Marvel Studios Officially Debuts Two New X-Men Teams

The X-Men are back at Marvel Studios and better than ever, as two mutant teams enter the picture in 2026. The Marvel Cinematic Universe will feature several X-Men in Avengers: Doomsday. The studio has yet to reveal whether those characters will be the same from Fox’s X-Men movies or variants of them, as was the case for Patrick Stewart’s Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

We also don’t know if the MCU’s version of the X-Men will show up in the film or potentially in 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars before the franchise is rebooted and the MCU X-Men movie arrives. There is a chance that happens, given how Stranger Things‘ Sadie Sink is rumored to be playing Marvel Studios’ new version of Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

If that were to happen, we could be looking at two different X-Men teams appearing in live-action in 2026 or at least in two consecutive years. That said, for the Marvel fans who want to see a full-fledged universe with multiple mutant teams, there is no need to wait. They can get exactly that through one of Marvel’s best Disney+ shows.

X-Men ’97 season 2 is now out, with the animated series’ first three episodes featuring plenty of mutants from Marvel Comics. With a major time travel storyline, the new season has become the perfect place to bring multiple teams to life, with each of them having a specific role to play. Joining the main X-Men are two mutant squads.

X-Men ’97 Season 2 Debuts Two Major Mutant Teams

Warning! This article contains SPOILERS for X-Men ’97 season 2’s first three episodes.Yes, the X-Men were scattered through time at the end of season 1, with a team being sent to the far future — the 40th century, to be precise — and another landing in Ancient Egypt. Both of those teams deal with Apocalypse, one of the X-Men’s biggest villains, in X-Men ’97 season 2’s first three episodes. That said, they are only different halves of the same superhero squad. There are two other mutant teams in the animated series’ return, with one of them being the X-Force. Put together by Cable, this darker superhero team is not afraid to kill.

Even though Sunspot and Jubilee do not agree with it, Archangel shoots and kills War, one of Apocalypse’s Horsemen, after they are done getting information from him. The other mutant team that appears in X-Men ’97 season 2 is X-Factor, who show up with an updated roster and are acting in accordance with the United States government. They might see themselves as heroes, but locking up innocent mutants, many of whom were kids, shows that this other mutant team is not that far off from Cable’s morally grey squad.

Could The MCU’s X-Men Have Multiple Teams?

X-Men star Hugh Jackman as Logan with his claws out in Deadpool and Wolverine

X-Men ’97 season 2 does a wonderful job with its multiple teams in these first three episodes, and it poses an exciting question for the future of the characters in the live-action MCU. With Marvel Studios showing that it knows how to make multiple mutant teams co-exist in a way that each of them feels special and fleshes out the universe, the chances of a similar structure being employed by the MCU after Avengers: Secret Wars reboots the franchise and fully folds the X-Men into it are starting to rise considerably.

After the Infinity Saga and the Multiverse Saga, why not have the MCU’s next chapter be the Mutant Saga? The X-Men are easily some of Marvel’s most popular characters, and by spreading out the mutants across the MCU, with different teams interacting with a wide roster of already established MCU heroes and villains, the franchise can only get better. Given how there are now two Avengers teams, the former Thunderbolts and Captain America’s Avengers, in the MCU, X-Men ’97 season 2’s practice could end up being used by Marvel Studios again when the mutants debut.