James Marsden is back in the visor. The new Avengers: Doomsday Cyclops image shows Scott Summers standing in the dusk outside a dark mansion, ruby quartz glasses on and the X-Men’s yellow harness strapped across his chest, with another figure in the shadows behind him. It’s a fresh look at the Fox-era X-Men leader in Marvel Studios’ next team-up, which opens December 18.
EXCLUSIVE 🧬
— Empire (@empiremagazine) November 13, 2026
The original X-Men return in Avengers: Doomsday – appearing alongside the rest of Marvel’s heroes.
“It just felt right,” Feige tells Empire of their return, promising it will “culminate a quarter-century of storytelling.”
Read more: https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/avengers-doomsday-culminate-original-x-men-exclusive/
Feige On Why The Original X-Men Came Back
Kevin Feige, who was an associate producer on the 2000 X-Men film, told Empire that reuniting the old mutant team with the current Avengers was the right ending for this stretch of Marvel history. “It just felt right. It just felt like the fun way to culminate a quarter-century of storytelling,” he said.
He also pointed to Hugh Jackman’s old interviews, in which the Wolverine star would say people called an X-Men and Avengers crossover impossible. Doomsday finally puts them on screen together, with Marsden’s Cyclops joining Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, Ian McKellen’s Magneto and Rebecca Romijn’s Mystique alongside heroes like Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards and Anthony Mackie’s Captain America.
A Leader Facing An Impossible Choice
For Marsden, the film is a chance to play Scott as the leader he was always meant to be. His character was killed off early in X-Men: The Last Stand, and the timeline reset in Days of Future Past is what brought him back. “I like to think of Scott as a noble and good man, who, at the end of the day, will do the right thing,” Marsden said.
The multiverse-collapsing incursions at the center of Doomsday complicate that. “It probably reveals quite a lot about your character, what you’re willing to do,” he said. “And it’s not black and white. It has a lot of very serious, potentially catastrophic implications.”
Gambit Isn’t Just The Comic Relief
Channing Tatum’s Gambit, who finally made it to the screen in Deadpool & Wolverine after years of a solo film that never happened, also has a bigger part to play. “He’s a standout,” Feige said. “It’s fun to see Gambit be as charismatic as he was in Deadpool & Wolverine, and yet in Doomsday it’s not all for laughs. He’s a fully-rounded character.”
The new Cyclops image is part of Empire’s 22-page Doomsday package, which runs in its January 2027 issue. The magazine goes on sale Thursday, November 19, with four collectible covers, including the Professor X subscriber cover we showed you earlier this week.
Avengers: Doomsday is directed by Joe and Anthony Russo and stars Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom. It arrives in theaters on December 18.
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