Yesterday, Sir Patrick Stewart suggested he and Sir Ian McKellen have unfinished business as Professor X and Magneto. They first shared the screen in 2000's X-Men and were last seen together as those characters in 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Stewart has already all but confirmed he will return as Charles Xavier in Deadpool 3, but reliable insider @MyTimeToShineH is now claiming there are indeed big plans in place for McKellen's Master of Magnetism in the MCU. In fact, they say we'll see him as Magneto in both the upcoming Deadpool threequel and 2026's Avengers: Secret Wars!
Remember, there were once rumours Marvel Studios planned to include Magneto in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness as a member of The Illuminati and that Sam Raimi even shot scenes with the character using a stand-in.
Given Kevin Feige's history with the X-Men franchise, we shouldn't be surprised that he wants to make use of these two (in place of James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender), and would imagine de-ageing technology will be used to showcase the duo in their prime.
All this Multiversal storytelling is the perfect opportunity to revisit the X-Men Universe before the franchise is rebooted for the MCU, and seeing the original big screen team assemble one final time on screen would be epic. Many fans will be keen to see new iterations of these characters, but that's likely being saved for the next Saga.
Only time will tell whether McKellen really does come back as Magneto, and it feels like we'll be spending the next few years combing through endless rumours about big returns in Avengers: Secret Wars. As for Deadpool 3, that's a movie we can almost certainly expect to see some familiar faces in, with even the original Fantastic Four cast rumoured to appear.
What would you like to see from the original big screen Magneto in the MCU?