Previously On X-Men Special Edition: Everything You Need To Know About The New X-Men Cast

After months — years, really — of speculation, the cast of the first X-Men movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was revealed Friday at the annual D23 event.

It features some names we’ve known (Sadie Sink, Kit Conner), some that have been circling around for awhile (Adam Driver) and at least one surprise (Maya Boyd). This is the just the first cast announcement; the number of rumors surrounding the casting of Beast suggest he has a role in the film, but there was no Beast announcement at this event, and Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige stated this isn’t the complete cast just before revealing these stars.

But for now, at least, we have a cast of six, and here’s everything you need to know about the actors and the characters they’re playing.

Jean Grey – Sadie Sink

The first member of the cast to be known, thanks to the character’s turn as the central antagonist of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Sink got her start in Broadway and broke through as Max on the latter four seasons of Stranger Things. Jean Grey made her comic debut in the very first X-Men issue, X-Men #1 (Sep 1963), and is the only member of the original team shown joining up, as she serves as the issue’s POV character as she arrives at the X-Mansion for the first time (though later stories would establish a teacher/student relationship with Professor X which predates the X-Men). At first, Jean was merely telekinetic, able to move objects with her mind, but later gained telepathic abilities like Professor X (originally, as a result of Xavier “gifting” her some of his power; later, it was revealed Xavier had suppressed her nascent telepathic abilities and later turned them back on).

For much of her published history, she has been tied to the Phoenix, a celestial force meant to represent life and rebirth in the galaxy, leading to her death for an extended period and ultimate resurrection twice. While “The Dark Phoenix Saga,” the story which culminates in her first death, is one of the X-Men’s seminal tales, hopefully the MCU avoids it for awhile, given the Fox films already adapted it (poorly) twice. Once upon a time, I would have killed for a cinematic adaptation of “Dark Phoenix.” Now, I just want a chance to see Jean be Jean for a bit.

Notable Stories: “The Dark Phoenix Saga” — Uncanny X-Men #129-137 (1980), The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix (1994), X-Men Origins: Jean Grey #1 (2008), Jean Grey #1-11 (2017-2018), X-Men Red #1-11 (2018), Jean Grey (vol. 2) #1-4 (2023).

Cyclops – Kit Connor

Announced shortly before the D23 event, Connor is probably best known as one-half of the lead duo in Netflix Heartstoppers (alongside the MCU’s Joe Locke aka Wiccan, leading to a lot of fancasting of the actor as Hulking). Sometimes called the first X-Man (as the first mutant recruited to the team by Professor X) Cyclops aka Scott Summers debuted in X-Men #1 alongside his future wife Jean Grey. Arguably the most powerful of the original X-Men thanks to his devastating optic blast, he was also one of the most dangerous, given his ability to only control said blast by wearing glasses made of “ruby quartz” which nullified the beam. This classic bit of Silver Age tension led to Scott being one of the angstiest of the original X-Men, spending much of the pining bemoaning his lack of control (later stories would attribute it to brain damage caused by a childhood accident, the result of jumping out of a burning plane with his brother while his parents were kidnapped by bird-aliens to become a brood mare and space pirate, respectively) and pining for Jean.

Over time, he become a much cooler and confident character, able to survive some serious bouts of character assassination (such as when he ditched his wife and newborn son to play with his high school friends and old teenage sweetheart) and becoming the steward of the X-Men’s mission to an arguable greater degree than Xavier himself. Personally, I hope the new cinematic version of the character gets a chance to shine, and isn’t pushed out by Wolverine the way James Marsden‘s take on the character was.

Notable Stories: Uncanny X-Men #126-128 — “Proteus” (1979), Uncanny X-Men #168-176 — “From the Ashes” (1983), Uncanny X-Men #201 (1985), X-Factor #65-68 (1991), Uncanny X-Men (vol. 3) #1-35 (2013-2015), Cyclops (vol. 4) #1-5 (2026).

