X-Men: Dark Phoenix Blowout Points To A Major Character Death

Evidence continues to mount that X-Men: Dark Phoenix will bump off a major character come 2018.

As part of Entertainment Weekly’s red-hot cover story, the outlet has revealed that Dark Phoenix will contain a “massive twist halfway through that will irrevocably change the course of the franchise.” Time travel? X-deaths? The end of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters? All three, perhaps?

Granted, there are naturally a ton of unanswered questions ricocheting around social media in light of EW’s media dump, but if there’s one photo that’s sparked heated debate – more so than even the cover image of Jean Grey becoming one with the Phoenix Force – it’s the graveyard scene featuring Xavier (James McAvoy), Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Scott/Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), and Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee).

That tells us two things: one, X-Men: Dark Phoenix will include a major death scene, and two, it’ll likely involve either Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Beast (Nicholas Hoult), and/or Magneto (Michael Fassbender). Here’s that morbid pic in question:

To make matters more interesting, just last month we reported that one of the X-Men could meet their maker, when Professor X (James McAvoy), Magneto (Michael Fassbender), Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Beast (Nicholas Hoult) were all name-dropped as potential victims of Dark Phoenix’s reign.

McAvoy’s crippled mutant is pictured above, which ostensibly rules him out of the equation, but there’s still a chance that either Mystique, Beast or Magneto could fall at the hands of Jean Grey’s alter-ego.

Also of note, it seems X-Men: Dark Phoenix will tweak the comic book arc ever so slightly, after EW revealed that the movie kicks off when “a solar flare hits the X-Jet and the surge of energy ignites a malevolent, power-hungry new force within Jean (Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner) — the Phoenix.” And it all begins on November 2nd, 2018.