It’s reasonable to look at the recent output and announcements of theMarvel Cinematic Universeand assume that the franchise is collapsing in on itself. The Multiverse Saga could have been an opportunity to explore new ideas, but Marvel primarily uses it to resurrect familiar characters for cheap audience pops. This philosophy is working financially, but it’s also scaring away a lot of fans. If Marvel wants to avoid losing their audience, they’ll have to create some new stuff. Reinventing theX-Menwould be a perfect start.
Marvel’s financial troubles are far from all-consuming. The franchise cranks out at least one smash hit for every flop, but a studio as massive as Marvel can’t handle any bad news. One would think that the biggest media empire in modern memory would be able to simply tank a fewunimpressive box-office returnsand soldier on. Unfortunately, their need to show an increasing profit every quarter has locked them into a trap. That means they’re prepared to do whatever it takes and cut whatever they have to in order to reachEndgamenumbers again.
The MCU Already Has the X-Men
The Walt Disney Company completed its corporate acquisition of 21st Century Fox on Jun 15, 2025. The process took a little over two years, featuring a bidding war with Comcast and a lawsuit from the Department of Justice. With the ink on the contract finally dry, Disney’sMarvel Studios had the rightsto use the massive list of characters they couldn’t get their hands on from Fox. The crown jewel among Fox’s properties was theX-Men. Fox has produced 13X-Menmovies with wildly varied results. When Disney bought the company, they gained the legal option to make their ownX-Menmovies. They have, so far, passed on that opportunity. Instead, they’ve just kinda continued making Fox’sX-Menmaterial.
The X-Men exist in two forms in the MCU right now.X-Men ‘97is one of thefinest extensions of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the past decade. That animated series resurrected the hit 1990s Fox cartoon. While oneX-Mencartoon or another has remained a fixture on kids’ TV for the past few decades, the original 90s series stayed alive in many fans' hearts. Alternatively, Marvel has brought back several familiar Fox performers to reprise theirX-Menroles. Patrick Stewart played Professor X again inDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The big reveal in the post-credits sequence ofThe Marvelssees Kelsey Grammar become Beast again. Finally,Deadpool & Wolverineincludes a mess of callbacks and cameos that clumsily attempt to forge a loving sendoff to the Fox era. Fox’s X-Men will likely live on as an alternatereality in Marvel’s multiverse. They’re still out there, so Marvel can drag them back out of retirement again and again. However, that can’t be the end of their X-Men strategy.
Marvel Often Alters Character Traits and Stories
Though the Marvel Cinematic Universe certainly takes a lot from itscomic book source material, the franchise is known to completely reinvent characters and concepts. Necessity being the mother of invention, a lot of the MCU’s big changes came from their inability to use a lot of Marvel Comics material. Wanda Maximoff’s backstory used to center on Magneto, but since Marvel didn’t have access to the character, they had to try something different. A more interesting example might be Sam Wilson. The original Falcon was the hero of Harlem, who used an innate psychic connection with birds to command a trained attack falcon while becoming Captain America’s sidekick and successor. Marvel makes a lot of big, weird changes to alter a character’s place in the narrative, shift the tone, or set up other fixtures for success. These massive changes vary wildly in quality. Some completely save a lesser-known character, changing their portrayal for years. Others ruin everything fans like about the source material. Thoughit’s a hit-or-miss strategy, there’s no reason to believe Marvel will stop changing characters.
Marvel has Fox’s X-Men, but They’ll Have to Make Their Own
Yes, the Fox depictions of these characters are still iconic. Yes, Marvel will almost certainly continue to drag their new toys back every so often. If the franchise wants something interesting, especially something that will last, it will have to create a new cast of X-Men. Marvel needs its own mutants. They have to beable to do Wolverine, Professor X, Nightcrawler, Cyclops, Storm, and the rest of the gang with their own actors, stories, and context. With the original 2000s X-Men still kicking around in the margins, it will be more important than ever to create something distinct.
Marvel’s approach to the X-Men needs to be somewhat like their take on Spider-Man. Everyone recognizes Tom Holland as Peter Parker, though he’s the thirdiconic live-action attemptat the character. The fact that humanity rarely had to wait a long time betweenSpider-Manfilms helped Marvel push out something new. People were already used to multiple takes on the wall-crawler. The X-Men have only one live-action presentation, and it’s still a part of the MCU. They’ll have to make the mutants something new to stand out.
