Marvel’s continuous delays with their movies and shows are not only depriving fans of the next chapter in the lives of the characters they’ve come to know and love, but there’s also the matter of the heroes we haven’t seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe yet. Specifically, the X-Men.
With the X-Men-Fox era is everyone’s rear-view mirrors, it’s only a matter of time before Marvel turns to the superhero group that was once the company’s most popular team. But while fans may want them in the mix, bringing in another universe’s worth of characters is a lot more daunting than introducing Sam Wilson as a veteran with a background in fighting with advanced technology who has the same morning running route as Captain America.
“It’s such an immensely huge thing now,” Eric Lewald, showrunner for X-Men: The Animated Series, said about the MCU during his recent appearance on GWW Radio’s Change My Mind podcast. “There’s so many billions of dollars and so many hundreds of thousands of people that are focused on this now. It’s so odd to us because this was like a little garage band to us. We just had this stuff dumped on our lap and [they] said, ‘Make a show, we’ll let you know if it’s successful or not.’ No real oversight, no micromanaging. Just the show that we and the artists wanted to slap together. It’s a whole nother world now.”
Then Lewald assessed the idea of bringing the X-Men into the MCU.
“It’s weird. I know that’s a challenge,” Lewald said on Change My Mind. “They’ve set up this thing, unprecedented — all these different superheroes that all are successful, and they’ve managed to give them different tones and different focuses. I’m continually in the awe of this juggernaut that they’ve set up — I can’t use that word because it’s a character.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how Kevin Feige sleeps at night trying to keep all these balls in the air. But for the X-Men, when people ask me about integrating them in the MCU, I always had the reverse problem. There were too many X-Men and too many villains already in the X-universe and too many connected characters. I found myself cutting half of them out and having stories about three of the X-Men. Just to keep sane and to not have to try to service all of them at once in a 22-minute episode.
So, the idea of all of the X-Men and all of their villains and all of their support crew then interacting with all of the Avengers, and all of Thors and all — it’s just crazy-making to me. I don’t even want to try to go there.”
To which Julia Lewald, one of the writers on X-Men: The Animated Series’ and Eric’s wife, said, “Yes he does.” Of course, he agreed.
“If Marvel were to call us, we would be thrilled to share some ideas with them,” Julia Lewald said. “Because, the truth, is no one has. We will tell you, no one has reached out to us.”
For more from the Lewald’s appearance on Change My Mind — in which they discuss their new book (which is available on Amazon and at local book stores across the country), the X-Men-Fox movies and the Thor animated show they pitched after the success of X-Men: The Animated Series — you can catch the show on iTunes, Spotify, GWW Radio’s SoundCloud and wherever else you get your podcasts.