Who Is Jean Grey in the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
Notice how nobody ever asks HOW is Jean Grey!
Spoilers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day ahead!
Seriously, like…the big one. The who-is-that-secret-character reveal spoiler. Thwip away if you’ve somehow managed to avoid it and want to remain pure when you see the movie.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day introduced a pretty major player from Marvel Comics to the MCU, played by Sadie Sink. Here’s what you need to know about Phoenix herself, Jean Grey.
In Spider-Man: Brand New Day we meet Jean as she is still coming into her powers and searching for her older sister Sara, who is also a telepath. Sara Grey is a minor Marvel Comics character who does exist, but hasn’t shown up in that many stories. Jean, on the other hand, is one of the most famous members of the X-Men.
This is a huge character to drop into a Spider-Man movie, in my humble opinion. But then again, they did drop Wanda Maximoff into Avengers: Age of Ultron and introduced Peter Parker himself in Captain America: Civil War. Stay crazy, MCU!
Sometimes known as Phoenix, Jean is a telepath. She’s a hero. Sometimes she’s a villain. We’ll get there in a minute. She’s got some childhood trauma, like pretty much all Marvel characters and especially the X-Men. Jean is part of Marvel Comics’ most annoying love triangle (or best throuple, depending on your POV) with Wolverine and Cyclops. Her origin story has a few different versions—totally normal and common for a comic book character—and Brand New Day has given her, well, a brand new one.
Jean Grey is so popular that, on multiple occasions, writers who are clearly big X-Men nerds have written secret adaptations of her into their projects. Willow’s villain arc on Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 6? That’s the Dark Phoenix saga, baby! Eleven on Stranger Things was so Jean Grey that it almost felt like a rip-off at times. Then, of course, there are characters like Silver Kincaid on The Boys and Cate Dunlap on Gen V who are parodies of Jean Grey in different ways. The people love Jean!
If you want more of Marvel’s Jean Grey, here’s what to watch:
'X-Men: The Animated Series' & 'X-Men ’97'
The best place to start, in my humble opinion, is with the animated series and Disney+ reboot/continuation that was a generation’s introduction to these characters. Jean Grey is voiced by Jennifer Hale in both series. The show will give you kid-friendly versions of Jean’s warring romances with Cyclops and Wolverine, the infamous Dark Phoenix Saga from Marvel Comics in which she gets a power upgrade from space and maybe goes evil, and her journey toward becoming a leader.
'X-Men'
Famke Janssen plays Jean Grey in the live-action film. The story begins with her already working at Charles Xavier’s school as a teacher. That’s the fun thing about the X-Men. They’re a superhero team, but also the faculty and student body of a boarding school. Talk about codependency! In this first film, Jean’s powers come in clutch when Professor X falls into a coma and only she can use his Cerebro device.
'X2: X-Men United'
Jean has a bigger story as a part of the team in the sequel, directly setting up her big villain arc in the third film. Something is also up with her powers. She’s worried about not being able to control them. She vanishes by the end, experiencing some kind of mysterious evolution.
'X-Men: The Last Stand'
The 2006 film is the first live-action adaptation of the Dark Phoenix Saga, but it misses a few beats. It’s also, lowkey, a subplot to a larger story about the government creating a “cure” for mutant abilities that suppresses the gene they all carry. (The type of science project that Peter Parker is just doing in his spare time, apparently!)
'The Wolverine'
I can confirm that Jean Grey is in this movie.
'X-Men: Apocalypse'
As excited as I am to see what Sadie and the other new actors cast as mutants in the MCU do with their roles, it bums me out to no end that the 2010s reboot cast from X-Men: First Class and its subsequent sequels are getting left out of the party. They were all such cuties! Alas.
We met Jean Grey, now played by Sophie Turner, three films into the new franchise. Apocalypse showed the beginning of her relationship with Scott Summers/Cyclops, played by Tye Sheridan, and how she and Professor X (James McAvoy) bond professionally over their telepathic powers.
'Dark Phoenix'
This film sort of gave us a more comic-book-accurate adaptation of Jean Grey’s origin story than Brand New Day. In the comics, Jean’s best friend Annie died in a car crash. The event both triggered her powers and traumatized her. This film’s version is that Jean’s powers caused the car crash and it killed her mother, not her best friend. Brutal!
This movie adaptation of the Dark Phoenix Saga begins the same way the comic does, with Jean gaining heightened powers on a mission in space. But it introduces an alien named Vuk, played by Jessica Chastain, to the mix that diverges from the source material. So does the ending…
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