Could "Wandavision" Bring The X-Men into The MCU?

Content warning: spoilers for episodes 1–5 of Wandavision, available on Disney+. Additionally, much of the analysis in this article is subject to my own personal interpretation of the show.

Anyone who has dutifully submitted to the Disney monopoly and enjoyed their many big-budget superhero action films has been eagerly anticipating all of the ambitious projects their favorite crowd-pleasing megacorp has been churning out recently.

With the success of The Mandalorian, the only good thing to come out of Disney purchasing the Star Wars franchise, the big-wigs in the pitch room obviously got to work on a few Marvel-adjacent television projects. No complaints here — I always say that capitalism kills creativity (which is true), but man, I can’t help but eat up whatever overdramatic, predictable crap that Disney spoon-feeds me. It is intoxicating.

The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, to be released in March, sounds the most compelling to me. It stars two of the most beloved characters in the Captain America franchise, and will presumably expand on their partnership. The Loki series also sounds awesome — I’m a sucker for some morally-gray antihero action.

However, the first show in this batch of new projects is Wandavision, which is probably conceptually the most creative thing that has come from Disney in a long time. It stars Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany as they reprise their respective characters, Wanda Maximoff (the Scarlet Witch — but we don’t call her that in the MCU yet) and Vision. The style takes the viewer through different decades in the style of a TV sitcom. There is one episode reserved for each decade, all the way from the schmaltzy recreation of a 50’s husband-and-housewife story to a more tense, plot-driven 80’s sitcom that leans into the presence of the “real” outside world.

The first episode obviously leads the viewer into the story with a false sense of security — it’s got awkward laugh tracks, campy puns, and a very jolly vibe. As the story moves along, an episode featuring a dark truth reveals the flaws to this false reality.

To make a long story short without reiterating the whole show, Wanda has incredibly powerful abilities derived from the mind stone. Unclear what the infinity stones are, but from what I got from past movies, they are weird alien rocks that give people magic powers. So, she got her powers from this stone, as did her twin brother Pietro (his powers of inhuman speed granting him the nickname “Quicksilver”), but he tragically died roughly a decade before Wandavision takes place. By the way, “present-day” is about 2023 in the MCU right now because of the time travel stuff in Avengers: Endgame. Outside characters, most notably Monica Rambeau (yes, the little girl from Captain Marvel), come to understand that Wanda has taken over a small town in New Jersey and has placed the citizens under her mind control to create an alternate reality in which her boyfriend never died.

To be honest, it can be more easily explained by saying that she’s just writing fanfiction and using her magic powers to make it come true. You know… “Everyone lives AU”, “Suburb AU”, “Fix-it fic”.

Just me who grew up on Wattpad? Okay. Moving on.

FBI agent Jimmy Woo from Ant-Man and fan-favorite Darcy Lewis from the first couple of Thor movies are also important figures. Their appearances in episode four brought some interesting revelations; At this point, Monica and other agents with some establishment called S.W.O.R.D (sketchy, by the way, and I bet that’ll come back to bite us viewers in the ass later) are monitoring Wanda’s alternate universe but they can’t get in to talk to her and convince her to release the people she is controlling. The characters are beginning to understand that Wanda’s powers far exceed anything they ever saw from her as a member of the Avengers.

In episode five, after being thrown out of the alternate universe by Wanda, Monica is recovering and there are problems with her medical scans. Fans have theorized that Wanda has, probably inadvertently, given her powers of energy absorption, generation, and manipulation — powers that Monica’s character has in the comics.

Monica brushes off her possible new abilities, more interested in the fact that Wanda is able to transform existing things into something else. Her fantasy world is partly reality — it isn’t just a hallucination she is causing for the people she is imprisoning. However, the episode makes it unclear if her powers extend to reanimating the dead — though a cameo at the end perhaps alludes to some such abilities being a reality for Wanda.

At the very end of the aptly named fifth installment, called “On a Very Special Episode…”, there is a surprise cameo from none other than Pietro Maximoff.

Hold on, what?

Yes, Pietro Maximoff. But as Darcy correctly exclaims, watching on a monitor from the outside, they recast Pietro.

Pietro Maximoff was played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but has been replaced by Evan Peters of American Horror Story fame. But superhero fans will also know that Evan Peters played Quicksilver too.

Back when X-Men: Days of Future Past was released, Disney didn’t own Fox, who owned the X-Men, though the X-Men are part of Marvel, and Disney owns Marvel. Whew. It’s a mouthful, but basically, Disney used Taylor-Johnson’s Pietro Maximoff as their Quicksilver, since he is also a member of the Avengers in the Marvel comics (remember, in the comics, there aren’t all these contract issues — the X-Men and Avengers exist in the same universe and are frequently intertwined) and Fox used Evan Peters as Peter Maximoff, also Quicksilver. They were not the same person, but merely the same… entity?

It can be safely assumed that MCU Quicksilver and X-Men Quicksilver don’t (or didn’t) exist in the same universe. Which made it so confusing when Evan Peters’ Pietro spoke in a Sokovian accent and recognized Wanda as his sister, even though Wanda isn’t a character in the X-Men franchise.

Some fans have immediately theorized that Wanda accidentally opened up the multiverse, which is canonical since it is set to be introduced in the next Doctor Strange installment, and was shown in Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. The existence of a “multiverse” essentially asserts that there are multiple universes where similar characters with similar powers and backgrounds can exist, though they do not intersect within their own alternate realities.

It was left grey in the episode if Wanda had the power to reanimate dead people or not — she seemed averse to the concept, so we can assume that she wouldn’t reanimate the “real” Pietro. At least not on purpose.

But what about Vision?

Well, what about him? She’s using his corpse as a puppet, basically. But, in my opinion, I think she is actually using her powers to grant him “life”. Vision’s powers were brought upon by the mind stone, and so were Wanda’s, so couldn’t she technically reanimate him using her powers? It isn’t reanimation of the dead — he isn’t human.

So, back to Peter/Pietro. The intersection of Fox and Disney means that now Marvel is open to merging the X-Men characters with MCU characters. The only issue standing in the way so far has been the Peter/Pietro complex. Perhaps Peter’s appearance as a “recast” Pietro means that Wanda didn’t bring her brother back — she opened a door to an alternate universe and brought over her brother’s parallel. Even though in 2023 Peter Maximoff would be old, Wanda can age her children up, and presumably could age people down. At least in her universe.

On the other hand, Peter might be dead. It isn’t clear in any of the X-Men movies whether or not Peter survived that long. Maybe he’s just a random citizen of Westview who Wanda “recast” as her brother, and they made the strange casting choice to use Evan Peters since he was popular as Quicksilver in the X-Men franchise.

In my opinion, this is the perfect opportunity to merge the X-Men and the MCU. I have been waiting forever for Marvel to buy Fox and do it, and ever since they did, I have been itching for the moment where they would fix the Peter/Pietro complex. It feels like it would be an idiotic missed opportunity to not lean into the multiverse theory — that way, the X-Men movies are technically canonical, but they exist in a different universe so they don’t affect the MCU at all. However, having Wanda open the multiverse would be a great way to slowly start to introduce mutants into the picture.

Maybe there already are mutants in the MCU. We haven’t even touched on Wanda and Vision’s children, Billy and Tommy, who have powers in the comics.

Perhaps the Billy and Tommy conversation can be saved for next week, when episode 6 will hopefully grant more clarity into the children, as well as Peter… er, I mean, Pietro.