Though it’s scheduled to land this August, The New Mutants is still shrouded in a lot of secrecy. Once a very promising installment in Fox’s apparently thriving X-Men franchise, now it threatens to send the universe out with a whimper as Disney hoovers up the studio. Reports and rumors haven’t painted an encouraging portrait of the film so far, but one new detail might just raise fans’ hopes a little bit.
According to the Twitter account New Mutants Updates, someone who viewed a test screening of the movie has revealed it features a lesbian romance between two of the superpowered kids held in the secret facility. Specifically, the star-crossed teens are Rahne Sinclair/Wolfsbane (Maisie Williams) and Danielle Moonstar/Mirage (Blu Hunt).
EXCLUSIVE: Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams) and Danielle Moonstar (Blu Hunt) have a lesbian relationship in New Mutants!
This comes from a source that have seen the movie in a test screening! Are u guys excited to see this kind of repesentation on the X-Men? 🏳️🌈👭 pic.twitter.com/eUlWF2yqed
— New Mutants Updates (@NewMutantsUp) March 14, 2019
X-Men fans will note that this is the second LGBT romance in a Marvel movie in two years. And the first one came from Fox, too.
Deadpool 2 broke new ground by featuring Teenage Negasonic Warhead in a relationship with Yukio. Some wished the romance had been more explicit, but still you have to give the Merc with the Mouth’s sequel credit for going where the MCU has yet to tread. Likewise, props to them for following it up with another same-sex relationship.
Now we just need to be able to see The New Mutants. The much-discussed extensive reshoots that were supposed to go down last fall never happened, leaving the fate of the film in question. It seems to be a genuine possibility that Fox could just dump the movie on Hulu as it is to cut their losses, something that producer Lauren Shuler Donner has acknowledged but hopes won’t happen, but we’ll have to wait and see.
In any case, even if The New Mutants is never released, at least it sounds like Marvel’s working hard to feature more LGBT representation in its own movies in the future, with Kevin Feige promising that it’s a priority for the next few years.
As of now, The New Mutants is still due to drop in theaters on August 2nd, but we’ll let you know if that changes.
