It would be fair to say that one of the least interesting aspects of the original X-Men trilogy was the love triangle between Jean Grey, Cyclops and Wolverine. Audiences that weren’t familiar with the comic book history of the characters were probably wondering why it was even a contest, given that James Marsden’s Scott Summers was one of the weakest and least interesting characters in the movies and Hugh Jackman’s Logan was clearly the magnetic and charismatic focal point of the entire franchise.
By the time we got to The Last Stand, Cyclops was simply killed off to little fanfare in the first botched attempt at adapting the Phoenix Saga as the focus shifted entirely towards Jean and Logan. For fans that felt like the complicated dynamic between the three X-Men was never really done justice the first time around though, or even those that thought the whole thing was a total waste of screentime, it looks like we could be seeing the love triangle once more when Marvel Studios finally get around to their highly-anticipated reboot.
According to sources close to WGTC – the same ones that told us that She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel shows were in the works for Disney Plus, and that Ahsoka Tano will be in The Mandalorian season 2 – Marvel are currently planning to use the complex relationship between Jean, Cyclops and Wolverine as one of the main narrative driving forces in their take on the X-Men. But that’s not all.
Yes, it won’t only be just the one love triangle in play, as we’ve also heard that the studio are diving deeper into comic book canon and considering introducing Emma Frost into the mix as well and given the history that she also shares with Cyclops, we could end up getting two love triangles for the price of one as part of the MCU’s X-Men: Jean-Cyclops-Wolverine and Emma Frost-Cyclops-Jean.
While having four major characters involved in two different but equally complicated romantic entanglements would have to be handled carefully to avoid confusion, it would certainly mark a departure from the norm. So far in the MCU, the heroes tend to have a single love interest that remains an integral part of their story for the entire time, and making things a lot more complicated both humanizes the X-Men in question and offers something different that we’ve never seen before in any of the dozen movies we got from Fox.
