Doing the rounds to promote Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, Jeff Loveness recently suggested he has no plans to include Phase 5 characters like Blade and the Fantastic Four in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.
Marvel's First Family not factoring into the story has disappointed many fans, but this is an Avengers movie, not a Fantastic Four one! There's plenty of time for team-ups down the line, and Loveness has now made it clear The Kang Dynasty won't be where we meet the X-Men for the first time.
Talking on the Phase Zero podcast, he explained: "No, I think all that stuff is pretty far away. I mean, I know they’re making Fantastic Four, but that’s its own thing. So, no, I mean, look, I’m the biggest X-Men guy in the world...No, no, no. I think that’s being saved for a bit."
"But, you know, these Avengers are in trouble," Loveness continued. "They got a lot going on with Kang. They got more than enough to handle."
Throwing the X-Men into the mix here wouldn't make a whole lot of sense, though we do expect some mutant Variants - Deadpool and Wolverine, for example - to factor into either this movie or Avengers: Secret Wars.
Assuming the latter ends with the creation of a new MCU, it's possible the X-Men will just be retconned into existence. Then again, with characters like Ms. Marvel and Namor officially dubbed "mutants" in recent stories, there's a chance Marvel Studios is taking a slow-burn approach to their introduction, with the X-Gene only now beginning to activate in teenagers.
We'll have to wait and see, but if a future set of Phases aren't eventually dubbed "The Mutant Saga," we'll definitely be surprised because there are countless stories that can now be told in the MCU.
Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is set to be released in theaters on May 2, 2025.