X-Men Could Appear In The MCU:
We have all wondered and waited for X-Men to get included in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it never really happened. For almost two dozen movies and a handful of TV shows, the characters have operated in a world in which mutants have not once even been mentioned. The reason for this was the longstanding, uneasy relationship between Marvel and 20th Century Fox. For years, Fox had the live-action movie rights to the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and any related character. This scene where the rights are with Fox, forbid Marvel to make any mention of the mutants, with even the word “mutant” being verboten. In fact, back in 2001, Fox sued Marvel over its planned Mutant X television series, even though the series was to be based on entirely new characters with a completely different origin story than the X-Men and already-existing mutants of the world.
But that has now changed since Disney has acquired 20th Century Fox. And in the wake of this event, on Disney Investor’s Day held on December 10, 2020, it was announced that Spider-Man director Jon Watts will now be directing the Fantastic Four, and the fans went gaga over it, as it is the first Fantastic Four movie in the MCU. Likewise, things are moving forward with Deadpool 3, with Deadpool being a mutant and previously with Fox. So we can expect our fierce mutants to make a mark for themselves in the Marvel Cinematic Universe alongside our Marvel heroes, and we can only vouch for one thing – That it is going to bonkers.
All this sounds nice and warm, but how will they unfold the X-Men’d existence in the MCU after spending so much time without even mentioning a word the mutants? How will they easily slide in the fact that they exist without making it look abrupt? There’s no way to make an X-Men movie that’s part of the MCU without addressing it; it’s too big and complex to sidestep as other continuity details might be. Now, this is where the Disney+ WandaVision series kicks in. Marvel has made it more than clear WandaVision will take lots of inspiration from the House of M comics.
In that story, Scarlet Witch suffers a mental breakdown after the loss of her twins with Vision and, in her grief, starts to warp reality. Though her father (Magneto) and Professor X try their best to help her get over her grief, and Professor X even tries to heal her mind, it remains fractured and reality warps further. When her twin brother, Pietro, a.k.a. Quicksilver, alerts her there are discussions she’s too dangerous to be allowed to survive, he suggests she create a new reality.
This disastrous breakdown and the unintentional power boost from Professor X pushes Wanda beyond her restraints, and she creates an alternate reality so powerful that it supplants the real Marvel universe for a while. In it, the heroes of Marvel are given everything their heart desires and it’s clear this will be played out on a modified scale in WandaVision. In the new reality of the series, Vision is alive again and he and Wanda are living happily ever after, but it’s clear something isn’t right and the reality isn’t, perhaps, actually reality at all.
In an alternate reality, Magneto is ruling the world with his mutants rather than being an oppressed race of humans with amplified strengths. But when Magneto realizes that all this is nothing but a fake reality concept, and all this was Quicksilver’s plan, he sets himself into an uncontrollable rage and kills Pietro. This sets off Wanda so much that she turns against her father because he always chose the mutant kind over his own family. With this, she decides to end what her father loves the most with only three words, “No more mutants.”
In a split second, Wanda simultaneously resets reality back to “normal” and wipes out 98% of the world’s mutant population by rendering them powerless in an event that came to be known as the Decimation. While a few mutants retained their powers, it was estimated that out of hundreds of thousands of mutants, under two hundred mutants on the planet retained their mutant abilities. By the time the dust had settled, the entire race of mutants had nearly gone extinct, so powerful was Scarlet Witch’s curse.
WandaVision can give us two point-explanation as to why mutants are not included in the MCU. One, it could go a modified comic book route in which Wanda accidentally wiped out the world’s mutants but no one in the MCU remembered that reality or that the X-Men had once existed, not even the X-Men themselves. After the events of WandaVision, their mutant abilities, and everyone’s memories, could be restored.
Or, two, it could lean more heavily into the alternate universes and timelines theme Marvel is setting up in Phase 4. Scarlet Witch could have zapped all the mutants of the Marvel movie universe into an alternate universe with, again, no one in the MCU remembering them.
What do you think, isn’t it interesting? Let us know!
