Nick Fury’s S.H.I.E.L.D. replacement has learned nothing from The Avengers. In the film, Iron Man and Captain America discover S.H.I.E.L.D.’s plans to use the Tesseract to make weapons that would be used to fight off any powerful threats. Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) reveals that it was actually Thor’s arrival that made him and the agency realize that humans (and Earth) were not ready to take on any potential threats as powerful as the superhero or others that could show up to wreak havoc. Now that WandaVision has formally introduced S.W.O.R.D., the Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division, the agency is retreading S.H.I.E.L.D.’s original mistake. 

At the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, Nick Fury is revealed to be in space building what many assumed to be S.W.O.R.D.. In Marvel comics, S.W.O.R.D. stands for Sentient World Observation and Response Department and was set up to track incoming aliens and otherworldly threats. That no longer seems to be the case in WandaVision, with the name of the agency having been changed from “world” to “weapon” in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The organization’s new name reveals that S.W.O.R.D. is now focused on superhumans rather than aliens and Wanda Maximoff may be the first on their observation list. 

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S.W.O.R.D. has already appeared in several instances throughout the first two episodes of WandaVision — a helicopter with the agency’s logo on it dropped into Scarlet Witch’s bush while a voice, presumably that of a S.W.O.R.D. agent, was heard on the radio during a neighborhood community meeting. The idea that S.W.O.R.D. could be monitoring Wanda is odd considering that Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. dropped their initial plans to build weapons to fight any superhuman threat. However, its existence all but confirms that something must have changed and that Fury carried out his initial plans to try and fight super-powered beings because he sees them as a threat. 

Nick Fury WandaVision Monica Rambeau SWORD

It’s possible that Fury saw the destruction that Thanos caused in the wake of Avengers: Endgame and sought to revisit the plan to develop weapons to stop such an event from ever happening again. One could argue that the Mad Titan got the best of everyone and, knowing that Fury was one of the ones to be snapped out of existence and brought back, might have made him more wary of those with omnipotent abilities. In the case of Wanda, there’s a chance that Fury saw that she almost defeated Thanos single-handedly in Avengers: Endgame and wanted to ensure that she could be stopped should her powers grow more threatening. 

All that said, Fury’s potential actions don't really make sense considering his close ties to Captain Marvel, the Avengers, and the Skrulls, whom Fury entrusted to impersonate him on Earth for a while in Far From Home. Fury is playing both sides if it turns out he’s doing the same thing with S.W.O.R.D. that he tried with S.H.I.E.L.D. The agency’s existence also brings up questions of ethics because WandaVision has yet to reveal who’s behind her surreal sitcom reality. If agents are watching her, then what does that say about them and their treatment? Either way, Fury is making the same mistake with S.W.O.R.D. and it seems like only a matter of time before the organization’s intentions are revealed. 

Next: Every Phase 4 Movie & Show WandaVision Can Set Up

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