The MCU Is Already Defining What Sets The X-Men’s Mutants Apart From Other Heroes

Warning! This post contains SPOILERS for Spider-Man: Brand New Day

For decades, one of the biggest X-Men challenges has been explaining why mutants are particularly feared more than others in a world filled with superheroes and superpowered beings. Despite having the Avengers, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and so many more heroes, mutants like the X-Men are constantly discriminated against in the comics for being born different. However, one can argue the distinction could be even harder to translate in the MCU.

Like the comics' Marvel Universe, the MCU already has aliens, wizards, androids, gamma-powered heroes, super-soldiers, wallcrawlers, and more enhanced individuals with extraordinary abilities. As such, it would feel fairly bizarre if mutants were to come onto the scene and become hated just for having powers and/or looking different. That said, it does seem like Spider-Man: Brand New Day is already laying the groundwork for some key nuances often seen on the page ahead of Marvel's upcoming X-Men reboot from director Jake Schreier.

Rather than making mutants universally hated just for having the label of mutant while others who gained powers later in life via non-genetic means are viewed as heroes, the MCU is seemingly building toward something far more compelling after Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Sadie Sink's exciting debut as Jean Grey.

How Spider-Man: Brand New Day Sets Up The MCU's Distinction Between Feared Mutants And Other Superpowered Heroes

When it comes to mutants, the MCU arguably has an even bigger challenge showing why the in-universe public would come to fear and oppress "homo superior". After all, this is a global population that has lived alongside the extraordinary with different-looking beings possessing incredible powers for decades. Keeping that in mind, Spider-Man: Brand New Day potentially provides an answer with Director Bill Metzger and the Department of Damage Control.

Metzger isn't afraid of Jean Grey's because she's a mutant. His concern lies in the sheer potential of her power and what he sees as a lack of control being in the hands of a teenage girl. Wanting to harness and replicate that power to be used in better-equipped hands (his), Metzger is fully willing to push Jean to the point of death to get what he wants, having already proven his determination by killing Jean's sister Sara (also a telepath) during his experiments on her.

As such, this mistrust and fear over Jean wielding such major power without oversight could become very important in the MCU's future. The public of the MCU could be influenced and come to collectively believe that mutants should be feared and hated specifically because of the risk they could pose with their powers.

Admittedly, Jean does demonstrate that risk after the trauma she's exposed to from Metzger's experiments evolves her powers, granting her comics-accurate telekinesis and expanding the range of her telepathy from just over 30 feet to a full kilometer. If the X-gene starts being triggered within an entire generation on a rapid level in the MCU, the fear and concern about all sorts of powers suddenly emerging in undisciplined teens will at least be more understandable and fairly unprecedented in the MCU, even if the discrimination and prejudice that will undoubtedly follow is still wrong.

After key MCU storylines like Civil War's Sokovia Accords and the world seeking greater oversight over heroes like the Avengers, control being a key focal point more than anything else when it comes to mutants makes a fair amount of sense. Even before Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the DODC's prior clashes with characters like Ms. Marvel (an MCU mutant) and Wonder Man (possibly an MCU mutant) do indicate a focus on what is viewed as unchecked power.

The MCU Is Already Justifying Its Younger Cast Of X-Men

With Sadie Sink's Jean Grey and Kit Connor reportedly cast to play Scott Summers' Cyclops, Marvel Studios seemingly wants to establish why its upcoming X-Men cast will be on the younger side as teenage heroes. As it stands, Marvel Studios is certainly well primed to establish its X-Men at the forefront of a new generation of emerging mutants, many of whom will likely lack experience with their powers while not being part of any team or institution, just like in the comics (explaining the eventual existence of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters...and Magneto's Brotherhood of Mutants).

Across the board, the X-Men and the majority of their fellow mutants in the MCU will likely be discovering their place in the world and learning how to use their powers, all while governments and the public try to figure out what their existence means. We're talking about the very earliest days of the X-Men stories in the comics, despite the fact that most of the MCU's other big teams of heroes have been established for quite some time.

However it all shakes out, it's going to be fascinating to see what the MCU has in store for the X-Men and mutantkind at large.