The Fox/Disney merger that was announced as far back as 2017 is finally going through, with Fox’s X-Men franchise going out with a fizzle this summer with Dark Phoenix and Marvel Studios regaining the rights to everyone’s favorite mutant superhero team.
It’s probably a few years away, but eventually, the X-Men characters will be fully rebooted by Marvel (apart from Deadpool, who isn’t going to change a bit) and integrated into the MCU. At that point, some classic MCU team-ups will surely be in order. So, here are 10 X-Men Characters And The MCU Icons They Should Team Up With.
Deadpool and Spider-Man
Fans have been clamoring for these two to pair up on-screen together since the merger was first announced. Deadpool co-creator Rob Liefeld doesn’t think Disney would let Sony cash in on a potential team-up, but the idea of Ryan Reynolds’ foul-mouthed, ultraviolent Deadpool teaming up with Tom Holland’s adorable, baby-faced, nervous Spider-Man is too lucrative for the studio to pass it up.
The movie might have to be rated PG-13 to justify its budget and appeal to younger Spidey fans as well as Deadpool fans, but Once Upon a Deadpool has shown that the Deadpool character can get around that by going extra meta.
Professor X and Smart Hulk
Professor X is the leader of the X-Men. He’s possibly the smartest person in the entire Marvel universe and he also has an incredibly powerful mind that he can use to do pretty much anything. Avengers: Endgame merged Bruce Banner and the Hulk to create “Smart Hulk,” a character with incredible physical brawn as well as the brains to build a time machine.
So, it makes sense that he’d be the character to pair up with Professor X in the MCU. With Tony Stark dead, the “Science Bros.” are fading away. Charles Xavier could take Stark’s place as Banner’s partner in scientific achievement.
Jean Grey and Captain Marvel
There’s a good chance that superhero fans won’t want to see “The Dark Phoenix Saga” adapted for the screen for a third time, but if anyone’s going to get it right, it’s the brass behind the consistently satisfying MCU. Jean Grey shares a lot of her powers with Carol Danvers, since they both got their abilities when their DNA was imbued with cosmic energy.
The MCU doesn’t have a really great female pairing yet aside from Gamora and Nebula, at least one headlining a movie, and maybe a strong candidate would be Jean Grey and Captain Marvel. They have a relationship in the comics, especially in Jean’s first ever solo series, so it makes sense that she would be involved in the character’s MCU debut.
Wolverine and Thor
The ending of Avengers: Endgame seemed to set up a storyline in which Thor joins the Guardians of the Galaxy, but this will likely only be for one movie where he gets back in shape, defeats a powerful villain, and gets his groove back. After that, Thor’s MCU future is a blank canvas, and that could see the God of Thunder hilariously team up with the adamantium-powered mutant Wolverine.
Chris Hemsworth not only wants this team-up to happen, he also wants Hugh Jackman to return to the role for it. Hemsworth said, “I love that character...I just love Hugh Jackman. Unfortunately, he died in the last movie, didn’t he?...We can bring him back to life...I’m going to get on the one phone and try to coax him over or convince him and see if he has one more in him.”
Quicksilver and Ant-Man
According to reports, Deadpool is the only character from Fox’s X-Men movies that Disney and Marvel aren’t interested in rebooting. However, one character they should consider keeping the same is Evan Peters’ Quicksilver. We already had a Quicksilver in the MCU, but he was instantly forgettable.
Peters’ Quicksilver has been one of the only fun parts of the recent X-Men movies and the tone of his scenes would fit perfectly into the MCU. As two of the funniest Marvel characters and also two that rely on avoiding danger by running really fast or shrinking instead of facing it, Quicksilver and Ant-Man would make a great MCU pairing.
X-23 and Scarlet Witch
In a last-ditch effort to make Scarlet Witch as interesting in the MCU as she deserves to be, the producers could pair her up with Wolverine’s cloned daughter, X-23. Played by Dafne Keen in Logan, X-23 is a young, reckless kid with adamantium claws and anger issues.
Wanda Maximoff would likely relate to her as a mutant who survived government experimentation and then lost everything, and take her under her wing to train her to use her powers for good, thus giving her life meaning again and redeeming herself for the events of Captain America: Civil War that led to the Sokovia Accords.
Cyclops and Captain America
Steve Rogers’ Captain America finished his eight-year character arc earlier this year, but Sam Wilson’s Captain America has just begun his. Cyclops was conceived around the era of the Vietnam War, back when heroes in American pop culture were gruff, cynical, and anti-authority, like Wolverine. Cyclops was created as the antithesis of this kind of character, as a bright-eyed, optimistic American hero.
In this sense, he’d make the perfect partner for Sam Wilson’s Captain America in the MCU. Wilson is more often paired with Bucky, but the producers could find room for Cyclops. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who wrote all three Captain America movies in the MCU, have said they’d like to reinvent the character for the franchise.
Magneto and Loki
It was revealed recently that the writers of the first Thor movie were told by Marvel to create a villain who was as diabolical and memorable as Magneto. While that movie didn’t quite manage to do that, his later MCU appearances did.
Now that we know Loki is alive out there somewhere, possibly in an alternate timeline with the all-powerful Space Stone in his possession, it would be great to see him team up with Magneto. As we’ve seen from his relationships with Thanos and the Grandmaster, there’s nothing Loki does better than loyally serving a more powerful villain than himself.
Kitty Pryde and the Guardians of the Galaxy
In the comics, Kitty Pryde has been heavily involved with the Guardians of the Galaxy – Star-Lord in particular, with whom she’s been in a romantic relationship. In the MCU, Star-Lord has romantic feelings towards Gamora, but at the moment, he doesn’t know where Gamora is, or if she even still exists, and either way, she’s always been resistant to a more-than-platonic relationship with him.
Plus, it’s important to remember that the Guardians of the Galaxy are a pretty male-dominated team, with only Gamora and Nebula in terms of female representation – and one of them is missing and the other one isn’t really a member.
Storm and Black Panther
Alexandra Shipp, who played Storm in Fox’s X-Men movies, dismissed the idea of pairing her character up with Black Panther in the MCU, claiming she doesn’t need a man for validation. But in the comics, Storm and Black Panther are Marvel’s foremost power couple.
They even got married at one point, making Storm the Queen of Wakanda. Since MCU fans love Wakanda and the Black Panther character, getting Storm in there might be the best way to integrate her new incarnation into the MCU. She might need to develop her own arc first before making the leap to Wakanda, but Marvel fans would be delighted to see the marriage translated to the screen.