WandaVision’s Kick-Ass Joke References Both MCU Quicksilvers

Warning: SPOILERS for WandaVision Episode 6 - "All-New Halloween Spooktacular!"

WandaVision episode 6 features a sly joke that references Kick-Ass, which starred both actors who played Quicksilver, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Evan Peters. Of course, Peters went on to play Quicksilver AKA Peter Maximoff in the X-Men movie franchise while Taylor-Johnson was cast as the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Quicksilver AKA Pietro Maximoff in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Now, Peters stepped into Taylor-Johnson's role in WandaVision.

Kick-Ass was an R-rated 2010 superhero flick directed by Matthew Vaughn adapted from the comics created by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr. Essentially a raunchy and ultra-violent parody of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movie tropes, Kick-Ass was about the misadventures of Dave Lizewski (Taylor-Johnson), a nerdy high schooler with no superpowers who became a garishly-costumed vigilante. The film also stars Nicolas Cage as Big Daddy, a black armored crimefighter, with Cage doing a spot-on impression of Adam West's voice as Batman. Kick-Ass is perhaps best remembered as the breakout role of a young Chloe Grace Moretz as the foul-mouthed and incredibly dangerous Hit-Girl. But, amusingly, Evan Peters also played a small role in Kick-Ass as Todd Haynes, one of Dave's hopelessly geeky friends who hung out with him at the local comic book store.

In WandaVision episode 6, Wanda still can't sort out how or why Pietro, her twin brother who died in Age of Ultron, is not only back but is played by a totally different person. For his part, Peters' Pietro seems to be the same character with the same memories as Taylor-Johnson's, except for the different face. But the apex of WandaVision's meta recasting conundrum came when Wanda and Pietro, wearing the classic Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver costumes for Halloween in Westview, were out with Wanda's twin sons Billy (Julian Hilliard) and Tommy (Jett Klyne). When Pietro volunteered to be a good uncle and use his speed to maximize their candy haul, the boys responded "kickass!". This sparked a lightbulb in Wanda's memory and she also muttered "Kick-Ass" to herself: an ingenious nod of recognition to the superhero film both of her "brothers" starred in before they became different versions of Quicksilver.

It was always ironic that Taylor-Johnson and Peters both got cast as the same superhero, Quicksilver. Despite Fox then-owning the rights to the X-Men characters while Marvel Studios owned the Avengers, Quicksilver was one of the few Marvel characters (along with Scarlet Witch) who fell in a grey area that allowed both studios to use the characters. This is because Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are both the children of Magneto and mutants in the comics, who were introduced in X-Men #4 in 1964, but they later became members of the Avengers.

Bryan Singer introduced Evan Peters as Quicksilver in 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past, but opted not to include a version of Scarlet Witch in the X-Men movies. Still, X-Men beat Joss Whedon to the punch since Taylor-Johnson's debut as Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron came a year later in 2015. Adding a bit of extra confusion to the Quicksilver castings, while Peters was tearing up movie screens as the super-speedy mutant in Days of Future Past, Taylor-Johnson was cast opposite Elizabeth Olsen in 2014's Godzilla - where they played husband and wife a year before they played twins in Age of Ultron.

By WandaVision, Evan Peters has not only played Quicksilver in four X-Men movies (including a cameo in Deadpool 2) but he has now taken over the role in the MCU that Taylor-Johnson has only played once. Yet for both Quicksilvers, it all went back to Kick-Ass, when Taylor-Johnson was the leading man (he returned to headline Kick-Ass 2 in 2013) and Peters was the hapless sidekick. WandaVision's kick-ass recasting of Pietro Maximoff has completed flipping the script.

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