X-Men recap: the story so far

No. 01 · 1992 · Series

X-Men: The Animated Series recap

The X-Men, led by Professor Charles Xavier and including Cyclops, Jean Grey, Wolverine, Storm, Rogue, Gambit, Beast and Jubilee, defend a world that hates mutants. In season 1, they fight the Sentinels, giant robots built to hunt mutants; Morph dies, Beast is jailed, and Apocalypse plots to turn humans against mutants by staging an attack on Senator Kelly. In season 2, Cyclops and Jean marry and are targeted by Mister Sinister, who sends a brainwashed Morph against them, the Friends of Humanity stir up hatred, and Xavier and Magneto are stranded together in the Savage Land. Season 3 tells the Phoenix and Dark Phoenix sagas, as a cosmic force takes over Jean and the alien Shi'ar Empire, ruled by Lilandra, tries to destroy her; Lady Deathstrike and the Shadow King also appear. Seasons 4 and 5 bring Apocalypse's war across time, the alien Phalanx and stories focused on single characters, before the show builds to a peace conference between humans and mutants.

How X-Men: The Animated Series ends

In the final episode, Graduation Day, Xavier is shot by an anti-mutant extremist at the peace conference. The wound is fatal on Earth, so Lilandra takes him into space to be healed by the Shi'ar, and he says goodbye to his X-Men. The team is left without its founder for the first time. The series ended there in 1997, and X-Men '97 picks up the story a year later.

No. 02 · 2000 · Film

X-Men recap

Senator Robert Kelly is pushing a law to force mutants to register with the government. Rogue, a teenager whose touch drains people, runs away from home and meets Logan, called Wolverine, a cage fighter with metal claws and a healing power who remembers nothing of his past. Sabretooth attacks them, and Cyclops and Storm bring them to Charles Xavier's school for mutants, where Jean Grey tries to work out Logan's past. Xavier's old friend Magneto, a Holocaust survivor, believes humans will turn on mutants and leads his Brotherhood: Mystique, Toad and Sabretooth. He kidnaps Kelly and turns him into a mutant with a machine that kills him slowly. Mystique poisons Cerebro, putting Xavier into a coma, and the Brotherhood kidnaps Rogue to power the machine, planning to turn every world leader at a summit on Ellis Island into a mutant.

How X-Men ends

The X-Men fight the Brotherhood on the Statue of Liberty, and Logan gives Rogue his healing power to save her from the machine, nearly dying himself. Magneto is captured and locked in a plastic prison, where he plays chess with Xavier. Mystique has taken Kelly's place after his death. Logan heads to Alkali Lake in Canada to look for answers about his past.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 03 · 2003 · Film

X2: X-Men United recap

A mind-controlled Nightcrawler attacks the President in the White House, and military scientist William Stryker uses the attack to get approval to raid Xavier's school. Stryker captures Xavier and Cyclops, and his soldiers storm the mansion, but Logan escapes with Rogue, Iceman and Pyro. Logan learns that Stryker was behind the experiment that put metal on his bones. Mystique breaks Magneto out of his prison, and the X-Men reluctantly team up with him. Stryker is building a copy of Cerebro at a base under Alkali Lake, and he plans to use his mind-controlling son Jason and a brainwashed Xavier to kill every mutant on Earth. Logan fights Stryker's brainwashed assistant, Lady Deathstrike, inside the base, while Jean battles a brainwashed Cyclops.

