X-Men: How Will Dark Phoenix Connect to New Mutants?

Three new X-Men movies were recently announced: We’ll get New Mutants on April 13, 2018; Deadpool 2 will follow on June 1, 2018; and X-Men: Dark Phoenix, will open on Nov. 2, 2018.

That release date plan means that all three X-Men movies will be in production at the same time – which has led to a lot of speculation that Fox could include some big crossover connections in each film, to help tie its growing X-Men cinematic Universe closer together. There’s particular fixation on New Mutants and Dark Phoenix, since both films may contain some core X-Men – characters that could easily crossover between both films. That leaves us with the question:

How Will X-Men: Dark Phoenix Connect to New Mutants?

Crossover Characters

The easiest way to connect New Mutants to X-Men: Dark Phoenix would obviously be to toss in some crossover characters that appear in both films.

Josh Brolin’s Cable is an obvious candidate to use as a link. Based on Marvel Comics history, Cable has been a major player in all of the X-Men films coming out in 2018: 

• He revamped the New Mutants team as their militant new leader. 
• Cable & Deadpool have been partnered up in their own comic book series. 
• Cable has been a major player in events like “Messiah War,” which eventually led to a new host for The Phoenix Force, Hope Summers. 

However, beyond Cable, there are several other big X-Men characters who could hop between films: 

• Professor Xavier – James McAvoy’s Xavier is rumored for New Mutants, and could lead us from that film right into Dark Phoenix. 
• Jean Grey – The actual host of the Phoenix Force could be New Mutants, before becoming the center of attention in Dark Phoenix. 
• Deadpool – He’s the most recognizable face in the franchise right now (since Hugh Jackman’s Logan retired), so he could be used as connective thread between New Mutants and Dark Phoenix and their respective casts of younger or newcomer actors.
• The New Mutants – Whatever happens during their film, The New Mutants could ultimately be recruited by someone like Cable to stop a threat Cable knows is coming: like The Dark Phoenix

The Cosmic Side

One of the other big connections between New Mutants and Dark Phoenix is the cosmic influences that factor into the Marvel Comics history behind both films.

For New Mutants, their team history includes major characters like Warlock (of the techno-organic alien race, The Technarchy), and Ship (The A.I. spaceship first owned by Apocalypse, but later housing the New Mutants when the X-Mansion was destroyed) – not to mention storylines that saw The New Mutants have to assume responsibility when Xavier headed into space, and the subsequent arrival of their new mentor, Cable (who will also appear in Deadpool 2). 

For Dark Phoenix, there’s a whole line of X-Men lore involving cosmic elements like The Shi’ar Empire, the M’Kraan Crystal, or even The Phoenix force itself. It wouldn’t be hard for the X-Men filmmakers to spin all of these X-Men cosmic elements into a new storyline that connects New Mutants to X-Men: Dark Phoenix.