At the D23 panel at the Honda Center, Marvel Studios finally put an end to the casting rumours fans have been chasing for months, as director Jake Schreier walked onto the stage alongside Sadie Sink, before Kevin Feige joined to introduce the rest of the roster for one of the MCU’s most anticipated projects yet: X-Men. The reveal is particularly significant given that this marks the first X-Men film to come out of Marvel Studios since Disney’s acquisition of Fox, and Feige was quick to note this is only the first wave, with more casting news still to come. Here is the line-up carrying the X-Men into their next chapter, set to hit cinemas on 5 May 2028.
Sadie Sink as Jean Grey
Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey isn’t exactly a surprise reveal, having already spent the summer as the secret villain of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, where she played a version of the character wrestling with the darker, Dark Phoenix-adjacent side of her power set before X-Men even got its own title card. It’s an unusual bit of franchise-building, letting audiences meet the character across the street before she officially suits up for her own team, and it means Sink walks into X-Men with a head start most new mutants don’t get.
Kit Connor as Cyclops
Kit Connor’s casting as Cyclops keeps Marvel’s Scott Summers young, following the lead of Tye Sheridan’s take in X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix, though Connor arrives even closer in age to the character’s comic-book origins as a teenage recruit at Xavier’s school. At 22, he’s stepping into the role well before Scott becomes the seasoned field leader James Marsden played in the original trilogy, which gives the studio room to build his authority over time rather than introducing him fully formed. It’s definitely a bet that starting the character young, and building the leadership arc from scratch, will make for a more interesting X-Men down the line.
Christopher Abbott as Professor X
Abbott’s casting is the sort of curveball that makes Marvel fandom melt down, in the best way. He beat out reported frontrunners Tom Pelphrey and Bill Skarsgård for the role, and at 40 he’s a good deal younger than the Charles Xavier most audiences grew up with, whether that’s Patrick Stewart’s older version or James McAvoy’s younger take in the prequel era. What’s harder to ignore is that this isn’t even Abbott’s first Marvel role. He already appeared in Sony’s Kraven the Hunter as the assassin known as the Foreigner, a separate continuity entirely, which makes him one of the rare actors to have played two different Marvel characters across two different studios. He’s also no stranger to prestige work, with a Tony nomination for Death of a Salesman and standout turns in Poor Things and Possessor.
Maya Boyd as Storm
One of the genuine happy surprises of the reveal is Maya Boyd stepping into Storm, marking her feature film debut after building a name for herself on Broadway in Merrily We Roll Along and & Juliet. Fans had been campaigning for Disney to cast her as Tiana in a rumoured live-action Princess and the Frog remake, with clips of her singing circulating widely online. Her fate, it turns out, was with a rather different kind of power, as the fierce, weather-commanding Storm. The character has been a flashpoint in fan conversations for years, with many pushing for a portrayal that leans closer to Ororo Munroe as she appears in the comics, a Kenyan-born mutant with white hair, a look neither Halle Berry’s original run nor Alexandra Shipp’s younger version fully captured. Boyd, who trained as a classical dancer before turning to musical theatre, quietly signalled she’d embraced the role hours after the announcement, updating her Instagram bio with a trio of lightning bolt emojis.
Inde Navarrette as Rogue
Fresh off the runaway success of Obsession, a horror film that turned a $750,000 budget into nearly half a billion dollars at the box office, Inde Navarrette arrives at X-Men as arguably the reveal’s biggest wildcard. It’s worth noting she’d previously been vocal about wanting to play Mystique after meeting with director Jake Schreier, so landing Rogue instead caught even her own fans off guard. Still, it tracks. Rogue has always needed someone who can play vulnerable and formidable in the same breath, unable to touch another person without draining their life force, yet capable of absorbing any mutant’s power along with it, and Navarrette’s breakout performance suggests she has exactly that range. Anna Paquin played the role across Fox’s original trilogy; this version reportedly gets to do a great deal more with the character’s abilities than the comic-accurate wallflower we got in 2000.
Samara Weaving as Emma Frost
On looks alone, this is about as comic-accurate as casting gets, but the appeal runs deeper than the Hellfire Club wardrobe. Samara Weaving has spent the past few years building a reputation as one of the more compelling genre actresses working today, from her Final Girl turn in Ready or Not to a scene-stealing cameo in Scream VI, and Emma Frost, a former supervillain turned reluctant X-Man, needs exactly that blend of glamour and menace to work on screen. The character was previously played by January Jones in X-Men: First Class, and Weaving’s take looks set to lean further into Frost’s morally ambiguous streak rather than smoothing it over.
Adam Driver as Mister Sinister
Last but certainly not least, Adam Driver’s involvement might be the reveal’s most talked-about detail, and not just because of the casting itself. Driver wasn’t in Anaheim for the announcement, appearing instead via a prerecorded video filmed at Pinewood Studios, where he cheekily told the crowd he’d be playing Magneto before correcting himself, “No wait, Nathaniel Milbury,” the civilian identity behind Mister Sinister. It’s a fittingly theatrical introduction for a character built on secrecy and manipulation. Driver previously worked alongside his new co-star Christopher Abbott on HBO’s Girls, which means the film’s Professor X and its central villain share a television history that long predates either of them putting on a cape, or in Sinister’s case, a very sharp coat.
