Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier, Ian McKellen’s Magneto, and more X-Men characters are going to appear in Avengers: Doomsday.
As Marvel announces the cast of Avengers: Doomsday, it’s so far been revealed that Xavier and McKellen will both reprise their respective X-Men roles in the forthcoming MCU ensemble movie. Other X-Men characters who are part of the ensemble include Kelsey Grammer’s Beast, Alan Cumming’s Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler, and Rebecca Romijn’s Mystique.
No official plot details for Avengers: Doomsday have been revealed at this time; however, with a number of X-Men characters set to appear in the movie, many MCU fans are wondering how this might happen.
How could Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen’s X-Men characters appear in Avengers: Doomsday?
At the end of The Marvels, Monica Rambeau wakes up in an alternate universe where she is greeted by Grammer’s Hank McCoy. This means that, within the Marvel Multiverse, the Fox X-Men exist in their own little space that, thus far, has remained largely untouched by the rest of the MCU (apart from Deadpool, who made his way from that world to Earth-616 in Deadpool vs. Wolverine). With Monica now being present in this world, Hank and the rest of the X-Men could be looking for a way to send Teyonah Parris’ character home.
In the Secret Wars comic by Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic, the main Marvel Universe and Ultimate Earth-1610 Universe (Miles Morales’ universe) collide in an incursion. Other Marvel universes are caught in the collision, and out of the ashes comes a new Battleworld universe, which Doctor Doom seizes control of.
One theory for Avengers: Doomsday could be that the Fox X-Men Universe attempts to make contact with Earth-616, only for an incursion to happen and create Battleworld, which would set up Avengers: Secret Wars. This likely wouldn’t happen until the third act of the movie, though this is all just speculation and nothing has been announced at this time.
Having said that, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness introduced a different Charles Xavier from Earth-838, so there’s no guarantee that all of the X-Men characters are playing the same version of the character they portrayed in the past. Channing Tatum’s inclusion as Gambit could further point to this. Gambit was played by Taylor Kitsch in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, meaning that Tatum’s version of the character comes from a different part of the multiverse.
Additionally, The Fantastic Four: First Steps is also set in a different reality than Earth-616, meaning the incursion could occur from those two worlds colliding together.
MCU fans will have to wait until Marvel Studios releases Avengers: Doomsday on May 1, 2026, to find out definite answers. Avengers: Secret Wars follows on May 7, 2027.
