After The Marvels and Deadpool & Wolverine laid the groundwork for more Fox X-Men to return, Avengers: Doomsday is going all in by bringing back several non-Wolverine (or Professor X) characters from the original films. Among them is James Marsden, who played Cyclops in that initial trilogy and didn’t really get to do much in them.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, the actor recalled “20 years of listening to people say, ‘When are you coming back? When are you coming back? Are you coming back?’ But I’m dead, or maybe not.” Despite “getting a little long in the tooth to put on the superhero costume,” he called getting it “a real blast” to put the shades on again for Doomsday. Marsden was one of the first X-actors to bow out of the franchise, having been killed off early into X-Men: The Last Stand after he booked a role in Superman Returns. The last time he showed up as the always right mutant was a short cameo at the end of Days of Future Past in a new timeline, which seemed at the time to close the book on “the firrst real event project I was ever a part of, and a very beloved character.”
“To step back into that role was pretty special,” he continued, “and it’s been a nice little homecoming to a role that really put me on the map.” Other returning X-actors for Doomsday include Alan Cumming as Nightcralwer, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, and Ian McKellen as Magneto. Two current, notable absences are Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey and Halle Berry’s Storm.
With how much fun X-Men ’97 had rehabilitating Cyclops into a very cool (and very flawed) hero, hopefully Marsden gets to show out when Avengers: Doomsday hits theaters on December 18, 2026.
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