My Two Credits: Why Evan Peters was the ONLY choice to play Quicksilver in WandaVision

So… Black Widow has put me in a Marvel mood and since out of date/irrelevant opinions are kind of my thing here I’m going to continue the trend with some musings on WandaVision that have been knocking around in my head for a while now.

What are you on about?

In case you’ve forgotten (and I don’t blame you if you have!), Wanda’s dead brother made a shock appearance midway through the series but it wasn’t the MCU actor who portrayed him but Evan Peters, who played the X-Men version of the character.

This naturally caused a bit of a ruckus, with fans expecting a multiverse crossover with the X-Men. This then led to disappointment when the character was revealed to be just…Ralph!

Weren’t you bothered?

Not really, no. To clarify I’m not a fan at all of mixing cinematic universes outside of maybe a fun cameo moment. So, to me, the revelation that it wasn’t Quicksilver came as a relief.

I say this to explain my viewpoint, which is probably in the minority, and to state that I am in no way judging anyone who felt let down by the reveal or trying to dissuade you from your opinion.

But I do believe, purely from a story perspective, that casting Peters wasn’t just the right choice, it was the only choice that made sense for that story. I’ll outline why by looking at the alternatives.

1. Cast no one

Ok so the first option would have been to leave Pietro out completely from the plot, which might have been the simpler option. I’ll have to allow some cynicism here and acknowledge that Marvel/Disney were well aware that adding in Peters would boost their numbers on the first Disney+ Marvel series.

Doubtless this is true, but looking purely at the story it would have been odd, wrong even, to have Wanda face her grief for Vision without acknowledging her incomplete grieving for Pietro. Whether they handled it in the best way is up for debate (I don’t think ‘Ralph Bohner’ helped much!) but I think it was important to acknowledge her brother’s death in a series about dealing with grief.

2. Cast Aaron Taylor-Johnson

Another, seemingly simpler, option would be to cast Aaron Taylor-Johnson who played Pietro in Age of Ultron. It certainly would have caused less controversy!!

But within the confines of the plot this would have been impossible.

Agatha openly acknowledges that she can’t create a new person, even within Wanda’s warped reality, so she couldn’t recreate Wanda’s brother, which forced her to ‘cast’ a townsperson as Pietro.

3. Cast someone new

By that logic they could have cast a new actor to be that townsperson. It would have been cleaner perhaps but I think in the end it would have been confusing for the audience.

With someone new we would have had to figure it out alongside Wanda and stayed in that confused state the whole way – did she recreate her brother, did his soul possess someone else? It would have gotten really complicated really quickly.

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Which is why, in the end, I think Peters was the only option. It provided a visual shorthand for the fans – immediately we know he’s Quicksilver but we also know he doesn’t belong there. We get all that before anyone opens their mouths.

I think once Marvel finally spell out their multiverse plans and we know where we stand with the Fox universe characters then we can put the tension behind us and just enjoy the series and the thrilling journey it took us on and take this as a fun cameo that served a purpose for the story.

Thanks for reading – I’d love to hear your thoughts if you have time to post a comment.