Who's the main antagonist of Fox's final X-Men movie, New Mutants? For a while in 2019, it looked distinctly possible that New Mutants might never see the light of day. Originally pitched by director Josh Boone as an extension of the Fox X-Men movie universe, rumors were swirling around New Mutants' release even before Disney arrived on the scene. Reshoots were reportedly demanded and then dropped, a battle between director and studio supposedly took place in post-production and Fox ended up pushing Dark Phoenix instead. With New Mutants still unreleased, the finished film passed to Disney and, after even more rumor and innuendo regarding editing and reshoots, a release date of April 2020 was finally set.
Based on the 1982 Marvel comic of the same name, New Mutants follows a group of super-powered youngsters who find themselves in a strange facility while coming to terms with their mutant abilities. In the comics, the New Mutants are essentially a junior version of the X-Men, but while Charles Xavier was originally scripted to appear in Boone's New Mutants movie, it seems that may no longer be the case, with Disney said to have axed any and all connection to Fox's franchise after the abject failure of Dark Phoenix.
Boone's film leans more towards the horror side of the comic book genre and introduces many lesser-known, yet no less exciting, X-Men comic figures such as Magik, Wolfsbane and Cannonball. But while New Mutants' marketing does a fair job of introducing the central group of young heroes, it's somewhat more ambiguous when it comes to the villain. Here's what we currently know about the main antagonist of New Mutants.
New Mutants' Villain Hasn't Been Confirmed
Gone are the days of X-Men: Apocalypse or Dark Phoenix where the villain is clearly signposted in the title. While Demon Bear has been confirmed for New Mutants, his exact status remains somewhat in limbo, as explored in more detail below. However, no other major enemy has been confirmed to appear, leaving the primary villain slot surprisingly open. New Mutants' marketing material hasn't announced any recognizable big bad like most superhero movies do, and the trailers only provide brief hints as to who the youngsters might find themselves battling come the film's climax. The fact that the villain of New Mutants hasn't been explicitly revealed this close to release suggests a deeper mystery at play.
New Mutants' Villain Isn't Demon Bear
Demon Bear was confirmed as a villain for the New Mutants movie as early as 2016, but Josh Boone stated in a 2017 interview that this creepy comic figure wasn't necessarily the main baddie of the story, with New Mutants instead taking elements of the Demon Bear comic arc as a starting point and moving out in other directions. This perhaps makes sense, since the Demon Bear of the Marvel comics is an amalgamation of Mirage's parents and came to Danielle via visions, eventually threatening the entire New Mutants gang. Based on the trailer footage and the source material, it seems that Danielle Moonstar will once again be haunted by a giant demonic teddy, and her new friends will have to take the thing down.
With that said, Demon Bear perhaps isn't the most natural main villain for a superhero movie, even one as unconventional as New Mutants. He is, after all, an animalistic entity rather than the kind of fully fleshed-out antagonist modern audiences have come to expect. So while it's confirmed that the bear will feature as an enemy in some capacity during New Mutants, it's unlikely to be the figure pulling the strings or the one responsible for trapping the assembled youngsters in the strange hospital that acts as the movie's primary setting. Nevertheless, Demon Bear could be a strong secondary villain for New Mutants, with the ability to draw power from the fear of others and to sway humans under his own control.
New Mutants' Villain Could Be Cecilia Reyes
The latest New Mutants' trailer is deliberately ambiguous with regards to revealing the movie's villain, but judged purely on the snippets of footage presented, the only natural conclusion to draw is that Cecilia Reyes, the doctor seemingly running the film's mutant hospital, is the main villain of the piece. Reyes is seen ominously glaring at handcuffed patients from afar, and it's highly unlikely that she's bought this crop of mutants together just for group therapy and a friendly check-up. More pertinently, Mirage finds the hospital surrounded by a force-field that Magik describes as a "cage." In the X-Men comics, Reyes' ability involves the creation of a personal force-field to protect her from harm, so it wouldn't be a huge stretch for her to create a barrier around an entire facility. The New Mutants' trailer also highlights Reyes watching her patients from a creepy surveillance setup and she talks to the mutants about "getting better" - never a positive phrase when used in the context of mutants.
Most tellingly, Mirage tells Rahne, "I saw something I don't think she wanted me to see," which naturally positions Reyes as an antagonist to the other mutants. This would certainly be a curious development, as Reyes in the comic books is essentially a heroic character. Although she has no desire to join the X-Men or become a crime-fighter, she usually winds up helping them anyway. Reyes as a villain might be a departure, but since she's a relatively minor character in the grand scheme of Marvel, it's a change that New Mutants could probably get away with. Dr. Reyes could be the puppet-master behind the more physically threatening Demon Bear.
New Mutants' Villain Could Instead Be Rahne's Father
Rahne's father, Reverend Craig Sinclair, is set to be portrayed by Happy Anderson and is a distinctly unpleasant character if his comic counterpart is anything to go by. A religious fanatic, the Reverend pretends to raise Rahne as an adopted father figure, but he is later revealed to be her biological dad via a prostitute. Raised in an abusive household, Rahne's childhood becomes even worse when Craig discovers her mutant ability and leads an angry mob to kill her. This origin story is alluded to in the New Mutants' trailer, where Rahne is seen walking the aisle of a church.
It's currently not clear whether Reverend Sinclair will merely be a villainous presence in Rahne's background, or whether he'll become an active part of the plot in the present-day timeline. In the comics, Sinclair is connected to the anti-mutant terrorist organization the Purifiers, and this may potentially link to Reyes' line about "getting better." It's possible the Reverend and Reyes are working together to purge young mutants of their powers, and this would be how Rahne finds herself booked into the facility. Rahne's father has been absent from the New Mutants marketing thus far, and this could either be because he has a relatively minor role, or to conceal his true nature as a main villain.
What About Those Mister Sinister Rumors?
According to reports, a major X-Men villain was planned for New Mutants, but ultimately cut. The story goes that Jon Hamm had been cast as Nathaniel Essex, otherwise known as Mister Sinister, and was set for a post-credits appearance in New Mutants. As brilliant as that sounds, the scene was dropped even before the film switched from Fox to Disney, with Hamm replaced by Antonio Banderas who was playing a second, unidentified post-credits villain.
Given New Mutants' relocation Disney, it's possible that Banderas has also been removed from the finished film, since there's unlikely to be any kind of sequel. There remains a possibility, however, that either Sinister or Banderas' mysterious character could somehow remain the overarching antagonist of New Mutants. Significantly, the New Mutants trailer shows "Milbury" to be the name of the facility, with Nathan Milbury being a pseudonym of Sinister. Fox's franchise set up Mister Sinister at the end of X-Men: Apocalypse, so his appearance would've made sense originally, but not so much now that Disney are at the helm. Unfortunately, fans will have to wait until New Mutants is released to find out for sure whether Sinister or Banderas made it into the post-credits.
