For the past few years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been plundering their newly acquired 20th Century Fox-produced X-Men movies for all the nostalgia bucks they’re worth. They made a buddy movie with Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, they brought back Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier just to kill him for a third time, and they’re bringing back everyone from James Marsden’s Cyclops to Alan Cumming’s Nightcrawler for cameos in the massive multiversal epic that is Avengers: Doomsday.
But that nostalgia is drying up; there doesn’t seem to be much juice left in the tank, and after the soft reset of Secret Wars in 2027, the MCU will finally introduce its own X-Men team, separate from the established Fox canon. Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier has been hired to helm the MCU’s X-Men reboot (a very promising sign), and Beef creator Lee Sung Jin and The Bear showrunner Joanna Calo are working on the script (another very, very promising sign).
It’s important to get the tone right, but they need to pick the right characters to round out the initial lineup, too. We’ll take Professor X as a given — it wouldn’t really be the X-Men without him — but he needs these beloved heroes fighting alongside him.
Cyclops
Cyclops should have the same sort of role in the MCU’s first X-Men movie that Captain America had in the first Avengers movie. He’s the leader of the team; the sensible, strait-laced one, galvanizing his teammates to stay focused and achieve their goals together as a unit.
Previous X-Men movies have portrayed Scott Summers as the lame, goody-goody flip-side of Wolverine, but the reboot needs to round him out as his own character. Cyclops might be a bit of a dork, but he’s also fiercely loyal, he has a strong sense of duty to his team, and he’s being torn up by internalized trauma. The new film needs to dig into all that.
Storm
Storm has always been a beloved member of the team, but she was taken to a whole new level of iconic when Halle Berry played her in the movies. Berry’s Storm is second only to Jackman’s Wolverine in terms of star power — they were the reason people kept coming back (along with Sirs Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, of course).
The MCU’s X-Men squad will feel incomplete without Storm. Storm is one of the most relatable X-Men, so it’ll be handy to have her around to keep all the comic book spectacle grounded in an emotional reality.
Nightcrawler
There are very few superheroes whose powers look as awesome in live-action as Nightcrawler. He’s a teleporter, bamfing all around the room, confusing his enemies, and disappearing into the shadows.
A great filmmaker could have a field day with Nightcrawler’s abilities. X2’s opening sequence in the White House was a prime example of just how amazing a live-action Nightcrawler can be.
Jubilee
It’s important for the MCU’s X-Men to have an inclusive lineup, to show that the X-Men are a civil rights allegory, and that everyone is welcome at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Jubilee is one of the most iconic Asian American superheroes. She wasn’t an O.G. X-Man, but she quickly became a fan-favorite.
Jubilee was barely featured in the previous live-action movies, but she had a huge role in X-Men: The Animated Series and its Marvel Studios-led revival X-Men ’97. It’s high time she got a proper live-action introduction with a substantial character arc across multiple movies.
Gambit
Gambit finally got his moment in the sun in live-action when Channing Tatum played him as a lost soul in The Void in Deadpool & Wolverine. Mainstream audiences were unfamiliar with this Cajun French closeup magician before Tatum’s hysterically self-effacing turn in the dream role he lost out on years earlier, but now, everyone knows who Gambit is.
While Gambit isn’t an original member of the X-Men, he is one of the best characters to come out of those comics. And since he didn’t get a big role in the Fox movies, giving him a big role in the MCU reboot would help to set it apart.
Jean Grey
Marvel might already be introducing Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The leading rumor about Sadie Sink’s mysterious character is that she’s playing Jean — and she certainly looks the part. Jean is one of the most complicated characters in the X-Men, so she’d provide the MCU’s reboot with a lot of dramatic juice.
Fox adapted the “Dark Phoenix Saga” comic book twice in the space of a little over a decade, and the studio completely fumbled the iconic storyline both times. It seems inevitable that the MCU will take a crack at it, too, but it should properly establish who Jean is before turning her into a villain.
Kitty Pryde
The world of the X-Men is so huge and sprawling that any movie building that world from scratch needs an audience surrogate. Having an outsider come into that world is a shortcut for the writers to explain everything in a nice, simple, digestible way for newcomers.
In Bryan Singer’s original X-Men film, that P.O.V. character was Rogue. But for the MCU’s reboot, I think Kitty Pryde would be the perfect point-of-view character to introduce the audience to this team and the world they inhabit.
Iceman
Iceman is one of the O.G.s from back when the X-Men consisted of just five mutants. But he’s never really been done justice in live-action. Frozone from the Incredibles movies is undeniable proof that a superhero with ice powers can look really cool in a movie, but the earlier X-Men films never managed it.
Iceman needs to feature prominently in the MCU’s X-Men reboot purely as a sign of respect for one of the O.G.s. But this character also has so much more potential than we’ve seen utilized in the previous films.
Beast
Like Iceman, Beast is another one of the O.G.s, but unlike Iceman, he has been done justice on the big screen before. Kelsey Grammer had a small but unforgettable role as Beast in the original trilogy, then Nicholas Hoult’s Hank McCoy got a much larger role in the story in the prequel series.
All in all, we’ve seen plenty of Hank over the years. But aside from a couple of glimpses during Grammer’s tenure, we’ve never seen Beast go full beast-mode in a movie before. Your move, Feige.
Wolverine
There’s been a bit of debate over whether Wolverine should be a part of the O.G. X-Men lineup in the MCU. Wolverine wasn’t an O.G. X-Man in the comics, but he completely consumed the last X-Men movie franchise; he overshadowed everyone else and became its entire focal point. He got three solo movies, and he’s since been reintroduced in the MCU itself, so maybe the next incarnation of this franchise should take a break from Wolvie.
But, having said that, Wolverine is the most iconic X-Man by far. A lot of casual viewers might not even show up to an X-Men movie if they hear Wolverine isn’t in it. Plus, whoever is foolish enough to take on the daunting task of replacing Hugh Jackman will inevitably generate a lot of hype and speculation.
- Movie(s)
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X-Men (2000), X2, X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), X-Men: First Class (2011), The Wolverine (2013), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), Deadpool (2016), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), Logan (2017), Deadpool 2 (2018), Dark Phoenix (2019), The New Mutants, Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)
- TV Show(s)
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X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men, X-Men (1992), X-Men: Evolution (2000), Wolverine and the X-Men (2008), Marvel Anime: Wolverine, Marvel Anime: X-Men, Legion (2017), The Gifted (2017), X-Men ’97 (2024)
- Video Game(s)
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X-Men: Children of the Atom (1994), Marvel Super Heroes (1995), X-Men vs. Street Fighter (1996), Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter (1997), Marvel vs. Capcom (1998), X-Men: Mutant Academy (2000), Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes (2000), X-Men: Mutant Academy 2 (2001), X-Men: Next Dimension (2002), Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds (2011), Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (2011), X-Men Legends (2005), X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse (2005), X2: Wolverine’s Revenge (2003), X-Men (1993), X-Men 2: Clone Wars (1995), X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse (1994)
- First Film
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X-Men (2000)