Dafne Keen is not the only mutant name hanging over Marvel’s next live-action X-Men plans. At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Kevin Feige reportedly expressed interest in bringing Anya Taylor-Joy back as Illyana Rasputin, Magik, from New Mutants.
The reported ask points to a simple business move: Marvel Studios is pulling together the next phase of the MCU, and that next wave will likely include an entirely new live-action X-Men iteration. For readers tracking which faces may carry over, this is the first specific returning mutant tied to that reboot talk.
Kevin Feige and Magik
Feige has reportedly asked Taylor-Joy to reprise the role she played in 2020’s New Mutants. That makes Magik the clearest test case in the current casting chatter, because the character already has a screen history and Marvel is now weighing whether to carry that performance into a reset rather than start clean.
Illyana Rasputin is the younger sister of Colossus, and the comic-book version first appears in Giant-Size X-Men #1 in 1975. Her screen version in New Mutants arrived with a built-in complication: the character was presented as one of five adolescents, all framed as threats to themselves and the outside world because they exhibited mutant powers and struggled with dissociative issues.
New Mutants in 2020
Josh Boone directed New Mutants for 20th Century FOX, and the film was marketed as a horror action film. Taylor-Joy played Illyana Rasputin, Charlie Heaton played Sam Guthrie, and Maisie Williams played Rahne Sinclair, giving Marvel one of the few late-stage FOX-era mutant casts that could still be mined for continuity if the studio wants to reuse it.
That possibility is sharper because New Mutants never sat comfortably inside the larger X-Men track. The film gave Magik a distinctive origin: she was kidnapped when she was six years old, held in hellish limbo by an otherworldly dimensional demon, and later returned as a teenager with a dark secret after escaping. Her mutant ability to teleport between time and space was revealed while she was captive, which made her one of the more adaptable characters for a franchise rebuild.
Marvel Studios at San Diego Comic-Con
Marvel was the center of attention at San Diego Comic-Con, and the Feige rumor landed in that same frame. That timing matters for one reason: if Marvel is reworking X-Men from the ground up, a returning Magik would signal that the studio may favor selected carryovers instead of a full wipe of mutant history.
For now, the practical takeaway is narrow. Taylor-Joy is the actor linked to the reported return, Magik is the role at issue, and the next Marvel X-Men setup is where the decision would surface. Has Anya Taylor-Joy actually agreed to return as Magik for Marvel’s next X-Men project? That is the open point the industry is watching.