How X2: X-Men United ends

Magneto turns Stryker's machine around to kill every human instead, and Storm and Nightcrawler break Xavier free. The dam above the base bursts, and Jean stays behind to hold back the flood and lift the X-Men's jet into the air, drowning in the lake. Magneto leaves with Mystique and Pyro. The X-Men give the President evidence of Stryker's plan, and the film ends with the shape of a phoenix in the lake.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 04 · 2006 · Film

X-Men: The Last Stand recap

A drug company finds a cure for being a mutant, made from a boy named Leech, and offers it to anyone who wants it. Many mutants are outraged, and Magneto raises an army against it. Cyclops, grieving Jean, returns to Alkali Lake and finds her alive, but she kills him. Xavier explains that Jean has a second, destructive personality, the Phoenix, which he locked away years ago. Jean disintegrates Xavier and joins Magneto. Mystique is hit with the cure while saving Magneto and he leaves her behind. Rogue considers the cure so she can touch Bobby. Magneto's followers include Pyro, the Juggernaut and Callisto, and the government arms its troops with cure darts. Magneto leads his army to Alcatraz, where Leech is held.

How X-Men: The Last Stand ends

At Alcatraz, the X-Men hold off Magneto's army, and Beast injects Magneto with the cure. Jean's power begins destroying everything, and Logan, the only one able to reach her, stabs her to death. Storm takes over the school, Rogue takes the cure, and a powerless Magneto sits alone in a park, where a metal chess piece moves slightly at his touch.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. After the credits, Moira MacTaggert checks on a man in a coma, and Xavier's voice speaks from him: he has moved his mind into another body, setting up his return.

No. 05 · 2009 · Film · optional

X-Men Origins: Wolverine recap

In Canada in 1845, young James Howlett kills the man who murdered his father, learns the man was his real father, and runs away with his half-brother Victor. The two fight in every American war up to Vietnam, until William Stryker recruits them for a team of mutants, Team X, including the wisecracking swordsman Wade Wilson. Logan quits after the team slaughters villagers in Africa and settles in the Rockies with his girlfriend Kayla. Years later, Victor, now called Sabretooth, appears to murder Kayla, and Logan agrees to Stryker's offer to bond an unbreakable metal, adamantium, to his skeleton to get revenge. Overhearing that Stryker plans to wipe his memory, Logan escapes. With help from the gambler Gambit, he finds Stryker's secret base on Three Mile Island, where captured mutants are being used to build Weapon XI, Wade Wilson fused with stolen powers.

How X-Men Origins: Wolverine ends

Kayla is alive and helped Stryker deceive Logan in return for her sister's freedom. Logan and Victor together defeat Weapon XI, and Logan beheads him. Stryker shoots Logan in the head with adamantium bullets, wiping his memory, and Kayla dies after helping free the captured young mutants, whom Xavier rescues. Logan walks away with no memory of who he is.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. In a mid-credits scene, military police arrest Stryker for the murder of a general. In a post-credits scene, Weapon XI's severed head opens its eyes, hinting that Deadpool survived; some prints instead end with Logan in a bar in Japan.

No. 06 · 2011 · Film

X-Men: First Class recap

In a Nazi camp in 1944, young Erik Lehnsherr bends a metal gate, and scientist Sebastian Shaw kills his mother to force his power out. In 1962, Charles Xavier, a telepath fresh from Oxford, and his adopted sister Raven help CIA agent Moira MacTaggert investigate the Hellfire Club, Shaw's mutant group. Charles saves Erik, who is hunting Shaw for revenge, and the two become friends. With the CIA, they recruit young mutants including Hank McCoy, Havok, Banshee and Darwin, and Charles teaches Erik to control his power. Shaw kills Darwin, and Angel goes over to his side. Shaw is stoking the Cuban Missile Crisis, planning a nuclear war that will leave mutants to rule. Raven, tired of hiding her blue skin, is drawn to Erik's pride in being a mutant.

