How should the Mutants(X-men) be introduced in the MCU?

[Killerbee911]

In the Wandavision thread a small topic broke out about how the mutants(X-men) should be introduced in MCU. To summarize it the two major points look like

1. Mutants were always around. How ever you introduce them you need to make sure that mutants are seen as "natural" evolutionary step up in humanity evolution and some link to past is needed..

2. Mutants are just showing up today. They are caused by "the Blip" and Wanda Hex, Maybe even the government like Ultimate X-men.

It was interesting topic in there and it was interesting to see different people point of view. My personal point of view is because you didn't introduce them in from the beginning of the MCU the best approach now is a reimaging of the X-men franchise being started today in 2021. With the mutant phenomena just being a thing now of course for example effects many things like 2 of the biggest villains backstory Apocalypse and Magneto, especially the later whose strongest origin is tied real world history event but saves the franchise and Marvel from the mental gymnastics of mutants always existing. A simple way of saying this is the Ultimate universe has a great guideline on how to introduce mutants in the present day.

What are your thoughts?

PS No MCU vs FoX Bs in here, I am going to report those post to mods with swiftness. This just about how you think Marvel should approach mutants going forward and what mechanism they should use introduce mutant powers.

[Vakanai]

Definitely new. Trying to say they were always there with the MCU as it has been? Just...no.

[Midvillian1322]

1

Mutants In very small numbers have always been around. In recent years Xavier could have been helping to keep them hidden. The snap just speeds along things and mutants become less rare and no longer manageable. Wolverine could have his entire history. Hope magento is still a Holocaust survivor. Just say his manipulation of the magnetic fields slows his aging. So he looks 40 instead of 90 something. Xavier could have been wiping people minds of mutants and even have formed his OG team(Whatever characters Marvel chooses).

[Midvillian1322]

Definitely new. Trying to say they were always there with the MCU as it has been? Just...no.

Why? The Ancient one and an army of wizards have been around the entire time. Why would a very small number of mutants be problematic? Not being confrontational, curious what your reasoning is.

[Conn Seanery]

I'd be down for mutants always being around, but in secret. Xavier's school has been around to help those that can pass as human control their powers. The events of the MCU up until now have encouraged them (the X-Men) to test the waters, step out into the spotlight. I'd even take it a step further with Xavier helping hide their existence with his powers until now, maybe even in some official capacity as a part of some superhuman affairs government agency, a larger global organization, or maybe S.H.I.E.L.D. before it went down. The mutant reveal could be what drives them to be classically hated and feared, because they were hidden from the world for so long. There's a public backlash to being in the dark for so long, what was supposed to mutantkind's triumph turns into a tragedy, with a good portion of the blame sorely on Xavier's shoulders for the steps he's taken most of his life helping to cover it up.

[Killerbee911]

1

Mutants In very small numbers have always been around. In recent years Xavier could have been helping to keep them hidden. The snap just speeds along things and mutants become less rare and no longer manageable. Wolverine could have his entire history. Hope magento is still a Holocaust survivor. Just say his manipulation of the magnetic fields slows his aging. So he looks 40 instead of 90 something. Xavier could have been wiping people minds of mutants and even have formed his OG team(Whatever characters Marvel chooses).

Xavier not doing anything to help while the world is falling apart is kinda completely counter to original X-men mission statement. Magneto with powers just keeping quiet seems just as unlike. Yes you can put in stuff like Magneto has slow aging and stuff like Apocalypse ,Selene and Weapon X program have been hidden but that is adding more convolution for the sake of continuity that is going to already be smashed to smithereens. When you can just have a clean start why not just use it? The Ultimate X-men proves you can tell a story that feels like the X-men with out all of that stuff. I am not saying the execution of the UU was perfect but trying to tie up all loose ends and to make them make sense seems like a large task that is unnecessary.


This isn't the 616, So why not start fresh?

[Midvillian1322]

Xavier not doing anything to help while the world is falling apart is kinda completely counter to original X-men mission statement. Magneto with powers just keeping quiet seems just as unlike. Yes you can put in stuff like Magneto has slow aging and stuff like Apocalypse ,Selene and Weapon X program have been hidden but that is adding more convolution for the sake of continuity that is going to already be smashed to smithereens. When you can just have a clean start why not just use it? The Ultimate X-men proves you can tell a story that feels like the X-men with out all of that stuff. I am not saying the execution of the UU was perfect but trying to tie up all loose ends and to make them make sense seems like a large task that is unnecessary.


This isn't the 616, So why not start fresh?

Who says Xavier and the Xmen wasn't helping? They can do what they did with the Ancient one and the Wizards. They can help with all this stuff without exposing themselves. Battle of new York and Sakovia are the only things they coulda helped with. Everything Thanos related would have been over by the time they found out and got there. Military didn't even show up for those.

Magneto doesn't have to a villian yet. He can be wary of Humans and disagree with Charles but begrudgingly helping him or just staying out of it. Then you have an event that happens that radicalized him. Maybe once mutants get outted, people like Heyward do them some harm. All they would need is one mutant getting his powers and losing control to justify rounding them up.

