Following the news that the Warfare actor Kit Connor will play Scott Summers in Marvel Studios’ upcoming X-Men reboot, artist BossLogic has shared fan art imagining Connor suited up as the mutant team’s field leader.
The artwork puts him in a comic-inspired Cyclops costume complete with the character’s unmistakable ruby-quartz visor, and it makes a pretty convincing case for the casting.
BossLogic has also previously imagined Samara Weaving as Emma Frost, giving us another early glimpse at what two major players in Marvel’s mutant future could look like once they make the jump to the MCU.
Connor is 22, putting him close in age to Sadie Sink, 24, who is set to play Jean Grey. Weaving is 34, which could be an indication that Marvel isn’t planning to immediately dive into Scott Summers and Emma Frost’s complicated comic book romance. Then again, this is the X-Men. Romantic complications practically come with the uniforms.
Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier is directing the new X-Men movie, and Marvel appears to be building its mutant franchise around a younger generation of characters.
We still don’t know exactly what Schreier has planned for the story, but one possibility is that the movie will follow Professor Charles Xavier as he assembles his X-Men rather than introducing audiences to a team that has already been operating for years.
There’s also the giant Avengers: Secret Wars question hanging over everything. If that movie reshapes or reboots portions of the MCU, Marvel could introduce the X-Men with an entirely new history already baked into the universe.
Scott Summers would certainly make sense as one of the characters at the center of Marvel’s new approach. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Cyclops debuted in 1963’s The X-Men #1 and became Professor Charles Xavier’s first student and one of the defining leaders of the X-Men.
Scott’s mutant ability allows him to unleash immensely powerful optic blasts from his eyes, forcing him to use a ruby-quartz visor to keep those blasts under control. But Cyclops has always been more interesting than his powers. He’s a gifted tactician with an intense sense of responsibility, and that devotion to the X-Men has frequently made his personal life incredibly messy.
His relationship with Jean Grey is one of the biggest romances in X-Men history, but Emma Frost eventually became a major part of Scott’s life as well.
During Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run, Scott cheated on Jean and became romantically involved with Emma. Scott and Emma remained together for years before Scott and Jean eventually rekindled their relationship during the Krakoan Age.
That history makes Connor, Sink, and Weaving sharing the MCU particularly interesting, even if Marvel decides to take their relationships in a completely different direction.
Connor will also be following two actors who previously brought Cyclops to live-action. James Marsden played Scott Summers in Fox’s original X-Men trilogy and returned for X-Men: Days of Future Past. Tye Sheridan later took over as the younger Cyclops in X-Men: Apocalypse, with appearances in Deadpool 2 and Dark Phoenix.
One of the big questions now is whether Marvel will finally give Cyclops the attention he deserves. The Fox movies had some great moments with the character, but Wolverine frequently became the centerpiece of those films.
Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has indicated that the MCU’s plans are considerably larger than focusing on a handful of familiar mutants.
“The X-Men are far more than just Wolverine, far more than the original team; fundamentally, it’s a universe, a multi-stage saga. Much of that is what we’re working towards.”
That opens the door to an enormous collection of mutants, teams, villains, relationships, and storylines that Marvel can explore across multiple movies and potentially TV projects.
Feige continued: “We’re constantly changing, constantly evolving, but having some guidance helps us act more purposefully, especially with X-Men—it’s already had 10 movies, some very, very good, some I think haven’t lived up to expectations—how do we plan the ‘mutant saga’ in a very grand way?”
He concluded: “That being said, we have many more characters to explore in the future—the schedule is already booked until 2042, especially the X-Men,”
If everything comes together, the mutants could become one of the major pillars of Marvel’s next era, with enough characters and comic book material to keep the studio busy for a very long time.
Connor’s Cyclops should have plenty of room to grow within that world. Scott can be a difficult character to nail because his disciplined, serious personality can easily come across as stiff when compared to more immediately colorful X-Men.
Get him right, though, and you have one of Marvel’s best team leaders, a character carrying an enormous amount of responsibility while trying to keep a group of extremely powerful and frequently volatile mutants alive.
Weaving’s Emma Frost brings an entirely different energy. Emma is sharp, powerful, morally complicated, and capable of walking into just about any X-Men story and making things more interesting. Seeing how Schreier utilizes Scott, Jean, Emma, and the rest of this new roster should be one of the most exciting aspects of the reboot.
For now, BossLogic’s artwork offers a cool unofficial preview of what Connor and Weaving could look like once Marvel Studios brings these characters to life.
