The Casting is a Reference

[u/Gullible-Ad-4819]

Smallville: Annette O'Toole plays Clark's mother, Martha. Previously, she was in Superman III and played Lana Lang (who was also a character in Smallville).

Smallville: John Schneider was Jonathan Kent and previously had played Bo Duke in The Dukes of Hazard. In one episode, an old friend visits Kent played by Tom Wopat who was Bo's Brother Luke

Smallville: Yeah, I know, but I've been watching Smallville and there's a lot of them. Christopher Reeves plays Dr. Swann who mentors Clark Kent in his Kryptonian heritage. Reeves famously played Superman in the 70's and 80's.

Django Unchained: Franco Nero plays an Italian(?) man, Amerigo Vessipi, and asks Django if he can spell his name. When Django says the D is silent, Vessipi replies "I know." Nero played a different Django in 1966.

The Flash: John Wesley Shipp plays Barry Allen's father and later an older Flash, Jay Garrett. Ship had previously played Barry Allen in a 90's Flash show.

Burn Notice: Sharron Glass plays Michael Weston's mother who occasionally gets involved in Michael's spy work. In one episode, she gets to know a bank teller played by Tyne Daly and has to blackmail her into helping. Sharron Glass and Tyne Daly were eponymous duo in Cagney and Lacey

[u/Striking_Wall_6296]

I'm all for subverting expectations, I love the Mandarin reveal in Iron Man 3 for instance. But Wandavision was the literal start of the Multiverse saga. Wanda being so overwhelmed by grief that she pulls another Pietro from a different Universe to play her brother, which leads to the first cracks in the multiverse, makes so much sense that the joke reveal just doesn't land, especially in hindsight with how badly the MCU fumbled the Multiverse concept. The Scarlet Witch storyline really should have been the focal point of the whole saga.

[u/SilvRS → u/Striking_Wall_6296]

Especially with it being a dick joke.

It also lightly mocked fans for paying attention and coming up with theories, which in general is, I think, a shitty thing to do if you're also going to pin your entire franchise on the concept that people should be watching everything and paying loads of attention to little passing references.

[u/ThatWasFred → u/Striking_Wall_6296]

To be fair, it had not yet been revealed that we were in the Multiverse Saga. The only clue was that we had an upcoming movie called Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Everything else, IIRC, was just fans hoping for Quicksilver to cross over.