How X-Men Cast Members Like Magneto, Wolverine and Mr. Sinister Could Slot Into MCU History Without a Reboot

The reveal of Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day as a mutant already existing in the background of the main MCU timeline, combined with the X-Men cast announced at D23, answers the biggest question I've had about Marvel Studios' mutant plan. These mutants are homegrown in the same 616 continuity as Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, the Avengers, Shield, Hydra, the Sokovia Accords, the attack by Thanos, the five year blip, Doctor Strange's memory wipe spell, Tiamut's emergence in the Indian Ocean and Khonshu's sky chaos. That tells me Marvel isn't rebooting this universe after Secret Wars, because they're too invested in things like T'Challa's lineage, the current Spider-Man, Yelena Belova, hopefully Anthony Mackie's Captain America, and everything Shang-Chi went through.

D23 Confirms Christopher Abbott, Kit Connor, Adam Driver and Others as MCU-Native Mutants

The confirmed 2028 X-Men cast includes Christopher Abbott as Charles Xavier, Kit Connor as Cyclops Scott Summers, Inde Navarrette as Rogue, Samara Weaving as Emma Frost, Maya Boyd as Storm, and Adam Driver as Mr. Sinister, Nathaniel Milbury. Marvel Studios casting director Sarah Halley Finn has said at least one or two more mutants are still to be cast.

Why Marvel Wouldn't Reboot the Timeline Just to Add the X-Men

I think it makes sense Marvel Studios isn't going to completely reboot this entire universe after Secret Wars. They're fully invested in the lineage of T'Challa, the current Spider-Man that's making them billions of dollars, Yelena Belova, and hopefully for Anthony Mackie, the current Captain America. Not to mention Shang-Chi, since you're not going to want to erase everything he went through. So in this piece I'm plugging the X-Men characters back into this still very much intact history to explain how older characters like Magneto, Sinister, Wolverine and Apocalypse can fit in.

Sarah Halley Finn's Comment on Casting \"Eight\" Hints at More Names to Come

After the seven confirmed cast members were announced at D23, some people looked back at an interview our colleague Brandon Davis did at San Diego Comic-Con in July with Finn, in which she compared casting the original six Avengers to casting this new group. She called the process \"quite challenging and rigorous\" and indicated the number involved was eight. At that point Sadie Sink was already cast as Jean Grey for Brand New Day, so she probably wasn't part of the decisions being made that week in mid-July, meaning the count could be read as eight plus Sadie Sink. It's also not clear whether Finn's eight includes Adam Driver's villain, which suggests there are between one and three additional mutants still being cast.

Cailee Spaeny and Charles Melton Rumors Point to Kitty Pryde and Beast

Cailee Spaeny was reported to be in talks to play Rogue before Inde Navarrette was cast, and Knight Edge Media reported hearing exclusively that Spaeny was still speaking to Marvel Studios about another role, which some believe to be Kitty Pryde, also known as Shadowcat. Charles Melton was rumored to be in the running for Hank McCoy, Beast, but it was reported last week that Melton would instead take a role as Kakashi Hatake in Destin Daniel Cretton's upcoming Naruto movie. That doesn't mean he can't still play Beast in the MCU as well.

Adam Driver's Magneto Joke and the Rumors I'm Not Buying

I find it interesting that Marvel Studios signaled they knew fans were expecting Magneto by having Adam Driver tease the D23 crowd, saying, \"So, I'm very excited to be playing the role of Magneto,\" before revealing he's actually playing Sinister. That makes me wonder if Marvel still plans to introduce Magneto later with a different actor. I'd ask people to ignore last week's aggregator claims that Lee Pace, Henry Cavill and Matt Smith were in talks for Magneto and tagging Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter, when those trades never actually reported that. Whenever you see that, double check the original source. That said, I do think Marvel will go with an actor in his 40s for Magneto, possibly a big A-list name like Adam Driver, and my guess is the remaining announcements will include a Kitty Pryde, a Beast and a Magneto, maybe with a Bobby Drake or a Warren Worthington somewhere in the mix.

Jean Grey's Origin Echoes the Original 1960s X-Gene Concept

Jean Grey's introduction in Brand New Day as a mutant came with no particular trigger event referenced. It implied that she and her sister just arose organically, which lines up with how Stan Lee and Jack Kirby originally introduced mutants in the 1960s, when they were creatively spent on inventing new origin stories and just decided some characters were born with powers that manifest at puberty. For this film universe, I think the simplest route is that humanity reached a natural inflection point where the species needed to evolve, and 0.5% of the population was born with a dormant X-gene that has begun manifesting naturally.

Mutants Who Predate the 1960s: Apocalypse in Egypt, Amahl Farouk, Azazel and Wolverine

In the comics, the Fox films and X-Men '97, mutants emerged on a wide scale in the 1960s. But some predated the 20th century. Apocalypse emerged in ancient Egypt, as shown in the recent season of X-Men '97, where the Celestial Eson the Searcher elevated his mutant abilities. Certain continuities imply Amahl Farouk was born in the 16th century in Egypt before becoming the Shadow King, Azazel has origins implied in medieval times, and James Logan Howlett, Wolverine, was born in the 1880s in Canada's Northwest Territories around Alberta. With Jean Grey and her sister Sara Grey emerging now in 2028, Marvel is shifting the era of mass mutant emergence about 60 to 70 years later than the comics.

