With the X-Men now in Marvel Studios’ possession following Disney’s acquisition of Fox, the iconic superhero team are officially set to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the near future. Although it may be a good while yet before we see the characters enter the fray, fans are already excited at the prospect of seeing Charles Xavier’s students share a screen with some of the MCU’s established heroes.
Up until the Fox takeover, the rights issues over certain Marvel names were incredibly complicated, which is why we briefly had two Quicksilvers existing in two separate franchises by different studios at the same time. The MCU was free to use some of these characters, but they weren’t legally allowed to use the term ‘mutants,’ which is why the go-to term for a while was simply to call them ‘enhanced.’
Now that Kevin Feige is in charge of the whole roster, it’ll be interesting to see how the long-running franchise deals with introducing mutants into a mythology that has already existed for over a decade. So far, we haven’t officially seen any mutants in the MCU yet, but in a recent interview to promote the still-not-delayed Black Widow, Scarlett Johansson used the term to describe the Hulk when talking about making The Avengers.
While it may be an innocent slip of the tongue, the word ‘mutant’ is a loaded one for both X-Men and MCU fans, and likely has a few people behind the scenes at Marvel tearing their hair out as they prepare for the inevitable speculation.
“None of us knew if this movie was going to work. It seemed crazy. There’s a Nordic god, there’s the Tony Stark character, the billionaire playboy, and then there’s a mutant scientist who’s got an anger management problem. This sounds like people are either going to love it, or it’s going to be a mess.”
Obviously, Johansson hasn’t just spilled top secret information about the future of the MCU and was using the word innocuously, but it nonetheless marks a rare wrong choice of phrase for the typically well-oiled Marvel publicity machine. In any case, the X-Men have survived being rebooted before, and they’re now in safer hands than ever for their next big screen outing. Just don’t bet on the Hulk being unveiled as a surprise member of the team.
