If you walked into a movie theater between 2014 and 2015, you might’ve felt like you were seeing double. In the span of less than a year, two different versions of the same silver-haired speedster sprinted onto the big screen. It was a weird, confusing time for Marvel fans. One guy was a high-voltage kleptomaniac in a silver jacket, while the other was a broody Eastern European soldier.
Basically, the answer to who played peter maximoff depends entirely on which universe you’re standing in—and honestly, the backstory of why there are two of them is almost as chaotic as the character himself.
Evan Peters: The Fan-Favorite Fox Speedster
When people ask who played peter maximoff, the name that usually pops up first is Evan Peters. He first showed up in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), and let’s be real, he absolutely stole the show. Before the movie came out, everyone was making fun of his look. The goggles? The "Mom’s basement" silver jacket? It looked kinda goofy in the leaked set photos.
Then we got the "Time in a Bottle" scene.
You know the one. He runs around a kitchen in slow motion, tasting soup and poking bullets while everyone else is frozen in time. Suddenly, he wasn't a joke anymore. Peters brought this frantic, twitchy energy to the role that felt exactly like what a teenager with ADHD and super-speed would act like. He played the character as Peter Maximoff, an American kid living in his mom’s basement who just happened to be the son of Magneto.
Peters stayed with the role for a while. He came back for X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and Dark Phoenix (2019). He even had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in Deadpool 2. For a lot of fans, he is Quicksilver. He made the character likable, funny, and impossibly powerful.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson: The MCU’s Pietro
But wait. There’s another one.
While Fox had Evan Peters, Marvel Studios had their own plans. Aaron Taylor-Johnson played the character in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Because of a super messy legal loophole between Disney and Fox, Marvel couldn't call him a "mutant" and they couldn't mention Magneto. Instead, they changed his name to Pietro Maximoff and gave him a sister named Wanda (the Scarlet Witch).
Taylor-Johnson’s version was way different. He was grittier. He had a thick Sokovian accent and a lot of trauma. While Evan Peters was playing for laughs, Aaron Taylor-Johnson was playing a guy who’d seen his parents die and wanted revenge.
The biggest kicker? The MCU killed him off in his very first movie. "Didn't see that coming?" he says before catching a hail of bullets to save Hawkeye. It was a bold move, but it left a lot of fans feeling like the character was wasted. Especially when compared to the absolute god-tier speed feats Evan Peters was pulling off over in the X-Men movies.
The Great Quicksilver Rights War
You might be wondering how this was even legal. Honestly, it was a headache.
Marvel had sold the film rights for the X-Men to Fox in the 90s. But because Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were both mutants and longtime members of the Avengers, both studios technically had a claim to them. It was a "shared" custody agreement.
- Fox could use them as long as they didn't mention the Avengers.
- Disney/Marvel could use them as long as they didn't mention mutants or Magneto.
That’s why we ended up with two different actors playing the same guy at the exact same time. It’s also why Fox’s Peter lived in a suburban house in D.C., while Disney’s Pietro was a volunteer experiment in a fictional European country.
The WandaVision "Fietro" Fake-Out
Fast forward to 2021. The world is watching WandaVision on Disney+. In a massive "holy crap" moment at the end of episode five, Evan Peters shows up at Wanda’s door.
The internet exploded. Everyone thought this was the moment the X-Men finally joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Since Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Pietro was dead, fans assumed Disney had plucked the "better" Quicksilver from the Fox universe via the Multiverse.
But Marvel loves a good troll.
It turns out Evan Peters wasn't playing Peter Maximoff from the X-Men movies. He was playing a guy named Ralph Bohner. He was just a random actor living in Westview who the villain, Agatha Harkness, had brainwashed to mess with Wanda.
Fans were... divided, to say the least. Some thought it was a brilliant meta-joke about casting. Others felt like they’d been cheated out of a cool crossover. Either way, it meant that even though Evan Peters appeared in the MCU, he technically hasn't played the "real" Peter Maximoff there yet. He even popped back up recently in Agatha All Along (2024), confirming that poor Ralph is still dealing with the trauma of being "Fietro."
Where Does the Character Go Now?
Now that Disney has bought Fox, they own all the toys. They have Evan Peters and Aaron Taylor-Johnson in their contact list. With the Multiverse being the center of everything in the current MCU, the door is wide open.
There are constant rumors that we might see a "real" return of who played peter maximoff in upcoming movies like Avengers: Secret Wars. Whether they bring back the high-energy Evan Peters version or resurrect Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Pietro, fans just want to see the speedster get his due.
What You Should Do Next
If you’re trying to catch up on the history of the Maximoff twins, here’s how to navigate the watch list:
- Watch for the Vibes: Check out X-Men: Days of Future Past. Even if you don't like the rest of the movie, the Quicksilver breakout scene is a masterpiece of cinematography.
- Watch for the Lore: Revisit Avengers: Age of Ultron to see the origin of Wanda’s grief, which drives almost everything she does later in the MCU.
- Watch for the Mystery: Dive into WandaVision. Even knowing the "Ralph Bohner" twist, the performance Evan Peters gives as the "wrong" brother is genuinely unsettling and funny.
The history of the character is messy, legalistic, and full of retcons. But at the end of the day, both actors brought something unique to the table. Peters gave us the cool, untouchable speedster we dreamed of being, while Taylor-Johnson gave us the heart and the stakes. It's rare to get two great takes on one character, so maybe we should just be happy we got both.