Marvel Was Reportedly Planning to Debut Its New X-Men in Avengers: Secret Wars, Not the Reboot

Marvel Studios planned to introduce new members of the X-Men during Avengers: Secret Wars, according to an anonymous Twitter scooper. These would be the same cast who'd go on to be part of the X-Men reboot. That claim recontextualized what I thought Marvel was doing with the reboot, and it tied directly into Avengers: Doomsday, the returning Fox X-Men characters, and a crucial mistake Marvel made going from the Infinity Saga to the Multiverse Saga.

An anonymous scooper said new X-Men would arrive in Avengers: Secret Wars

The update came from an anonymous scooper on Twitter who's been around for a while. Keep in mind, no scooper gets everything right, and I'm always willing to give a little more reverence to those willing to put their name on a scoop, rather than just anonymous material posted to social media and Reddit. With that caveat in place, he was indicating that Marvel Studios planned on introducing new members of the X-Men, the same cast that would be part of the X-Men reboot, during Avengers: Secret Wars.

Working backwards off that logic, this wasn't the first time I'd heard something like this. Right around the time Sadie Sink was confirmed for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, it was reported that she had signed a two or three picture deal and that we would see her again in Avengers: Secret Wars. That didn't come from an industry insider. It came from The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline. So at least her character, who's most likely Jean Grey, was meant to show up there.

I think the Fox X-Men could all die at the end of Avengers: Doomsday

If you take that one step further, I think it reveals quite a bit about Avengers: Doomsday. Marvel was bringing back a ton of the Fox X-Men characters, and I think some had not been announced. The idea seemed to be bringing the old Fox X-Men into the fold, giving them proper uniforms accurate to the comics and one last moment in the sun before the resetting of timelines in Avengers: Secret Wars.

But if it's true that Marvel would introduce new members of the X-Men who would presumably be part of the reboot after Secret Wars consolidates the timelines into what Kevin Feige called singular, then there's a real likely chance they won't be fighting side by side with their Fox counterparts. Rather, the Fox X-Men would come to an end during Avengers: Doomsday. There were already rumors that this would be Sir Patrick Stewart's last film. Not his last Marvel film, but literally his last movie ever, implying that he might not survive it, or at least wouldn't be part of Secret Wars.

If Marvel was introducing the new characters who'd make up the X-Men team going forward in Secret Wars, then I think it's likely all of the X-Men returning from the Fox timeline will die at the end of Doomsday. Whatever that final battle is, whether or not the plot leaks about them marching on Castle Doomstadt were real, and whether or not they're anywhere near successful in stopping Doom even for a little while, more likely than not, all of the X-Men from the Fox universe are going to die.

Deadpool and Wolverine may be the exceptions who carry over

The exception would be any characters who hold over and aren't part of the main battle alongside the Avengers. That will most likely be Deadpool and Wolverine, who were rumored to appear at the beginning of the film but not in the main battle, or not in the main part of the film at all.

So presumably, they survive into Avengers: Secret Wars, become part of Battleworld, and then make it out to join the new X-Men team after Deadpool 4. At the time, Ryan Reynolds was writing that film, and it was heavily rumored to be the beginning of an X-Force movie.

This plan could make Doomsday and Secret Wars very different from Infinity War and Endgame

Here's my honest take. I think this plan functions in two ways that are super important. The first is that it would make these films very different and not what we're expecting. When Marvel went from Infinity War to Avengers: Endgame, they removed a lot of the secondary and tertiary characters and allowed the original Avengers to shine, eventually bringing everyone back together as a culminating event.

After Avengers: Doomsday and a major loss for some of the superheroes, not only from the Fox X-Men but also from our Avengers timeline, and I think there are some names at the top of that list, those characters wouldn't be coming back. They wouldn't get unsnapped. Rather, the team that ends up defeating Doom would be made up of some of the new members of the X-Men, some of the old members of the Avengers, and who knows who from across the multiverse who may or may not stick around.

In that sense, it wouldn't basically be a bringing back of everybody from Doomsday at all. It would be a totally different lineup of characters, or, where characters are the same, different actors playing them, different variants in a new timeline going forward.

Marvel's Multiverse Saga introductions lacked emotional weight

The second major feature of this plan is that it would allow some real connective tissue going into the X-Men reboot. Marvel Studios went from the Infinity Saga to the Multiverse Saga by killing off Tony Stark, disappearing Steve Rogers, and jumping into a bunch of new characters. Yes, we got Black Widow right out of the gate, but it was a prequel. She had already died, so it had no agency.

Then we were introduced to Shang-Chi, then to the Eternals, then to a bunch of TV shows with new characters like Moon Knight and She-Hulk, one after another. Marvel didn't focus on a main point of view character. I argue we should have been introduced and reintroduced to Shang-Chi maybe five times before we got to this point. Marvel didn't go that way, and with all of those standalone introductions, there was a disconnect, because these characters had no stakes or value.

They weren't tied in a direct and emotional way to the characters the audience was emotionally tied to, like Tony Stark, Steve Rogers and the original Avengers, and they had zero part to play in the major crossover event for our 616 heroes that had just happened. I think that's why there was such affection right off the bat for Loki, and for Wanda in WandaVision. Those characters had that emotional hangover, the carryover from the Infinity Saga. The other new introductions hadn't been part of the struggle against Thanos in Infinity War or Endgame, and that created a real chasm between how we felt about Tony Stark and Captain America and how we felt about these new characters. They just didn't have the same emotional weight.

