Marvel’s X-Men Reboot Announces Its New Mutant Leaders

Published Oct 9, 2026, 8:00 AM EDT

Nicolas Ayala is a Senior Writer for the Comics team at ScreenRant, with over five years of experience writing about Superhero media, action movies, and TV shows. 

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Marvel's new X-Men are divided into separate factions, with multiple mutant heroes waging war against each other. Although Charles Xavier and Cyclops are the X-Men's leader figures in most mainstream Marvel timelines, the X-Men's leadership often rotates to suit changing eras and political climates. In times of open warfare, the X-Men turn to seasoned commanders like Storm, former enemies like Magneto and Emma Frost, or survivalists like Cable. The team's fluid leadership makes it an evolving movement that adapts constantly to match the specific threats of the time.

Over the past two decades, Wolverine's massive prominence on the big screen made him the global face of the X-Men in pop culture. However, there's a wide array of mutants who hold equal importance to the survival of mutantkind. Jean Grey is both one of the X-Men's most powerful heroes and one of their biggest threats, and Nightcrawler is the X-Men's heart and moral conscience, while Beast is the brains behind their operations. Rogue, Kitty Pryde, Gambit, Kid Omega, Magik, and Juggernaut have joined the team after Xavier's original first assembled, but they have also become essential members of the X-Men.

Across the infinite expanse of the Marvel multiverse, some versions of the X-Men have evolved more tragically than others, with a broken team on the verge of collapse.

The Midnight X-Men Are Divided Into Multiple Factions, Each With Its Own Leader

Midnight X-Men #1; Written By Jonathan Hickman; Art By Matteo Della Fonte & Arthur Hesli

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Jonathan Hickman, Matteo della Fonte, and Arthur Hesli's Midnight X-Men #1 presents a fractured mutantkind. The queen of the vampire mutants Storm leads the "empyres", a dominant new race of bloodthirsty mutant vampires. While Ororo Munroe commands her undead legions, Magneto protects an uninfected stronghold as the leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants, while Bishop Kurt Wagner serves as a diplomatic link between the Catholic Church and the various superhuman factions while maintaining a secret link to his former teammate and close friend Storm.

Meanwhile, a non-vampire mutant resistance begins to mobilize under a battle-hardened Cyclops. Scott Summers' guerrilla warfare takes a detour when he rescues the young mutant Hope Summers from a lethal empyre ambush, which leaves several of the vampire mutants severely injured. Having narrowly survived a terrifying encounter with a squad of blood-drinking empyres led by Gambit, Hope becomes interested in the idea of Cyclops' rebel movement to secure a future for mutantkind. Remy LeBeau survives despite enduring severe burns, but his vampiric followers Psylocke, Glob Herman, and Empath are seriously injured along the way.

Midnight X-Men Likely Won't End Well For Mutantkind

The Future Doesn't Seem Too Bright For The Midnight Universe's X-Men

The bleak reality of the Midnight Universe unfolds much like a slow-burn variation of Marvel Zombies, where total collapse is an inevitable destiny for every hero and villain involved. The corruptive nature of the empyre affliction warps the moral compass of the world's most pure-hearted mutants, and even though they aren't nearly as aggressive as all their undead counterparts from Marvel Zombies, they're all still irredeemable monsters. Storm and Gambit are twisted villains driven by bloodlust, and even the non-vampire Cyclops leads his resistance with a ruthless pragmatism, no longer hesitating to execute infected fellow mutants for the sake of survival.

The multiple clash between mutant factions in Midnight X-Men might set off a catastrophic chain reaction across Marvel's new imprint. The empyres' explosive war for global dominance will likely break the already fragile peace agreements between humans and mutants, as well as force every hero to stand in the crossfire, regardless of their biology and their allegiances. The sheer scale of the fallout promises inescapable ramifications for neighboring titles. Midnight Spider-Man may find his urban hunting grounds transformed into a hyper-violent war zone, while the already tragic Midnight Fantastic Four could see their fragile hold on sanity slip away further as the world submerges into chaos.

Which Midnight X-Men team are you rooting for?

Midnight X-Men #1 is now available from Marvel Comics