Marvel Hid WandaVision’s Big Evan Peters Surprise From X-Men: Dark Phoenix Director Simon Kinberg

The very first TV series from Marvel Studios really sent fans into a tailspin in the middle of its run, bringing on Evan Peters to play Wanda Maximoff’s brother, Pietro, also known as Quicksilver. This was WandaVision reveal one of Marvel’s biggest surprises of the last few years, and it had fans thinking that the X-Men movie universe was crossing over into the MCU, since Peters had played Quicksilver in the more recent X-Men films. That didn’t turn out to be the case, but his end-of-episode reveal was shocking nonetheless, even to some of the folks who had a hand in casting him as Quicksilver in the first place.

Simon Kinberg, longtime X-Men producer and Dark Phoenix director, was just as surprised as the fans were to see Peters pop up in WandaVision, and he found out at the same time as the rest of us. While speaking with Screen Rant, Kinberg said that he was completely unaware of the casting until after that episode of WandaVision had aired.

“No, I did not know it was going to happen in advance actually, which was wild,” Kinberg said. “And I did see it in real time. In fact, I didn’t even see it in real time. I was late to it by a day or two, but obviously, I have Twitter and I also have two sons who were hardcore X-Men and Marvel fans, and they saw it and they immediately texted me and they were like, ‘Dad, did you see?’ And I was like, ‘no, I haven’t seen the ep, thanks for spoiling it.’ And then I saw it blowing up Twitter and then I was like, okay, well, immediately, obviously you have to go and watch it.”

Since Disney bought Fox, where all of the X-Men movies were brought to life, Peters’ appearance in WandaVision really seemed to be the first connective tissue between the two franchises. It was especially convincing since everyone knew that the multiverse was about to be introduced. As we know now, however, Peters’ casting was just a red herring.

The name of Peters’ character was Ralph Bohner, and he was just an actor that was under the control of Agatha Harkness. She gave him his speedy abilities in order to fool Wanda, pulling one over on the audience at the same time. While some were frustrated by the false hope this casting created, Peters was really the only actor that could’ve claimed to be Pietro and convinced the audience that he wasn’t an imposter. Our understanding of the X-Men films helped us believe that this Pietro could be real, which helped assure us that Wanda believed it to.

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Unfortunately, Peters isn’t playing a Quicksilver in the MCU, but Ralph Bohner lives on for more adventures.