Warning! Potential spoiler for Avengers: Doomsday follows:
X-Men actor Ian McKellen appears to have accidentally confirmed the destruction of New Jersey in Avengers: Doomsday.
Speaking to YouTube channel Jake’s Takes, McKellen dropped the apparent spoiler while musing about how his physical workload had eased over the years, following some of the stunts performed in the X-Men movies.
“Two police cars in front of me were raised up by cranes,” McKellen recalled of the memorable sequence in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand. “These were not special effects. Nowadays I think things will become a little bit easier — though I did destroy New Jersey the other day.” At this point, the actor appears to realize he has said too much, saying: “Oooh, I perhaps shouldn’t have said that…”
Of course, Marvel fans have pounced on the quote — and the speculation has quickly begun as to what this could all mean. But for starters, here’s what we know of McKellen’s return as the iconic X-Men villain for definite.
Marvel’s X-Men-focused Avengers: Doomsday trailer (that’s apparently not actually a trailer) shows Magneto and Patrick Stewart’s Professor X sitting side by side in the X-Mansion, playing what appears to be one final game of chess. The feeling here is that something very bad is about to happen — presumably the arrival of Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom — as we also see the school reduced to rubble, and James Marsden’s Cyclops letting loose in front of what look like Sentinels.
Fan speculation has widely centered on the X-Men being brought into Doomsday’s story as a result of the multiverse collapsing, via the “incursions” of realities crashing into each other as seen in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and Captain Marvel (which ends with an X-Men cameo). Does McKellen do something to avert an incursion in the X-Men universe, at the cost of destroying New Jersey? Whatever’s going down, the state is only a short distance from that of the X-Mansion, which is situated in Westchester County, New York.
Alternatively, could this be the destruction of New Jersey in the main MCU reality? This would potentially be a huge story moment for the saga, depending on how everything likely gets reset at the end of Avengers: Secret Wars. It would also surely bring in Jersey City resident Kamala Khan (and potentially the rest of her growing group of young Avengers). And finally, if this was the case, it would mean Magneto (and potentially other X-Men) survive the X-Mansion attack and leave their universe to take the battle elsewhere.
All will be revealed this December 18, when Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters. On the upside, for once in the Marvel universe it seems like Manhatten finally gets a day off.
Image credit: Joe Maher/WireImage via Getty Images.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