Professor X – Christopher Abbott

The first of two alums from Lena Dunham‘s Girls in the cast, Abbott is also an acclaimed theater actor, having recently been nominated for a Tony for his portrayal of Biff Loman in the revival of Death of A Salesman. There would be no X-Men without Professor X – he debuted in X-Men #1 as well – making his inclusion in the film no surprise, but the X-Men have had something of rocky relationship with Professor X in the 21st century. While not without his foibles in the first four decades of the character’s existence (including that time he notably wiped Magneto’s mind, inadvertently leaving himself open to becoming Onslaught, a massive powerful being who briefly turned the Avengers and Fantastic Four into Image characters), in the 21st century it became increasingly trendy to do stories which pulled dark secrets out of Xavier’s past, to create tension in the character, between his status as a moral visionary and someone who was, on the microlevel, kind of a jerk.

And so it was that we learned things like the time he created a whole team of X-Men, including Cyclops and Havok’s brother, and sent them to their deaths before wiping everyone’s memories of them or when he knowingly kept the emerging sentience of the Danger Room enslaved in order to better train the X-Men. Ultimately, Xavier spent much of the 2010s dead and off the board, but he returned in time for the 2019-2023 “Krakoa Era,” which struck a better balance between “Xavier the Visionary” and “Xavier the Jerk.”

Notable Stories: X-Men #65 (1969), X-Men #117 (1978), Uncanny X-Men #161 (1982), New Mutants #26-28 (1984-85), Uncanny X-Men #309 (1993), X-Men Legacy #208 (2008), House of X/Powers of X #1-6 (2019).

Rogue – Inde Navarrette

One of the two members of the announced-so-far cast to not debut in X-Men #1, Rogue first appeared in Avengers Annual #10 (1981) as the latest member of Mystique’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Having (off-panel) used her ability to absorb other people’s powers and memories via touch to permanently (and inadvertently) absorb Carol Danver’s flight, super-strength and invulnerability powers, Rogue makes short work of a stacked Avengers roster. After making a few subsequent appearances as a traditional villain (including a brief run as a Dazzler antagonist), Rogue soon becomes the first in a long line of villains-turned-X-Men when she comes to Professor X for help controlling her powers and dealing with the memories of Carol Danvers rattling around her mind. Over time, a series of artists, including John Romita Jr. and Marc Silvestri, would increasingly make the character more of a sexpot visually, underscoring the tension in her whole “unable to touch anyone without harming” limitation of her power, culminating in Jim Lee‘s full-on bombshell depiction of the character, which more or less became the standard going forward and would imprint itself on a generation of fans thanks to X-Men: The Animated Series.

Nowadays, Rogue is considered one of the most stable and stalwart of the X-Men, able to control her powers, happily married to Gambit and leading a branch of the X-Men in the pages of Gail Simone‘s Uncanny X-Men. The original cinematic version of the character, however, leaned more into the “scared, alone, and unable to control her powers” aspects of the character’s earliest days, and given the young bent of the MCU cast, that will likely be the case again, at least to start. In Navarrette, the MCU snags an actress on the rise, following her breakthrough and acclaimed role in this year’s surprise blockbuster, Obsession.

Notable Stories: Avengers Annual #10 (1981), Uncanny X-Men #172-173 (1983), Uncanny X-Men #182 (1984), Uncanny X-Men #269 (1990), Astonishing X-Men #1-4 (1995), X-Men (vol. 2) #188-193 — “Supernovas”, Mr. and Mrs. X #1-12 (2019).

Storm – Maya Boyd

Another veteran of the stage, Boyd is the biggest unknown of the young cast, having debuted on Broadway in 2023 and breaking through as the lead of & Juliet in 2024. In contrast, Halle Berry was one of the biggest and most established names in the cast when she took on the role in the original X-Men film (thankfully for Boyd, “better than Halle Berry’s Storm” is a low bar to clear). Comic book Storm debuted in 1975’s Giant-Size X-Men #1, the same issue which introduced Colossus and Nightcrawler, brought Wolverine onto the team, and kicked off the “All New, All Different” Era of the X-Men, the beginning of their climb to stratospheric popularity. Since then, Storm has rarely been away from the X-Men (or without a series of her own) for very long, largely viewed as one of the group’s elder statespeople and often their moral compass (especially as Professor X and Cyclops’ stories took darker turns in the 21st century).

Storm also has connections to Black Panther, thanks to a mid-2000s story which saw the character marry and Storm become Queen of Wakanda (a story which was itself inspired by a backup story in 1980’s Marvel Team-Up #100 which established they had been childhood sweethearts, essentially). While their marriage would eventually end in annulment during the events of 2012’s Avengers vs. X-Men event, it wouldn’t be at all surprising to see the MCU lean on a Storm/Wakanda connection given Black Panther 3 is already on the studio’s calendar as well.

