After X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine underwhelmed fans, 20th Century Fox rebooted the franchise with 2011's X-Men: First Class.
The movie took us back to the 1960s to reveal the team's origins and explain how Professor X and Magneto met. In its closing moments, X-Men: First Class saw the Master of Magnetism's hatred for humanity get the best of him and he inadvertently sent a bullet into Charles Xavier's spine.
They then went their separate ways, with Professor X forming the X-Men and Magneto creating his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. The franchise would have benefitted from remaining in that period, but instead jumped from decade to decade and further confused the timeline (all while the cast never really aged).
Magneto's motivations became increasingly muddled as time passed but Fassbander's Erik Lehnsherr remains a firm fan-favourite.
Talking to Josh Horowitz, the actor was asked if he saw Deadpool & Wolverine, a movie that seemingly bid farewell to 20th Century Fox's X-Men franchise with an emotional montage played over the credits.
"I haven't seen it yet, but apparently, they've taken a little extract from...I signed off on something," Fassbender said. Told about the sequence, the actor described it as "sweet."
"For me, and I'm betraying my own people, but my favourite of the comic book series world would be Deadpool and Iron Man," he continued. "Movie-wise."
Horowitz put it to Fassbender that Gladiator II star Denzel Washington has emerged as a possible contender to play Magneto in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the former Master of Magnetism is on board with the idea.
"I think it's great. I'm excited to see who does it. Brilliant. He's a heavyweight," the Irishman enthused. "I don't think I could even pass the baton [Laughs]. He's incredible."
We'd expected Deadpool & Wolverine to feature a long list of X-Men franchise cameos; instead, the focus shifted to characters like Blade and Elektra, seemingly saving the team's return for Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. After all, the expectation is that the heroes of Earth-616 and Earth-10005 will cross paths in those.
Which Variants we'll see remains to be seen, particularly as Marvel Studios can pluck actors and characters from two different timelines: the original X-Men trilogy and movies like First Class and Days of Future Past.
Whoever ends up playing him, we're bound to eventually get a new Magneto in the MCU, though the character has received a lot of screentime over the years. With that in mind, utilising some of the X-Men's other foes would be welcomed by comic book fans.
Would you like to see Fassbender suit up as Magneto again?