HYDRA’s Miracles Program Explained: Everything The MCU Has Revealed

Years ago, HYDRA instituted the Miracles program, which gave rise to Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) in Avengers: Age of Ultron. In the comic books, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff were originally depicted as mutant superheroes and later as the children of X-Men villain Magneto, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe has provided a completely different origin for the two iconic Avengers.

It was explained in Avengers: Age of Ultron that unlike their comic book counterparts, the MCU’s take on the Maximoff twins weren’t born with their abilities. Instead, they were given their powers by an experiment conducted by a new incarnation of Captain America: The First Avenger’s villains. Decades after the fall of Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) and the defeat of HYDRA, other characters – including Arnim Zola (Toby Jones) — rebuilt the organization and made it a threat again in the MCU, as seen in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Agents of SHIELD. This culminated in Captain America (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) leading Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in an attack on HYDRA in the beginning of Avengers: Age of Ultron.

What HYDRA was up to prior to their defeat in Age of Ultron has had a major impact on the MCU that’s still being felt today. What they created were MCU versions of two key Marvel Comics superheroes: Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. Unfortunately, Quicksilver didn’t survive Age of Ultron’s ending, but his sister has gone on to become a major force in the MCU, with important roles in several Marvel movies, including Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. In Phase 4, she’ll be co-leading her own Disney+ series – WandaVision – and co-starring with Benedict Cumberbatch as the Sorcerer Supreme in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But if it wasn’t for the Miracles program, none of this would be possible. Here’s everything that has been revealed so far about the experiments that gave Scarlet Witch and her brother their powers.

HYDRA’s Age Of Miracles Explained

In Avengers: Age of Ultron, HYDRA leader Baron Wolfgang von Strucker (Thomas Kretschmann) was discussing HYDRA’s current work with Dr. List (Henry Goodman) what he called what they were doing an “age of miracles”. This description has since been attributed to the experiments that Strucker did during his time with HYDRA. A lot of it was built on notes left behind by the Red Skull, who apparently knew more about the Infinity Stones than anyone ever guessed. Because of his interest in the Tesseract in Captain America: The First Avenger, it was never any secret that Red Skull was obsessed with weapons that he believed had divine origins, but it would seem that he was aware of the existence of other Infinity Stones as well. Red Skull left behind research that reveals that he knew about Loki’s Scepter (which contained the Mind Stone). Through the Book of Yggdrasil that he found alongside the Tesseract, Red Skull may have known about all six Infinity Stones. He believed the Scepter and the Tesseract were “left for us by the gods”, and it was Strucker’s goal to unlock the power of these cosmic artifacts.

The Sokovia Solution And Why The “Volunteers” Were Chosen

According to new Marvel book The Wakanda Files, Baron von Strucker had very specific reasons for being based in Sokovia. The geography and the advantage of being in a place that would help them go unnoticed were naturally factors, but there was another added benefit that contributed to the decision to have their headquarters in Sokovia. People in this area supposedly had the “appropriate genetic markers” that they needed for their experiments to be a success. What this means is that there was something in their DNA that made them the perfect test subjects for their experiments with Loki’s Scepter. This suggests that there was something different or unique about Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch before the experiment even happened, thus opening the door for Marvel to retcon them as mutants in WandaVision. It could be that HYDRA had figured out that they were mutants, but didn’t know how to activate their latent X-genes, and that was where the Mind Stone came in.

What Happened To Scarlet Witch And Quicksilver

Like Red Skull, Strucker wanted to use the Infinity Stone in their possession to make weapons, but his ambitions extended to humans. He wanted to know if the power running through Loki’s Scepter could enhance humans and was curious about the effects it would have on them. To conduct their experiments with the Scepter, Strucker and Dr. List needed “volunteers”. To achieve this end, they looked to a group of Sokovian protesters and convinced them to join their program. Everyone but Wanda and Pietro died as a result of their experiments. They weren’t able to survive what the Mind Stone’s energy did to them, but the two Maximoff twins were irreversibly changed by the Infinity Stone’s power. Side effects that HYDRA noticed were that Pietro could move at uncontrollable speeds and Wanda was capable of telekinesis and other abilities. Since the two didn’t know how to properly use these new powers, HYDRA elected to keep them in cells. Once they gained a certain degree of control over their powers, HYDRA let them out and unleashed them on the Avengers.

What Agents Of SHIELD Revealed About HYDRA’s Experiments

What HYDRA started with the Age of Miracles didn’t end with Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. The Mind Stone wasn’t the only method HYDRA used to imbue humans with super powers. HYDRA’s human experiments were a focal point of the early seasons of ABC’s Agents of SHIELD series. Similar to the situation with the two Avengers in Age of Ultron, HYDRA’s experiments with humans created live-action versions of Marvel Comics superheroes and villains.

Under the direction of Daniel Whitehall (Reed Diamond) and Strucker, HYDRA turned Carl “Crusher” Creel (Brian Patrick Wade) into Absorbing Man, a classic Avengers villain with the ability to take on the physical properties of any surface he touches, whether it be metal, plastic, wood, or glass. Creel was a product of their Destroyer of Worlds project. Years later, this project was restarted and is ultimately responsible for the powers that General Hale’s artificially inseminated daughter, Ruby Hale (Dove Cameron), possessed in Agents of SHIELD season 5. They also began the Centipede Project, which was started by HYDRA to give the organization their own super soldiers. Through HYDRA’s Centipede Project, Agents of SHIELD introduced Marvel Comics cyborg Deathlok (J. August Richards).