To Keep Magneto's Origin Intact, Mutants Have to Age Slower

For all of this to work while keeping Magneto's origin story tied to World War II, I think we have to accept that mutants simply age slower, which Namor indicated was true for him as well in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. I don't think that means all mutants can fly, though. Storm flies because she manipulates weather, Magneto flies because he manipulates Earth's magnetic fields, and Rogue flies because she absorbed Carol Danvers' powers and abilities.

Fitting Professor X and Magneto Into World War II and the Blip

Christopher Abbott's Charles Xavier lives in his Westchester mansion, the same place Jean Grey was heading at the end of Brand New Day. I'm assuming this Charles was still born in 1932 in New York City like in the comics, just aging two to two and a half times slower, which would mean he lived through the blip, the threats of Hydra, the Chitauri invasion and watched Tony Stark's Iron Man reveal and the Avengers fight each other on the airport tarmac in Germany from the sidelines. I even wonder if he was the kid in Brooklyn that Steve Rogers saved from a Hydra operative.

If the slower aging rule applies to Magneto too, young Erik Lehnsherr, born Max Eisenhardt, was a Jewish boy born in Germany in 1928. World War II still happened in this continuity, with Nazi Germany's side project involving Johann Schmidt, Red Skull, and Hydra. We wouldn't have seen young Magneto in Captain America: The First Avenger because he was sent to Auschwitz in Poland while Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes and the Howling Commandos fought on the western front. After surviving Auschwitz, Erik would meet Charles Xavier in the early 1960s and their relationship would unfold from there.

Wolverine's Wartime Clues and the Adamantium Contradiction

What's interesting about potential Wolverine sightings in the MCU is that Loki season one episode four showed a TVA ticker referencing Alberta, Canada, among sacred timeline locations, which could tie to James Howlett's past there. In Deadpool and Wolverine, the TVA recognized Wolverine as the anchor being of another universe, Earth-10005, so maybe they're also watching the Wolverine of the sacred Earth-616 timeline. There are two ways to think about his origin here. One is the classic route where the postwar Weapon Plus program tried to replicate the super soldier program on other soldiers, as it did with Isaiah Bradley, grafting adamantium to this regenerative Canadian mutant's skeleton. But Captain America: Brave New World indicated Marvel executives described Tiamut's adamantium corpse as the birthplace of adamantium in the 616 universe, which would mean Wolverine couldn't have gotten his surgery until after the events of Eternals. I choose to believe there were other sources of adamantium as far back as the 1940s, a man-made alloy of vibranium and steel, which could account for the man with metal claws referenced in a She-Hulk website headline about a bar brawl.

Mr. Sinister, Ancient Egypt, and Emma Frost's Massachusetts Tragedy

Adam Driver playing Nathaniel Milbury, Mr. Sinister, suggests his history traces back to 1880s England, since it's the empowerment he gets from Apocalypse that makes him immune to aging and disease, and using an alias that old implies he's been around a very long time. That's why I think it's going to be important for the MCU to establish mutant origins as far back as Egypt, similar to what X-Men '97 did in its second season, showing how the Celestials, alongside introducing the Eternals to ancient Mesopotamia, created a genetic offshoot of mutantkind in ancient Egypt. I think we need to meet Amahl Farouk, hear the name En Sabah Nur, and see Maya Boyd's Storm grow up as a daughter of Kenyan royalty in Cairo the way she does in the comics, whether that's in Jake Schreier's 2028 X-Men film or in Ryan Coogler's Black Panther 3 later that year.

I also find it interesting that Samara Weaving was cast as a slightly older Emma Frost than the rest of the cast, implying she'll already carry her tragic backstory involving the Massachusetts Academy and the students she lost. Rather than time-traveling Sentinels causing that tragedy, I wonder if it could instead have been the blip disrupting those kids.

My Pitch: Xavier and Magneto Secretly Fought in the Battle of Earth

I think the hardest thing for fans to fathom is where Charles and Erik were during the Battle of Earth in Avengers: Endgame, even if the X-Men weren't formally organized yet and it was just the two of them debating over chess. My pitch for how the 2028 X-Men movie could open, or appear as a flashback or verbal reference, is that Charles did help the Avengers in that battle and we simply didn't see it. It was a massive battle, and what we saw on screen were just representative vignettes, with plenty logically left on the cutting room floor. Several MCU titles since 2012 have revisited the Battle of New York this way, including Adrian Toomes in the opening of Spider-Man: Homecoming, the Time Heist in Endgame, and Kate Bishop in Hawkeye, and we've already seen other blip perspectives from Monica Rambeau and Yelena Belova. We also learned in Secret Invasion that Nick Fury organized a harvest with Skrulls like Gravik to recover Avenger DNA from that battle's aftermath.

I like the idea of Charles Xavier, watching from the window of his Westchester mansion, seeing Thanos' ship bombarding the Avengers compound a few miles away, then looking across the chessboard at Erik and saying something like \"To me, my friend,\" before the two of them fly over and take on Ebony Maw while the other Avengers are on the other side of a pile of rubble trying to get the nano gauntlet to the quantum tunnel. Establish that Charles and Erik were veterans of the Battle of Earth, whether shown outright or just referenced, and everything in the mutant saga connects to the Infinity Saga, calling back to the moment Wong asked, \"Is that everyone? You wanted more?\" We'd know we did have more.

What do you think is the best way for Marvel to explain where the X-Men were during the Infinity Saga?