Did ‘WandaVision’ Tease the Epic Return of Wanda’s Brother Pietro?

WandaVision Episode 3 “Now in Color” finally moves the story forward while looking back at one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most tragic episodes to date. Wanda “Scarlet Witch” Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) spends most of the episode preparing for the birth of her miraculous twin sons. Miraculous because the pregnancy lasts all of 20 minutes and the father is the dead synthezoid Vision (Paul Bettany). However once little Tommy and Billy (aka Speed and Wiccan) have been born, WandaVision takes a dark turn. Wanda recalls that she, too, was a twin, and it is the memory of her twin brother’s death that causes Wanda to ferociously defend the sitcom dreamworld she’s living in.

The moment that Wanda recalls Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is rife with tragedy. It’s been a while since the MCU even acknowledged that Quicksilver was a major character in Avengers: Age of Ultron, let alone the fact that the orphaned Wanda’s has had to also navigate the loss of her twin. It’s not only a moment that briefly shatters Wanda’s dreamworld, but it confronts the underlying grief surging beneath the surface of WandaVision. 

But what happened to Wanda’s twin brother Pietro again? Did he really die at the hands of Ultron? And why could we see Pietro again in the world of WandaVision? Here’s everything we know about Pietro Maximoff and his role in Disney+’s WandaVision…

WHO WAS WANDA’S BROTHER PIETRO, AKA QUICKSILVER?

Struggling to recall Wanda’s twin brother Pietro? It’s totally understandable! He’s one of the few major comic book characters to actually die in an MCU film and he died pretty soon after being introduced!

Wanda and Pietro were first teased in the end credits scene of 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. After Cap (Chris Evans) and his allies routed HYDRA’s plans to reassert itself as an evil global superpower, we learned that a secret HYDRA base operated by Baron Strucker (Thomas Kretschmann) had been using an Infinity Stone to conduct experiments on “the twins.”

We later learn in Avengers: Age of Ultron that Wanda and Pietro Maximoff were orphaned by a war in their native Sokovia. The weapons that murdered their family and nearly killed them were created by Stark Industries. Because the twins blamed Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) for the pain in their lives, they volunteered themselves as test subjects for Strucker. The idea was they would be turned into living weapons that could take the Avengers on in battle. Pietro became known as Quicksilver on account of his super-speed, while Wanda became the Scarlet Witch, a being with the ability to change reality with chaos magic.

HOW DID WANDA’S BROTHER PIETRO DIE?

Eventually, the twins figure out that Ultron (James Spader), the sentient supercomputer they’ve allied with to take down the Avengers, is actually the bad guy. They team up with the Avengers and the newly made Vision make a last stand against Ultron in their home city of Sokovia.

Pietro dies saving Hawkeye’s (Jeremy Renner) life. He uses his super-speed to dash in the line of Ultron’s fire, thus shielding the Avenger and taking the bullet himself. His death leaves Wanda totally isolated. Enraged, she confronts Ultron’s primary body. She uses her chaos magic to destroy the host body, but not without tripping off one of the evil robot’s failsafes.

In the end, Wanda is rescued by Vision, who sweeps her away from the plummeting city of Sokovia. From then on, Wanda and Vision have a link that later grows to love…and in WandaVision, that love grows to marriage and two baby boys in a proverbial baby carriage.

IS PIETRO MAXIMOFF GOING TO APPEAR IN DISNEY+’s WANDAVISION?

Sure! (Okay, that’s not really an answer…)

Disney+ only sent critics the first three episodes of WandaVision, so we really have no clue what’s coming next. However, it does seem to be incredibly important that Wanda remembers her dead twin brother only after giving birth to her own twin children. The memory of his death is obviously too much for her to bear, but she seems heartened to recall she is a twin and poignantly sings a Sokovian lullaby to her little Tommy and Billy.

Given that Wanda has already resurrected one dead love in WandaVision — Vision! — it wouldn’t be a stretch to expect “Uncle Pietro” to show up in a future episode. Of course the question we should be perhaps asking is in what form will Pietro show up?

There have been a lot of rumors that actor Evan Peters has some kind of juicy role to play in Disney+’s WandaVision. What’s interesting about this is that Peters is known for playing the Fox X-Men film version of the same character. Decider’s own Alex Zalben has cheekily conjectured that Peters might pop up as Pietro in an homage to infamous sitcom recasting choices like “second Becky” or new “Aunt Viv.” Given WandaVision‘s propensity for winking at sitcom conventions — and the fact that we’re hurtling towards the early ’90s era when such a switcheroo was common place — this isn’t a bad theory!

Even if Pietro Maximoff doesn’t show up in WandaVision, he’s already made an impact on the drama of the show. Wanda clearly isn’t over the loss of her twin brother and she will use her chaos magic to oust anyone who tries to trigger her memories of said loss. (Like Teyonah Parris’s “Geraldine.”)

Expect Pietro’s presence to be felt again, even if he’s not seen again on WandaVision…

Where to stream WandaVision