How X-Men: First Class ends

Off Cuba, Erik kills Shaw by driving a coin through his head. The American and Soviet fleets fire on the mutants, and Erik turns the missiles back on them; when Moira shoots at him, a deflected bullet hits Charles in the spine and paralyses him. Erik leaves with Raven, now Mystique, and Shaw's followers, calling himself Magneto. Charles opens his school, wipes Moira's memory, and Erik breaks Emma Frost out of prison.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 07 · 2013 · Film

The Wolverine recap

Haunted by having killed Jean, Logan lives alone in the Yukon. A young woman, Yukio, brings him to Tokyo to say goodbye to Ichiro Yashida, a dying tech billionaire whose life Logan saved during the Nagasaki bombing in 1945. Yashida offers to take away Logan's healing power so he can finally die, and Logan refuses. Yashida dies that night, while his doctor, the mutant Viper, secretly weakens Logan's healing. At the funeral, yakuza try to kidnap Yashida's granddaughter Mariko, and Logan, bleeding and slow to heal, protects her as they flee across Japan. They fall in love. Mariko is captured by her father Shingen's men and by Yashida's old bodyguard Harada. Logan finds and rips out a parasite on his heart that was blocking his healing.

How The Wolverine ends

Yashida faked his death and wants Logan's healing power for himself, wearing a giant suit of armour, the Silver Samurai. He cuts off Logan's metal claws and starts draining him, but Mariko kills Yashida, and Logan's bone claws grow back. Yukio kills Viper and Shingen is killed. Mariko takes over the company, and Logan leaves Japan with Yukio as his companion.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. In a mid-credits scene two years later, Logan is stopped at an airport by Magneto, whose powers have returned, and a living Charles Xavier, who warn him that a new weapon threatens every mutant, setting up Days of Future Past.

No. 08 · 2014 · Film

X-Men: Days of Future Past recap

In 2023, giant shape-shifting Sentinels have killed most mutants and the humans who helped them. Kitty Pryde can send a person's mind back in time, so the old Xavier and Magneto send Logan's consciousness to 1973 to stop Mystique from assassinating Bolivar Trask, the creator of the Sentinel programme; her capture after the killing gave Trask the DNA to make his robots adapt. Logan wakes up in his younger body and finds the young Charles a broken drunk, taking a serum from Hank that lets him walk but blocks his powers. With the fast teenager Quicksilver, they break Erik out of a prison under the Pentagon. In Paris, they stop Mystique killing Trask, but Erik tries to kill her and the fight is caught on camera, which pushes the government to approve the Sentinels.

How X-Men: Days of Future Past ends

At the unveiling of the Sentinels in Washington, Erik lifts a stadium onto the White House and takes control of the robots. Mystique, disguised as President Nixon, stops Erik and chooses not to kill Trask, which changes history. In 2023 the Sentinels vanish, and Logan wakes at the school to find Jean, Scott and the X-Men alive. In 1973, Mystique, disguised as Stryker, pulls the young Logan from the river.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. After the credits, crowds in ancient Egypt chant the name En Sabah Nur as he raises a pyramid with his mind, watched by four horsemen, setting up X-Men: Apocalypse.

No. 09 · 2016 · Film

Deadpool recap

Wade Wilson, a former special forces soldier turned mercenary, falls in love with Vanessa, then is diagnosed with terminal cancer. A recruiter offers a cure, and Wade enters a secret programme where a sadist named Ajax, real name Francis, tortures him to trigger a mutation. It works: Wade can heal from anything, but his skin is left scarred all over. He escapes, leaving the lab burning, and, ashamed to face Vanessa, puts on a red suit and becomes Deadpool, hunting Francis to make him fix his face. Living with an old blind woman called Al, he tracks Francis's men and finally catches up with him on a highway, but the X-Men Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead interrupt, trying to recruit him. Francis escapes and kidnaps Vanessa. Deadpool talks to the audience all through the film.

How Deadpool ends

Deadpool, Colossus and Negasonic attack Francis in a scrapyard on a decommissioned helicarrier. After learning Francis cannot fix his face, Deadpool shoots him dead despite Colossus's plea for mercy. Vanessa is angry that he let her think he was dead for so long, but when he takes off his mask she accepts his scarred face, and they kiss as Colossus and Negasonic look on. Deadpool has his girl back, and the X-Men still want him to join.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. After the credits, Deadpool, in a dressing gown in a parody of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, tells the audience to go home and announces that the sequel will feature Cable.

