The long-awaited – seriously, it’s been about 15 months since the first one! – second trailer for The New Mutants finally arrived online yesterday. It’s been a very rocky road for the teen-oriented X-Men spinoff, but all the bad vibes were blown away by this trailer, with fans finding themselves really impressed by what’s on offer in Josh Boone’s movie. It even featured a sneak peek at a fan favorite character – well, dragon – that we totally missed.
One scene that’s got a lot of attention is the climactic clip of Anya Taylor-Joy’s Magik attacking Demon Bear with the Soul Sword. What you might have not caught in this scene though was the brief, easily-missed glimpse of her pet dragon, Lockheed. We’ve already seen the creature represented by a handheld puppet in Illyana’s possession, but it seems that the supernatural events of the film will mean Lockheed comes to life to help out in the battle against Demon Bear by its end.
Lockheed is typically Kitty Pryde’s pet in the comics, but he and Illyana do have a connection. In The New Mutants series, Kitty and Magik were roomies and so the latter got pretty close to the dragon, as well. With no other X-Men properties making use of Lockheed in the past 20 years, let’s be thankful that Boone decided to drop the popular – but weird – creation into this flick. His appearance in the third act could be an extra treat for fans in this surprise final installment of the Fox franchise that we never thought we were going to see.
Not that this is necessarily the last time the New Mutants will show up, mind you. Marvel Studios must be releasing the movie theatrically because they have a certain amount of faith in it and sure enough, our sources say that Kevin Feige likes what Boone has done and is willing to fold the gang into the MCU if it does well. It’s hard to say whether general audiences will be hooked, but Marvel lovers will no doubt check The New Mutants out when it arrives and this trailer gives us hope that it may get some decent reviews.