The MCU’s X-Men entrance has a huge challenge ahead of them in regards to explaining where the mutants have been, but one Marvel comic storyline holds the perfect answer. Until Disney bought Fox in 2019, Marvel’s films could not integrate classic characters like Deadpool, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men into the MCU. Lack of access to the X-Men characters meant Disney could not introduce concepts like mutants and their relationship with humanity.
The mutants’ absence in the MCU poses a storytelling challenge. If mutants are only now being discovered, for example, then the origins of important characters like Charles Xavier, the formation of his School For Gifted Youngsters, and the formation of antagonistic groups like Magneto’s Brotherhood of Mutants will have to be rushed through. The existence of so much storytelling content is the reason the MCU’s perfect X-Men reboot idea would be to adapt their adventures and origins into a TV show. Marvel’s mutant history holds an abundance of established lore, so there needs to be a way to acknowledge it without the X-Men movies being dedicated to endless origin stories.
This huge challenge could be solved by an X-Men comic era known as the Krakoa Age. In the Krakoa Age of X-Men comics, all mutants, whether they originally sided with Xavier or Magneto, live in harmony on the sentient living island of Krakoa. If this idea is integrated into the MCU as the audience's introduction to mutant society, it could explain exactly where mutants have been all along, following up on Doctor Strange 2’s setup for X-Men. That story option could also still work with Ms Marvel's mutantkind set-up.
How Marvel Can Seamlessly Bring Iconic X-Men To The MCU
Setting up the X-Men on the hidden island of Krakoa effectively removes the need to make sense of the lack of public conflict surrounding mutant civil rights. The explanation, in this case, would be that mutants of conflicting ideologies settled their general disputes and retired to the island of Krakoa a long time ago. Events like the Phoenix Saga and Age of Apocalypse have come and gone, opening up the X-Men and their surrounding cast to all-new stories exclusive to the MCU. One potential avenue for storytelling is how the leaders of Krakoa, which include iconic characters like Magneto and Xavier themselves, may contrast politically while running the island and leading its inhabitants.
On top of skipping past old storylines, the Krakoa storyline allows the MCU to introduce iconic characters seamlessly. The Russo brothers’ Wolverine tease highlights the fact that what most want to see from the MCU's X-Men arrival is the introduction of countless beloved mutant characters. Introducing each one of them in origin stories would take a lot of time, however. The best way to introduce the X-Men themselves would be to do it in a contained team-up film like Eternals, but large swaths of mutant characters would have to wait. Introducing mutants on the island of Krakoa opens the opportunity to skip past introductions and present certain characters easily and seamlessly. On the island of Krakoa, dynamic characters like Wolverine, Mr. Sinister, and Apocalypse can pop up and interact with the story at any point - perhaps even pursuing their own agendas.
Thanks to the growing X-Men references and Easter eggs in the MCU, the question of the mutants’ place in the MCU is sure to get an answer soon. The mutants’ absence from the larger MCU so far presents the challenge of tackling where exactly they have been throughout the MCU timeline and what they’ve been doing. Introducing the X-Men on the island of Krakoa presents the perfect opportunity to answer where the mutants have been all along, without interfering with the MCU canon.