No. 10 · 2016 · Film

X-Men: Apocalypse recap

In ancient Egypt, the first mutant, En Sabah Nur, is betrayed and entombed. In 1983, he wakes in Cairo and, appalled by the modern world, recruits four horsemen: the young thief Storm, the assassin Psylocke, the cage fighter Angel, whom he turns into Archangel, and Magneto. Erik has been living quietly in Poland with a wife and daughter, until his powers are exposed and both are killed. Charles runs his school, where Jean Grey has frightening visions and Scott Summers arrives. Mystique brings news of Erik and joins the school. Stryker's soldiers kidnap several mutants and take them to Alkali Lake, where the X-Men free a feral Weapon X, Logan. Apocalypse kidnaps Charles, planning to take over his body and his telepathy, and Magneto begins tearing apart the world's cities.

How X-Men: Apocalypse ends

In Cairo, Charles fights Apocalypse inside his mind and calls on Jean, who unleashes the Phoenix and destroys him. Magneto and Storm turn against their master and help destroy him. Charles gives Moira back the memories he wiped decades before. Erik and Jean use their powers to rebuild the ruined school, Erik leaves again, and Mystique and Hank begin training a new team of X-Men that includes Storm, Jean, Scott, Nightcrawler and Quicksilver.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. After the credits, men in suits collect a vial of Weapon X's blood from Alkali Lake for the Essex Corporation.

No. 11 · 2017 · Series · optional

Legion recap

In season 1, David Haller, told since childhood that he has schizophrenia, is in a psychiatric hospital when he meets Syd Barrett, a woman who cannot be touched. A government agency, Division 3, captures him, but a group of mutants from a place called Summerland rescues him and shows him he is an extremely powerful psychic. Inside his mind, a parasite called the Shadow King, Amahl Farouk, has been living as his friend Lenny and other figures since he was a baby; David learns his real father is Charles Xavier. At the end of season 1, David forces Farouk out, but Farouk escapes into another man's body, and David is captured inside a floating orb. In season 2, David returns a year later and works with Division 3 to stop Farouk finding his old body, while a future version of Syd warns him to help Farouk. David's own actions grow darker, and he wipes Syd's memory and sleeps with her, so his friends turn on him. In season 3, David runs a commune of followers and kidnaps a time-travelling mutant called Switch to go back and fix his childhood, while creatures called Time Eaters attack the timeline.

How Legion ends

In the finale, David's parents, Charles and Gabrielle, return to protect their baby son, and the adult Farouk persuades his younger self to make peace with Charles. The timeline is rewritten so that the baby David will grow up without Farouk inside him. David and Syd fade away beside the baby's cot, hoping the new David will be better. The series ends there.

No. 12 · 2017 · Film

Logan recap

In 2029, no mutants have been born in 25 years. An aging Logan, whose healing is failing and whose body is being poisoned by his adamantium, works as a limo driver near the Mexican border. He hides an ailing, 90-year-old Charles Xavier, whose seizures have killed people, with the help of the mutant Caliban. A nurse begs Logan to drive a young girl, Laura, to a place called Eden in North Dakota. Laura is a mutant with claws like his, created from his DNA by a company called Transigen, and its mercenaries, the Reavers, led by Donald Pierce, are hunting her. Logan, Charles and Laura flee across the country. A family takes them in, and X-24, a younger clone of Logan, kills Charles and the family. Logan reaches Eden with Laura and finds other escaped children waiting to cross into Canada.

