5 Pieces Of 'X-Men' Content Worth Revisiting Before 'Avengers: Doomsday

It's an exciting time to be a fan of the Fox X-Men films. While 2024's Deadpool and Wolverine initially seemed to act as a love letter/goodbye to the Fox-verse, fans were delighted earlier in 2025 with the reveal that some of the Fox-verse X-Men were set to appear in Avengers: Doomsday. Doomsday's third teaser focuses on a few of these returning characters, including Patrick Stewart as Professor X, Ian McKellen as Magneto, and James Marsden as Cyclops.

For fans unfamiliar with the X-Men, or those who just want a refresher, here's some of the X-Men content worth revisiting in the lead up to the release of Avengers: Doomsday in December.

1. 'X-Men'

Released in the year 2000, X-Men was the first film of what is now widely known as the Fox-verse. Attacked by Magneto's Brotherhood of Mutants after becoming the unlikely protector of a young fellow mutant known as Rogue, the amnesiac Logan/Wolverine finds himself reluctantly recruited into the X-Men. A group of heroic Mutants led by Professor Charles Xavier, the X-Men, working to build trust between humans and Mutants, must thwart Magneto's plan to mutate the entire world.

X-Men was a hit upon it's release, and most fans believe it still holds up. It is often celebrated as having set the blueprint for modern day superhero films. It provides a fitting introduction for most of the X-Men characters appearing in Doomsday.

2. 'X2: Mutants United'

X2: Mutants United, also known as simply X-Men 2, was released in 2003. After narrowly surviving an attack by a Mutant assassin, the President of the United States allows Colonel William Stryker to conduct an investigation on Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, unaware that Stryker had engineered the attack.

The 'investigation' becomes cover for an attack on the school, resulting in the kidnapping of a large number of students, while Stryker's assistant also captures Professor Xavier, who had been conducting his own investigation of the attempt on the President's life. Those who escaped the attack on the school (including Wolverine, who is also dealing with Stryker's taunts about knowing his past) find themselves forced to team up with Magneto to stop Stryker's evil plotting against Mutant kind.

X2, an adaptation of the classic God Loves, Man Kills graphic novel, is often considered an improvement on it's already successful predecessor, and has been deemed by some critics as one of the best comic book movies of all time, or at least the best of it's era. The film introduced Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler. Initially the character's only appearance in the franchise, Cumming is now set to reprise the role in Doomsday after a 23 year hiatus.

3. 'X-Men: The Last Stand'

Hitting theatres in 2006, X-Men: The Last Stand is the final entry in the original Fox X-Men trilogy. Still grieving the apparent loss of Jean Grey at the end of X2, the surviving X-Men face a new dilemma with the announcement of a supposed 'cure' for mutation. The Cure is supposedly optional, but available for any who want it.

While some X-Men, such as the life-draining Rogue, are tempted by the Cure, Magneto reforms the Brotherhood of Mutants to oppose and eliminate the source of the Cure, a young Mutant boy known as Leech, fearing that it will be weaponised against unwilling Mutants. The situation is complicated further when Jean is discovered alive, albeit as her extra powerful darker half, the Phoenix, previously kept at bay by Xavier.

While considered the weakest entry of the X-Men original trilogy, recent retrospective reviews have been kinder to The Last Stand, referring to it as a decent film, even if a lacklustre adaptation of the comics' classic Dark Phoenix Saga. Though many will say it could be skipped as far as Doomsday prepatory viewing, the film does sow the seeds of Magneto and Xavier's reconciliation by the time of X-Men: Days of Future Past, an entry that may prove vital.

4. 'X-Men: Days of Future Past'

Released in 2014, X-Men: Days of Future Past is a sequel to both the original X-Men trilogy, and the 2o11 prequel film X-Men: First Class. The film begins in a semi-dystopic 2023, where the rapidly shrinking group of surviving X-Men are ruthlessly pursued by Mutant-hunting robots the Sentinels. Using a new ability of Shadowcat's, the group forms a plan to project Wolverine back in time to 1973, to prevent the Mutant assassination of Weapons Developer Bolivar Trask, resulting in the posthumous approval of Trask's Sentinel Program.

Days of Future Past presses the reset button on certain events, creating a new timeline in which both Jean Grey and Cyclops are still alive. It is in this timeline, sometime between Days of Future Past and Logan, that many fans speculate the X-Men's Doomsday storyline will take place.

5. 'X-Men '97'

Arriving on Disney Plus in 2024, X-Men '97 is a sequel to the classic X-Men: The Animated Series that aired in the 90s. The series, which was written for the now grown up audience of the original, covers some much darker storylines, including the genocide of the Mutant nation of Genosha, and is not afraid to kill off fan favourites.

X-Men '97 may not have any direct connection to the Fox-verse, or events we'll see unfold in Doomsday, but it is in fact part of the MCU Multiverse, as hinted by a blink-and-you'll-miss-it Easter Egg of The Watcher observing shortly before the attack on Genosha begins. For the uninitiated, it provides a good rundown on who the X-Men are, and what they stand for.

Hopefully, we'll learn more about the X-Men's role in Avengers: Doomsday before the film hits theatres in December.