Sadie Sink's Jean Grey could give the X-Men reboot a real ramp

Introducing a Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day and then seeing her again in Avengers: Secret Wars alongside a brand new Cyclops and maybe some other new characters would give Marvel a real ramp up to the X-Men reboot. Within the story, that gives us the emotional connection. By the time we see Sadie Sink's Jean Grey in the X-Men reboot, we'd have already seen her fight side by side with Spider-Man, presumably Punisher, and maybe Daredevil and Hulk in Brand New Day, and then alongside a ton of different heroes in Secret Wars, including originals like Steve Rogers' Captain America.

Then when she's fighting alongside the new X-Men team, we'll have familiarity with her, and she'll have been part of the big crossover event for the whole multiverse alongside some of those new X-Men. On a different level, it also gives Marvel Studios the kind of ramp it needs so it isn't diving headfirst into a huge reboot with a bunch of unknown commodities, which is essentially what it did in a bunch of standalone scenarios in the Multiverse Saga.

This would give Marvel a chance to do something it didn't really nail with Thanos. Granted, he had shown up in Guardians of the Galaxy and in some scenes after the credits, but he didn't have as much screen time as you would have liked. And Marvel definitely didn't have enough time with Doctor Doom because of the pivot away from Kang. This approach would let them do it with the X-Men characters years and movies before the reboot, giving them a bit of a known commodity rather than banking only on interest in the X-Men title itself. There would be MCU fans who already know these characters.

I think it's an extremely smart pivot, and it lines up with the Russo rumors

When Marvel goes from the Multiverse Saga to the Mutant Saga, or whatever it ends up being called, there would be the kind of transition Marvel Studios didn't have at all between the last two. It's a major pivot point for Marvel, and it's extremely smart. To me, it really leans into the rumors that the Russos may be involved in overseeing it all, so that when they get to Avengers 7 and Avengers 8, they'll have known where all the chess pieces were moving the entire time and won't have to do a total reset.

Honestly, if Doomsday turns out to be even a nine out of 10, given the pieces and the setup the Russos had for the Multiverse Saga, that will be a massive win. And given some of what I'd heard, it seemed like Avengers: Doomsday, as industry insiders were saying, might be one of the best Marvel movies of all time. If that's in any way true, I can't wait.

The pressure on Doomsday and Secret Wars could shape Marvel's future

I don't mean to be a downer, but the X-Men reboot and its box office expectations were years down the road. First, Marvel had to get through the next two years with Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. There will certainly be a ton of pressure on Marvel and on Kevin Feige, a producer who worked on those old Fox X-Men films, to nail a new team right after re-canonizing all those old characters. But the pressure was on that same team, minus some of the new actors, to nail Doomsday and Secret Wars first.

If there's a misstep, and if they can't tie this all together and bring the hype to somewhere at least similar to where it was with Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, that may represent an existential crisis for Marvel Studios. It comes down to the budget, the return on these films, and what can reasonably be expected going forward. How can anyone work out what Marvel Studios looks like down the road to 2032 if it can't get through the next two Avengers films and get the fandom's hype back? That would mean smaller budgets, fewer films, and a lot less wiggle room to experiment and make the kind of movies we need as Marvel evolves with the superhero genre heading into its third decade.

Casting new X-Men for Secret Wars may just shift the risk

All things considered, there's a ton of risk and weight on all these movies. But by bringing in new X-Men during Avengers: Secret Wars instead of saving them for the reboot, Marvel Studios may just be shifting that risk. Secret Wars is going to be directly compared to Avengers: Endgame, a film that may have set the bar impossibly high. And in that film, Marvel would cast new X-Men characters, with actors who had never been in the MCU before, not after the reset but during Secret Wars. That takes the unknown commodity from the X-Men reboot and puts it right into the Avengers culmination of the Multiverse Saga.

There's already so much weight on that film, and on all three of these films: Doomsday, Secret Wars, and Avengers X-Men. My final point is that while this may be the ramp Marvel Studios needs to keep these two films from being too similar to Infinity War and Endgame and to make the transition into the next saga much smoother than last time, it would still be taking on a huge unknown commodity by casting new X-Men, if this is true, and using Secret Wars to introduce them. You can't have it both ways. Then again, maybe this is the way to do it. Maybe adding this level of intrigue and surprise, by not even knowing which new X-Men we're getting, let alone who's playing them, is the way to take Secret Wars to the next level over Endgame.

Marvel would probably want to keep the new X-Men cast secret

If Marvel planned on doing that, there's probably a huge tendency for them to want to keep whoever's playing these new X-Men characters a huge secret. Industry insiders like Jeff Sneider, who have been hot on the casting case for years, are going to get to some of these names. But if Marvel was bringing in new X-Men for Secret Wars, I think it would certainly want to keep that under wraps.

The big asterisk is whether the casting was anywhere near done. With Marvel doing a new rewrite of the script under the director with two new writers at the time, it could have been that casting wouldn't happen until much later in the year. Marvel Studios also had its hands full with Doomsday and Secret Wars for the following 18 to 24 months.

Do you think introducing new X-Men in Avengers: Secret Wars, after Doomsday brings back the Fox X-Men, is a good idea?