There’s Something Badly Wrong With Avengers: Doomsday’s X-Men Cast

If Avengers: Endgame was a celebration of the MCU, then Avengers: Doomsday is a homage to the Marvel movies we’ve been watching for literal decades. Gradually, the plot is becoming clear; three universes are colliding, and the heroes of each Earth must find a way to prevent mutual destruction. No doubt the various Avengers teams, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four will initially clash; that’s a superhero tradition, after all. But beyond that, we’re talking one of the biggest, most exciting superhero team-ups ever seen in live-action.

Marvel’s just released an official first look at Avengers: Doomsday, showcasing concept art by Andy Park. It’s an exciting glimpse of some of the film’s main heroes, although oddly it keeps Sam Wilson’s new Avengers team largely under wraps; it spends more time with the Thunderbolts and the X-Men, with Sam’s Captain America and the new Falcon shown flying over the Fantastic Four and Shang-Chi. Some fans are criticizing Doomsday for missing heroes, and that’s pretty fair. But what is most striking, though, is just how imbalanced the X-Men team is.

The X-Men Team in Doomsday Has Massive Gaps

Seven X-Men are shown returning in Avengers: Doomsday:

• Patrick Stewart’s Professor X
• Sir Ian McKellen’s Magneto
• James Marsden’s Cyclops
• Kelsey Grammer’s Beast
• Alan Cumming’s Nightcrawler
• Channing Tatum’s Gambit
• Rebecca Romijn’s Mystique

Oddly, I hadn’t really appreciated just how problematic this line-up really is until I saw the Avengers: Doomsday promotional art. The X-Men team is rather strange, because only two of those characters (Professor X and Cyclops) were members for more than one of the Fox films. Grammer’s Beast had a cameo in X2, only appearing as a member in X-Men: The Last Stand. Tatum’s Gambit was star of a canceled movie, only appearing in Deadpool & Wolverine as part of a timeline we’d never seen before. While the First Class timeline showed Mystique as a major X-Man, that wasn’t true in Romijn’s timeline, and Nightcrawler never joined up.

Even assuming Hugh Jackman is back as Wolverine (a safe assumption), this particular nostalgia play is bizarre. What makes it all the more striking, though, is the absence of every single female X-Man. Anna Paquin probably couldn’t reprise Rogue due to health reasons, but Halle Berry’s Storm and Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey are both AWOL. The absences are all the more remarkable when you remember how many celebrated female characters the X-Men have.

Why Has Marvel Made So Many Strange Choices With the Returning X-Men?

It’s clear Marvel intend Doomsday to be a homage to the first wave of X-Men films, presumably meaning we may get some First Class characters in Secret Wars. That, unfortunately, means the MCU is left dealing with a trilogy that only had a smaller, often male-centered X-Men team. Making matters worse, all the evidence suggests there are story reasons Janssen’s Jean Grey doesn’t appear (Cyclops’ grief in Doomsday‘s X-Men teaser suggests Jean Grey and the X-Men are dead, presumably killed by Sentinels). But that feels like a justification, rather than something essential.

Marsden’s Cyclops return makes this a little more frustrating, too. The X-Men’s greatest leader was badly underserved by the first Fox trilogy, and Marsden was only given a chance to act right before his death scene in The Last Stand. While it’s exciting to see him given a chance to show how good he really is, though, he’s far from the only one; Berry’s Storm didn’t exactly have a great run, either, and she too deserves a chance to redeem herself. Chris Hemsworth has jokingly suggested Storm and Thor’s powers are too similar, but good writing could deal with that.

Marvel Just Showed How Much Better the MCU’s X-Men Need to Be

Doomsday is something of a Last Hurrah for the Fox X-Men, but this gorgeous concept art unintentionally highlights just how much better the MCU’s X-Men need to be. In the comics, the X-Men have some of the best-developed female characters in the entire Marvel Universe; Jean Grey, Storm, Psylocke, Kitty Pryde, Jubilee, Emma Frost, Magik… the list is almost endless. And yet, despite that, Fox never really managed to make the most of it. The Fox films tended to focus in on Wolverine, Professor X, and Magneto, relegating some fantastic superheroes into the background. Looking back, it just feels like such a waste.

And yet, I can’t help being a little wary. The MCU itself doesn’t exactly have a good history with female characters, in part because of absurd sexist views held by key players in the early years. Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow was the only female Avenger until 2015, and she was objectified pretty badly in Iron Man 2; despite public demand, she didn’t get a solo film until 2021, after the hero’s death in Avengers: Endgame. Marvel didn’t give us a single female-led superhero film until 2019, and we’ve only had three more since then. Given the MCU’s staggering rate of growth, that’s seriously disappointing.

The problems are far from over, again unintentionally highlighted by that concept art. Although the problem is most notable with the X-Men, it’s striking that the entire image features 20 male superheroes… and just five female ones. No doubt there will be a lot more female characters in the film (there’d better be), but it’s telling none of these are seen as important enough to promote. There’s clearly a bigger problem here, and the X-Men may be the only way for Marvel to put matters right – by doing them properly this time, and avoiding the sexist focus on male characters front and center.

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