During a special event hosted by ABC, Marvel Studios unveiled a handful of pieces of concept art from the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron, including a first look at what the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver will look like. The event also offered a few images from Ant-Man, all of which were captured and posted by Comingsoon.net.
The images from the upcoming Joss Whedon sequel show the Hulk fighting against “Hulkbuster” armor, which raises some interesting questions, but the main reveal is the two new characters. In the film, Scarlet Witch (aka Wanda Maximoff) will be played by Elizabeth Olsen, while Quicksilver (aka Pietro Maximoff) will be played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. In the comics, the characters are brother and sister, and also the children of Magneto. The siblings both dabble in their father’s criminal and terroristic ways at first, before joining the Avengers while seeking redemption.
Quicksilver teeters between good and bad guy throughout his history, while Scarlet Witch went on to marry the synthetic man, the Vision, and remained an Avenger for decades in real time. It was also recently revealed that the Vision will be in the film and played by Paul Bettany (who voiced the AI character of J.A.R.V.I.S. in the Iron Man films), suggesting that Tony Stark will have a hand in creating the character. In the comics, Ultron was the Vision’s creator and that might still be the case in the film, but Stark will somehow be involved.
The character of Quicksilver is also an interesting one outside of the film world, since his origins create an interesting legal loophole. He and Scarlet Witch are both Avengers and mutants, and so both Marvel Studios and Fox have a legal right to use the characters. Fox has the right to use all mutant characters, while Marvel’s claims are equally strong. Because of that, there will be two Quicksilvers appearing on screen in the next two years. (Scarlet Witch is not currently set to appear in the X-Men films.)
The first Quicksilver will be played by Evan Peters in the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past, although it isn’t known if he will be Magneto’s son or not. The second Quicksilver will be played by Johnson. It’s unknown how the film will handle his origins, but he won’t be a mutant and Magneto is not part of the Marvel film universe.
The Marvel event also showed a handful of images of Ant-Man in action from Edgar Wright’s upcoming film, but it appears to be the essentially same footage that Wright debuted back in 2012 at Comic-Con, with an extra scene or two added in.
Avengers: Age of Ultron will cap Marvel’s Phase Two on May 1, 2015, while Ant-Man will kick off Phase Three on July 17, 2015.
