Confirmed! Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch to join Avengers: Age of Ultron
The subject of fan speculation for months, Marvel has officially announced that the popular superhero/villain twins Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch roles have been cast in the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron film. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen will be playing the mutant speedster and witch respectively.
Legal issues on this are a bit awkward, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch are technically mutants (and spoiler alert: Magneto’s abandoned children) which places them squarely in the X-Men universe. The X-Men film rights are currently controlled by Fox while Avengers is being produced by Disney. Quicksilver, played by Evan Peters, is set to appear in the Fox movie universe in next summer’s X-Men film Days of Future Past. How they will rectify these matters remains to be seen, though it is speculated that neither character will be referred to as mutants within the Avengers film to avoid any complications.
Both characters have had a long and complex history in the Marvel comics universe. Starting off as anti-human terrorists in Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, they eventually saw the error of their ways and became members of the second generation of Avengers (along with former villain Hawkeye). Not that they both didn’t have the occasional slip back into villainy, most recently with Scarlet Witch notably undergoing a nervous breakdown and destroying most of the mutant population after being manipulated by her brother.
I’ve always loved Scarlet Witch, a glamorous complicated superheroine with the most ridiculous, deus ex machina powers in the entire Marvel universe. One of the first comics I ever read was the miniseries where she fell in love, married, and had children with the android Vision. Who, coincidentally is the son of Ultron, the villain in the upcoming film. Will we see an appearance by the sensitive android? One can only hope.
Or, they could take a cue from the Ultimate Marvel universe and keep the Scarlet Witch’s romantic interests a bit closer to home…
That’s right. Twin-cest. It’s canon, people.
I really am looking forward to seeing Whedon’s interpretation of these characters, and the addition of the Scarlet Witch is a much needed boost to the scarce female membership in the current Avengers films. But let’s leave the romantic affairs outside of the family this time.
