The countdown to Wolverine in the MCU begins … now.
Image: Disney +
WandaVision star Elisabeth Olsen set the minds of fans on fire when she provoked one of the show’s next surprises and compared it to The MandalorianLuke Skywalker’s jaw-dropping season two. If the surprise she alluded to was the phenomenal end of WandaVision episode 5, Olsen devalued the moment.
Episode 5 finally brought the program’s two main storylines – the antics of Wanda and Vision’s sitcom and the cross-agency effort in “real life” to investigate the Westview anomaly – together, culminating in Vision waking up to the possibility of Wanda being controlling his reality and Wanda confronting the SWORD and FBI agents stationed outside the Westview perimeter.
The episode drops some massive revelations, including the fact that Wanda’s control over the Westview population is tantamount to psychological torture, and that Wanda broke into a SWORD facility to steal Vision’s body and bring it back from the dead. In addition, the twin babies of Wanda and Vision are now ten years old and their dog Sparky died from consuming lethal azaleas. It was a very eventful episode.
Any of those moments would make Episode 5 the most exciting installment of WandaVision so far, but the final 30 seconds of the show blew up all other revelations of the water for its mind-melting implications. Just as Vision confronts Wanda about his seemingly villainous control over Westview, Wanda admits that even she has no idea how the anomaly started. Vision does not believe her, and when the doorbell rings, he assumes that she is manipulating reality to end the discussion. Wanda insists it wasn’t her and opens the door to reveal …
His dead brother, Pietro Maximoff, also known as Quicksilver. Only it’s not the same Pietro who appeared with Wanda in Avengers: Age of Ultron, the one played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. It is not the From others Pietro, the one played by Evan Peters in the X-Men films. An Avenger opened the door to a literal member of the X-Men, and with that the real The biggest crossover event in the history of the entertainment franchise has just begun.
The Quicksilver moment is the equivalent of Kirk and Spock showing up to train Baby Yoda for Starfleet.
To recap why it is so important that Quicksilver X-Men’s is now in the MCU, we have to go back to 2019, when Disney acquired 21st Century Fox for $ 71.3 billion. At the time, 21st Century Fox contained the 20th Century Fox film studio (among other properties, such as the TV network Fox and National Geographic. They are not important at the moment). 20th Century Fox had the rights to a large number of Marvel characters, including the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. They made X-Men movies, Disney had Avengers movies, and the two of them could never legally meet.
Except in the case of Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. These two characters were somehow shared between the two companies, which allowed the X-Men films to have their own mutant version of Mercury (Evan Peters) and the Avengers films to release their own non-mutant Mercury in Avengers: Age of Ultron (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).
For a long time, the joke was that Disney killed its Pietro in its first appearance to avoid co-fathering different versions of Quicksilver with a company with which they had no partnership, but the acquisition of 21st Century Fox eliminated that problem. Disney now owns both Quicksilvers along with the rest of the X-Men, but the company kept silent about how they could integrate the characters for the much-dreamed X-Men / Avengers crossover.
Until the moment when Evan Peters entered WandaVisionWanda and Wanda’s sitcom house recognized this alternative universe version of Quicksilver as their brother Pietro. In the world beyond Westview, Darcy Lewis is surprised to see this new Quicksilver on the show, questioning why Wanda “reformulated” Pietro on his own show. It is clear from Darcy’s reaction that Evan Peters is no playing the character of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, which means one thing and only one thing: the MCU multiverse is upon us.
Opening the multiverse creates literally endless possibilities for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There may be alternate versions of characters (like Quicksilver), new heroes from different versions of Earth (like the X-Men and the Fantastic Four) and explorations of different timelines within the current MCU (like any universe created by Steve Rogers when he went back in time to live his life with Peggy Carter at the end of Avengers: Endgame) Everything is possible and everything is starting now.
As usual with WandaVision, episode 5 answered some questions and raised new ones, but the scale of possibilities created by Evan Peters’ $ 71.3 billion appearance is monumental. Luke Skywalker appearing on The Mandalorian it made sense without tearing the fictional fabric of reality into confetti; the Quicksilver moment is the equivalent of Kirk and Spock showing up to train Baby Yoda for Starfleet.
WandaVision has a lot to offer in its final four episodes. The mystery of who is actually controlling Westview remains unsolved (although we have some theories), and playing X-Pietro in the mix only increases the stakes. Whatever happens, this kind of tortuous excitement is the most fun Marvel fans have had in a year and with the X-Men on the way, the journey has just begun.
WandaVision is broadcasting on Disney +.