The gigantic Avengers: Doomsday cast announcement featured some expected members of the Marvel Cinematic Universe coming back for this big multiversal adventure, including the Thunderbolts* cast members, Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson/Captain America, Letitia Wright’s Shuri/Black Panther, and others. An incredibly unexpected part of the announcement, though, was how many cast members from the 20th Century Fox X-Men movies were back. Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Alan Cumming, Rebecca Romijn, Kelsey Grammer, James Marsden — they’re all back, and it’s doubtful they’re the only cast members from this franchise returning.
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These casting moves mirror how recent MCU movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Deadpool & Wolverine crammed their respective run times with cameos from famous stars of classic superhero movies. Plus, Doomsday is a big multiversal adventure, so the X-Men universe crossing over with the MCU isn’t outlandish. However, this is still a disappointing development for the future of the MCU. Please, Marvel, let these X-Men cast members rest.
Remember When the MCU Launched New Superheroes?
Nothing suggests a movie franchise is in great shape like announcing the return of a bunch of 50+-year-old actors playing characters they’ve already inhabited as crowdpleaser cameos in another big timeline-colliding blockbuster, X-Men: Days of Future Past. All jokes aside, these X-Men casting announcements are disappointing on multiple fronts, including how they epitomize Marvel’s increasing reliance on nostalgia. Long gone are the days when Marvel Studios would place bets on general audiences loving obscure characters like Iron Man, the Guardians of the Galaxy, or Black Panther.
Now, the Disney/Fox merger has allowed Kevin Feige and company to exploit people’s memories of older movies. What was a delight in Spider-Man: No Way Home has become an incessant nuisance in subsequent MCU movies. Even “grounded” Marvel Studios offerings like Captain America: Brave New World are too obsessed with 2000s superhero movie mythos and laying the groundwork for mutants. Multiversal stories, meanwhile, are now just a parade of familiar faces from non-Marvel Studios properties. These sagas aren’t a chance for rich, exciting storytelling like other multiverse movies like Everything Everywhere All at Once. They’re just reminders of Disney’s creepy, extensive corporate reach.
The ubiquity of fan-service multiverse movie cameos also means it’s no shock that Marvel Studios is getting a bunch of X-Men actors back for Doomsday. Patrick Stewart already showed up as an Xavier variant in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and ditto Kelsey Grammer’s Hank McCoy/Beast in The Marvels. Sure, Alan Cumming’s never reprised the role of Nightcrawler in live-action before, but it’s otherwise not a shock seeing the Fox X-Men in an MCU property. The novelty has been well-worn before this Avengers installment, the grand story where seeing universes colliding should have real weight. That’s what happens when you go to the fan-service well too many times.
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What About a New Version of the X-Men?
One interesting prospect with the X-Men coming to the MCU was seeing fresh rebooted versions of these characters. With the Fox X-Men saga running for 20 years (from X-Men to The New Mutants), it was clear this incarnation of the characters was out of gas. It was time for new creative blood. Much like Spider-Man: Homecoming started with a fresh slate and cast to reinvigorate a familiar comic book movie saga, a new MCU X-Men reboot could’ve really given these merry mutants a new lease on life. The mind reels at the imagery and casting accomplished directors like Alice Wu or Kelly Fremon Craig could’ve executed if allowed to give the X-Men a top-to-bottom overhaul.
Alas, the MCU’s emphasis on vintage X-Men movie actors for Avengers: Doomsday reaffirms how this franchise can’t let go of the past. The X-Men cannot be handed off to a new generation of artists and moviegoers. Modern actors are not allowed access to these characters to put their own stamp on them, much like what performers get to do with Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man. Stoking nostalgia has taken precedence over giving these comic book characters a clean slate. Avengers: Doomsday solidifies that Deadpool & Wolverine was no one-off fluke. Marvel Studios is fully ride or die for the Fox era of X-Men movies.
Sure, there’ll be some inevitable pleasure in finally seeing Alan Cumming’s Nightcrawler (albeit as a CG mo-cap character rather in his awesome X2 practical makeup look) likely wielding swords in a red comic book-accurate outfit on the big screen. However, the MCU constantly returning to these Fox X-Men characters for crowdpleaser cameos in the 2020s dilutes the excitement of seeing these superheroes in Doomsday. To boot, bringing so many of these mutants back for this team-up movie signals the MCU’s unwillingness to let the past go. Marvel really needs to stop exploiting this era of superhero cinema and look more towards the future.
Avengers: Doomsday hits theaters on May 1, 2026.
What do you think of the X-Men stars returning? Let us know in the comments below!