Notable Stories: Uncanny X-Men #168-176 — “From the Ashes” (1983), Uncanny X-Men #186 and #198 — “Lifedeath” and “Lifedeath II” (1984), Uncanny X-Men #201 (1985), Uncanny X-Men #215-216 (1986), X-Men: World’s Apart (2008-09), X-Men Red (vol. 2)  #1-18 (2022-2024).

Emma Frost – Samara Weaving

A modern day Scream Queen probably best known for the horror-comedy Ready or Not (though her role as Scarlett in the not-great 2021 G.I. Joe Origins- Snake Eyes film lives as a footnote in my memory for some reason), it’s unclear at the moment whether Weaving is playing a hero or villain. Like Rogue, Emma Frost is another “villain turned X-Man,” (albeit one with a much deeper villain CV than Rogue ever had) and the new movie could easily lean into Emma as the villainous White Queen of the Hellfire Club just as well as it could the snarky headmistress and too-cool-for-school X-Man aspects of the character. Debuting at the start of the “Dark Phoenix Saga” (in the same issue as Kitty Pryde), Emma would turn face to become co-headmistress (along aside veteran X-Man Banshee) of a new school for mutants in 1994’s Generation X.

She would later join the X-Men during Grant Morrison’s iconic 2000s-era run, during the course of which she would begin a psychic affair with Cyclops. With Jean off the board following her second death, the Cyclops/Emma relationship would have surprisingly-long legs, with numerous writers enjoying the interplay between the tightly-wound Scott and the exhibitionist Emma. Though the days of “Scemma” are long behind her now, she remains a key power player in the X-Men universe (she is currently headlining what is, effectively, the third X-Men book in X-Men United), and with a role – whether hero or villain – assured for the movie, that’s unlikely to change in the near future.

Notable Stories: Uncanny X-Men #129-131 (1980), Uncanny X-Men #314 (1994), Generation X #1-19 (1994-96), New X-Men #114-116 — “E is For Extinction” (2001), New X-Men #138-139 (2003), Astonishing X-Men (vol. 3) #13-18 — “Torn” (2006), X-Men: Black — Emma Frost (2018)

Mister Sinister – Adam Driver

Arguably the biggest name in the cast so far, Driver (the other Girls alum) leveraged his role as Kylo Ren in the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy into a variety of critically acclaimed roles in films like BlacKkKlansman and Marriage Story. Reportedly, MCU head Kevin Feige had been badgering Driver for years to join the MCU, and Driver smartly acquiesced by accepting a villain role, something which will, as seen with actors like Cate Blanchett and Christian Bale, allow him to come in, do his thing, and get out, without having to be tied down to an onerous multi-film contract.  In Mister Sinister (aka Nathanial Milbury), he’ll be playing one of the signature X-Men villains to not yet make it onto the silver screen (despite being teased in both X-Men: Days of Future Past and New Mutants). Debuting in Uncanny X-Men #221 (1987) as the mysterious leader of the murderous Marauders with a bad temper and a distinctive look (aka Vampire Colossus with a cape), Sinister played a key role in 1989’s crossover event, “Inferno,” in which he was effectively retconned into being the person responsible for everything shitty that had happened to Cyclops and which culminated in his apparent death.

He was brought back in the 1990s, where his experience as a geneticist was firmly established and played up, leading to a decade or so of roles in stories in which he’d pop up into a story, drop some cryptic hints about such and such, and get out. In the 2010s, writer Kieron Gillen would slightly reframe the character as a kind of evil Oscar Wilde, gleefully dropping snarking bon mots right alongside troubling genetic creations, and that presentation of the character has largely stuck since. It remains to be seen whether Driver will be asked to play that version of the character, or the more traditional “tortured Victorian scientist obsessed with Scott Summers … while also looking like Vampire Colossus with a cape” presentation.

Notable Stories: Uncanny X-Men #239-243 — “Inferno” (1989), X-Factor #72-75 (1991), X-Men (vol. 2) #23, The Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix (1996), X-Men Legacy #211-214 (2008), Uncanny X-Men (vol. 2) #1-4 — “Everything is Sinister” (2011), Hellions #1-16 (2020-2021), “Sins of Sinister” (2023).