Patrick Stewart Remembers Stan Lee: “Your Legacy and Humanity Will Live on in All of Us”

Days after the passing of Marvel icon Stan Lee, several celebrities are still making the rounds on social media, sharing fond memories and touching tributes to the late creator. Today longtime X-Men star Patrick Stewart finally spoke up.

Stewart appeared in several Marvel films as X-Men leader Charles Xavier, a character that Lee co-created with Jack Kirby.

“I am very sad about Stan Lee’s passing,” Stewart wrote in the tweet. “Because of Stan, all of us who worked on the X-Men films were always very much aware that no matter our superpowers, we were all human beings at the core. Thank you, Stan. Your legacy and humanity will live on in all of us.”

Stewart’s tenure as Professor X began in 2000, with the original X-Men film. He went on to reprise the role in the subsequent movies in that trilogy, 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, and 2017’s Logan. He also appeared in a brief cameo during the post-credits scene of The Wolverine.

After Logan, both Stewart and Wolverine actor Hugh Jackman said goodbye to their characters for good, moving on from the X-Men franchise altogether. It’s unclear at this point if either one will ever return, but the Disney’s purchase of Fox makes that seem highly unlikely, even if the actors were willing to return.

Over the years, Lee had cameos in just two of the X-Men films that Stewart starred in: X-Men and X-Men: The Last Stand. His most recent cameo in relation to Stewart came during a preview for Deadpool 2 that aired before Logan in theaters. The next X-Men film to be released will be Dark Phoenix in 2019, and it has been confirmed that Lee does not have a cameo in the movie. It’s unclear whether he will appear in The New Mutants, which arrives after Dark Phoenix.