Will Phoenix rise again? Jean Grey’s return in past X-Men movies “were all surprises that I never anticipated,” Janssen says.
Famke Janssen isn’t expecting another X-Men rebirth. The Boy Kills World star played the telepathic mutant Jean Grey / Phoenix in five X-Men movies between 2000 and 2014, including cameos in The Wolverine and X-Men: Days of Future Past. Sophie Turner took over the role as young Jean in two prequels, 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse and 2019’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix, the latter marking the final film in the Fox franchise following Disney’s purchase of 21st Century Fox. But — like a phoenix — the X-Verse rose from the ashes.
Janssen’s former X-Men co-stars Patrick Stewart and Kelsey Grammer have since reprised their respective roles as Professor Xavier and Beast in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and up next, Hugh Jackman returns as Logan in Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine. With the just-released trailer revealing multiversal cameos of actors and characters from past X-Men movies, could Janssen’s Jean Grey make her first appearance in more than a decade?Â
“I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t expect to come back after dying as Jean Grey,” Janssen exclusively told ComicBook ahead of her new movie, the bloody action-thriller Boy Kills World. “I came back as the Phoenix [in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand], and I came back in flashback scenes in The Wolverine, and then in Days of Future Past.“
After Jean’s sacrifice that ended X2: X-Men United, she returned from her watery grave in The Last Stand as the Phoenix: the long-dormant side of Jean’s personality uninhibited by Professor Xavier’s psychic blocks. Wolverine was forced to kill Jean a second time, only for her memory to haunt him in 2013’s The Wolverine. Janssen last appeared as a resurrected Jean in 2014’s Days of Future Past, making a cameo opposite James Marsden’s Cyclops in the reset 2023 timeline.
Jean’s post-X2 returns “were all surprises that I never anticipated,” Janssen added. As for yet another unanticipated return in July’s Deadpool & Wolverine, she said: “I don’t know. I doubt it, but you never know.”Â
Marsden has hinted he might don Cyclops’ ruby-red visor once more in Deadpool & Wolverine. Returning Deadpool co-star Karan Soni also teased “a lot of surprises” from the next Marvel Studios movie to wade into the multiverse. “Let’s just say a lot of people traveled to London,” Soni said of the London-shot sequel in a recent interview.
Boy Kills World — also starring Bill Skarsgård, Jessica Rothe, Michelle Dockery, Brett Gelman, Isaiah Mustafa, Yayan Ruhian, Nicholas and Cameron Crovetti, Quinn Copeland, Andrew Koji, and Sharlto Copley — is in theaters April 26.
