In 1984 Berlin,
Mystique and
Logan (disguised as
Patch) rescue
Kurt Wagner and other mutant prisoners (restrained by power-dampening shackles) from Operation: Zero Tolerance (OZT) agents led by
Agent Carl Denti. The agents transform into PRIME SENTINELS which Mystique, Logan, and Kurt barely escape, thanks only to Kurt’s teleportation powers. The Prime Sentinels’ self-repairing NANO TECHNOLOGY infused within them make them practically unstoppable. Mystique decides they have to alert Xavier of the coming threat, despite her reluctance to return home.
Cyclops,
Jean, and
Storm are already students at the school when Kurt arrives with Mystique and Logan. Kurt and Storm develop a quick friendship as she gives him a tour. She has a free spirit, almost rebellious in nature, pushing Kurt to accept his own gifts and open up. Meanwhile Scott and Jean deal with their own personal journeys, with Scott learning to step up as leader and Jean facing the true extent of her powers—
we spend less time exploring their origins, and more time developing the chemistry amongst this young team.
Magneto is meanwhile living on
Avalon with
mutant refugees (including
Forge, Callisto, and
Toad) and his son
Quicksilver (the two came together offscreen some time after the events of DOFP). Avalon is a peaceful, remote mutant community— simple in construction and appearance at first glance, but surprisingly sophisticated and powered by mutant engineering. Magneto built his island haven in secret, its name a reference to the Arthurian legend and callback to
Magneto reading The Once and Future King in X2; he has moved on from his war against humanity.
Since DOFP, Mystique and Logan have been hunted by
William Stryker and
his forces. At one point, to save Mystique, Logan sacrificed himself and was captured, ultimately being forced into the
Weapon X procedure that bonded adamantium to his skeleton. 18 months later, Mystique rescued him and the two have been traveling the globe ever since to free mutants from similar fates. Mystique reveals this to
Beast to help open his eyes to the reality of what’s happening outside the mansion. Beast, who now lives freely in his blue furry form, has recently started seeing broadcast journalist (and human)
Trish Tilby, reminding Mystique how far their paths have diverged since that beach in Cuba.
Xavier and Raven fly to
Langley, Virginia to meet with
Moira MacTaggart, the head of Mutant Affairs at the CIA, for information on OZT but the Prime Sentinel technology Raven describes is too advanced for anything at the CIA. She refers them to Bolivar Trask, the world’s foremost expert on robotics, but it’s another dead-end as he’s locked up
inside a cell underneath the Pentagon. Xavier coyly responds he has
another way… Moira still does not remember meeting the X-Men in the 60s after Xavier erased her memories, which Raven chastises him for as they leave Moira’s office and freely walk out of Langley amongst the psychically-frozen officers and agents.
Meanwhile with Xavier away, Storm convinces Kurt, Jean, and Scott to leave the mansion and
have fun at the mall. Beast and Logan have an awkward catch-up, since
this Logan doesn’t remember actually meeting him in DOFP. They have a beer and turn on the TV instead, much to Logan’s delight (
a funny moment to hang a lamp shade & acknowledge the messiness of this universe’s time travel without dwelling on it).
After returning from Langley,
Xavier uses Cerebro for the first time since seeing Mystique to psychically interrogate Bolivar Trask in his prison cell (like the Jean/Gyrich scene in the X-Men ‘97 premiere). Like MacTaggart, Trask doesn’t have any answers but the interrogation is interrupted by
Bastion who appears to Xavier inside Cerebro via his technopathy powers. Bastion reveals his history to Xavier and how he created the Operation Zero Tolerance task force:
- Bastion is the human embodiment of Nimrod from the dark future the X-Men prevented in DOFP. Nimrod detected the temporal anomalies caused by Shadowcat and mimicked its enemy’s tactic, time-traveling into the past before it could be erased from existence. Nimrod then imprinted itself inside a mother’s womb to be born again into humanity to better shepherd the evolutionary future and avoid defeat again.