I wasn't a fan of Ultimate Xmen. But even in that mutants had been around for over 50 years(The 40s pr 50s right?). It's not the same as making them just pop up now. How is Xavier helping and mentoring them when he became a mutant the same day as them? Yea he older therfore wiser and his powers allow him to amass knowledge fast. I mean I guess if he wasn't snapped he could have had his powers for 5year now but 7-10 by the time we get an Xmen film. Iono maybe but I think a small number of mutants being around all along works and doesn't convolute anything. You just have to show them doing what the ancient one was doing in the battle of New York. Then explain where they were when Ultron tried to turn a city into a comet.

I'm sure whatever Feige has planned is better then anything we gonna come up with. Iono thinking it through has made me come around to the idea of them popping up now. Still prefer they have always been there but in numbers so small they have flown under the radar. The ones that were seen were written off as circus freaks and the such. Speaking of that how does Nightcrawler work? He was a normal kid and then the snap turned him into a blue furry devil? Or unlocked his latent power and later he turned into that?

Captain Marvel they explained away by her being off helping the Skrulls for a very long time. Seems silly for someone who can make they're own worm holes. It doesn't break continuity though. People just go with it. Whatever excuse they come up with for the Eternals will probably be similar. Slightly suspect but people will accept it.

[Vakanai]

Why? The Ancient one and an army of wizards have been around the entire time. Why would a very small number of mutants be problematic? Not being confrontational, curious what your reasoning is.

Because the Ancient One and wizards were still a lot earlier in the MCU than any film the X-Men could show up in, and unlike a Sorceror Supreme who can get away with being more of a secret, the mutants whole shtick is the racism allegory - which feels disingenuous if they had been here and hated all along but no one pointed that out until 30 movies in. Better to just bring them in as a brand new thing.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

They always existed but hid themselves on Krakoa. The amount of mutants were pretty small so this was more manageable. The snap caused an increase in mutant appearances causing them to contemplate joining the outside world again.

[Immortal Weapon]

I'm in favor of mutants showing up today. With them always being around will bring up the question of why we haven't seen them until now and I'm not going to be happy with the answer to that question. Not with every that's gone down with these movies.

[mace11]

It still possible that mcu mutants would be on or from a alternate universe mcu earth like how cw supergirl was and maybe upcoming dceu supergirl will be.

[titanfan]

From a movie/tv standpoint, I would just have them start appearing. They can still discover the mutant gene or whatever, and a bunch of random people all of a sudden find out they have powers/are freaks.

This is a world where the Avengers are mostly popular and are considered heroes.

Seing Jean Grey, Cyclops, Storm etc. appear all of a sudden wouldn't necessarily freak people out when people are using to seeing Spider Man, Thor, etc.

You need to introduce and event or a way for the mutants to be feared/shunned. I might actually leave it a mystery for awhile, if humans are like "Oh whatever it was just the snap"--it doesn't necessarily cause fear. It's the unknown that causes fear. It's the fear that your life could be ruined because you're a mutant that causes fear, or that bad things happen when they're around that causes fear.

[Alan2099]

Mutants have been around for a while, but there's very little proof of them. Unreliable witnesses, blurry pictures, it's like bigfoot. On top of that, Xavier has been doing his best to hide the presence of mutants in the world.

Then he disappears in the snap...

[Zero Hunter]

I would say that the X-gene has been present forever but only ever activated very very rarely in the past. Now though with all the cosmic energy released on Earth by Thanos the x-gene has kicked into high gear. Mutants have started showing up since shortly after the Blip, but because the world was in such chaos with half the population vanishing people like Xavier, Magneto, and the governments of the world have been able to keep it secret. Xavier has been gathering and training young mutants for the last few years knowing that sooner or latter something big is going to happen to expose mutantkind to the world. Something or someone too big to hide. A major incedent with a trully evil mutant like Proteus that causes the X-Men to have to fight him in public. Proteus or whoever would start yelling about how mutants are the future and humankind is obsolete with more and more of us being born everyday. A speech to really scare the hell out of normal humans which would cause humans to hate and fear mutants.

So in short. The X-gene has always been around but almost never activated in the past except in rare cases. All the cosmic energy from the battles with Thanos kicked started the x-gene as a defense mechanism to protect humanity. They have been slowly showing up for the last 5 years MCU time, but people and groups have been keeping a lid on it.

[green_garnish]

There's a part of me that cringes at the incorrect science of most mutant stories. As I recall, it takes two generations for a mutation to develop. And from that standpoint, I would prefer that mutants not suddenly start popping up because of a cosmic energy eruption last year. That's not a mutation, that's a transformation. Much like the way the FF and Spider-Man and Captain America were transformed. It doesn't make mutants very special.

But, I bow to the inevitable and understand CBMs are not likely to ever take mutations seriously, and a large part of me understands they probably shouldn't.