Marvel’s X-Men reveal gave the internet its roster on Friday night and, within hours, its first fight.
A loud thread on X boiled down to one question: where are the men?
However, that complaint is missing a piece. Kevin Feige said on the D23 stage that this was the first group of actors, with more X-Men casting still to come.
The Backlash
The seven names announced at D23 break down as four women and three men: Sadie Sink‘s Jean Grey, Samara Weaving‘s Emma Frost, Inde Navarrette‘s Rogue, and Maya Boyd‘s Storm on one side, Kit Connor‘s Cyclops, Christopher Abbott‘s Professor X, and Adam Driver‘s villain Nathaniel Milbury on the other.
Count only the team members and it’s four to two. That gap is what set X off.
Posts asked “Where are the men?”, called the lineup mostly women, accused Marvel of taking the men out of X-Men, and ran down the missing names: no Beast, no Bobby, no Angel, no Logan.
Others worried the two male heroes end up sidelined, or filed the whole thing under modern Marvel and moved on. The Storm casting drew its own debate the same night.
Strip away the commentary and the observation underneath is accurate.
There is no Wolverine, no Beast, no Iceman, no Angel, no Nightcrawler, no Gambit, no Colossus, and no Magneto on the list, and most of the classic X-Men who are missing happen to be men.
What Feige Actually Said At D23
Here is the part the backlash skipped. Variety’s report described the seven as the “inaugural” members of the team, and that word choice was not an accident.
Marvel’s own recap of the panel says Feige told the crowd there is more X-Men casting news to come, but that he couldn’t wait to introduce this first group of actors.
Empire’s report from the room adds that Feige noted these are all the cast members confirmed so far, with more names to be confirmed in time.
Rumors have offered that Beast was ready to go with Charles Melton but the talks fell apart prior to D23.
The posts circulating with “Kevin Feige says there will be more casting announcements for X-Men” are accurate. He said it on stage, and Marvel put it in writing.
Deadline signaled the same thing before the show. Days before D23, the trade was already treating the roster as a work in progress and said it expected to add more names, while Sadie Sink teased how excited people would be “when it’s all announced.”
Deadline also reported that Schreier and Marvel spent the summer auditioning, with a final round of tests after the Fourth of July. The D23 lineup was who was locked by showtime, not the whole movie.
Who Is Still Uncast
Start with the original five.
Reports have long suggested Marvel is building around Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Angel, and Iceman, and only two of those seats are filled. Beast, Angel, and Iceman are all still open, and all three are men.
Beast (rumor): Charles Melton was the name attached for months, and claims that he had dropped out surfaced right before D23. Worth remembering that no trade ever reported Melton had the role in the first place. Peter Claffey has also been floated for Hank McCoy.
Wolverine (rumor): Nobody has been cast, and rumors have suggested Marvel may keep Logan out of the team at the start, holding him back as a mentor or a later reveal. It’s also rumored Hugh Jackman will stay as Wolverine for the long haul on the Avengers side, while Deadline reads his D23 beam-in as a sign he isn’t coming back as Wolverine for the reboot.
Magneto: Adam Driver joked in his video message that he was playing Magneto before revealing Milbury, which was the loudest reminder of the night that the role is open. Marvel has not said whether Magneto is even in the first film. The Daniel Day-Lewis chatter and the Denzel Washington (confirmed for Black Panther 3) and Colman Domingo thread never went anywhere, and Ian McKellen’s version returns in Avengers: Doomsday this December.
Everyone else: Nightcrawler, Gambit, Colossus, and Bishop are all unaccounted for, and Emma Frost’s presence has fans expecting a Hellfire Club, where Wagner Moura was rumored for Sebastian Shaw. Our running rumor tracker has the full list of names that hit and missed. For what it’s worth, Mystique is also expected.
The “Outdated” Comment Everyone Remembers
The “taking the men out of X-Men” line isn’t coming from nowhere.
In 2019, Marvel Studios producer Victoria Alonso called the X-Men name “outdated” because, in her words, there are a lot of female superheroes in that group.
That quote is why a gender count reads as a fear instead of a footnote for part of the fandom. It has been sitting there for seven years waiting for a roster to attach itself to.
The fans also have reason to be skeptical. Following Avengers: Endgame, Kevin Feige went the “M SHE U” route with the MCU which failed bigtime. Reportedly, Feige and Marvel are pivoting back to what works, which explains Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars.
Things have also changed since. Alonso was let go by Marvel in 2023, and the people actually building this movie are on record with the opposite philosophy.
X-Men writer Lee Sung Jin told Deadline last month that he and Joanna Calo are leading with what makes these characters “universally relatable” before plots and world stakes, which we covered as the X-Men being for everybody.
That is a character-first mandate, not a headcount.
Kit Connor said much the same thing after the panel, telling GMA the reboot feels like “a really different version, a different take” from the Fox movies he grew up with.
The First Group Was Never The Whole Team
Look at what Marvel chose to lead with: the franchise’s four biggest female characters, plus the captain, the founder, and the villain.
What’s left is the male half of the classic team, and that is the half Feige says is still coming.
Judging the gender split of a roster Feige explicitly called unfinished is like reviewing a trailer for the scenes it didn’t show. But again, you can’t really blame the fans considering what Feige gave them post-Endgame. It’s also the reason Disney is reportedly yanking live-action Marvel for animation.
The next wave of names is where the Wolverine, Beast, and Magneto questions get answered, and the people writing the movie have already said what kind of X-Men they are building, so there is at least a small sliver of hope(?).
Jake Schreier directs, cameras roll next year, and X-Men opens May 5, 2028.
Watch the full D23 Marvel panel here, and meet the seven so far: Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey, Kit Connor’s Cyclops, Christopher Abbott’s Professor X, Samara Weaving’s Emma Frost, Inde Navarrette’s Rogue, Maya Boyd’s Storm, and Adam Driver’s Nathaniel Milbury. Everything else on the movie lives in our X-Men guide.
