At the moment, we have fairly good reason to believe that Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, aka Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, will be in Avengers 2. Let’s hope they don’t get dropped from the script any time between now and filming.
Now, according to this article from SuperHeroHype, the siblings are going to get a bit of an overhaul. Why? Because the twins are stuck in limbo. They mostly belong under the Avengers title but they are mutants and the children of Magneto himself… so they could be used by Disney or Fox so long as the respective connections to Avengers or X-Men are ignored.
So, yeah, having the Maximoff’s not be mutants makes sense from a legal perspective. Disney doesn’t want to step on Fox’s toes regarding the licensing and Disney also probably doesn’t want to open the door to let Fox milk off their recent success.
Then what could our twins be? Lots of options. Experiments gone wrong. Augmented humans. Or down-right pure magic. Since Disney’s MCU isn’t taking itself nearly as hard-core serious, i.e. everything doesn’t have to be realistic and explainable, giving the twins Magic, whether inherent or learned, is their best bet. It gives them a reason to be ‘super’ without being ‘mutants’ and gives them connections to Dr Strange who is getting his own movie and has a connection to Wanda as a teacher of the magic arts.
Now that I think about it, they could treat magic like it’s treated in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, it’s basically a really high understanding of physics. Can you imagine Bruce and Tony trying to figure that one out? Oh… the comedic value alone…
What about their history?
The same SuperHeroHype article mentions that Disney is basically looking for 20-somethings for the twins. This makes sense for the legal reasons I mentioned. Also, if they are Mags kids and he lived through the Holocaust as a pre-teen then they’d be in their late 40s (at best, like if Mags had them when he was much older). So basically making the twins younger avoids a paradox and also steers them away from the licensing issue (though hopefully Whedon will at the very least just not mention their father, or say they were adopted, etc, to keep that little hint of something in there, rather than giving them a father who isn’t Max, erm, Erik).
The twins also joined the Avengers when they were relatively young, so it does fit their profile for them to do so in the MCU.
But the big thing is, if Disney wants to keep the Avengers going they need fresh ‘young blood’ who can be tied down to several future films. While I’m sure Dr Strange will be an older-ish character, anyone else they bring in, like Ant-Man and Wasp, will likely also be in the 20-something club as well.
Okay, there is also talk in that article that the twins are going to be British, rather than Eastern European. This could radically change their characters. One of the staples of the twin’s backgrounds is that they are gypsies (Romani) from Transia, a fictional country next to Romania. Thing is, Eastern European Romani are not like the gypsies everyone thinks of as not all gypsies are the same. For starters, in Eastern Europe they are predominately Muslim. If they want to make the Maximoff’s legit Eastern European Romani then they have to make them Muslim which I think would actually be really awesome, but, I fear that, for the sake of not wanting to offend anyone, they will make them British gypsies which are mostly Catholic/Protestant. That way they don’t have to bring up religious beliefs at all.
This of course assumes that they even keep the gypsy background. They could, again, as not to offend anyone, make them boring old British people from Croydon (wherever that is).
But how important is it that they are gypsies? Not being an avid Avenger’s reader, I’ve never seen it addressed in the comics I have read, and it is just part of their characters ‘mystic quality’, at least Wanda’s. That’s the thing though, if they are going to be magic users then being gypsies would definitely be a way to kinda cement their individuality. If they are just augmented humans, then I doubt anyone other than the fans would even notice their lack of Romani heritage.
I do like the hint that they are looking for “Euro” and “edgy”… the “edgy” part actually. The twins did try a stint at being bad guys at first but decided against that pretty quick. So it’s possible that they could actually be the sub-villians in Avengers 2 and somewhere in there turn good. Or maybe they are petty-criminals in the beginning who are recruited by Fury early on (or are simply just new recruits but that would be boring). This could all lead into Wanda perhaps being in the Dr Strange movie as a tie-in.
Lastly, the clothes. Yeah, the red corset and pink leggings are way to much even for the MCU. They should take a cue from X-Men: Evolution and give Wanda normal (but well-tailored) clothes and a red leather jacket. As for Pietro, anything would work, really, though I’m fond of giving him a silver racing-jacket in my fan fics.
Well, that’s all I have to say at the moment, we don’t really know a heck of a lot beyond some words thrown around and that’s too little to be able to really gain a love it/hate it opinion. Also, in the next six months Disney/Whedon could decide to drop them from the cast list. I hope they don’t though because these two could really have some fun on screen.
Oh, let the fan casting begin…
(though I’d like to note the hilarity of the fact that a great Pietro would be a young Michael Fassbender…)
X-Men: The (fan fic) Series 
See? I told you it would be good 😉
Personally I’m on board with them not bothering to explain the origins of Wanda and Pietro’s abilities at all. The fact that Wanda’s abilities are (sometimes, depending on the writer) magically oriented gives them a way to imply an explanation to newbies, but if they outright say that they’re not mutants they’re going to piss a lot of people off. Including me. Besides, if they’re introduced as secondary characters in a big cast movie, it would be very easy to avoid the subject.
Yeah, they don’t have to give them a backstory, just introduce them as super-powered beings and be done with it.
But the mutant question has to be addressed. If they are mutants then that means other mutants can exists and that’s a really big hole, esp as Wolverine is stuck with Fox and not in limbo like the Maximoff’s.
They have to explain how they have powers… somehow…
I suppose they could go with the “we just have them” excuse but dunno if that will fly. Unfortunately they have the movie-going audience as a whole to think about and most won’t have a clue.
I think that by the time Avengers 2 comes around there will be that many characters who have different powers at their disposal that you could slip the Maximoff twins in there without a big need for explanation. You’ve got Hulk, Captain America, Dr Strange, Ant-Man, and whoever else they plan on intriducing prior to Avengers 2. By that point I could imagine that getting an explanation for the abilities of every single character being rather tiresome. They could get away without addressing it directly, especially in a big cast movie. Now, if they were to give Wanda and Pietro their own movie, then we’d be in trouble.
They will likely get the same introduction as Black Widow and Hawkeye did, or therebouts. As for them getting their own movie? Seeing as Hawkeye hasn’t even gotten one yet, when Ant-Man and Dr Strange will be… not holding my breath… plus they likely don’t want to get that close to the X-Men (via Magneto)… because they will have to either make that connection or totally and completely overhaul them and risk pissing off fans.
Excited to see them in the movie. But I don’t wanna see Bova in their back story… like, really, A COW HEAD?
You guys think they might go for an Inhuman angle instead of Mutantion?
I’m sure they could make Bova work without a cow head… if they want to even go that far and bother with a full backstory with them.
As for the Inhuman angle? It’s a possibility, but I really am hoping for the magical (aka high understanding of physics) angle myself.
[…] me this reads that, as I earlier suggested, and what is canon, these two will start out as villains. He talks about their rough beginning […]
[…] that she won’t be speaking in a European accent but a British one, thereby clinching the earlier comments that Whedon and Co. were looking to make the twins “edgy and […]