Sooner or later, the X-Men will make their full MCU debut. We’ve already seen Patrick Stewart as Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Kamala Khan turning out to be a mutant in Ms. Marvel, and in Deadpool 3 Hugh Jackman will once again pop the claws as Wolverine. But those are just the opening salvo, and the years to come will see an avalanche of mutants shaking up the status quo.
There are decades of great X-Men stories that could be adapted, but there’s one beloved arc that fans want Marvel to stay far, far away from: The Dark Phoenix Saga.
Originally released in the comics in 1980, it’s become one of the most iconic X-Men stories. Fox liked it so much that it was adapted twice: once in 2005’s X-Men: The Last Stand and again in 2019 flop Dark Phoenix (which lost the studio $133 million).
Now fans are adamant that, while the original story is a classic, it’s time to move on. Comments on r/MarvelStudios point out the MCU has just done the whole “powerful female psychic loses control and threatens the world” thing with Wanda Maximoff, that at this point the arc is “cursed”, and that they’d prefer seeing much more of the Sentinels instead.
That said, there are those who point out that the MCU’s well-developed cosmic and interstellar aspects may mean that the MCU Phoenix Saga would work better than before. The original comics are leaned heavily into the sci-fi side of the X-Men, and the Fox movies were unwilling or unable to get into space travel and alien visitation.
If the Phoenix was going to be retold in the MCU we’d want it to be an Infinity War-style build-up and come after we’d spent a lot of time with the new Jean Grey. But, for the moment, we’re just hoping to see some lesser-known X-Men stories be told rather than the now quite predictable Phoenix stuff. Let’s hope we get some indications of the MCU’s mutant future soon.