X-Men Is Everywhere Right Now — Here’s What’s Happening

It’s a big time to be an X-Men fan. Marvel’s mutants are front and center across comics and film right now — and the conversations happening around each project couldn’t be more different. One is full of genuine excitement. One is raising real questions about whether darker always means better. And one might be quietly setting up one of the most ambitious storytelling twists in recent X-Men comics history.

Let’s get into all of it.

The MCU Reboot Has a Clear Vision — and It Sounds Promising

The creative team behind Marvel Studios’ upcoming X-Men film has been talking, and what they’re saying is exactly what longtime fans have been waiting to hear. Director Jake Schreier — who helmed Thunderbolts* — brought in two of his collaborators from that film: Beef creator Lee Sung Jin and The Bear co-showrunner Joanna Calo. And in a recent interview with Men’s Health, Jin opened up about why he couldn’t say no to this one.

“I wasn’t planning on doing another Marvel thing because I do have a lot I want to explore in my personal projects,” he said. “But Jake is one of my best friends, and when he comes calling with X-Men… come on, you drop everything for that.”

Jin’s connection to the franchise runs deep. He grew up watching the animated series every Saturday morning, devoured X-Men ’97 when it arrived, and has a genuine love for Chris Claremont’s foundational comic run — the same run Schreier has cited as a key inspiration. That 1975 era of Uncanny X-Men introduced Storm, Nightcrawler, and Colossus to the world alongside Cyclops and Wolverine, and it remains the gold standard for what X-Men storytelling can be.

“What I’m excited about with Jake’s vision for the X-Men — and [Marvel president Kevin Feige and co-president Lou D’Esposito] are fully aligned with his vision — is that he wants to get back to focusing on the characters first,” Jin said. “These are amazing characters with very rich backstories full of so much emotion. There are so many intra-team dynamics and relationships. There’s soapy stuff. And sure, there are political themes baked into the DNA of X-Men too, and those are evergreen, but we want to get back to character-first storytelling.”

He also gave a rare glimpse into how hands-on the process has been: “We’ve been in the lab every day. It’s me, Joanna Calo, Jake, Kevin, and Lou. We’re in the trenches together and it’s invigorating.”

Feige’s involvement isn’t a surprise — he got his start as an associate producer on the original 2000 X-Men film, and mutants have been his unfinished business ever since. Reports suggest the lineup could mirror X-Men ’97, though there’s also talk of going back to the original “First Class” five. That question — teenage team or established heroes — may not be settled until the script locks in. The film doesn’t have an official release date yet, but shooting is rumored to begin this year ahead of a 2028 debut.

Midnight X-Men Has a Cool Premise With a Real Problem

While the MCU version is leaning into what makes mutants resonate, Marvel’s new comics initiative is doing something very different — and it’s already stirring debate before a single issue has hit shelves.

The Midnight Universe is Marvel’s new dark-reimagining line, positioned as an answer to DC’s Absolute Universe. The tagline: “hope dies in the shadows.” The first book out of the gate is Midnight X-Men, written by Jonathan Hickman — co-creator of Invincible — with art by Matteo Della Fonte. It’s set in a Manhattan where mutant factions and vampires are locked in a brutal territorial war. The cover of issue one shows a vampiric Storm and Nightcrawler mid-battle. The series description says these X-Men “no longer fight for acceptance” — instead, “they hunger for blood.”

As a premise for a What If? story, that’s genuinely interesting. As the flagship title for a new ongoing universe? It raises a harder question.

The X-Men have always worked because mutants are a metaphor — for racial minorities, for queer people, for anyone who’s ever been told they don’t belong. The franchise’s most enduring villains aren’t monsters; they’re politicians, pundits, and fear-mongers. That’s the engine. Turning mutants into literal blood-drinking predators in turf wars with vampires doesn’t just darken the story — it inverts the entire moral framework that makes X-Men meaningful. It arguably validates the worst things the franchise’s human antagonists have always said about mutants.

The comparison to DC’s Absolute Universe is also worth unpacking. What’s made that line work is that the darkness serves to illuminate something heroic underneath — characters stripped of everything still choosing to fight for something. The Midnight Universe, at least as described, doesn’t seem to offer that same counterweight. There’s no light to push against the shadow.

Midnight: X-Men #1 arrives in comic shops on August 5, 2026. It could absolutely surprise people. But right now, the concept is generating more skepticism than hype.

The DNX Event Might Be Hiding a Brilliant Twist

The most quietly fascinating X-Men story developing right now isn’t the darkest or the loudest — it’s the one with the most interesting theory attached to it.

Marvel’s next major X-Men event, DNX, spins directly out of the current X-Men (Vol. 7) run, which has pitted the team against a villainous organization called 3K. The group’s roster includes Cassandra Nova, Astra, Joseph, and Wire — but the big reveal is that the mastermind behind it all is Hank McCoy. The original Beast. A character who turned villainous during the Krakoa era and was presumed dead, now leading a scheme to release a deadly virus with the X-Men and the Fantastic Four standing in his way.

There’s a visual detail that’s caught a lot of attention: Beast’s fur has changed from his iconic blue to white. It’s a striking look — more feral, genuinely unsettling. But it’s also not new. The last time Marvel gave us a white Beast was 22 years ago, in the final arc of Grant Morrison’s legendary New X-Men run. That story, “Here Comes Tomorrow,” introduced a villain named Sublime — not a human, but a bacteriological lifeform that had been evolving on Earth for billions of years. Sublime took control of Beast, turning him into the Beast of Apocalypse and nearly ending the world in its attempt to seize the Phoenix Force.

X-Men editor Tom Brevoort has spoken openly about being a huge fan of Morrison’s run, and the current X-Men series has already pulled heavily from that era — Cassandra Nova being a key example. The white fur, the increasingly extreme behavior, the willingness to cross lines that Hank McCoy once held sacred — it’s all pointing somewhere. If DNX reveals that Beast’s worst actions weren’t entirely his own, that Sublime has been pulling strings again, it would be both a satisfying explanation for a character arc that many fans found hard to accept and a genuine payoff for readers who’ve been tracking these breadcrumbs.

It would also give one of Marvel’s original X-Men a path back — which, given everything the character has been through, feels overdue.

“This is the privilege of a lifetime,” Lee Sung Jin said about writing the MCU reboot. “It’s the coolest IP out there, in my opinion.” Whether you’re watching the comics or waiting for the film, it’s hard to argue with him right now.