Before Xavier can disconnect from Cerebro, Bastion launches a global Prime Sentinel attack (ahead of schedule due to Mystique’s early discovery in Berlin), claiming that “tolerance is extinction.”
Across the globe, ordinary
human citizens transform into Prime Sentinels due to a nanite infestation orchestrated by Bastion that affects only those who have attended his organized anti-mutant rallies and hate groups.
The X-Mansion and Avalon, no longer hidden due to Bastion’s connection to Cerebro, are both attacked by Prime Sentinels, as are hundreds of mutants across the globe including Cyclops, Jean, Storm, and Kurt at the mall. Trish Tilby, now a Prime Sentinel, attacks Beast during the assault on the mansion but Mystique decapitates her (we see the head already starting to reattach itself while Beast and Mystique work
together with Logan to protect the students and move them to the sub-basement).
Quicksilver nearly defeats the Prime Sentinels (led by Prime Sentinel-Carl Denti) on Avalon singlehandedly using his super speed but the Sentinels calculate his trajectory in real-time and critically injure him. The near-death of Quicksilver and the sight of fallen mutants, bring Magneto back to the horrors of Auschwitz and finally push him over the edge. He rips the invading Prime Sentinels apart and flies high into the atmosphere to emit a massive electromagnetic pulse that shuts down all the Sentinels and plunges the world into total darkness, causing widespread panic.
The X-Men (Xavier, Mystique, Logan, Beast, Cyclops, Jean, Storm, and Kurt) regroup under the ashes of the X-Mansion in the sub-basement along with all the displaced students. Beast studies the nanites inside the now-powerless, sedated Trish Tilby and finds a way to neutralize its effects, as well as suppress Bastion’s powers—impressing Mystique.
The young X-Men grapple with the last 24 hours. Storm says the Prime Sentinel assault reminds her of
her past and why she ran away from home in the first place. Cyclops comforts Jean.
After mourning the dead and caring for Quicksilver,
Magneto raises Avalon from the ocean, revealing a bee-hive fortress underneath the surface. Magneto has decided to leave humanity and its hate in the darkness it deserves. He travels to the X-Mansion, offering the X-Men a chance to join his new mutant haven—“How many more of your bones will pave the way to Xavier's future, where we simper like beggars for tolerance? Your professor's dream is dead. So I offer a new one. A home to replace what they stole from us. A new Avalon. We are left with but two choices. Cling to this dying world, or rise to your future and look down upon this fallen pigsty planet.”
Storm decides to go with him, disillusioned by the constant hate towards mutants—Mystique was her hero. She looked up to Mystique standing up to President Nixon & Trask and even had her
Time Magazine cover hung up on her bedroom wall; now it’s Storm’s time to stand up. Kurt, having only just recently joined this new family, is shocked and saddened by her decision to leave.
In Washington DC,
President Claremont is
contemplating a military response to the blackout and Avalon, with Moira MacTaggart and William Stryker advising when Magneto addresses the world. Using his powers to enable a single broadcast on every screen across the globe, Magneto invites all mutants to his safe haven Avalon.
Stryker pushes for a swift response, but Moira cautions against anything that might bring the world closer to a long-feared evolutionary war.
Inside the War Room, the X-Men split into two teams, dressed in comic-accurate suits aboard separate X-Jets (Beast’s been busy in the subbasement since DOFP):
- Xavier, Mystique, and Nightcrawler will board Avalon and attempt to convince Magneto to reverse his electromagnetic pulse, or Professor X will be forced to hijack his mind.
- Beast, Logan, Cyclops, and Jean will fight against Bastion and his stockpile of Model I Sentinels that he controls with his technopathy from his citadel (the location discovered when Xavier and Bastion linked minds in Cerebro)
Before they depart, Mystique and Beast wish each other luck (
life, again, is pulling them away from each other).
