Avengers: Doomsday: was Magneto's New Jersey line planted?

Is Magneto going to destroy New Jersey in Avengers: Doomsday, or was that a talking point the production handed Ian McKellen as a red herring so he could avoid spoiling anything real? The line had surfaced in two separate interviews, and the second one felt a little artificial to me.

McKellen, who plays Magneto, first said it while promoting his play. When he said it again on Stephen Colbert's show, I started to suspect someone had fed it to him.

Ian McKellen's first New Jersey slip on Jake's Takes

The remark first came up when McKellen appeared on Jake Hamilton's podcast, Jake's Takes. I think Hamilton is an amazing interviewer and a very good journalist, and that interview with McKellen was a great one. The context was Magneto's past feats. The conversation touched on how audiences had already seen Magneto move the Golden Gate Bridge.

McKellen then seemed to slip up. He said, "Well, he does destroy New Jersey," and followed it with, "I shouldn't have said that." We jumped all over it at the time.

Why McKellen's Colbert appearance felt like doubling down

Then McKellen went on Colbert, again to promote his play, and doubled down in a way that felt a little artificial to me. He told Colbert he doesn't always understand the story of the movies he's in, then described Magneto destroying New Jersey. He nearly said New Zealand instead. He described standing up on set and acting it out: "I'm standing up pretending to do that." He added that the director on the loudspeaker told him, "Ian, look more furious."

The same appearance included a political joke from McKellen built around Mar-a-Lago. In our discussion, the joke felt more like a 2017 Trump era joke than a 2026 one, the sort of line an older man thinks the crowd will love. Still, the conclusion was that he's a cute old man, and there was plenty of affection for him.

The near miss with New Zealand made sense to us. The point came up that he's always talking about Lord of the Rings, that New Zealand and New Jersey sound alike said quickly, and that he's heading back to New Zealand for the new Gollum movie, with another long flight ahead. Colbert is also a huge Lord of the Rings fan, so the subject was on his mind.

Who fed Ian McKellen the Magneto line?

What bothered me is that Colbert didn't prompt him to bring up New Jersey this time. The fact that it came up twice stood out. If it had been such a faux pas the first time, I think there's no way he would have raised it again. So I think someone fed him that.

The discussion also turned to his publicist. The suggestion was that if Marvel got to his publicist, the advice might have been to bring up that one line and nothing else. Actors like Andrew Garfield and Benedict Cumberbatch get asked about their next Marvel project whenever they promote something unrelated, and they have to answer. At McKellen's age, he's going to keep being asked about either Lord of the Rings or Magneto.

From a publicist's point of view, the thinking went, it's safer to let him repeat what's already out there than risk him accidentally saying something new. Once he gives that answer, interviewers have their headline and may not push for anything more. It's also possible the studio decided the moment was going in a trailer anyway.

Could Avengers: Doomsday's trailer show New Jersey destroyed?

There's a precedent for that idea. In the first proper teaser for Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos threw a moon down at a city, one of the most destructive moments in that film other than the snap. Maybe a Doomsday trailer could do something similar, with people on the Atlantic City boardwalk looking up at a tidal wave caused by the Earth's magnetic polarity reversing. That would be a big disaster shot in the vein of The Day After Tomorrow or Independence Day.

Why New Jersey, though? The answer in our discussion was that it's easy to take out because everybody knows the Jersey Shore. It's an easy place to identify, maybe because of how often it appears in media. And destroying it might hurt audiences less than wiping out somewhere like the Bean in Chicago, which the conversation agreed should be left alone.

Magneto in Avengers: Doomsday may echo Professor X in Logan

Even so, the feeling in the discussion was that it isn't going to happen, or that it's maybe just a one-off sentence. Seeing it twice in back-to-back interviews raised the possibility that we'll later find out the Russo brothers told different actors to say false things.

Another idea came up: that Magneto in this movie could resemble Professor X in Logan, sick, ill and old. In that version, he has to stay in one place because it's the only place he's protected, since he keeps destroying things by accident. The reaction to that was that it would be too sad. Magneto went through the Holocaust, and there was a strong wish not to see anything worse happen to the character.

Mark Ruffalo's Infinity War spoiler is the comparison that makes me doubt it

That's why I think it's fake. The first slip reminded me of Mark Ruffalo before Infinity War, sitting next to Don Cheadle at what I think was Comic-Con or D23 the summer before. Ruffalo said, "Well, wait till you see this next one," and let slip that half of everybody dies. Cheadle tried to stop him, and Ruffalo backtracked that it wasn't everybody.

Ruffalo also once had his Instagram live running in his pocket during a special screening, and people had to run into the theater to get him to turn it off. Ruffalo never did another interview talking about anything to do with Infinity War.

So I think the Russo brothers are playing some little games too. I'd love that. With their careers and the films they're making for Marvel, why not lie to us? It isn't going to hurt them, and I'll still see their next movie.