At long last, the MCU’s X-Men have arrived. That’s the big takeaway from this weekend’s big announcements from Disney’s biennial superfan event, known as D23. (It’s called that because Disney was started in 1923, an abbreviation I definitely always knew and certainly did not Google in the middle of drafting this piece). While most of the weekend focuses on exclusive merch releases, various panels, and other inside looks, the big draw of the event—at least for our purposes—was a flurry of footage drops and reveals around the future of Marvel and Star Wars.
Sure, a new Incredibles movie, more information on Coco 2, and the announcement of a Kingdom Hearts anime are cool, too—but really, it’s all about the mutants and their impending MCU debut. If you somehow missed the panel or are looking for a bit more context on what their arrival will mean to the MCU, we broke down that announcement, and a few others, including the first details around Ahsoka season two and more info about Ryan Gosling’s Star Wars: Starfighter, below.
To Me, My X-Men Cast
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As expected, now that Spider-Man: Brand New Day is out in the world and folks know that Sadie Sink is playing Jean Grey, Kevin Feige and X-Men director Jake Schreier took the stage to formally announce their cast. The MCU’s version of the Children of the Atom, alongside the aforementioned Sink, are Heartstopper’s Kit Connor as Scott Summers aka Cyclops, Obsession breakout Inde Navarrette as Rogue, Broadway star Maya Boyd as Storm, Ready or Not’s Samara Weaving as Emma Frost, Christopher Abbott as Professor Charles Xavier, and Adam Driver as Nathaniel Milbury. To quote Logan Roy, they have some juice here.
The X-Men cast has been the subject of much speculation and deliberation over the intervening weeks, but now that comes to a close with this announcement. Driver, in particular, is a notable addition to the lineup. Feige mentioned earlier this year that the actor has long circled Marvel projects (he was rumored to be in consideration for Reed Richards, for example) without ever committing. That is, until now. X-Men will also represent a reunion of sorts for Abbott and Driver, both of whom broke through as problematic boyfriends on Girls. (Surely we can get Alex Karpovsky in the mix for this one, somehow?)
Comic fans will likely have clocked that “Nathaniel Milbury” is one of a few aliases commonly used by the villainous Mister Sinister. Sinister (born Nathaniel Essex in the 19th century—it’s complicated) uses the Milbury persona when he’s posing as the head of a Nebraskan orphanage—where a young Scott Summers grows up and is experimented on by Milbury.
