Just By Including This Original X-Men Hero, The MCU's Reboot Can Do One Thing Fox's Franchise Never Did

Published Aug 18, 2026, 10:00 PM EDT

Nicholas Raymond is an author and journalist based out of Alabama, where he proudly roots for the Alabama Crimson Tide football team. A graduate of the University of Montevallo, he has a degree in mass communication with a concentration in journalism.

If the MCU's X-Men reboot winds up adding Angel to its cast, the reboot will offer audiences something no film in Fox's X-Men franchise ever attempted to do. Warren Worthington III a.k.a. Angel is an original member of the X-Men, having made his debut alongside Cyclops, Iceman, Jean Grey, and Beast in 1962's X-Men #1. And he's remained essential to the team's story, as evidenced by decades of adventures with the group and all sorts of changes and challenges he's endured over the years.

So far, Warren Worthington III has been portrayed twice in live action. He was played by Ben Foster in X-Men: The Last Stand, with Ben Hardy taking on a different take on the character in X-Men: Apocalypse. And while the classic X-Men from Fox's films are returning to relevancy thanks to Wolverine and Deadpool and the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, there's no sign yet that Angel will have any part in the team's big-screen resurgence.

No role for Angel in Avengers: Doomsday makes sense, given that he didn't contribute much to the original X-Men trilogy, which appears to be the segment of Fox's franchise that the new movie is largely drawing on in respect to the X-Men's role. He would, however, be a sensible choice for the younger generation of X-Men that will be the focus of the MCU's 2028 reboot. For now, though, there's no confirmation that will be the cast.

At D23 2026, Marvel confirmed the inclusion of multiple X-Men characters in the project: Cyclops, Jean Grey, Rogue, Storm, Emma Frost, Professor Xavier and Mister Sinister. Even if they're all new incarnations of the character, their stories will likely be familiar to those who followed the previous X-Men movies, but if it adds Angel to its cast, it can take a course that has thus far been avoided by every movie adaptation.

Angel Has Been Poorly Represented In The X-Men Movies

It's difficult - if not impossible - to identify an X-Men hero more poorly represented in live-action than Warren Worthington III. Both The Last Stand and Apocalypse depicted him with his trademark wings, and in the former film, he was established as the son of a wealthy man. Both of these elements are true to the original character, but neither movie really fleshed him out or handed him his comic-accurate "Angel" costume.

While he did get to join the final battle on the side of the heroes, his role was still of a supporting nature; he was not part of the team and and had no affiliation with Professor Xavier's mutant academy. Apocalypse failed him even further than The Last Stand, in that it didn't even give him a chance to showcase any of his heroic traits. Rather, it was far more focused on his Archangel alter ego, the form he took when he served as one of Apocalypse's Four Horsemen.

How the X-Men movies handled Angel stands in stark contrast to the approach taken to the other four co-founding X-Men heroes. Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, and Iceman have all enjoyed more than one movie appearance as a member of the X-Men team. Angel has yet to get one, in spite of all his years as a key character in various X-Men titles. Angel's time in the spotlight also compares poorly to many of the later additions to the X-Men. The likes of Kitty Pryde, Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Rogue have all been on the team's lineup in at least one film.

Angel Is A Crucial Part Of The X-Men's Earliest Days

Angel's two biggest contributions to X-Men lore are his "Archangel" identity and the part he played in introducing the X-Men to readers for the very time in the 1960s. For the last few decades, the comics have been populated with dozens of X-Men heroes for fans to keep up with, but back in the Silver Age of Marvel Comics, there were only five core members, and Angel was one of them.

Angel was there when the team had their now-historic first battles with several key figures in their rogues' gallery, including Magneto, Blob, the Sentinels, and Juggernaut. He was also a participant in the stories that introduced several major Marvel characters, such as Ka-Zar, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Banshee, and Havok.

During these years, Angel fit in well with the X-Men comic's diverse cast, as each character hailed from different walks of life. Unlike his teammates, Angel had grown up in a wealthy household, which affected his interactions with the other X-Men. He was also in a love triangle with Cyclops and Jean Grey, as he held feelings for her that weren't returned. That side of the character's story, though, has long since been dropped.

Angel Could Still Be One Of The MCU's New X-Men

After the first X-Men trilogy, the franchise had a great opportunity to do right by Angel through X-Men: First Class, given that it's a story about "the first class" of mutants taken under Professor X's wing. But rather than place Warren Worthington III in the initial X-Men roster, the movie opted to include a different winged mutant, Angel Salvadore. Based on the young ages of many of the actors cast in the MCU's X-Men reboot, it too will likely be an origin story film that explores the team's formation and earliest adventures.

So like X-Men: First Class, it may also ignore Angel. Considering the casting of Rogue and Storm, it's apparent that the film isn't looking to feature a replica of the original team's lineup in Marvel Comics, Angel missing out on another X-Men adaptation is certainly plausible. That said, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige did clarify at D23 that the announced cast is not final. Other characters could turn out to be members of the new team, and if the updated cast includes Angel, the X-Men reboot's team roster will be in a great position to be unique to all previous iterations.

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  Jean Grey

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  Rogue / Anna Marie

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  Scott Summers / Cyclops

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  Samara Weaving

  Emma Frost