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However that did not happen and in the WandaVision plot, Monica's engineer friend turned out to be a new character named Major Goodner, a royal friend of her mother’s, played by Rachel Thompson.

Richard Reed’s appearance was never on the cards

In the same article, it was revealed that Matt Shakman, the director of the show, admitted in an interview that Reed’s appearance was never on the cards at all. In the statement, Shakman said some of the fan theories were easter eggs and some were absolutely unintentional. He clarified that Monica’s plan with regard to Hex was not a part of the plan. He said they did a reshoot for a little thing, they changed the dialogue and added an aerospace engineer which was never an intention on their side to set up Fantastic Four.

In the same article, Shakman said it was difficult to watch the carefully constructed narrative of the show be completely sidetracked by wild fan theories with no basis in reality. He said fan theories were charming and wonderful but his team worked to built the rover set piece for over a year. He expressed he wanted people to invest in what was in the origin of the story of a different character, referring to Monica Rambeau, but fans were distracted by someone else. He said he, as a director-producer, felt people should not run with their assumptions because he did not want the focus to shift from what was important, which was the story of Monica travelling through the Hex.

Image Source: WandaVision Twitter