WandaVision episode 5 threw viewers, Vision, and even Wanda herself for a loop, when her long-dead twin brother Pietro Maximoff dropped into their now-80s-set Westview pad for a touching reunion, opening up a can of Marvel Cinematic Universe worms that have now spilled just about everywhere. Pietro, as played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the MCU, originally died in a hail of bullets protecting Hawkeye and an endangered child at the climax of Avengers: Age of Ultron – Marvel’s 2015 blockbuster team-up movie where we first properly met Wanda – and Kevin Feige and director Joss Whedon both promised Pietro’s death was a permanent one that they planned to honor going forward. Well, Marvel sorta kept that promise during episode 5 of its Scarlet Witch and Vision spinoff series, managing to bring Pietro back from the dead – at least in the sitcom reality of WandaVision – by recasting the character using the actor who played Quicksilver in the X-Men franchise, Evan Peters. The American Horror Story star’s inclusion in the Disney+ spinoff leaked last summer, but was never confirmed by Marvel Studios. We can now officially cross it off our Big Marvel Cameo bingo sheet! Cue Evan Peters’ version of Pietro Maximoff, complete with over-the-top New Yoik accent. Definitely not the Quicksilver we know and love from the X-Men films or Age of Ultron, and definitely more like Scott Valentine’s Nick Moore on Family Ties, which this episode of WandaVision pays homage to. Peters played the mutant version of superhero speedster Quicksilver in Fox’s 2014 prequel X-Men: Days of Future Past, and returned for its sequels X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix before Disney bought Fox and the X-Men back catalogue in 2019. During his run as Quicksilver, Peters became a fan favorite and also expressed his disappointment that the MCU’s version of the character (Taylor-Johnson) had been killed off so quickly. He might not be as sad about it now, seeing as how he gets to step straight into Taylor-Johnson’s shoes in WandaVision, and perhaps beyond. Yes, the series did end up pulling a “Becky in Roseanne” as fans theorized after episode 3, giving Wanda’s ‘show within a show’ a post-credits twist that even she didn’t see coming.
X-Men in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Is Pietro really alive again in the MCU? Hmm, you heard the SWORD research – everything that Wanda creates inside The Hex is real, including her twins Tommy and Billy, but she seemed pretty surprised by her own twin’s arrival in Westview. He doesn’t appear to have manifested by her hand, which means he might not truly exist. His arrival also leaves a few new possibilities open: either someone else also has some sway over Wanda’s reality (and maybe wields the kind of power that lets them squish parts of the other Marvel movie universes together) or she’s losing control of her little Westview project. We don’t know which one is more unsettling or exciting.