How Logan ends

The Reavers capture the children, and Logan takes a drug to restore his strength and fight. X-24 impales him on a tree, and Laura kills X-24 with an adamantium bullet. Logan dies holding Laura's hand, saying this is what it feels like. The children bury him, and Laura turns the cross on his grave on its side to make an X.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 13 · 2017 · Series · optional

The Gifted recap

In a world where the X-Men have disappeared, Reed and Caitlin Strucker learn that their teenage children, Lauren and Andy, are mutants, and the family goes on the run from Sentinel Services, a government agency led locally by agent Jace Turner. In season 1, they join the Mutant Underground, a network that hides mutants, with Thunderbird, the teleporter Blink, Eclipse and the magnetic Polaris, who is pregnant with Eclipse's child. Reed, a former prosecutor who once put mutants away, turns out to be part mutant himself. The underground clashes with Trask Industries and is courted by the Inner Circle, a group led by the telepathic Frost sisters, and by the end of season 1, Andy and Polaris leave to join them. In season 2, the Inner Circle, led by Reeva Payge, recruits more mutants for a revolution, while the anti-mutant Purifiers stir up violence, Polaris gives birth to a daughter, Dawn, and the Strucker family is split between the two sides.

How The Gifted ends

The Inner Circle uses the combined powers of the Strucker children to destroy Sentinel Services' headquarters. Reed confronts Reeva and his unstable powers kill them both. Polaris and Eclipse are reunited with their daughter, the underground escapes the Purifiers, and Blink returns through a portal looking changed. Andy and Lauren are pulled back by the Frost sisters as they try to slip away. The show was cancelled on that cliffhanger.

No. 14 · 2018 · Film

Deadpool 2 recap

Deadpool's girlfriend Vanessa is killed by a gang on their anniversary, and he tries to kill himself. Colossus brings him to the X-Mansion as a trainee. On his first mission, he defends Russell, a teenage mutant who calls himself Firefist, from the abusive staff of his orphanage, and both are locked in a prison for mutants. Cable, a soldier from the future, arrives to kill Russell, who will one day murder Cable's family. Deadpool forms a team, X-Force, to rescue Russell from a prison convoy, but nearly everyone dies on the parachute jump, leaving only the lucky Domino. Russell teams up with the Juggernaut and heads to the orphanage to kill its headmaster, the act that will start him on his path.

How Deadpool 2 ends

Deadpool takes Cable's bullet for Russell and dies, and seeing this sacrifice changes Russell's future. Cable uses his time device's last charge to go back and put a token in front of Deadpool's heart, so he survives. Russell does not kill the headmaster, and the Juggernaut is beaten by Colossus. Deadpool, Cable, Domino, Russell and the others form X-Force, which Deadpool now insists is a family.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. In mid-credits scenes, Negasonic and Yukio fix Cable's time device, and Deadpool uses it to save Vanessa and his friend Peter, kill the Deadpool from X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and shoot Ryan Reynolds as he reads the script for Green Lantern.

No. 15 · 2019 · Film · optional

Dark Phoenix recap

In 1992, the X-Men are celebrated as heroes. On a rescue mission to a space shuttle, Jean Grey absorbs a strange cosmic force, which makes her far more powerful and breaks down the mental walls Charles built in her mind as a child. She learns that she caused the car crash that killed her mother and that her father is alive and gave her up, and that Charles hid both facts. In a confrontation, Jean accidentally kills Mystique. Shape-shifting aliens called the D'Bari, led by Vuk, want the cosmic force to remake Earth as their home, and Vuk manipulates Jean. Hank, grieving Raven, joins Erik on his island of Genosha to kill Jean, while Charles tries to bring her back.

How Dark Phoenix ends

The X-Men are taken prisoner on a train, and the D'Bari attack it. Jean takes full control of her power, destroys the aliens, and carries Vuk into the sky, where both are destroyed. Charles retires, the school is renamed the Jean Grey School for Gifted Youngsters, and Charles and Erik play chess in Paris as a phoenix shape appears in the sky.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 16 · 2020 · Film · optional

The New Mutants recap

Danielle Moonstar, a Cheyenne teenager, survives a disaster that destroys her reservation and wakes in an isolated hospital run by Dr. Cecilia Reyes. Her fellow patients are four other young mutants: Rahne, a Scottish girl who turns into a wolf; Illyana, a cruel Russian girl with a sword and a puppet dragon; Sam, a boy who rockets through the air; and Roberto, who burns when he uses his power. Reyes says they are learning to control their powers before they can leave. Strange things start happening, as each patient is attacked by visions of their worst fears. Dani and Rahne fall for each other. The patients find out that Reyes works for the Essex Corporation, which plans to turn them into weapons or kill them.

