After his brief cameo in X-Men: First Class, Wolverine returns in X-Men: Days of Future Past as very much the central character of the movie (or at least the marketing). In a future ravaged by anti-mutant hysteria and war, Kitty Pryde uses her abilities to send Wolverine's mind back 50 years into his younger, pre-Adamantium body, in the hope of stopping disaster before it has a chance to sprout.

A new promo for X-Men: Days of Future Past has now been released, providing a succinct précis of who Wolverine is, what he can do, and how he intends to do it. Even if you already know all of that, the promo is worth watching for a few seconds of new footage in which Wolverine demonstrates his poor aptitude for patience.

In addition to old familiar faces like Wolverine, Magneto and Professor Xavier, X-Men: Days of Future Past also introduces some new characters lifted from the comics, including Evan Peters (American Horror Story) as a disco era Pietro Maximoff AKA Quicksilver. Straddling the fence between two studios and their respective rights, Quicksilver will appear in both X-Men: Days of Future Past and The Avengers: Age of Ultron, but the two versions will be played by two different actors and will presumably have different backstories. That's multiverses for you.

Director Bryan Singer stated last year that the Quicksilver's sister, the Scarlet Witch, would not appear in X-Men: Days of Future Past, but after a promo image of Quicksilver sitting with a little girl on his lap was released, speculation arose among fans that the mysterious young princess might actually be Wanda Maximoff.

X-Men Quicksilver and sister

In the comic books the mutant siblings are twins (and Magneto's children), but the X-Men films have rearranged families in the past - for example, there's been no indication that Mystique is Nightcrawler's mother in the movie universe. Director Bryan Singer has now addressed the Scarlet Witch speculation in an interview with ComicBook.com, explaining that although the girl isn't Scarlet Witch, an earlier draft of the script did imply that she exists in the movie canon:

"Is that the Scarlet Witch? No, that’s his little sister. I even had a line which I cut, where Quicksilver’s mother says to the little girl, ‘Go up and bug your sister,’ and the little girl says, ‘She bugs me!’ You never see the older sister, but it was to imply that there is an older sister for comic book fans. I ended up cutting it.

"Even though our Quicksilver is not a main character like in The Avengers, it's a character there's a lot of thought and concern about and it's a character I'd like to explore further in the sequel."

Perhaps it's just as well that there's no surprise appearance from the Scarlet Witch, considering how crowded the cast of X-Men: Days of Future Past has already become, featuring a medley of characters from both the near-future movies and X-Men: First Class as well as a host of new faces. However, if that little sister is not Wanda then there's a strong possibility that she's actually Polaris, another daughter of Magneto and half-sister to Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch in the comics. It seems unlikely that Singer would include a younger sister arbitrarily, especially considering the fact that Havok - Polaris' eventual love interest - has returned for the sequel.

The latest trailer for X-Men: Days of Future Past revealed that Quicksilver gets recruited for Magneto's prison break by Wolverine. Screenwriter and producer Simon Kinberg has said that there "may be an allusion" to Magneto and Quicksilver's familial connection, but that it's "not something we fully explore yet." Something to look forward to in X-Men: Apocalypse, perhaps?

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X-Men: Days of Future Past is out in U.S. theaters on May 23, 2014.

Source: ComicBook.com