The upcoming Disney+ series is a wonderfully weird send-up of sitcoms of the past — and Marvel’s key to the future. Don’t touch that dial.

EW – Last year, the notoriously secretive Marvel Studios did something unprecedented: It opened its set to visitors. WandaVision, the six-hour series about Elizabeth Olsen’s reality-altering witch and Paul Bettany’s charming android, takes inspiration from beloved TV comedies, from campy 1950s classics to the zany family shows of the ’90s. So for its premiere episode, Marvel’s first Disney+ TV show went full midcentury sitcom, filming in classic black and white in front of a live studio audience (all of whom signed very, very strict NDAs).

Crew members came to set in ’50s-era clothing, and used period lenses and lighting to capture that dreamy vintage glow. The special-effects team employed wires and camera tricks straight from Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie, making wine bottles appear to pour on their own and household appliances zoom about like magic. And when Vision’s familiar maroon skin didn’t look quite right in grayscale, the makeup artists painted Bettany blue instead.

Bettany and Olsen rehearsed their entrances and exits as if putting on a play, and at first, they say the notion of live performance terrified them more than any Marvel supervillain. But by the time they secured their first audience chuckle, the pair realized they might have missed their calling as sitcom stars. “It was insanity,” Olsen, 31, says with a laugh. “There was something very meta for my own life because I would visit those tapings as a kid, where my sisters were working [on Full House].”

“We were all so high by the end of it, we wanted to keep on running the show,” Bettany, 49, adds. “Maybe take it out on tour or something. WandaVision on ice.”