The MCU’s biggest box office bomb now boasts the most important post-credits scene of the last five years thanks to the Avengers: Doomsday live stream. It was great to see the MCU confirm that some of its newer characters, like Shang-Chi and Namor, will be returning in a future MCU installment with Marvel’s surprise announcement that Avengers: Doomsday has officially entered production. While their return was heralded by the post-credits scenes of the movies they starred in, the amount of time that has pᴀssed since their last appearance threatened to remove them from the MCU zeitgeist entirely.

The simple yet effective 5-hour live stream has unsurprisingly spurred speculation about how each of the characters will fit into the story. While notable absentees like Captain Marvel and Hulk suggest that there are more Avengers: Doomsday cast members to be announced, the conversation has been dominated by those that were. The fact that Channing Tatum’s Gambit, for instance, has escaped the Void is a particularly exciting prospect, as is the presumption that he will immediately join up with his fellow mutants.

Avengers: Doomsday’s Cast Includes Many Returning X-Men Actors

Many (But Not All) Of Fox’s X-Men Cast Are Returning To The Big Screen

Keley Grammer was one of the more surprising names to arise in the Avengers: Doomsday live stream. This was then compounded as his co-stars from Fox’s X-Men franchise steadily joined him in the lineup. While Patrick Stewart was last seen portraying a Professor X variant in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (complete with comics-accurate yellow hover chair), co-stars like Ian McKellen and Alan Cumming were even more stunning due to the fact that they haven’t been seen since the X-Men movies.

In fact, Alan Cumming hasn’t been seen as Nightcrawler since X2 in 2003. This would be his only appearance in Fox’s X-Men franchise before Kodi Smit-McPhee inherited the role in the alternate X-Men timeline in X-Men: Apocalypse and X-Men: Dark Phoenix. Despite Cumming stating emphatically that he would never reprise the role due to the hours of makeup he had to endure (for exceptional results), he recently reacted to the news with a post on Instagram where he demonstrates his acrobatic skills with the caption “Never say never.”

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James Marsden has additionally not been seen as Cyclops since X-Men: The Last Stand, where he was unceremoniously killed off, causing fans to rally for a return to help redeem the character. A fake ᴅᴇᴀᴅpool & Wolverine leak tantalized this subset of the fandom with Cyclops in a comics-accurate X-Men suit, though this would ultimately prove to be a misdirection. Of all the original X-Men cast returning to the big screen, it’s Kelsey Grammer’s Beast who boasts the most recent appearance.

Kelsey Grammer’s Beast Made His MCU Debut In The Marvels Credits Scene

Kelsey Grammer Appears As A Comics-Accurate Version Of Beast

We already know that these X-Men will come from another universe, thanks to The Marvels. In the post-credits scene for The Marvels, Monica Rambeau is trapped in a parallel universe after mending the tear in spacetime between it and Earth-616. She first encounters a variant of her mother, Maria, who seems to be operating as Binary, before then meeting Kelsey Grammer’s Hank McCoy, AKA Beast. Beast informs Monica that she has inadvertently traveled to their parallel universe before then declaring that “Charles” wanted an update.

Although a variant of Professor X had already appeared in the MCU at this point, Beast’s MCU cameo was particularly astonishing – not least because he survives to appear again. Unfortunately, his post-credits appearance was seen by very few at the time, dampening the impact of the scene as The Marvels grossed only $200 million worldwide, making it the lowest-grossing MCU movie. Nevertheless, the scene remains one of the Multiverse Saga’s most important thanks to what has been revealed for Avengers: Doomsday.

Avengers: Doomsday Makes The Marvels Credits Scene Very Important To The MCU

The Marvels Now Ties To Avengers: Doomsday Directly

Despite appearing in the one MCU movie that drew the smallest audience, this post-credits scene is now one of Marvel Studios’ most consequential. Kelsey Grammer’s appearance in the Avengers: Doomsday cast list points to the fact that Avengers: Doomsday will follow up on this scene directly. Monica Rambeau is now an integral part of the MCU, as she will seemingly be the one to tie the X-Men to Earth-616. Incidentally, this also lends credence to the notion that Marvel intends to announce more actors for Avengers: Doomsday, as Teyonah Parris’s name did not appear in the original lineup.

The fact that these iconic mutants will be appearing together in Avengers: Doomsday hints at the possible story Marvel is looking to adapt. With Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars rounding out the Multiverse Saga, it stands to reason that a core MacGuffin from the last Saga – namely, incursions – will finally come to bear as the main threat facing the Avengers. This suggests that the alternate universe in which the X-Men live will be on a collision course with the MCU’s Earth-616.

A prevailing theory now suggests that this could lead to an Avengers vs. X-Men adaptation as each team fights to save their own universe by destroying the other. It seems as though the X-Men’s universe is most at risk, considering the collective age of the cast and the fact that the MCU is inexorably tied to Earth-616. Whatever the case, it is clear that The Marvels, despite having been one of the least-viewed MCU movies, played a larger part in the Multiverse Saga’s throughline than many other MCU installments.

The Marvels Credits Scene Is Now More Important Than Most Others In The Last 5 Years

The Marvels Delivered A Post-Credits Scene That Will Actually Be Paid Off

One of the main criticisms leveled at the Multiverse Saga is its general lack of cohesion, and the post-credits scenes of the last five years support this. Like Spider-Man: Homecoming revealing Scorpion is imprisoned with Vulture, there are several examples of plots being set up that don’t look as if they’ll ever be paid off. This has seemingly spurred Marvel to deliver less consequential post-credits scenes more frequently, with The Marvels being among the most important for Avengers: Doomsday specifically.

Scenes like the introduction of Eros look less like they’ll ever amount to anything with each pᴀssing year. Meanwhile, the hard pivot from Kang the Conqueror to Doctor Doom as the Multiverse Saga’s arch-villain has rendered such post-credits scenes as the Council of Kangs and perhaps the beacon emanating from Shang-Chi’s Ten Rings obsolete, though it is feasible for the latter to be picked up on in another way. Captain America: Brave New World directly references the looming threat of another universe, with the Leader presumably referencing the X-Men when he warns Sam Wilson of other heroes.

Of course, there is still a chance that scenes such as Hercules’ introduction and the symbiote left behind in Spider-Man: No Way Home could be paid off in Avengers: Doomsday. Still, none comes close to The Marvels in terms of consequences, as it seems as though this version of Beast will directly enter Avengers: Doomsday after the live stream confirmed Grammer’s involvement. If and how the other post-credits scenes will affect the events of Avengers: Doomsday remains to be seen.

Upcoming MCU Movies

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