It Took 26 Years, but Marvel Movies Have Finally Remembered How Powerful Cyclops Really Is

January 5, 2026, 5:45pm

Avengers: Doomsday is more than just the next Marvel team-up blockbuster; it’s clearly being positioned as a celebration of the last 26 years of superhero comic book adaptations. The film will unite the X-Men and the Avengers against Doctor Doom (or perhaps fulfill all the best Avengers versus X-Men daydreams), and Doomsday‘s ever-expanding cast includes the likes of Patrick Stewart, Sir Ian McKellen, and James Marsden. All three of these actors appear in the latest Doomsday teaser, finally released online.

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Fox’s X-Men movies were often focused on Wolverine (to the extent it became a joke they should be called “Wolverine and the X-Men”). Already, there are signs Marvel intends to correct this, because the first look at the X-Men includes the official first X-Man himself, Cyclops, unleashing the full power of his optic blasts. It’s a stunning shot, a tease that we’re about to see the version of Cyclops we’ve always longed to see. What’s more, it’s already clear Marvel movies are finally remembering just how powerful Cyclops is.

Cyclops Has Been Woefully Underpowered in the X-Men Movies

Visually, Cyclops looks as though he has the same kind of heat vision you associate with Superman. In reality, his optic blasts are very different; they’re pure kinetic force, making them rather more destructive than anything else. The precise origin of Cyclops’ mutant powers is hotly debated in the fandom, with X-Men #43 suggesting his power is derived from a process akin to photosynthesis, while the Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe instead suggests his eyes are windows to a dimension of kinetic force (possibly the “Punch Dimension” once visited by America Chavez). Whatever the truth may be, they’re actually incredibly powerful.

In the comics, Cyclops’ powers have tended to increase with age. The early Cyclops often needed to take a breather after performing a notable feat (suggesting he’d depleted his reservoirs of power), but that hasn’t been necessary for a long time. More modern iterations of Cyclops have accomplished remarkable things, with Cyclops literally cutting an entire living island in half at one point. During the X-Men: Civil War miniseries, Iron Man measured his energy output at a staggering 2 gigawatts per second, meaning Cyclops’ eyes generate more power than most nuclear reactors.

But here’s the catch: the X-Men movies have seldom treated Cyclops like the powerhouse he should be. His optic blasts have been treated more like (pretty weak) lasers, and oddly it fell to X-Men Origins: Wolverine to really give a sense of how destructive they could really be. But now, at last, it looks as though Avengers: Doomsday is giving up Cyclops in all his glory. The teaser shows him in pitched battle with the mutant-hunting Sentinels, unleashing the full power of his optic blasts in a scene unlike any we’ve seen on-screen before.

Will This Finally Be the Cyclops We’ve Been Longing For?

To be fair, Fox’s version of Cyclops had a lot of problems – not just power levels. Oddly enough, there’s a sense in which he was a victim of the X-Men’s own success in the ’90s, because X-Men: The Animated Series treated Cyclops as something of a “boy scout” (as he was dubbed in one episode) rather than a charismatic leader. Following on from that show, Fox’s Cyclops was a stand-offish, reserved character who lacked any real sense of charisma. James Marsden was frankly wasted in the role. Cyclops certainly didn’t feel like one of the best X-Men.

Avengers: Doomsday is, therefore, a welcome opportunity to change everything for Scott Summers. It’s a chance for Marvel to show just how powerful the first X-Man really is, as well as how charismatic and competent a leader he is; this is a man who’s outmaneuvered Captain America in one story where the X-Men and the Avengers went head-to-head (and once tried to beat up Cap up with a frying pan, but the less said about that, the better). It’s particularly exciting to see Cyclops in a trailer before Wolverine, too, given how much the big screen version has been overshadowed by Logan.

Of course, it’s sadly quite likely Cyclops won’t make it out of Doomsday alive. The new teaser is focused in on death, and it’s disturbing to note that only a handful of X-Men cast have been confirmed to return, suggesting other characters are probably already dead. What’s more, Cyclops is in a pitched battle with Sentinels in this teaser, and one is behind him – suggesting the X-Man has already been outflanked. Still, at least he’s going down in spectacular fashion.

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