La Ron S. Readus
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The X-Men and Other Mutants Are Already in the MCU (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2021-03-01 21:00:05 +0000 UTCYes, Readers. I know I said that I wasn’t going to make another WandaVision video until the series was finished.
And honestly, I would’ve gotten away with it, too. If it weren’t for the second to last episode dropping a huge-ass bombshell regarding how Marvel Studios can explain the existence of mutants in the MCU
But, in my defense, the fact that I’ve gone a whole month without any new videos specifically about WandaVision is an accomplishment, and I should be proud of myself.
No Pietro recast theories, no explanations of Monica’s superhuman abilities, no Agatha All Along comedy sketches, NOTHING
I mean, yes; haters will say that my video about how the state of Monica Rambeau and Carol Danvers’ relationship will be handled in Captain Marvel 2 still counts as a WandaVision video. But last time I checked, being wrong is a choice. And I can’t stop people from making choices.
But yes, Readers. You, in fact, heard me correctly; the penultimate episode of WandaVision actually opened a pretty huge door regarding the possible state of mutants in the MCU
And that state is a pretty simple one: They’re not being cherry-picked from the Fox-Men universe or being spoken into existence like the popular “reverse House of M theory” that’s been going around.
/Thanks to a simple tweak in Wanda’s origin story, it is 100% plausible that mutants in the MCU already exist./
With that being said, I am obligated to say that this video will contain spoilers for episode 8 of WandaVision from here on out. But you probably already knew that, so let’s just cut to the chase.
So, fun fact that’s fun: This is the episode that Wanda officially gets her Scarlet Witch title after finding out through Agatha Harkness that she’s a wielder of Chaos Magic
The thing is, Agatha only discovers that about Wanda due to forcing her to relive her trauma, in order to better understand how she “Doki Doki Literature Clubbed” all of Westview, New Jersey.
And when I say “relive her trauma,” bitch I mean ALL OF IT
/The loss of her parents during the Sokovia bombings, signing up for Hydra’s Mind Stone experimentation program, falling in love and losing Vision; everything we’ve either seen or heard her experience since she was introduced into the MCU in Age of Ultron, we either saw it happen or experienced the aftermath of it./
But, as you can imagine, the first bit that we do see is Wanda being forced to relive her attachment to American sitcoms over the course of the decades the genre existed, and how it connected with the death of her parents.
We see the explosion that took her and Pietro’s parents away from them after only hearing about it in Age of Ultron, and we see the bomb from Stark Industries she told Ultron that they were stuck with for 2 days, living in terror of it eventually going off.
But then we see something else; more specifically in the form of young Wanda reaching out to the bomb as if she were about to do something to it. As if she were trying to cast a spell on it. And that’s a bit of info NONE of us learned about in Age of Ultron
/But after learning that Wanda has no real formal training in her magic due to her not understanding the rules of magical runes earlier in the episode, Agnes -- aka Agatha Harkness; the MAYBE villain of WandaVision -- is able to put together the pieces pretty quickly/
(You used a Probability Hex, It Never Went Off, So what I see here...)
Yes, Readers; according to this one scene in WandaVision, Wanda always had access to her powers, which is absolutely new information to us
After all, we were brought to believe for the longest time that it was Strucker’s experimentation on the Maximoff twins with the Mind Stone responsible for how they GOT their powers in Age of Ultron
/But that’s why the next scene in Wanda’s little trip down memory lane is so important, because we SEE that exposure to the Mind Stone once she got older and also her coming into her abilities as we’ve seen them play out since Age of Ultron proper/
And it was in the combination of those two scenes that I realized what they were implying with this narrative; especially when it comes to mutants and the possible machinations of the MCU version of the X-Gene
Now for those of you unfamiliar, the X-Gene is a genetic trait mutants share that allow them to gain their physical abnormalities and special abilities, usually after they hit puberty. That’s how it works in the comics and the Fox-Men movies, anyway.
But after seeing Wanda’s journey in how she came into her Chaos Magic, I think it’s happening a bit differently in the MCU.
