We finally received a tiny morsel of news aboutX-Men: Dark Phoenixand learned a little bit about Jessica Chastain’s villainous alien shapeshifter character, which has led many to wonder aloud if she’s a Skrull. It was originally thought thatChastain was playing Lilandra, the leader of the Shi’ar Empire since she plays such a large part in the comics when taking over Jean Gray, but Chastain shot down those rumors earlier this year. Since then, we’ve been left in the dark, but we received some new information today and it seems highly likely that Jessica Chastain could be playing a Skrull.
As Jessica Chastain revealed, she is indeed, not playingLilandra, but instead an alien shapeshifter. She is shown in the new Entertainment Weekly story in a blonde wig while standing in house with a wall that’s been blown out. The article states that Chastain will be playing “an otherworldly shapeshifter who comes into contact with Phoenix.” The actress had this to say about her character.
“Simon (Kinberg) and I were talking about the character and I said, ‘I keep thinking of the vet who tells you need to put your dog down. There’s something very clinical about it.”
There are many shapeshifters in the Marvel Comics universe likeMystiqueas well as the Chitauri, but it seems highly unlikely that Jessica Chastain could be from the Chitauri since Marvel Studios owns them. However, there is another shapeshifting group of aliens that bot Fox and Marvel Studios both share and that’s the Skrull. The Skrull are going to be in the MCU’sCaptain Marvel, but Fox could beat them to the punch by including them inX-Men: Dark Phoenix. Plus, it would make plenty of sense for the Skrull to show up in the movie since they are in the comic version of the story, but in a limited capacity.
Another factor thatCaptain MarvelandDark Phoenixshare is that both movies take place in theearly 1990s, but will both companies really use the villains? If the merging between Disney and Fox goes through, that would make sense, but it would seem that they would’ve had to have known about a possible merger months ago, which doesn’t make sense. So, if Jessica Chastain ends up actually being a Skrull, it will more than likely be a different kind of Skrull than we’ll see inCaptain Marvel. There are many different types of Skrull with varying powers.
The Skrull theory makes a lot of sense, especially since we know that part ofX-Men: Dark Phoenixwill take place in space when the team’s ship is hit by a flare, leading Jean Gray to over exert her power and get controlled by the Phoenix and Jessica Chastain’s alien shapeshifter character. Regardless, it’s cool to finally get an update onX-Men 7and know that they’re taking their time with the post-production process. You can check out more about Jessica Chastain’s mystery villain courtesy ofEntertainment Weekly.
