Contrary to some last-minute reports last week, Marvel did not announce the MCU’s first X-Men movie at Comic-Con. The Mutants, if that’s going to be the name, isn’t part of the Phase 5 and Phase 6 roster that Kevin Feige revealed at SDCC last week. And if a new rumor is accurate, Marvel won’t launch any X-Men movies until the MCU reaches Phase 7. That will be 2026 or later if this claim pans out.
It’s not that Marvel doesn’t want to add mutants to the MCU, because we’ve already seen them appear. And Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) should show up in the MCU before the end of Phase 6. But Fox’s existing contractual obligations might force Marvel to use the same actors for any movies released through 2025. Some spoilers might follow below.
MCU Phase 5 and Phase 6 announcements
We had no idea how massive Marvel’s Comic-Con 2022 announcements would be. Kevin Feige told the world that Phase 4 ends this year with Wakanda Forever and the remaining Disney Plus content.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will then open Phase 5, which will last through early July 2024 when Thunderbolts hit theaters. From the looks of it, there’s no place for any X-Men movies in the MCU Phase 5, as Marvel seems to have announced all the titles in it. We’re not counting any animated series here, which might feature all sorts of mutants from different realities.
But Marvel has started showing us the MCU’s mutants with Ms. Marvel. Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan is a mutant, although the X-Men label is still missing in action. Also, we saw Patrick Stewart’s Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. It’s a different reality, and Stewart might never return to the role. But it still counts.
With that in mind, we’d expect other mutants to appear in Phases 5 and 6. As for Phase 6, Marvel only gave us three of the 11 titles in it. That’s Fantastic Four, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, and Avengers: Secret Wars. There’s plenty of space in Phase 6 for Marvel to add a live-action X-Men title, no matter what it calls it.
And we still expect a Deadpool 3 release before Avengers 5 hits theaters.
Why X-Men movies might drop only in MCU Phase 7
Secret Wars will end Phase 6 in November 2025, and that’s how far Marvel’s MCU announcements went at Comic-Con. This brings us to a Marvelvision podcast episode, where we find out that Marvel might have outstanding obligations to some of the X-Men actors that appeared in the Fox movies.
Those contracts last through 2025, so Marvel can’t recast any of the roles it might want to adapt for the MCU. And Marvel likely wants most of the X-Men from the Fox movies to also populate the MCU.
As with all MCU rumors, there’s no way to verify any of this. Even if the information is accurate, Marvel won’t stop showing us mutants in the MCU now that it has officially started the process. Not to mention that Phases 4 through 6 are part of the Multiverse Saga. That is, we might see some of the Fox mutants again, besides Deadpool.
Even without the X-Men in the MCU officially, Marvel will put out a massive amount of movies and TV shows in the coming years. Not having an X-Men movie in Phase 5 and 6 isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Let’s not forget that Marvel still has to figure out a way to explain their existence.
You can listen to the podcast at this link, with the MCU’s X-Men movies discussion happening after the 80-minute mark.
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