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Pietro on WandaVision: tonight’s special guest
A big part of what makes Pietro’s appearance on the show unimportant is that he’s just not very long ago. After his last second appearance in Episode 5, he has a supporting role in Episode 6 accompanying Wanda and her twins on Halloween night, before disappearing from the series almost completely until the end. Of course, the revelation that he is an impostor evoked and presumably given powers by Agatha Harkness in the body of Ralph Bohner, Westview resident explains why he ultimately plays little more than the role of Agatha’s henchman. What he does not explain is why Pietro, a critical figure in Wanda’s life, was invoked in this context.
The question of Pietro’s arrival and how he was resurrected remains unresolved Wanda in the Halloween episode: She tries to ask him about his knowledge of their shared childhood past, asks him if he knows how he was resurrected or why he looks different, and needs a few cuddles to open up to him about how his mini-reality in Westview came about. However, those questions are dropped when Vision breaks through the barrier and begins to disintegrate, with Wanda even hitting Pietro with a burst of energy when he makes a flippant comment downplaying the gravity of the situation (a comment that also acknowledges the reality that Vision is actually dead). The conflictual turn between siblings is not only never resolved, it is never even mentioned again. It feels like this should be a big development for both characters, but they don’t interact as much for the rest of the series.
Ralph Bohner: She recast Pietro ?!
Another aspect that lessens Pietro’s potential impact is the decision to recast the character. Impostor or whatever, choosing to use a version of Pietro that isn’t quite the one Wanda knows and we’ve seen him connect with means he essentially has to “start over” from a character perspective. The relationship between them and his reaction to her death in Age of Ultron are the building blocks of Wanda’s portrayal in this franchise, so making him look alive again should be something that has a major emotional influence on Wanda and her development. . But because it is not really “his Pietro” (both in and out of the universe), its appearance here looks more like a footnote than a real story thread. Wanda doesn’t even mention Pietro in the finale, where he’s reduced to a simple prison guard for Monica Rambeau, a character he has no relationship with.
It’s an odd decision on a show ostensibly about Wanda’s grief. Her inability to cope with the magnitude of her loss drives the events of the show, to the point that she attempts to rewrite reality to avoid dealing with her pain. While the loss of Vision is what prompts her to adopt this course of action, it is only the latest in a long line of traumatic stories, each of which was a stepping stone to her breaking point: her parents dying when his house is bombed. , brutal experiments of the Hydra scientists, the death of his brother at the hands of Ultron. The potential to reverse the loss of vision is of paramount importance to Wanda, but for some reason the potential to reverse the loss of her brother doesn’t seem to affect her.
The X-Men factor
With no other apparent explanation, the surprise reveal of Quicksilver’s appearance appears to serve a purpose not for the story or the characters, but for the audience. Wanda opening the door and seeing the Evan Peters version of Pietro Maximoff really doesn’t mean anything to her, but it does mean something to people watching, as the show expects them to know he’s the actor. who played the same character in Fox’s X-Men Franchise. It’s a hollow move, because it simultaneously dilutes what should be a big character beat into an “I know him!” cameo, while opening a pit of speculation that is really going nowhere. It’s also not necessary, as using the MCU version of Quicksilver as a ghost, vision, or reincarnation might have added to Wanda’s main thematic thread dealing with her grief.
Of all the fan theories about what exactly WandaVision was going to entail that didn’t come to fruition, the idea that Pietro’s appearance opened the door to the MCU and Fox X-Men movies intersection was probably one of the most wrong – was this the first step in the multiverse, many fans wondered, where other cinematic universes might merge with the MCU? – but it’s also the only one that the series actively promotes. Comic concepts like Mephisto or Nightmare This season’s appearances were all fan generated, but there’s no way the show’s producers wouldn’t know what Pietro’s introduction would entail.
