AOU: The Death of Quicksilver Might Be More Meaningful Than We Realized

2014 saw two versions of the Marvel fan favorite speedster Quicksilver. While we only got a glimpse of the MCU Quicksilver as an end-credits scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The Fox film X-Men: Days of Future Past explored his powers in a much cooler way while at the same time hinting at his connection with Magneto. As for the MCU, they showed us the death of Quicksilver. Fun fact, both the Quicksilver stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson (MCU) and Evan Peters (X-Men) appeared together in another comic book movie Kick-Ass (2010). 

While Fox ended up exploring a very one-dimensional version of Quicksilver with his slow-mo savior scenes. MCU went for a much darker tone and ended his narrative in the final battle scene from Avengers: Age of Ultron. But was it worth it? As fans of speedsters from Comic Book worlds’ must know that with the power to run faster. There also comes the added ability of fast healing capabilities. One can simply ponder why didn’t do the same work for Quicksilver in the Age of Ultron. But could it mean that the death of Quicksilver had more weight than the simple death of a superhero?

In 2012, we saw the superheroes team up in Joss Whedon’s epic Avengers. It had its own share of fan-favorite moments. From Iron-Man suiting up at the last moment while falling down the Avenger’s tower. To Hulk beating up Loki by smashing up around like a toy and giving one of his best quotes: “Puny God”. But the one scene that comes very close to heart is the death of Agent Coulson. Agent Coulson’s character is built up as the more human persona in the MCU movies and fanatic of Captain America himself. He also played an essential figure in gathering the team together.

The very next year in the pilot episode of Agents of SHIELD we see Agent Coulson return in the pilot episode. This became a trend as Loki, the God of Mischief himself has been faking his death numerous times before. Loki dies in the first Thor standalone film with self-sacrifice and comes back in the Avengers 2012 as the prime villain and again in 2013, Thor: The Dark World when he is again killed by Malekith’s monster and comes back in the end credits scene impersonating Odin. This pattern led to a preconceived notion in the minds of the MCU Fans that these characters have a lesser chance of having a permanent end. 

Death of Quicksilver (& His Supposed Return)

Then in 2014, we saw the first proper death of a superhero in Age of Ultron when Quicksilver got riddled with bullets and fell on his knees. Fans expected a possible return and multiple fan theories about how the character might make a comeback but none of that came true. Ever since then, we have understood that our superheroes aren’t immortals and rather they are mere immortals who can be killed.

Avengers: Endgame saw the self-sacrifices by Black Widow and Iron Man. This year in Wandavision we were teased with the biggest joke. We saw a return to Quicksilver as fanservice wherein Evan Peters portrayed a character by the name of Ralph Bohner (Very funny!! Hehe. Not!). He is bewitched by Agatha Harkness into playing Pietro Maximoff.

While one might say that Quicksilver’s death was an essential lesson for us to understand the realism in MCU, it’s not justified. It could have been dealt with in so many different ways. The X-Men version of Quicksilver was able to bend the path of the oncoming bullets. The same could have been expected from the MCU version. The character had such high expectations. The thing that led to his demise was a bullet even though from his perspective the bullets appeared to move slower than an average human being.

Personally, I prefer the BTS scene of Quicksilver and Hawkeye giggling in the rescue plane. It is a farewell to the character though one can never know what might be coming in the future for the fate of the character. Maybe, Wanda brings him back in the future from the infinite parallel universes. Get some much-needed help or maybe a different version of him appears in the upcoming plans for the MCU adaptation of the X-Men characters.

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