On Avalon, Kurt and Mystique face off against Toad and Callisto. After defeating them, Kurt evades Storm (the two unwilling to fight each other) and manages to remove Magneto’s helmet to allow Xavier to temporarily enter his mind but Mystique stops the process midway by striking Xavier, giving Beast and his team more time to first stop Bastion (knowing that he’ll be unstoppable once the power is restored).
But when Magneto pins Nightcrawler and Mystique down with metal debris, and starts to
kill Xavier by crushing his helmet onto his skull, Storm realizes the error of her decision and intervenes with a controlled lightning bolt. Xavier once again enters Magneto’s mind and turns Earth’s power back on, but the two are now threatened to be lost forever on the Astral Plane unless they can find their way out together.
With the power restored, Stryker convinces the President to order a
missile strike against Avalon—Moira helpless to stop it.
Meanwhile, Jean finally embraces her true power
(in the form of a psionic Phoenix) to defeat Bastion and his Sentinel army. The team boards their jet to join the fight in Avalon but once there, they find a comatose Magneto and Xavier still locked inside each other’s mind, debating ideologies over
a game of chess inside the Astral Plane.
Bastion, now enhanced with
Sentinel armor to appear more like Nimrod, barrels towards the X-Men to make his final stand, having survived the Jean’s wrath. He is going to destroy Avalon’s gravitational core (built by Forge) which will cause the island to drop from the sky and onto Earth. He’ll rebuild after the world is nothing but ashes.
Remembering the lessons learned from Xavier about peaceful coexistence, Cyclops tells the team to stand down. He refuses to “fight the future,” cementing his role as leader of the X-Men.
Bastion mocks them for their naivety and points to the incoming missiles. Still, the X-Men offer Bastion a path to peace but he ultimately
self-destructs inside the gravitational core trying to terminate them.
Meanwhile on the Astral Plane, Xavier and Magneto finally reach an emotional reconciliation, with Magneto accepting the death of his family and embracing his new found-family with Xavier’s encouragement— “I know you think you've lost everything, but you haven't. You have Peter, you have me…you have Raven... you have more family than you know. You didn’t have the chance to save your family before, but you do now. That's what I've come here to tell you.”
The two awaken in time for Magneto to halt incoming the missiles, mirroring the
finale of X-Men: First Class. As the world collectively holds its breath wondering what he’ll do, Magneto releases the missiles into space—effectively releasing his anger and resentment. The world is safe.
In the final montage:
- News coverage of the world rebuilding. Trish Tilby recuperates inside a hospital room, now clear of all Sentinel nanites;
- Xavier meets with Moira in Washington DC, restoring her memories (and hinting at a possible romantic reconciliation for sequels);
- Magneto joins Xavier to rebuild the X-Mansion and rebuild their dream for mutantkind together. Xavier remarks, “It’s going to be different this time, Erik. We have to evolve”;
- Mystique leaves on her own terms, along with her companion Logan. Confident that her old friends Xavier and Magneto will now look out for each other, she’s ready to live her own life and says goodbye to Beast with a gentle kiss on the cheek. As she leaves, Beast quietly says to himself, “mutant and proud”;
Inside the Danger Room, Beast initiates a training sequence for the X-MEN: Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Quicksilver (now healed, although, he won’t be as fast in sequels), and Nightcrawler. Xavier looks on as the sequence begins and the circular doors close…
THE END.
CHARACTER AGE GUIDE
- Charles Xavier is 52 (born 1932)
- Erik Lensherr is 54 (born 1930)
- Hank McCoy is 41 (born 1943)
- Young X-Men are 18 (born 1966)
- Moira MacTaggart is 50 (born in 1934)
- Peter Maximoff is 28 (born 1956)
- William Stryker is 38 (born 1946)
- Bolivar Trask is 56 (born 1928)
CHARACTER STYLE GUIDE
- Xavier is already bald
- Magneto’s hair is white
- McCoy is blue and furry, wears glasses
- Mystique uses “Raven” guise in public-setting only but otherwise appears in Dark Phoenix make-up
