Quicksilver Character Comparison: Peter Maximov & Pietro Maximoff (X-Men and The Avengers)

Back when Days of Future Past came out and I flailed nerdishly over X-Men’s Quicksilver, I talked about the franchise overlap with the character being fair game for both X-Men and The Avengers.  This was before Age of Ultron, so I had yet to see Marvel’s Quicksilver, but I was already looking forward to comparing the two version of the speedster.  (Note:  to avoid confusion, this is the last time I’ll use the name Quicksilver.  Since X-Men Americanized his name, I’ll be referring to the X-Men version as Peter and the Avengers version as Pietro.)

Both iterations of the character are awesome, but in fairly different ways.  Everything about Peter says “larger than life”:  the silver hair and goggles, which weirdly kind of work even though they shouldn’t, his ridiculously huge stash of pilfered loot in his room, the quick cuts and comic beats, Evan Peters’s snappy line delivery, and his show-stopping speed scenes in Days of Future Past and Apocalypse.  He’s fast, funny, and fun, whipping through Days of Future Past like a whirlwind, and it’s not just his powers.  Temperament-wise, he’s like a ping pong ball, always eager to leap ahead to the next thing; you get the sense that he’d go well and truly crazy if forced to wait around.

Pietro shares a number of Peter’s traits besides the speed, enough to recognize them as the same character.  Like Peter, he can be cocky (more than a bit of showoff,) a smart-aleck, and easily distracted.  Pietro is different less in character than in the tone of the portrayal itself.  While Peter is a definite “character,” Pietro feels more like a person, like (powers aside) I could easily meet someone like him in real life.  This is partly through the more low-key expression of his humor and partly through his more well-rounded depiction.  Pietro is a young guy with superpowers and can act like it, but he’s also known serious loss.  When he tells Ultron about the deaths of his parents and the days he and Wanda spent trapped in the wreckage of their home waiting to die, you can see the angry and pain driving him.  The different sides of him coexist in a way that feels consistent.  (By contrast, when Peter gets a more serious side plot in Apocalypse, it makes him feel… not like Peter.  The different sides of him are too jarring for me, and his subdued scenes just make me wonder when entertaining Peter is coming back.)

So that’s the major difference in tone.  The biggest difference in terms of character is probably where their focus lies.  Peter is pretty self-absorbed, though not in a particularly bad way.  It’s just that he’s all about instant gratification.  When Charles, Wolverine, and Hank ask him to help them with their mission, his first question is, “What’s in it for me?”  Like I said, this isn’t a condemnation of him – for a teenager a.k.a. walking id (running, in his case,) it’s perfectly believable.  By contrast, Pietro is always, always a package deal with Wanda.  He usually defers to his twin and looks out for her above all else.  Of course, much of this is down to the blindingly obvious fact that Wanda is in Age of Ultron but not the X-Men films; Peter can’t be expected to consider the needs of someone who isn’t there.  However, plot-driven or not, it still changes the character in a big way.  Pietro sees things outside of himself that Peter really doesn’t.

In the end, both versions of the character have plenty of merit.  For me, I’d say Peter is the most entertaining, while Pietro is the most engaging.  Peter probably gets the biggest showcase moments, but Pietro (IMO) makes an overall greater impact.