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Why Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch are Avengers

For many years the gypsy heritage and upbringing which are now being emphasised in Wanda's dress and attitudes were ignored by writers. This is strange, because the childhood of the Maximoff twins seems to be the key to so much of the subsequent behaviour of the two most prominent mutant Avengers.

A potted history as we now know I:. Magda Lensherr, concentration camp survivor and wife of the man who would become Magneto, fled her husband on learning of his abilities and anger when he slaughtered a prejudiced and ignorant crowd that prevented him from rescuing his eldest daughter Anya from death by fire. She eventually took refuge on Wundagore mountain (and one can only wonder if the demon Cthon guided her steps there) with the High Evolutionary. There midwife Bova was able to save her twin children (Pietro was born first in most versions). Magda fled into the snow soon after bearing her children, leaving them in the care of Herbert Wyndham, the Evolutionary.

Also present in Wundagore that night was the pregnant Madelaine Frank, the former wartime heroine Miss America. She died in childbirth, and the Evolutionary tried to assuage her husband Bob (Whizzer) Frank's grief by presenting Magda's twins to him as his own children. The Whizzer was unable to cope with his wife's death and fled Wundagore, leaving Wyndham with the problem of how to care for the twins.

His solution was to manifest as a kind of deity to a troupe of gypsies and to place the children into the care of the childless Maximoff family. It was the gypsies who presumably named Wanda and Pietro, since these are unlikely to be names that the American Frank of the English Wyndham would have selected. Wanda and Pietro were both mere babies at this time, so all of their memories are of being the children of Django Maximoff.

It was Wanda's developing but uncontrolled hex power which brought disaster on the family. Blaming the girl (possibly correctly) for disasters which had occurred, the people of the place where the always-distrusted gypsies were staying turned upon the Maximoffs. Wanda and Pietro presumably considered their parents dead, since they never sought them again (until the little man from Vladivostok turned up much, much later). They fled, consumed with guilt for their actions, Wanda for her lack of control of her hex power which had brought grief and doom upon those she loved, Pietro with the agonising guilt of his inability to protect them. And in this early incident we have much of the early defining character of the siblings: Pietro fiercely determined not to fail his only remaining family, his sister, and Wanda unsure and timid because of her guilt and shame at her early hex disasters.

The pair were rescued by Magneto. Like Xavier, Magnus was recruiting mutants to use in forwarding his agenda, which was a very different paradigm to his old friend's. Ignorant of his parentage of Wanda and Pietro (not even knowing that his lost Magda had been pregnant) he added them to his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, placing the babes in the wood alongside the unwholesome Mastermind and the Toad. This exposed Wanda to what we would nowadays call sexual harassment from both the sophisticated and cruel Jason Wyngarde and the crude and socially-unadept Mortimer Toynbee, and forced Pietro still further into his role of protective hot-tempered brother. It was presumably Magneto who cast the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver in their costumed identities.

The early X-men depictions of the Brotherhood always painted Magneto in very stark colours as a villain, an attitude unquestioned until later tales by Chris Clairmont gave his crusade a nobler perspective. Certainly from the evidence of those original issues Magnus was both a charismatic leader who was able to sweep the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver along in his villainy by the sheer force of his personality and an unfeeling tyrant who was quick to exploit the two young mutants he had enmeshed in his world. But we also see a growing distrust of Magneto and the Brotherhood generally being nurtured in the siblings, the first fruits of which is Pietro's thwarting of Magneto's use of a nuclear weapon against Santa Marcos, the culmination coming in Quicksilver's announcement that he and his sister wish to leave the Brotherhood just before the Stranger destroys the team for the X-Men.

This period embeds two more characteristics upon the pair. They have perhaps the most brutal exposure to the world of mutant politics it is possible to have, absorbing more of Magneto's rhetoric and prejudice than either would acknowledge, as evidenced by both Wanda and Pietro's later backlashes against homo sapiens. And they learn that there are evil men and evil ideas which some people strive to fight. Although they decline Xavier's offer to enrol as X-Men (Wanda and Pietro were portrayed as slightly older than Cyclops and co. in those days, and would not have fitted in well with a high school programme) the idea of battling for justice is clearly one which takes seed.

