WandaVision Episode 5’s Twist:
For almost two dozen movies and a handful of TV shows, the characters have operated in a world in which mutants have not once even been mentioned. The reason for this was the longstanding, uneasy relationship between Marvel and 20th Century Fox. For years, Fox had the live-action movie rights to the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and any related character. This scene where the rights are with Fox, forbid Marvel to make any mention of the mutants, with even the word “mutant” being verboten. In fact, back in 2001, Fox sued Marvel over its planned Mutant X television series, even though the series was to be based on entirely new characters with a completely different origin story than the X-Men and already-existing mutants of the world.
But that has now changed since Disney has acquired 20th Century Fox. And in the wake of this event, on Disney Investor’s Day held on December 10, 2020, it was announced that Spider-Man director Jon Watts will now be directing the Fantastic Four, and the fans went gaga over it, as it is the first Fantastic Four movie in the MCU. Likewise, things are moving forward with Deadpool 3, with Deadpool being a mutant and previously with Fox. So we can expect our fierce mutants to make a mark for themselves in the Marvel Cinematic Universe alongside our Marvel heroes, and we can only vouch for one thing – That it is going to bonkers.
WandaVision Episode 4 Spoilers Below!
Now, WandaVision’s episode 5 has changed the Marvel Cinematic Universe forever. Wanda tells her twin boys, “We can’t reverse death, no matter how sad it makes us,” and it is easily one of the most heartbreaking moments of WandaVision. We still do not know how Wanda is making everything happen in Westview, basically the resurrection of Vision, who was clearly killed by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War. But, Wanda altered the reality, and so, at the end of episode 5, we see her twin brother Pietro returning, who is dead as well. What we didn’t necessarily expect — internet leaks aside — was that this version of Pietro wouldn’t be the one that Wanda fought alongside in the Avengers. In fact, this Quicksilver hasn’t even appeared in the MCU until now, something which was only made possible very recently thanks to the Disney/Fox merger.
As we all remember, Aaron Taylor-Johnson played Pietro Maximoff in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but the speedster’s time on-screen went by pretty quickly because Ultron killed him before the credits rolled. The Pietro who shows up here in WandaVision instantly claims to be Wanda’s brother, and he seems to recognize her too, so why hasn’t Aaron Taylor-Johnson been recast in the role? A year before Marvel brought the silver-haired speedster to life on screen, Fox’s X-Men introduced their own version played by American Horror Story’s Evan Peters. Things were mostly kept separate on-screen because of this, but Quicksilver was an unusual case because, in the source material, he’s both a mutant and an Avenger. As these complicated things, these blurry lines enabled Marvel and Fox to both create their own unique versions of the same character.
More on that later, but for now. the question remains: why would Wanda resurrect a different version of her brother? Did she just “recast him”, as Darcy suggests? Was Aaron Taylor-Johnson just busy that day? Right now, there are two prevailing theories, both more bewitching than even Wanda herself. The first possibility is that this isn’t actually Pietro and Marvel are just messing with us by casting someone who once played this character for a different studio. And if that’s the case, we don’t imagine that this “Pietro’s” intentions are good.
As the comic roots suggest, Wanda and Pietro’s father is Magneto. In an alternate reality, Magneto is ruling the world with his mutants rather than being an oppressed race of humans with amplified strengths. But when Magneto realizes that all this is nothing but a fake reality concept, and all this was Quicksilver’s plan, he sets himself into an uncontrollable rage and kills Pietro. This sets off Wanda so much that she turns against her father because he always chose the mutant kind over his own family. With this, she decides to end what her father loves the most with only three words, “No more mutants.”
WandaVision can give us two point-explanation as to why mutants are not included in the MCU. One, it could go a modified comic book route in which Wanda accidentally wiped out the world’s mutants but no one in the MCU remembered that reality or that the X-Men had once existed, not even the X-Men themselves. After the events of WandaVision, their mutant abilities, and everyone’s memories, could be restored.
This episode goes out of its way to confirm that Wanda can rewrite reality, so it’s possible that she may have subconsciously dragged a different version of Pietro into Westview. Wanda can only bring Vision back to life because he’s synthetic and they both share a connection to the Mind Stone.
Resurrecting an actual human could exist outside the realms of even Wanda’s power set, so instead of bringing her Pietro back to life, she may have (subconsciously) scoured the multiverse for a different Pietro who survived.
