You might've liked the Days of Future Past version, but the Age of Ultron version was closer to the source.
Quicksilver was born to a mother on the run from something. He might have just been a gypsy infant stolen along with his sister by the High Evolutionary. Young Pietro Maximoff might have developed mutant super speed powers while trying to protect his sister. He also might have been bestowed the powers at Mount Wundagore. The Whizzer, Django Maximoff and/or Magneto could also be the father of Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch. Marvel has gone out of their way to tell new readers not to try and make sense of his parentage/early origins.
So, we’ll skip ahead to how he joined the Avengers. Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch were lovely twins that were rescued/recruited by Magneto into The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. They fought the X-Men before having a change of heart about Magneto’s intentions. After Magneto is taken off planet, the twins return to Europe to reform. That’s when Iron Man recruits them into the Avengers. The duo has an uneasy start at first, as Quicksilver is angry over Hawkeye’s attempts to seduce the Scarlet Witch.
Quicksilver spends the next few years jealously trying to protect his sister from the world, while seeking to understand more about himself. Pietro would become wounded in an attack by the Sentinels, which would cause him to meet the Inhuman Crystal. The duo bonded and eventually were married. At the same time, his sister wanted to marry The Vision and Quicksilver took the chance to decry human/robot sexual relations. Scarlet Witch and the Vision would eventually marry and have children, as Quicksilver would later be blessed with his daughter Luna. Being that this is Marvel, the marriage wouldn’t last as Crystal would have an affair. Feeling rejected by Crystal, Pietro would fall into a trap by Maximus the Mad and allow himself to be brainwashed.
This started the great period in Marvel where Quicksilver was played as a psychotic, fighting the Fantastic Four and Avengers from time-to-time. The Inhumans would eventually cure him, but the damage was done to his reputation. Quicksilver would eventually end up on the government sanctioned X-Factor team, as he tried to explain his world view to the masses. What’s so scary about his explanation is that it made sense. A being moving faster than human perception would see the normal world like a lone adult in a building full of infants.
While everyone reveled in that Peter David revelation, Marvel would quickly dump Quicksilver back into semi-villain mode. His marriage ended and estranged from Luna, Quicksilver would steal Terrigen Mists to help revive mutantdom after House of M. This would cause him to develop time oriented powers for a bit, all the while forcing Luna closer to Crystal. Quicksilver would eventually return to normal, while helping his nephews recover The Scarlet Witch from Doctor Doom. At long last, a semblance of familial normalcy was returning.
Then, the retcon came that ruined everything. Marvel/Disney/whatever hates that the X properties effectively belong to FOX now. So, they wanted to influence the populace to embrace the Maximoff Twins that were appearing in “Avengers: Age of Ultron”. It was time for Publishing to get onboard and create an origin that eliminated mutant elements and made Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch effectively part of the non mutagenic set. This was done by using the High Evolutionary.
I’ll make this brief for non comic readers. Using the High Evolutionary to weasel out of an origin is the ultimate Straw Man. The High Evolutionary was a scientific Deus ex Machina used by Kirby and later talents to work around the scientific hang-ups of the Marvel Universe. Spider-Woman, Werewolf by Night, Adam Warlock and Ego the Living Planet were all characters that the High Evolutionary was used to explain away. Think of him as the precursor to Mister Sinister and Apocalypse for over-complicating things that didn’t need to be that complicated.
Basically, the High Evolutionary was contacted by an Inhuman that helped develop Isotope E. The High Evolutionary was feared by the gypsies that lived below his Mount Wundagore laboratory and he found a way to procure twins for his experiments. Using the Isotope E, the High Evolutionary created the Eastern European twins that we know and love today. Did you care for the intricate Magneto familiar stuff or the twins’ quest for identity after all of these years? Well, Marvel said piss on that. This is a retcon that only works as a way to advance the Inhumans’ influence on the Marvel Universe and bring things closer to a MCU mentality.
Post Secret Wars, Quicksilver is still a part of the Uncanny Avengers/Avengers Unity Squad. He remains on Earth, as most of the mutants have taken off due to the Terrigen Mist exposure around the world. So, I guess that’s good about the retcon? Oh well, Marvel has pretty much said they only want around a Eurotrash super speedster and to ignore the rest. But, if you’re noticing a pattern here…you wouldn’t be wrong. I’d say we’re about 3-4 years from getting back the real Pietro.
QUICKSILVER FACTS
Real Name: Pietro Maximoff
Amount of Retcons to Origin: 3
Relationships:
Scarlet Witch (Sister)
Crystal (ex-wife)
Luna (daughter)
Wiccan and Speed (hypothetical nephews belonging to Scarlet Witch and former synthezoid brother-in-law The Vision)
Quicksilver joins The Avengers as part of Captain America’s Kooky Quartet.
Quicksilver learned that his father was Magneto. Well, that was until the recent retcon.
Due to a spiteful feud with FOX, Marvel Publishing retconned away most of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch’s origin. They’re just regular people that the High Evolutionary gave powers.