Hence when news reaches Pietro several months later about the Avengers line-up change, Quicksilver is enthusiastic about contacting Tony Stark for a place on the team. Pietro is still very young here. He dreams of one day working in a circus, another ambition attributable to his gypsy heritage. Wanda is willing to go because Pietro goes. At this stage she is still very submissive, and Quicksilver makes the decisions for the two, even speaks for his sister. However, there are all kinds of reasons why being in such a team would attract both siblings.

Wanda and Pietro have always been part of a group. First they were members of the tight-knit Maximoff clan. Then they were in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. The few months after X-Men #12 was the first time in their lives that they had ever been alone. The idea of a fellowship like the Brotherhood, but devoted to good not evil, must have been an attractive one. Likewise both were struggling with the guilt of their actions as Magneto's pawns, seeking redemption. Serving with the Avengers would gain them both a pardon, and perhaps eventually reluctant public acceptance. More importantly, it would possibly assuage their own consciences. And both were still struggling with the mutant heritage which had so far destroyed their lives. It must have seemed almost inevitable to the young people that they must become superheroes, for how else could they utilise the gifts which had become the defining reality of their troubled lives?

But these were only the reasons which put them on the ship to New York. When the actually met the Avengers things were going to get interesting.

For one thing, both Wanda and Pietro in their own ways came under the spell of another charismatic leader, but one with considerably more benevolence than Magneto: Captain America. Wanda's first little act of rebellion against her brother's well-meaning protectiveness was to nurture a secret crush upon "the handsome Steve Rogers". Pietro's first positive role model as a superhero was Cap (and even years later Pietro is outraged if he believes Cap has done anything which fails those massively high expectations Quicksilver formed of him during those early days as an Avenger).

For another, Wanda and Pietro discover that whilst the public are willing to accept them in their role of Avengers, albeit with an initial grudging mistrust, they are less likely to embrace them as individuals. The real world is very different from the way two lonely refugees dreamed it would be. This leads to Pietro's eventual disaffection with humanity and his leaving the team, first to link up again with Magneto (in a reprise of the exploitative relationship we previously observed in the Brotherhood) and again and again later. It takes Wanda in different directions, seeking affection from one who is very clearly not human, the Vision.

It is interesting that as Wanda's commitment to the Avengers grows, Pietro's wanes. Whereas the Scarlet Witch once joined Earth's Mightiest Heroes principally because her brother did, now Quicksilver hangs around with the team since that's where his sister is. He returns to the Avengers in #75, for example, because he needs help in rescuing Wanda from the Imperion Arkon.

Wanda has changed over the years. As her confidence increases, first to reach out to the Vision, then as a senior and experienced superhero, latterly in leadership capacities within various teams, she has chosen to champion the values which the Avengers uphold. She has made their cause her own. She has sought out other relationships, such as her mentoring by Agatha Harkness, and has integrated herself into society (at least as much as it has allowed). She progressed to acknowledge her supposed father Bob Frank, her true father Eric Magnus Lensherr (eventually), even her perhaps-illicit passion for Simon Williams She even became a mother. Like a late bloomer, Wanda has grown up and remade herself into what she wants to be. And what she wants to be is an Avenger.

Pietro has walked a darker path. Abandoned by his sister because of her affection for the android Vision (although he didn't yet understand that Wanda and the Vision were growing close, only sensed the increasing distance between his formerly obedient and supportive sister), Pietro somehow transfers all his affection for Wanda into his romance with the Inhuman Crystal. Crystal, for reasons of her own which we shall explore if we ever get on to "Why Crystal is an Avenger", cleaves to him, and the two wed. Quicksilver finds himself an outsider in an even less tolerant society than amongst homo sapiens. He falls prey to his own weaknesses and to the manipulations of Maximus the Mad. He is betrayed by Crystal and shattered by what he sees as the second infidelity from somebody he loves. And he goes off the deep end.

Quicksilver's actions in his two plots against the Avengers are really a manifestation of his disillusionment that things weren't really the way he wanted them to be back when he got off that ship to meet the Avengers for the first time.

Quicksilver has seen action with the team since then, but never as a full member, only as an adjunct because Crystal was present. There remains a lot of road for even a speedster like Pietro Maximoff (or is it Lensherr these days?) to travel, and he still seeks to redeem himself from the errors of his past. He has yet to recognise that his first instincts were his best ones, that through the fellowship of the Avengers he may reach the summit that he seeks.