WandaVision head writer Jac Schaefferignited a firestorm of X-Men theories with that Quicksilver Easter Egg, but she didn’t mean to. In a recent conversation with Variety, the showrunner talked about the Evan Peters twist and the fan reactions all over social media. It’s been wild to see the varied arguments for and against including it when the X-Men reveal was never really coming in WandaVision. The words Ralph Boehner are like an expletive on social media now. So many people thought they were getting a crossover with FOX’s X-Men universe. But, the creative team only really promised a story about Wanda, so it’s easy to see how things could have gotten muddled. At any rate, those good intentions still rubbed a lot of the very hungry fans the wrong way and Schaeffer understands some of their gripes.
“I couldn’t have anticipated… I don’t know, maybe Mary Livanos and Kevin Feige are like, “Yeah, it’s like this every time.” But I’m like, these theories are crazy!,” she laughed. “So it wasn’t that was not part of my thinking, and also, that’s not my department. I am lucky enough that I get to hear about the other projects and sometimes I’m involved and their conversations. I know a little bit about all the things that Lizzie’s been up to. But that’s a bigger, fancier thing, what you’re asking about.”
Comicbook.com had the chance to speak with Livanos about Peters’ casting and the choice to have him in WandaVision.
“The idea of bringing Evan into the universe as this ‘Quicksilver’ really presented itself when we were figuring out Agatha’s plot. Because the villain plot really was to make Wanda feel unsure about her power. At this point in Wanda’s sort of grieving process, we wanted her to be unsure about what she was capable of, about what she was doing, was her subconscious acting out again? We wanted Wanda to believe that her powers could be on the fritz,” Livanos said.
She added, “In our studies of grief and grieving, a side effect that we found is when you lose someone, the details of memory recall can get fuzzy. So the idea that she kind of forgot exactly what her brother’s face looked like, and perhaps her powers have been acting out again, we found really compelling. And we wanted the audience to be as confounded as Wanda and so Evan was the obvious choice for that. Though we knew that we wanted to sort of upend expectations. And so when we brought Evan in and explained exactly what the character was and where he ends up as Ralph, Evan was game. And we’re so grateful for that.”
Did you think the mutants were coming in WandaVision? Let us know in the comments!