What Happened To Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver’s Accents

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

WandaVision dropped intriguing new hints about why neither Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) nor Pietro Maximoff (Evan Peters) sport their native Sokovian accents in Westview. WandaVision episode 6 picks up from last week's bombshell arrival of Wanda's dead twin brother, who was played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Avengers: Age of Ultron but is now embodied by Evan Peters. Not only did Taylor-Johnson's Pietro die in Age of Ultron but Peters played a completely different version of Quicksilver in the X-Men movies, which only compounds Wanda's confusion.

Since WandaVision began, Wanda and Vision (Paul Bettany) - who, himself, died in Avengers: Infinity War - have been playing husband and wife (and later parents) in a TV sitcom fantasy that Wanda seemingly concocted using her ever-increasing powers. Wanda and Vision's show has been cycling through several decades of TV comedy eras. Wanda has been desperately trying to maintain her All-American suburban reality but Vision has been wising up and he is now investigating what's really going on behind his wife's back. In WandaVision episode 5, which was set in the 1980s, Wanda's long-lost brother Pietro suddenly arrived to shake things up according to the classic TV trope. However, Wanda has no explanation as to why Pietro has been recast with a different actor.

Like Wanda, Pietro no longer has a Sokovian accent inside Westview. Both Maximoff twins were born and grew up in Sokovia; from their introduction in Age of Ultron's to Wanda's last pre-WandaVision appearance in Avengers: Endgame, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver spoke with their native Eastern European accents. But within Wesview's protective magic bubble, which Dr. Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) dubbed The Hex, Wanda and Pietro have all-American accents. In fact, Pietro's is even more pronounced and New Jersey-ish than Wanda's. Quicksilver sounds like a "bro" through and through who says things like "Holy schmacaroni!" However, when Wanda quizzed Pietro about what happened to his accent, he fired back with, "What happened to yours?" Yet neither Maximoff twin could offer an explanation.

Pietro and Wanda Maximoff on a street in Sokovia in Avengers: Age Of Ultron.

Yet the pointed and, for Wanda, unnerving verbal jabs Pietro sends her way offer clues as to what's actually going on, both with their changed accents and with what's really happening in Westview. When the twins remembered their childhood Halloweens in Sokovia differently, Pietro speculated that Wanda was simply "repressing her trauma." Later, as they enjoyed Halloween outdoors with Tommy (Jett Klyne) and Billy (Julian Hilliard), Wanda tried to quiz Pietro about why he looked different and he replied, "Beats me. If I found Shangri-La, I wouldn't want to be reminded of the past either."

Later, Pietro commented that their dead parents would have enjoyed living in Westview, and it's clear that Pietro knows that Wanda has created the kind of safe, all-American haven she and her brother must have envied watching American TV shows when they were kids. For Wanda, Westview is a haven where the painful memories of past tragedies (and Wanda has so many) aren't welcome. That includes every reminder of Sokovia, starting with their native tongues and accents. In Westview's "Shangri-La", Wanda and Pietro are as American as apple pie, and that's the way Wanda likes (and needs) it in order to keep the haunting ghosts of the past on the other side of The Hex.

WandaVision episode 5 bluntly showed that when Wanda exits The Hex, all of her favored illusions fade away: When Scarlet Witch confronted S.W.O.R.D. to "return" the drone they sent into her magic bubble, Wanda once again spoke with her Sokovian accent. Wanda and Pietro's pronounced changes in dialect seem to be a manifestation of being inside WandaVision's TV world, but Quicksilver is a (somehow) living reminder to Scarlet Witch at how fleeting her perfect all-American life in Westview - accents and all - really is just a fragile fantasy.

Next: WandaVision: Every MCU Easter Egg In Episode 6