The X-Men are now officially on the Marvel chessboard.
Patrick Stewart‘s Professor Charles Xavier, Ian McKellen‘s Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto, and James Marsden‘s Scott Summers/Cyclops headline their own Avengers: Doomsday teaser, which debuts in an official capacity after a week of online leaks.
The footage offers our first look at these stars reprising their superhero roles from the previous 20th Century Fox era of X-Men movies, now in the Disney-owned Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Following two teasers, one revealing Chris Evans’ return as Steve Rogers and another all about Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, this new preview reveals Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, a safe haven for young mutants, now in shambles.
There’s the joyous sight of seeing longtime frenemies Xavier and Magneto playing chess again, their favored pastime from the original X-Men movies, but it’s paired with a more haunting scene of Marsden’s Cyclops. The leader of these superheroes rips off his protective visor and unleashes a catastrophic optic blast.
“Death comes for us all. It’s all I know for sure,” Magneto says. “The question isn’t, ‘Are you prepared to die?’ The question is, ‘Who will you be when you close your eyes?'”
Fans should take note of the new X-suits for these characters. Cyclops dons a more comic-accurate blue-and-yellow uniform, while Xavier wears a black-and-red X symbol on his gray jacket. This particular design was the aesthetic for Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s 2001 New X-Men comics.
Other X-Men characters not seen in this first look but who are confirmed for roles in Avengers: Doomsday include Channing Tatum’s Gambit, Alan Cumming’s Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler, Rebecca Romijn’s Mystique, and Kelsey Grammer’s Hank McCoy/Beast.
Ian McKellen’s Magneto returns in X-Men ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ teaser.
Marvel Entertainment/Youtube
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It’s a move that’s been in the works ever since Disney purchased Fox in a splashy studio-restructuring deal in 2019. Though, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige told Entertainment Weekly in 2024, “It took a long time between whenever [the acquisition] was announced to it all getting done, so [the characters] weren’t really in our sandbox for a very long time after that first announcement happened.”
In the lead-up, we’ve seen Grammer’s Beast pop in for The Marvels’ post-credits scene, Stewart’s Xavier prominently featuring in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Deadpool and Wolverine bring a whole host of mutant characters to the MCU.
James Marsden’s Cyclops releases an optic blast in X-Men ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ teaser.
Marvel Entertainment/Youtube
Avengers: Doomsday, directed by Marvel golden children Joe and Anthony Russo, will feature characters from across the multiverse breaking realities in a story involving Robert Downey Jr.’s Victor Von Doom/Doctor Doom. The plot continues with Avengers: Secret Wars, which Feige said “really leads us into a new age of mutants and of the X-Men.”
At that point, Marvel made known plans to recast X-Men characters as part of a “reset.”
Doomsday is currently scheduled for Dec. 18, 2026, with Secret Wars coming Dec. 17, 2027. Watch the latest teaser above.