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Spider-Man: Brand New Day is teasing the MCU X-Men, and here's why it's different from Marvel's last few mutant hints

After five years of teases and false starts, the MCU X-Men are finally starting to show up in Spider-Man: Brand New Day - here's what laid the groundwork

A still from the Avengers: Doomsday teaser — Image credit: Marvel Studios

Features by Graeme McMillan, Editor

Published on Fri Jul 31 2026

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The X-Men are coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe — something that fans who have seen Spider-Man: Brand New Day know all too well, for reasons that we’ll not spoil just yet. (Consider this a spoiler warning, however; we’ll get there soon.) But Marvel Studios have been teasing Charles Xavier’s mutant heroes for five years by this point, with the new Spider-Man movie being just the latest example. So… what makes this time different? We’ll answer that after we’ve addressed the previous MCU X-Men appearances.

Oh, and one more time: spoiler warning for Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Read on at your own risk.

WandaVision (2021)

The first X-Men character to show up in the MCU was, amusingly enough, a metatextual trick played on the audience. Evan Peters, who played Quicksilver in Fox’s X-Men movies from 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past through 2019’s Dark Phoenix, appeared to be reprising his role when he showed up as ‘Pietro Maximoff’ in the first Disney+ Marvel series, WandaVision. Alas, it was just a gag played by producers, with Pietro being a fictional identity conjured by Wanda’s out of control magic. Peters was actually playing an entirely unrelated character called Ralph Bohner. But for a brief second, we all wondered if there was a multiversal crossover in the offing.

Ms. Marvel (2022)

While the Ms. Marvel miniseries didn’t feature any X-Men characters, it did end with a very clear X-Men tease: Kamala Khan was revealed to have a genetic mutation that set her apart from her family, a reveal that was accompanied by a musical sting that referenced the theme from the 1990s X-Men animated series, Kamala actress Iman Vellani would later confirm via Reddit that she was, in fact, a mutant — making her the first actual mutant native to the MCU. (The MCU Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch aren’t mutants, unless their original comic book origins.)

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

Fittingly, the first actual appearance by one of the core X-Men characters in the MCU came from none other than Charles Xavier, founder of the X-Men himself, portrayed once again by Sir Patrick Stewart, who’d originated the live-action role in 2000’s X-Men movie. Of course, it wasn’t a Charles Xavier of the ‘sacred timeline’ that most Marvel movies and shows take place in, but an alternate reality — Earth-838, to be precise, where ‘our’ Doctor Strange and Wanda Maximoff land temporarily after traveling through the multiverse. He dies soon after showing up, but that’s okay; we hadn’t really known this Professor Xavier for that long, if you think about it.

The Marvels (2023)

Alternate versions of Fox’s X-Men movie characters, you say? For more of those, let’s look no further than The Marvels, which had a post-credit sequence in which Monica Rambeau wakes up in an alternate reality where she meets not only a super-powered version of her own mother, but Hank McCoy, AKA the X-Men’s Beast — once again played by Kelsey Grammar, who had last appeared onscreen as the hero nine years earlier in X-Men: Days of Future Past. This dangling plotline of Monica being stranded in an alternate reality may or may not be addressed in December’s Avengers: Doomsday. We hope it is for Monica’s sake, considering it’s been a few years since her arrival by this point.

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Easily the greatest MCU/X-Men crossover to date in terms of scale is 2024’s hyper-successful Deadpool & Wolverine, which was Marvel Studios’ first full X-Men production, as well as a loving farewell for the Fox X-Men universe, centering two X-Men characters. Technically, none of it took place in the regular MCU for multiversal reasons — and maybe because it was also Marvel’s first R-rated production — but it is a story that explicitly ties in with the larger Multiverse Saga of it all, as particularly lampshaded easter eggs make clear. The first Marvel Studios X-Men movie? Pretty much, even if it doesn’t feature the words ‘X-Men’ anywhere in its title.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)

So if we’ve had five bites at the X-Men tease apple before now, what makes Spider-Man: Brand New Day so special? It’s very simple: this movie features the first X-Men character we’ve seen native to the regular, core MCU. And Jean Grey isn’t just any X-Men character: she’s one of the original team. Sadie Sink’s portrayal of a particularly troubled Jean suggests that we might be looking at an X-Men unlike any that movie audiences have seen before when the full team arrives in the MCU proper — and before then, there’s one last hurrah for the Fox version of the characters in December’s Avengers: Doomsday. It’s definitely a good time for X-Men fans who want to see their favorites on the big screen… as long as they’re okay with them not having the best time in the process.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is in theaters now.

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Graeme McMillan: Popverse Editor Graeme McMillan (he/him) has been writing about comics, culture, and comics culture on the internet for close to two decades at this point, which is terrifying to admit. He completely understands if you have problems understanding his accent.