Before Wanda Maximoff, aka Scarlet Witch, and her twin brother Pietro Maximoff, aka Quicksilver, first encountered Magneto and later embarked on an extended tenure with the Avengers, the heroes began their journey on the land of Marvel Comics’ most fearsome mountain, Wundagore.
Located in the fictional Eastern European country of Transia, Marvel’s Wundagore Mountain is home to humanoid animals, demons, mad scientists, and two mainstay Avengers. Without the caring aid of a mother or father, newly born siblings Wanda and Pietro were raised by Wundagore’s resident humanoid cow lady Bova. As well as becoming a temporary home, Wundagore would become the location that would set the stage for Wanda and Pietro’s adult lives. Upon leaving Wundagore, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver would connect with the mutant radical Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants before ultimately shifting their allegiances to the Avengers.
For the longest time, the ruling body of the mountain has been human geneticist Herbert Wyndham a.k.a. the High Evolutionary, one of Marvel’s foremost threats to mankind. Wundagore became an outlet for the constantly evolving Herbert to conduct his transformative experiments and give birth to highly intelligent humanoid animals known as the New Men. But the High Evolutionary and his New Men were not the only occupants of the mountain. Decades prior to Herbert’s arrival, powerful sorceress Morgan La Fey imprisoned the demonic Elder God Chthon within Wundagore. Creating a series of works containing his wicked spells (which would become known as the Darkhold), Chthon’s chance of escape was inevitable. Luckily, the High Evolutionary had his own deterrent in case of an attack from the centuries-old Chthon, in the form of the Knights of Wundagore. The Knights of Wundagore were a collection of the High Evolutionary’s most capable New Men warriors. In their time as Herbert’s guards, the Knights have battled superhuman opponents from Thor to Magneto’s Acolytes.
However, it would then be revealed in a 2015 retcon in issue #4 of Uncanny Avengers by writers Rick Remender (Black Science) & Gerry Duggan (Deadpool) along with artist Daniel Acuna (Uncanny X-Men), that Wanda and Pietro’s time at Wundagore may have been slightly misinterpreted. It was at Wundagore where the High Evolutionary experimented on the twins before determining that they were a species more than human. Originally intended as the mutant offspring of Magneto and his wife Magda, the 2015 retcon seemingly did away with the original mutant background, positioning the two super-children as mutants incognito. Once his work with Wanda and Pietro was fulfilled, Herbert returned the children, who would become known as Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, to the care of gypsies Django and Marya Maximoff.
Though the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) iterations of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver do have a background in Eastern Europe, the fictional nation of Sokovia is in place of Transia. Any ties that MCU Wanda and Pietro have to Mount Wundagore remain to be seen. With Disney + series WandaVision promising to peel back the curtain on the history surrounding Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch, an appearance by Wundagore Mountain may still be in the cards.