/Y’see we’ve been conditioned to think that the Mind Stone granted Pietro’s super speed and Wanda’s magic, since Marvel Studios couldn’t legally link the twins to being mutants once upon a time./
But now, thanks to these two scenes, we now know that the magical abilities of Wanda -- and even the super speed of Pietro -- weren’t GRANTED by the Mind Stone in the way that we previously thought. To quote Ang Lee’s Hulk:
(It just unlocked something that was already there.)
What’s already there, in this case, is the X-Gene
And when I say unlock, I mean FULLY unlock.
Wanda and Pietro were always respectively magical and fast. But it wasn’t until being exposed to the Mind Stone that their X-genes stopped only spurting out energy and instead became fully active
Now I understand that doing this is technically a retcon in the MCU canon for Wanda that’s already been established in Age of Ultron.
But I also wanna point out that the MCU canon for Wanda in question was initially created by Joss Whedon. And FUCK Joss Whedon.
Because having Wanda ALWAYS be attuned to her magical abilities even as a young girl opens up so many possibilities within how characters have been portrayed in the MCU. And even Pietro is a prime example of this.
/Because if WANDA’S abilities were always her own and were unlocked and made prominent thanks to the Mind Stone, then that means Pietro -- who went through and survived the same procedure as Wanda -- always had -- albeit limited -- access to his super-speed as well. They both just needed a little push to become fully activated in either something Cosmic or something chaotic./
And in order for them to explain to the audience that Mutants have always existed in the MCU, this might be the direction Marvel Studios is going in. Mutants as we know them to be do already exist in the MCU.
But because their X-gene hasn’t been exposed to either a cosmic or magical power source to properly activate it in order for it to be fully utilized, what said mutants are able to do until then is relatively small and borderline insignificant.
That’s going to be the main difference in how the X-gene works in the MCU versus how it works in the comics and the Fox-men movies.
Instead of fully activating and having its human host acquire the physical and superhuman changes come puberty, it instead lies dormant, only activating in response to the raising of certain brain chemicals that matches said situations, until a source of energy large enough can finally fully flip on the switch.
Wanda unknowingly creating a probability hex to keep the Stark Industries bomb from exploding while she and her brother were trapped there for 2 days? The result of her body activating a little bit of her X-Gene via the brain chemical of stress with the impossible name I can’t pronounce channeling her magical abilities thanks to the sudden situation she was in.
(Norepinephrine)
/Pietro avoiding the initial explosion that killed their parents without a single scratch on him? A little bit of his X-Gene activating as a “fight or flight” response due to the same brain chemical, making him just quick enough to avoid getting knocked out like his sister was./
But despite being able to do what they were able to do that fateful night, neither of their X-Genes are fully activated -- completely switched on -- in their genetic code until they both volunteer for Hydra’s experimentation program with the Mind Stone; a program that Strucker’s scientists themselves stated that they were the only survivors of.
And that’s because more than likely, those other volunteers either weren’t carrying the X-Gene, or didn’t have genetic traces of the Kree’s experiments done on mankind once upon a time passed down to them in order to classify as an InHuman.
Now I’m not saying that there’s gonna be some catastrophic event at either the end of WandaVision -- or even Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness -- that’s just gonna result in Wanda using her chaos magic to simultaneously activate the X-Genes in every mutant.
/What I AM saying is that making this small addition to what’s already been established about Wanda in order to have always made her capable of utilizing her abilities, has actually created a more tangible explanation for not only mutants already EXISTING in the MCU, but for explaining how the X-Gene in the MCU works in order to justify why they haven’t been an active talking-point throughout its history./
And I hope that they did this on purpose. Because if they didn’t...
(Huffs)
But, I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:
Write in the comment section whether or not YOU think this might be the route Marvel Studios is taking in order to introduce Mutants to the MCU
Or if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, if you have any theories of your own regarding how they’re gonna show up.
Whichever you decide to answer, I’d love to know your thoughts.
