Wolverine’s pretty badass; there’s no denying that. But the X-Men franchise almost gave us a another hero who could have rivaled the short-tempered furball if the writer’s had just given him a bit more attention.
That character is of course, none other than Quicksilver. The Fox version; not the one from Avengers: Age of Ultron. Star of Netflix’s true crime drama: Dahmer, Evan Peters, first portrayed the character in 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past and he practically stole the show with one of the most memorable scenes of the movie. The scene comes about halfway through and involves some pretty creative use of slow-motion and slapstick comedy.
Unfortunately for “plot” reasons the character is left behind after he helps the gang break Magneto out of prison. Fans weren’t too happy about it then, but the movie had so much going on it made sense to focus on the meat of the story and not introduce too many new characters for an already overcrowded film.
When the next sequel came along, X-Men: Apocalypse fans were promised more Quicksilver. It was looking like he could be the next mutant to lead the franchise as Wolverine was no longer directly involved in the story. However, once again, the writers failed to make full use of the character. He was given another cool scene to show off his powers but he shows up too late in the film to have a meaningful impact. That and Apocalypse just straight up sucked.
At least, that one did try to give him some backstory as Peter reveals that he believes Magneto to be his father. But we don’t even get to see him talk to Erik about potentially being his son and the whole thing ends up being forgotten pretty fast.
From there things just get worse as the Dark Phoenix almost acts like he isn’t even there and his story from the previous film is brushed under the rug in favor of the poor excuse for a plot audiences ended up being given.
Fellow X-Men fans agreed that Peter’s performance as Quicksilver was vastly underrated and underutilized in the Fox films.
And the fact he’s Magnetos son, and just used that for absolutely nothing.
— Kaiya! (@Boo_Fly75) April 24, 2023
Some pointed out that it was a play by Fox after it heard Disney were planning to use the character in Age of Ultron. Peters was shoehorned in without much thought for the sake of character rights.
It’s because he wasn’t supposed to be in the movies. FOX only added him cause Disney was using him in AOU & so FOX shoehorned thier own Quicksilver in DOFP forcing Disney to kill their Quicksilver due to movie rights. Juggernaut was originally going to break Magneto out.
— DT (@DTTH1RT3EN) April 24, 2023
Whatever the reason, the studio did Quicksilver and the fans dirty. Whilst Marvel Studios teased Evan Peters’ return to the role in WandaVison it turned out to just be another slap in the face for fans. Will we ever get to see Evan Peters dominate the screen as Quicksilver? It’s possible, but in all likelihood it will just be a cameo. Fox had the chance and it wasted one of the best things about the later X-Men movies.