The first details about the next chapter in the X-Men movie franchise, Dark Phoenix, are here. And as you’d expect when it comes to adapting one of the most iconic sagas of the X-comics, things are about to get hot under the collar for Jean Grey. And like, everywhere else too.
Entertainment Weekly has revealed that its next cover story is X-Men: Dark Phoenix, giving us not just our first look at Sophie Turner’s Jean, dramatically igniting and becoming one with the Phoenix, but also the first real details about the movie.
According to the magazine, Dark Phoenix will be set in 1992, ten years after the events of the last film, X-Men: Apocalypse, and follow the X-Men as they have become national heroes instead of maligned mutants. An increasingly cocky Charles Xavier (the returning James McAvoy) starts sending his X-Men on increasingly dangerous missions, until a space-bound rescue mission sees a solar flare strike the X-Jet, awakening a long-dormant power in Jean Grey… a power fans of the comics know all too well as the ultimate cause of her dramatic exit from the X-Men.
Image: Entertainment Weekly via Twitter
What’s interesting here is that these details are implying that rather than being a cosmic force that encounters Jean (as in various iterations of the comics canon), the Phoenix is something that’s always been inside Jean, just waiting for the right trigger to appear. But aside from the inevitable torment the Phoenix’s arrival will cause on the X-Men, it seems like there’s even more strife on the way: EW teases the film as having “a massive twist halfway through that will irrevocably change the course of the franchise.” So… expect some Phoenix-induced X-deaths, I guess?
We’ll bring you more on X-Men: Dark Phoenix as and when we learn it.