WARNING: Spoilers for The Marvels below.
After Marvel spent the last two weeks dropping surprisingly unsubtle hints that The Marvels would have a connection to the X-Men, we can report that the film does make good on that tease. However, The Marvels uses an unlikely character to pull off that connection.
In the sole mid-credits scene, Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) is seen recovering in a hospital bed after the events of the film. However, she quickly realizes something is not right, and she’s clearly in an alternate reality. For starters, her dead mother, Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch), is alive and a version of Captain Marvel known as Binary. There’s also a strange creature treating her who will be immediately recognizable to fans of the old school X-Men movies: It’s Beast, and wildly, it’s the Kelsey Grammer version of the character.
The Frasier star played the character in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand before Nicolas Hoult took over as a younger version of Beast/Hank McCoy in X-Men: First Class. However, Grammer did reprise the role during a brief moment in 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Now, it should be noted that the version of Beast in The Marvels is not exactly the one from the films. Like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which featured Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, this Beast hews more closely to the classic X-Men animated series. Because Marvel is a master at cross-promotion, that series is getting a revival on Disney+ next year called X-Men ’97, which Kevin Feige teased just this week. (He also teased that the X-Men would be showing up “soon” in the MCU, and he was not joking.)
The presence of Beast also confirms the Variety expose that claimed Marvel was planning on leaning into the Fox version of the mighty mutants to give the MCU a much-needed shot in the arm. That was already evident with Hugh Jackman reprising his Wolverine role for Deadpool 3, but clearly, that was just the beginning.
The Marvels is now playing in theaters.