Since every single person who clicked on this article has probably already seen Avengers: Age of Ultron, we probably shouldn’t have to warn you that we’re going to get into spoilers in about three seconds. Surely you only care about the future of Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s super-speedster Quicksilver and what writer/director Joss Whedon has to say on the matter if you already know what goes down with the character. Surely.

As you know, Pietro Maximoff was struck down by Ultron during the climax of the movie, sacrificing himself so Hawkeye and an innocent bystander could live. His bullet-riddled corpse was then transported to the nearby Helicarrier, where the camera lingered on the lifeless body for long enough to make it clear that he was dead. Dead, dead, dead. Dead. Quicksilver is surely not coming back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Then again, look at Agent Phil Coulson. Death is rarely permanent in the pages of Marvel comics, so it actually isn’t too crazy for Taylor-Johnson to suggest (in an interview with CinemaBlend) that he may return to the MCU someday:

I mean, I thoroughly enjoyed working on [this movie], and I would love to be doing more movies with the guys at Marvel. Maybe there will be some case where that might happen.

Hey, the last main character to get definitively killed in one of these movies got his own TV show. Never say never, especially when you probably won’t be in the Godzilla sequel and Kick-Ass 3 is never gonna happen.

However, Whedon’s opinion on the Quicksilver matter (via Empire) is very different. As far as he’s concerned, the silver-haired Avenger is a goner and his death actually means something and is entirely necessary for the final emotional beats to work:

It felt very disingenuous for me, especially the second time around, to make what I refer to as ‘a war movie’ and say that there is no price and everybody walks away. In this movie, we’re saying, ‘Prove to me that you guys are heroes.’ And he’s the guy that does it.

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I knew it would be resonant, and make everything else work better and matter more. The city in the air, that’s just an explosion – Wanda’s grief, that’s extraordinary.

Whedon hasn’t been shy about how much he doesn’t approve of Coulson’s resurrection on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and how it cheapens his great death scene in The Avengers. Then again, he’s well-aware that these movies are also products assembled by a massive corporation. In fact, he even shot extra scenes where Quicksilver doesn’t die and joins the new Avengers line-up at the end of the movie:

I said to Aaron, ‘The only way you’ll stay alive is if the Disney executives say, “Hey idiot, this is a franchise, and we need all these people and you’re not allowed to kill them off!”

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We did actually shoot him in the last scene, in an outfit, with his sister. We also shot him, waking up, saying, ‘Ah, I didn’t really die from these 47 bullet wounds!’

Honestly, with 10 more movies already on Marvel’s schedule and tons of new characters waiting in the wings, it probably makes sense to just let Quicksilver rest in peace. There is not enough room for him, and Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch already fulfills the MCU’s “vaguely eastern European-accented hero” slot.

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