There is no telling when the X-Men will arrive in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The MCU hinted at the Fantastic Four’s arrival in its Phase 4 teaser, but nothing about the mutants.
However, make no mistake. The mutants are coming to Marvel.
Marvel might want the memories of the Fox movies to lessen before reviving the mutant franchise on the big screen.
Not that the movies weren’t successful. Three of the X-Men movies ended up as critically lauded successes, with Logan, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and X2: First Class.
There were also two beloved Deadpool movies and the first two in the original X-Men trilogy remain groundbreaking success stories.
However, the MCU will almost surely reboot the entire mutant franchise and put its own stamp on the stories. There is even a chance that teams other than the X-Men might appear.
Here is a look at 10 mutant Marvel teams we would like to see in the MCU, ranked.
The Hellfire Club
The Hellfire Club was the main villains in X-Men: First Class. However, that version of the team doesn’t come close to their comic book counterparts.
Of the main core of the Hellfire Club, only Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) and Emma Frost (January Jones) appeared, and neither fit the bill for the original members of the team.
Emma Frost was especially disappointing, nowhere near the dominating and powerful mutant she is from the comics.
The original club included rich and powerful people from all walks of life (Howard Stark was a member at one time). The mutants ruled from behind the scenes, with Shaw and Frost on top.
Sebastian Shaw also leads the more recent Hellfire Trading Club, but he has Emma Frost and others keeping him in check. This is a scary, powerful group that deserves a bigger showing in a movie.
The Exiles
The Exiles feature a team of characters from around the multiverse, put together to correct hiccups in the timeline.
If this sounds familiar, it is like what the Time Variance Authority in Loki is all about. However, instead of a bureaucracy that tries to fix things, this team is a group of powerful warriors really fixing things.
Many of the characters came from timelines created thanks to the X-Men, including Age of Apocalypse and House of M.
There are plenty of mutant legacy characters here. Magnus Lensherr is the son of Magneto and Rogue. Nocturne is the daughter of Nightcrawler and Scarlet Witch. Thunderbird was actually an X-Men member who died.
Excalibur
Excalibur would be a very interesting mutant team to add to the MCU.
This would give Marvel a more fantasy based group, as they based it on the characters in Camelot, and around the United Kingdom.
The original Excalibur saw Captain Britain and three former X-Men members: Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde, and Rachel Summers (a time-displaced daughter of X-Men founders Jean Grey and Cyclops).
More recently, there are some mutants that fans want to see join the X-Men in the MCU. Gambit, Rogue, and Jubilee are all members of this recent version of Excalibur, along with Betsy Braddock (Psylocke) as the new Captain Britain.
Alpha Flight
Alpha Flight was, at one time, Canda’s greatest superhero team. Unlike the X-Men, this group worked directly for the Canadian government.
They also had training centers with Beta Flight and Omega Flight, which saw members of those teams working toward joining the main roster.
Wolverine was a former member, and the first appearance of Alpha Flight saw them attempting to bring him back under orders of the Canadian government.
This team featured Guardian as the leader, the hulking Sasquatch, a mystic known as Shaman, an alien known as Snowbird, and the mutant twins, Northstar and Aurora.
The New Mutants
The last movie Fox made in the X-Men world was New Mutants.
The characters in the movie were the original New Mutants teammates, and the story was the team’s most famous, the Demon Bear Saga.
Despite Fox using this famous story, the team is still a significant group and deserves a second life in the MCU. The casting was dubious, although Maisie Williams and Anya Taylor-Joy were perfect as Wolfsbane and Magik.
The Hellions
The Hellions are one direction the MCU could go if they wanted to create something darker.
This is a team of black ops mutants, mostly mercs, all with serious emotional and psychological problems.
Mister Sinister leads this group, although the X-Men’s most dangerous villain hasn’t debuted in a movie yet. His team includes Psylocke and Havoc, both appearing in the later X-Men movies and both with serious mental problems.
Other members are way out there, including the murderous Greycrow, the crazed Wild Child, the possessive Orphan-Maker, and the morally grey Empath.
The Marauders
For something completely different, the Marauders bring a swashbuckling attitude to the mutant teams.
Kitty Pryde, now going by the name Kate Pryde, leads this team, as they operate off a ship that sails the ocean and helps lend support to the poor people in Madripoor (from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier).
Other members include the popular Ice-Man, the villain Pyro (from X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand), and Storm.
This group is fun, yet deadly when the fight comes to them, and could present something completely different to the MCU.
X-Men
Of course, the one team that everyone knows is the X-Men.
This could feature anyone and everyone and mostly revolved around the leader, Professor X. The problem here is that the X-Men and Professor X storylines played themselves out in the countless Fox movies.
However, X-Men is the name that everyone knows and is the most bankable name that Marvel could use for an MCU team.
If it is the X-Men that makes the return to the movies, Marvel might be smart to create a brand-new X-Men team with mostly fresh members and only a couple of old names sticking with the new movies.
X-Force
Deadpool 2 was supposed to introduce X-Force. What it did was make a joke out of X-Force, with every member dying on the first mission other than Domino.
Domino and Cable are the two members most known as part of X-Force, and both could return thanks to Deadpool.
X-Force is the true black ops team from the mutant world. Originally, it was the New Mutants with a new name and attitudes. Eventually, it included the deadliest mutants in comics willing to do anything to protect mutants.
As long as Domino is part of the team, anything could end up gold if Marvel went with X-Force in the MCU.
X-Factor
The best option to re-introduce the mutants to the movie world would be X-Factor.
Initially, X-Factor was the original X-Men in disguise as mutant hunters. They were, in fact, saving mutants in this role, and taking them in to help protect and train them.
If mutants suddenly popped up in the world, fear and hatred are the most likely reactions by humans. X-Factor could be a way to re-introduce the idea of mutants in the world.
Subsequently, the idea of the new X-Factor Investigations is even more interesting. This group investigates mutant murders and has an impressive lineup, including Northstar and Aurora (previously with Alpha Flight), Daken (Wolverine’s son), Rachel Summers, and Polaris.
This is the best way to introduce mutants into a world where they never existed.