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Since what used to be 20th Century Fox was purchased by Disney, fans have been impatiently wondering when the X-Men were going to show up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s been a recurring question facing Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige, and even though he’s done his best to duck it and offer platitudes, there’s been one thing he’s repeatedly done that’s got us wondering something. This week in Marvel Matters, we're asking: is Marvel Studios looking way, way back in Marvel’s past to find a new take on the X-Men?

As a man who knows better than most how to deal with the press and our unrelenting desire to read into every single thing he says for some secret info that likely isn’t there — oh, don’t worry, we know how ridiculous it can get just as much as you do — Feige is a master at dodging questions and sidestepping potential mis-speaking on any given subject, so we can’t help but notice that he doesn’t really use the term “X-Men” a lot when talking about… well, the X-Men. That’s not to say he never does it (he did it just a couple weeks ago at D23 Brazil, for example), but he’s tended to use a different term far more often: “The Mutants.”

At the world premiere of Deadpool & Wolverine this summer, he said, “I’ve said The Mutants are coming, and it all starts with this movie.” He’s also talked about “the Mutant era,” and said “we have characters from the ‘X-Men’ world, the Mutants, we haven’t had access to before.”

On the one hand, this is simply a way to avoid saying ‘X-Men’ all the time, and also to allow for the fact that, if Marvel Studios builds out this side of the universe correctly, it won’t just be about X-Men; as in Marvel’s comic book line, there can also be X-Force, X-Factor, NYX, and many other properties featuring mutant characters. On the other… what if The Mutants is an intentional callback to the pre-history of the X-Men as well as a way to build out the property to outlive ‘X-Men’ as a brand?

While everyone today knows Marvel’s mutantkind as the X-Men and related titles, that name was actually Plan B for Stan Lee and everyone at Marvel comics at the time; Lee’s original title for the original 1963 comic was, it turns out, ‘The Mutants.’ As Lee explained in an interview, Marvel’s then-publisher Martin Goodman liked the idea of the comic when Lee proposed it, but reportedly said, “nobody knows what a mutant is, you gotta come up with another name.” (Now you know why ‘X-Men’ feels quite as generic and rushed as it does.)

Obviously, going with X-Men didn’t hurt the comic to any real degree, especially once the 1970s rolled around and characters like Storm, Wolverine, and Nightcrawler were introduced to the mix — and by the 1990s when the comic book became a cartoon series that shaped a generation, there was no turning back in terms of branding, even though iconic X-Men writer Chris Claremont has talked about his own displeasure with the name. 

But… what if Marvel Studios is doing something different, and more ambitious, as it brings the X-Men franchise to the screen…? And what if that ambition is going to be marked by a desire to take things beyond just one team…?

Perhaps it’s time to pay tribute to Stan Lee one more time, and give these characters the umbrella title they could have had 60 years ago, had Lee had his way.

Keep up to date on Popverse's Marvel coverage, with these highlights:

• Marvel Studios has accidentally created a new Phase that predates Phases 1 - 6: the MCU Phase Zero
• Overgrown children of the atom: Marvel's X-Men can't evolve past their '90s commercial peak
• The biggest outstanding questions of the Marvel Studios' movies & TV shows
• Donald Trump is the landlord for Marvel's House of Ideas
• Marvel Studios swapping out Doctor Doom for Kang offers the chance to jettison the Multiverse Saga
• What Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige is saying (and not saying) about the MCU X-Men franchise says a lot about the future of the Mutant Saga
• If Marvel is going to bring Loki back for Secret Wars, it's time to give him an upgrade
• With Daredevil, and spinoffs from Black Panther, What If, and more, Marvel Studios' 2025 Disney+ slate is bigger than ever, and that might be a big deal for the future
• If Kraven the Hunter flops, Sony's Spider-Man Universe could look for a Marvel-assisted reboot
• In 2021, Sony's boss said people won't miss Spider-Man in its Spider-adjacent movie. Turns out, they do.