With the overwhelming amount of actors jumping into the Avengers: Doomsday cast — like, hello, did you see the livestream?! — it’s a pretty natural step to think that maybe, just maybe, Halle Berry would return to the X-Men and reprise her iconic role as Storm. Sadly, it seems as though that beautiful theory will not be working out the way fans hoped.
“We want to see your name on a chair for Avengers: Doomsday, we want Storm,” Black Girl Nerds told Berry on the red carpet at CinemaCon in Las Vegas recently, to which the Never Let Go star replied with a chuckle and: “keep waiting. Not gonna be there.”
Fans have been eager to see Berry make her first official appearance in the MCU as it stands today, even before the Avengers: Doomsday cast reveal. She first appeared as Ororo Munroe, also known as Storm, in Bryan Singer’s 2000 adaptation of X-Men, where she starred alongside a now iconic ensemble cast of Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman, James Marsden, Anna Paquin, Rebecca Romjin, Ray Park, Famke Janssen, and Bruce Davidson. She went on to reprise her role in 2003’s X2, 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand, and 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Each of these films were produced by 20th Century Fox before they were purchased by Disney and integrated into the current MCU — so fans seemed to be really holding out hope that she would finally make an official appearance within Marvel’s new world.
Then came last month’s Avengers: Doomsday cast reveal, which was heavy on veteran X-Men actors. Kelsey Grammer, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Alan Cumming, Rebecca Romijn, and James Marsden are all now set to appear in Avengers: Doomsday, confirming the X-Men are in the film in a big way. Grammer famously played Beast in the Fox X-Men franchise before making his MCU debut via The Marvels’ post-credits scene. Stewart played Charles Xavier/Professor X in the X-Men films before appearing briefly in the MCU via Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness as a member of the Illuminati. McKellen, who played Magneto, has yet to appear in the MCU. Neither has Cumming, who played Nightcrawler, Romijn, who played Mystique, nor Marsden, who played Cyclops. It begs the question: is Avengers: Doomsday secretly an Avengers vs. X-Men movie?
And then, Marvel and Robert Downey Jr. teased they’re not done yet, which led fans to believe the likes of Halle Berry and other former X-Men actors who didn’t make the cut still had a chance.
Berry’s next official appearance on the big screen, however, is a film called Crime 101, featuring Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Barry Keoghan, Monica Barbaro, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Nick Nolte. It is said to be releasing sometime this year.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
