Since Disney purchased Fox, and by extension granted Kevin Feige the rights to a raft of iconic comic book characters including the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Deadpool, the Marvel Cinematic Universe could technically pick up right where the thirteen-film franchise featuring the merry band of mutants left off.
After all, with the multiverse in play, it wouldn’t be breaking the boundaries of MCU canon were one of those infinite alternate realities the one that housed Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, Ian McKellen’s Magneto, and the rest of the roster, but Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness producer Richie Palmer hinted that won’t be the case.
In an interview with Empire, Palmer addressed the internet-breaking cameo appearance of Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier in the full-length trailer for Sam Raimi’s upcoming sequel, and he vaguely insinuated that this is going to be a version of Professor X we haven’t met before.
“I’ll quote the first X-Men movie and say, ‘Are you sure you saw what you saw?’ There are infinite versions of these characters, and just because you may have heard something familiar doesn’t mean it’s someone you have seen before.”
In other words, it sounds as though Stewart will be playing a variant, one that we didn’t meet for the first time back in Bryan Singer’s original X-Men over 20 years ago. Hypothetically, that opens up the playing field for Xavier to be reintegrated into the MCU’s mythology moving forward, without carrying the baggage of his previous onscreen history.
With Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness only weeks away from coming to theaters, fans are getting desperate to find out the truth one way or another.
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