How The New Mutants ends

The visions are caused by Dani's power, and her fear has created the Demon Bear that destroyed her reservation. The bear kills Reyes, and the others fight it while Dani faces it and calms it down. Illyana fights off the Smiley Men from her own past along the way. With Reyes dead and the Essex Corporation's plans exposed, the five teenagers leave the hospital together, free, to find a new place where they can live.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 17 · 2024 · Series

X-Men '97 recap

In season 1, a year after Xavier is taken into space, his will leaves the X-Men to Magneto. Cyclops and Jean are shaken when they learn that the woman they thought was Jean was Madelyne Pryor, a clone made by Mister Sinister, whose son Nathan is infected with a techno-organic virus and sent to the future to become Cable. Magneto stands trial at the UN, and the mutant nation of Genosha is destroyed by a giant Sentinel, killing Gambit. The man behind the attack, Bastion, takes control of new human-machine Sentinels. Magneto rips the metal out of Wolverine and sets off a pulse that wipes out the world's electronics, and Xavier returns to stop him. Bastion tries to crash Magneto's base, Asteroid M, into Earth, and it vanishes, scattering most of the X-Men through time: some to ancient Egypt, where they meet the young En Sabah Nur, and Jean and Cyclops to the far future. Apocalypse arrives at the ruins of Genosha. In season 2, released in 2026, the X-Men find their way back to the 1990s to stop Apocalypse, who has brought Gambit back as his Horseman of Death. Gambit's new power lets him kill Apocalypse, but Apocalypse's soul lives on inside him, and Cable's X-Force and the government team X-Factor, led by Dr. Valerie Cooper, plan to kill Gambit before Apocalypse takes over.

How X-Men '97 ends

Rogue, Beast and Nightcrawler visit a Celestial on Apocalypse's ship, who says Gambit can only be saved if Rogue gives her life. Rogue draws Apocalypse out of Gambit and traps him in a gem, which Cable takes. Rogue survives because Nightcrawler secretly took her place and died. In a mid-credits scene, Dr. Cooper is revealed to be Mystique, who kills the real Cooper, setting up a third season planned for 2027.

No. 18 · 2024 · Film

Deadpool & Wolverine recap

Six years after his time with the X-Men, Wade Wilson has retired as Deadpool and sells cars, single after Vanessa left him. Agents of the Time Variance Authority bring him to Mr. Paradox, who says Wade's universe will die slowly now that its anchor, Logan, has died, and offers him a place in the main Marvel universe. Wade instead sets out to save his world by finding another Wolverine, and settles on a drunk, disgraced version who failed his own X-Men. Paradox banishes them to the Void, a wasteland where the TVA dumps unwanted things, ruled by Cassandra Nova, Charles Xavier's twin sister. There they meet forgotten heroes such as Elektra, Blade, Gambit and X-23, and a version of Johnny Storm whom Cassandra kills. Paradox plans to destroy Wade's universe at once with a machine called the Time Ripper, and Cassandra wants it for herself.

How Deadpool & Wolverine ends

Cassandra sends an army of Deadpool variants against Wade and Logan. Paradox admits that one person could stop the Time Ripper by disrupting its power, at the cost of their life; Wade and Logan do it together, sharing the strain and surviving, and the blast kills Cassandra. The TVA agent B-15 arrests Paradox and lets Logan stay in Wade's universe, though she refuses to change his past. Wade's friends gather with Logan and Laura, and Logan pushes Wade to make up with Vanessa.

Post-credits scenes

The credits open with a behind-the-scenes montage from Fox's Marvel films. After the credits, a scene from the drive to Cassandra's lair shows Johnny Storm really did insult her at length, as Deadpool claimed. It sets nothing up.