MCU's First Mutant Movie May Skip the X-Men Name Entirely

The MCU's X-Men lineup is coming into view, and with several major casting announcements now attached to the upcoming mutant movie hitting theaters after Secret Wars, I think I may have cracked the plot. And plot twist, I don't think Professor X, Magneto, or even the name X-Men will show up in this first mutant film at all.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day introduced the first proper MCU 616-native, eventual X-Man, Jean Grey, played by Sadie Sink. Between that ending and the new casting reports for Emma Frost, Cyclops, and possibly Mystique and Mister Sinister, the shape of this next movie is becoming clearer to me.

Sadie Sink, Samara Weaving, and Kit Connor Confirmed for Jean Grey, Emma Frost, and Cyclops

Sadie Sink is confirmed as Jean Grey, and now Samara Weaving has been cast as Emma Frost, with Jean's eventual love interest Scott Summers, Cyclops, going to Kit Connor. I think both castings totally fit the roles. Some fans were pulling for Cooper Hoffman to play Cyclops, but I'm actually holding out hope Cooper ends up playing Hank McCoy's Beast instead.

Cyclops is a lead in X-Men '97, and James Marsden played the character in the original X-Men films before returning to the role in Avengers Doomsday. Scott Summers is Xavier's star pupil and leader of the X-Men, with a romantic relationship with Jean Grey and, in later comics, a romantic relationship with Emma Frost as well. Given all that, it makes total sense he'd have a role in this movie, and I'm very happy with both the Kit Connor and Samara Weaving casting.

What the Hellfire Club Really Is, and Why Emma Frost Belongs to It

Emma Frost and the Hellfire Club are basically inseparable, since that's where she first rose to prominence in the comics. Both the character and the club were featured in X-Men: First Class. In the wider Marvel universe, the public sees the Hellfire Club as one of the most exclusive social clubs in the world, where billionaires, politicians, royalty, CEOs, and the global elite gather behind closed doors. That's really just a cover.

In secret, the Hellfire Club is a shadow organization that uses money, political influence, and connections to manipulate world events from behind the scenes. I could see the MCU version being connected to someone like Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. At the center of the club sits an even more exclusive group called the Inner Circle, and that's where Emma Frost is found.

One of the bigger misconceptions is that the Hellfire Club is a mutant organization. It isn't. As I put it, "The Hellfire Club, it doesn't care whether you're a human or a mutant. It really only cares whether you're powerful." That could mean being rich and influential, or possessing a useful mutant ability like mind control. If you're not useful to them, you're expendable, because their loyalty is to power itself, not to mutantkind.

Emma Frost was introduced as an antagonist who embraced that philosophy of influence and leverage, but she also genuinely believes mutants need to become stronger to survive in a world that hates and fears them. That's why in the comics she mentors young mutants in a way similar to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, even leading a team of young mutants called the Hellions at one point, which may well be the direction this first mutant movie takes before the X-Men are formally introduced.

Cyclops's Casting Reports and Adam Driver's Rumored Magneto or Mister Sinister Role

Beyond the confirmed castings, two other names have been kicking around the trades but haven't yet been reported by an outlet like Variety or The Hollywood Reporter: Adam Driver of Star Wars fame and Indira Varma from Obsession. Initial reports had Driver cast as Magneto, which I don't think is bad casting at all. But there was also talk of him actually playing a different villain, Mister Sinister.

Mister Sinister is who I think will most certainly be the MCU X-Men's first big bad, with a narrative reason to be there that was already set up in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Sinister has a very notorious rivalry with Jean Grey and Scott Summers in the comics, and he's obsessed with the Summers bloodline, which leads into the whole cloning storyline where he clones Jean and replaces her, eventually leading into Cable. X-Men '97 season one already told that story, and I'd recommend checking it out if you're interested, since the comics are a much heavier lift in terms of scale.

Indira Varma Has Met With Marvel and Namechecked Mystique

Indira Varma has skyrocketed in fame following the success of Obsession, and she reportedly has a stack of scripts waiting for her to sign onto. We know she has met with Marvel, and she recently stated that a cool character for her to play would be Mystique.

