Entertainment
WandaVision creator reveals sad reason Evan Peters replaced Quicksilver in Marvel series
WandaVision’s creator Jac Schaeffer has explained the sad reason why Evan Peters was cast as Pietro Maximoff, otherwise known as Quicksilver, in the Marvel series.
While watching episode five of the MCU show on Disney Plus, fans were shocked beyond belief when Wanda Maximoff’s (Elizabeth Olsen) brother, Pietro, showed up at her front door.
However, what was even more startling was the fact that Evan was playing the role, not Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who portrayed the character and depicted his death in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
While many viewers assumed Evan’s arrival signalled a crossover between the X-Men and the MCU, as Evan played a different version of the character – Peter Maximoff – in the X-Men film franchise, it was revealed in the WandaVision season finale that he was really a Westview resident called Ralph Bohner who was being controlled by Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn).
Although lots of people were disappointed by this huge reveal – particularly the fact that it was used to make a ‘boner joke’ – screenwriter Jac has outlined that casting Evan in the role was a powerful way of illustrating Wanda’s grief over the loss of her twin brother.
‘There’s a lot of discussion about the significance. Our strategy and our thinking about it had to do with that he is in fact Agatha’s pawn, that he is meant to mess with Wanda’s head,’ she said on Empire magazine’s podcast.
‘We had a grief counsellor come to the room, and we did some research on grief, and there’s a lot about how people remember faces and the anxiety about not remembering the faces of your loved ones, that their images fade away, or misremembering, or actively misremembering things as a self-preservation tactic.’
Jac stated that casting Evan as this false version of Pietro ‘would not only have that effect on Wanda, but it would have this meta layer for the audience’ too.
While Wanda is aware that something isn’t right about Pietro when he appears in Evan’s form, she seemingly convinces herself that he is a representation of her brother in the fake reality she has created.
Jac said that she found it ‘really fascinating’ that Wanda ‘would kind of gaslight herself’, adding: ‘It felt really sinister to me, that she would allow herself to be manipulated at this fundamental level.’
During a recent interview with ComicBook.com, WandaVision director Matt Shakman said that there were ‘early conversations’ about having Aaron return to play the character.
‘There definitely were conversations about bringing Aaron Taylor-Johnson back early on, I think Kevin [Feige, Marvel Studios boss] talked about this publicly,’ he said.
‘But it was ruled out fairly early on and we’ve already got Vision from back and so Agatha is bringing Pietro into this world, fake Pietro, into this world to further her agenda.’
WandaVision is available to watch on Disney Plus.
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