The Fantastic Four: First Steps hits cinemas this weekend as Marvel’s First Family makes their debut into Disney’s MCU.
The superhero team had two previous incarnations from when the rights were owned by 20th Century Fox, starting with 2005’s Fantastic Four and 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
This original cast included future Captain America star Chris Evans as Human Torch, before he reprised his version of Johnny Storm in Deadpool and Wolverine last year.
Speculation has been rife that other former Fantastic Four cast members will return in Avengers Doomsday and Avengers Secret Wars alongside the original X-Men, who are already confirmed for the first outing.
And now one actor in particular is causing a fan frenzy after showing up at the world premiere of The Fantastic Four: First Steps last night.
Original Reed Richards star Ioan Gruffudd is the man in question. And given he’s previously said he’d return as Mr Fantastic “in a heartbeat” if asked, we’d be very surprised if he’s not appearing in the next two Avengers movies in some form. After all, the two blockbusters are closing out the MCU’s Multiverse Saga and already have the 2000s X-Men cast returning, as already mentioned. Meanwhile, scooper MyTimeToShineHello appears to be hinting at this after posting the new snap of Ioan on the blue premiere carpet and simply commenting with a side-eye emoji. But in what narrative capacity would he feature?
So far, there have been three appearances of Fantastic Four members in the MCU, and they’re all from different universes to the MCU’s Earth-616. First up was John Krasinski’s Reed Richards in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, followed by Evans’ Johnny Storm in Deadpool and Wolverine – both of whom kicked the bucket. And now there’s The Fantastic Four, who are from a retrofuturistic universe, ahead of a crossover with Earth-616 in Avengers Doomsday. The latter was teased in the Thunderbolts* end credits scenes, although some theorise this could be a different Fantastic Four team, perhaps even one led by Ioan’s Reed? One popular theory is that we’ll see the Council of Reeds, which in Marvel Comics is an organisation of Mr Fantastic variants from across the multiverse who gathered to “solve everything”.