Warning! Spoilers for WandaVision episode 5 ahead.
Vision’s reading material in WandaVision serves as a tease of the MCU’s mutants. Ever since it was known that Marvel was getting the rights to the X-Men and the Fantastic Four back from Fox, fans have wondered when Marvel would start incorporating them into the MCU, and it looks like Marvel is setting the stage for their introduction.
The Fantastic Four have a movie confirmed to be in development, but Disney has yet to announce any official plans for Marvel’s Merry Mutants. Even so, many believe it’s only a matter of time before they start making appearances in MCU movies and Disney+ shows. It’s not clear yet if Marvel will save them for their own franchise, or if their debut will occur in one of the projects in its Disney+ lineup. One of the shows that stands a chance at using them in some capacity is WandaVision, especially because of Scarlet Witch’s mutant connections in Marvel Comics and the similarities to “House of M”, a storyline that had massive repercussions for mutantkind.
A hint at mutants came in WandaVision when Vision (Paul Bettany) said that he tried reading Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man to Billy. This particular book by Darwin relates specifically to human evolution. It’s unlikely that the reference is a coincidence, given how Darwin’s theories tie into what mutants are in the Marvel comics. Characters such as Magneto have long argued that mutants like themselves are the next step in the evolutionary chain of humans, hence their scientific name, “Homo superior.” What gives them access to powers that humans don’t possess is the X-gene in their DNA.
WandaVision being the show that references Descent of Man is important because, in the comics, Scarlet Witch was originally depicted as a mutant superhero. She was also regarded as Magneto’s daughter for decades. In the MCU, though, due to the then-legal agreement with Fox preventing Marvel from using or mentioning the mutants in any way, her mutant origin was changed so that the Mind Stone gave Wanda and her brother, Pietro, their powers. However, WandaVision provides Marvel with an opportunity to dive deeper into her backstory, and perhaps even retcon the real source of Scarlet Witch’s Hydra powers by finally making her into a mutant.
It’s possible that by the end of this episode, Marvel had already introduced mutants. The surprise ending twist saw Evan Peters’ Quicksilver show up at Wanda’s door. Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s version of Pietro Maximoff got his powers the same way that Wanda did, but if Evan Peters is indeed playing the same incarnation of the character that he did in Fox’s X-Men movies, that would make him the MCU’s first mutant hero. Going in this direction could also make the X-Men franchise canon, but as a separate universe from the MCU in a larger multiverse, not unlike what Marvel is apparently doing with Spider-Man 3. More answers about him and whether or not mutants are about to become a part of the MCU Phase 4 could come in WandaVision’s next episode.
Originally from https://screenrant.com/wandavision-mutants-xmen-descent-man-darwin-hint-book/