Did Fox botch a classic X-Men story? Iman Vellani says the movie failed
Iman Vellani is calling out Fox for jamming a massive X-Men arc into one film—wait till you hear which saga she says got shortchanged.
On the latest episode of the Countdown to Avengers: Doomsday Official Podcast, Iman Vellani didn’t mince words about how X-Men: The Last Stand handled the Phoenix Saga. A lifelong X-Men diehard, the Ms. Marvel star argued the Dark Phoenix arc was crammed into a single film and sidelined the character it ’s supposed to be about — pointing to Jean Grey literally standing behind Magneto during the final battle.
“If they wanted to do the Phoenix Saga properly it should’ve been three or four movies, really milk it,”
Vellani went further, saying the 2006 movie undercut its own centerpiece the moment it split focus away from Jean.
“[The movie] failed the minute that they made Jean’s story also secondary.”
She also confessed there’s one chapter of Fox’s run she still won’t touch: Dark Phoenix (2019), the studio’s second attempt at the same storyline. Vellani said she refuses to watch it.
The commentary came as host Frank Alvarez steers the podcast from MCU rewatches into Fox’s original X-Men trilogy. The series launched in August 2026 as a countdown through the Infinity Saga and is now revisiting the mutants with an eye on how they feed into Avengers: Doomsday arriving December 18, 2026.
- Her fix for Phoenix: stretch it across three or four films.
- Her core critique: making Jean’s arc “secondary” broke the movie.
- Her stance now: still skipping Dark Phoenix.
Loki ’s moment
Vellani also predicted Loki will loom large in Avengers: Doomsday, calling him the “God of Stories” after the end of Loki Season 2, where he took a seat at the end of time as guardian of the multiverse. She joked he’s been killed and redeemed more times than she can count and said she’ll back the character as long as Tom Hiddleston plays him — while admitting she has no idea what Marvel’s actual plan is.
That read lines up with what we’ve seen so far: the first Avengers: Doomsday trailer features Loki, and Robert Downey Jr. appears as Doctor Doom. Insider Daniel Richtman has claimed the Void could factor into the movie, though Marvel Studios hasn’t confirmed that.
Avengers: Doomsday opens in theaters December 18, 2026.