My Theory: This First Mutant Movie Won't Be Called X-Men

Putting all of that casting together, here's what I think is coming in the MCU's X-Men movie, which I don't actually think will be an X-Men movie in name. I think it'll be called something like The Mutants or The New Mutants, though the exact title doesn't matter much to me. As I said, "I'm just really certain that it won't be called X-Men," maybe with X-Men tucked into a subtitle at most, though even that feels silly to me.

I think the X-Men name simply doesn't carry the same cachet with general audiences that a title like Avengers does, so it isn't necessary for the MCU's mutant stories to jump straight to the X-Men. We'll get there eventually, but I like the idea of telling these pre-X-Men stories first, bringing in the Hellfire Club and Emma Frost, before Magneto, the Brotherhood, Xavier, and the X-Men arrive a little later on.

Jean Grey's Cross-Country Run and Her New Cerebro-Level Powers

Sadie Sink's Jean Grey is, I believe, going to be the lead of this film, and her scene on the bus at the end of Brand New Day is just the beginning of the journey. She's on the run, we don't know where William Metzger has gone since he's missing at the end of Brand New Day, and we don't know the status of the Department of Damage Control, though we do know it tried to scrub files that Black Widow is now helping comb through, per Detective DeWolff.

I think those files probably contain disturbing details about the DODC's mutant experimentation, including tracking mutants like Jean under the radar and nabbing up innocent kids with powers to torture and study, trying to steal that power the way they tried with Jean. In this movie, I picture Jean going bus stop to bus stop, diner to diner, motel to motel, on the run, and still a little morally gray compared to a squeaky clean Peter Parker, maybe using her powers to get a free meal or a free room for the night.

Remember, her power scaled by nearly 10,000 percent at the end of Brand New Day, and I think she'll use that power as her own personal Cerebro, since she's now more powerful than Xavier, to find other mutants like her who are on the run, whether kicked out of their homes or targeted by the DODC. That mutant hunt, I think, will lead Jean and Metzger to cross paths again as they pursue mutants for very different reasons.

Mister Sinister, Metzger, and the Clone Twist I Think Could Be Coming

I could see the reveal that Metzger was never really Metzger at all, but Mister Sinister all along. If they go that route, I'd hope they cast Tramell Tillman as Mister Sinister rather than having him shapeshift into Adam Driver's true form, or alternatively just keep Metzger and Sinister as two separate characters working together. I don't think Xavier shows up in this movie, at least not until maybe the very end.

Emma Frost's Misdirect, the Hellfire Club Mansion, and the Road to a New School

There will be another telepath besides Jean, of course: Emma Frost. I think Emma will seek out Jean, communicate with her telepathically, and guide her and her fellow mutants toward safety away from Metzger. At first, we might not even hear that voice ourselves, only Jean relaying what it tells her, leading the audience to assume it's Xavier calling her to a safe place. Instead, when they arrive, it's the Hellfire Club mansion, not the X-Mansion.

There, Jean and the other young mutants learn they aren't alone, and that mutants have been hiding in plain sight for a long time. Emma Frost, who I think we'll learn is far older than she appears, has led the Hellfire Club in keeping mutants secret for years, seemingly to avoid the very persecution Jean and Scott have faced. Emma offers them a home and a life of luxury, but living in hiding won't sit well with Jean, who'll sense something is off and eventually discover the Hellfire Club isn't good at all, having killed mutants who tried to go public or handing them over to the DODC and Metzger in exchange for being left alone.

I think we could even hear Emma mention that keeping mutation secret has gotten harder as more mutants are born and superheroing becomes a trend, and that the Hellfire Club works with corrupt elite figures like Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, trading mutants for experimentation in exchange for its own members being left alone. Jean and Scott, who I'd love to see fall for each other while on the run together, might be receptive to those luxuries at first, but once they learn the truth they'll revolt, leading them to a new home run by a mutant probably in his 40s who spent years thinking he was alone before deciding to build an alternative to the Hellfire Club: a school that welcomes and teaches young mutants and pushes to reveal mutation to the world as something to embrace rather than fear.

So yes, I think we're getting a mutant movie rather than an X-Men movie by name, at least not right away, and I think that fits with everything Brand New Day set up for the mutant saga, including Peter Parker taking the Hulk's inhibitor tech and advancing it into a universal inhibitor. That's definitely going to come into play.

What do you think this first mutant movie should be called if not X-Men?