The MCU X-Men cast revealed at Disney’s D23 fan event this weekend is the headline most people came for, and Kevin Feige and director Jake Schreier delivered. Seven actors will form the backbone of the franchise’s first proper mutant ensemble, with a release date locked in for 5 May 2028.
MCU X-Men Cast Revealed: The Full Lineup
Alongside the previously announced Sadie Sink as Jean Grey, the confirmed cast reads as follows: Kit Connor (known for Heartstopper) as Scott Summers, Inde Navarrette as Rogue, Maya Boyd as Storm, Samara Weaving as Emma Frost, Christopher Abbott as Professor Charles Xavier, and Adam Driver as Nathaniel Milbury.
Driver’s casting is the one that will generate the most conversation. Feige noted earlier this year that Driver had long circled Marvel projects without committing, including reported consideration for Reed Richards. That changes now. Abbott and Driver also share history, both having broken through as characters on Girls, making their reunion on a mutant superhero project an unlikely but pleasing bit of casting symmetry.
The name Nathaniel Milbury will ring bells for comics readers. In the source material, ABC News notes that Mister Sinister is a geneticist who has existed since the 19th century, consumed by an obsession with Cyclops and Jean Grey, believing their combined DNA can produce the ultimate mutant. The Milbury alias is the cover he uses while posing as the head of a Nebraskan orphanage, the very place where a young Scott Summers grows up and is subjected to his experiments. Casting Driver in that role signals the MCU is going straight for one of the X-Men’s most layered and unsettling antagonists from the off.
Schreier, who previously directed 2025’s Thunderbolts, co-wrote the X-Men script alongside Lee Sung Jin and Joanna Calo. The film is slated as the first MCU release after Secret Wars.
One absence worth noting: Professor X has a screen history before Abbott takes the role. As the BBC reports, Sir Patrick Stewart previously played the character in other Marvel films, including Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Abbott steps into well-worn territory, then, though the MCU’s version is clearly building its own continuity from scratch.
Doomsday, VisionQuest, Starfighter: Everything Else from the Weekend
The MCU X-Men cast revealed wasn’t the only news out of D23. A fresh trailer for Avengers: Doomsday landed before the mutant announcement, leaning hard into the threat that Doom poses. The footage features Sentinel robots that Doom appears to reanimate, plus a pre-filmed segment with Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds lobbying for a place in the Doomsday crew. Avengers: Doomsday releases on 18 December 2026.
VisionQuest was presented as the concluding chapter of a loose trilogy that began with WandaVision. The trailer shows Vision presiding over a digital world populated by Marvel’s other artificial intelligences in human form, including J.A.R.V.I.S. (James D’Arcy), E.D.I.T.H. (Emily Hampshire), and F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady). The disruption arrives in the form of Ultron, played once again by James Spader, alongside a young man claiming to be Vision’s son, Tommy (Ruaridh Mollica). The series arrives on Disney+ on 14 October.
A teaser for Star Wars: Starfighter gave audiences their first proper look at Ryan Gosling’s character, named as Kade Auberon at the presentation. The clip centres on Auberon and a younger character, Flynn Gray, discovering a decommissioned Imperial Reaper-class fighter that Auberon describes as the “fastest starfighter ever built.” The rest of the teaser follows Auberon rebuilding the craft across various planetary settings. Directed by Shawn Levy, the film’s cast also includes Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman, Daniel Ings, and Amy Adams. It releases on 28 May 2027.
The panel also produced a leather jacket, now part of what observers are calling the Ryan Gosling Cinematic Jacket Universe: a skull-and-crossbones design where the bones are crossed rifles and the skull is an inverted version of the Rebel Alliance’s star bird crest. Gosling wore it onstage.
Separate from the Marvel and Star Wars slate, a trailer for Ahsoka season two confirmed a debut date of 20 January 2027, with Lars Mikkelsen’s Grand Admiral Thrawn and more of Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker both confirmed to return. The MCU X-Men cast revealed this weekend still dominates the conversation, but the rest of the slate makes clear that 2026 and 2027 are going to be relentless for anyone following either franchise.
