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Josh Boone's The New Mutants has truly been through the wringer. From that initial trailer that launched in 2017, through countless release-date changes and reshoots – many thought the cast would be old and grey before the movie finally made it into cinemas. But, thankfully, the New Mutants has arrived, and there's a lot to talk about.
More than likely, The New Mutants ending left you with a whole host of questions about its place in the wider context of the X-Men movies. And now we that Fox and the X-Men have broken up for good thanks to the Disney merger, we can happily speculate about what might have been.
But first – consider this your official SPOILER WARNING. Do not read ahead unless you have seen The New Mutants!
Still here? So you have seen the New Mutants team fight the Demon Bear and escape the facility that Doctor Rayes was keeping them in. Chances are, though, you have a few questions: what is the Essex Corporation? What are Dani's powers are actually capable of? What on earth was Maisie Williams' accent was supposed to be?
Not to worry friends and fellow mutants, we've got you covered. Keep reading as we dissect that New Mutants ending and answer some of your burning questions about the events that unfolded at Milbury Hospital.
What are Dani's powers?
Danielle Moonstar (Blu Hunt), known later in the comics as Mirage, possesses a rather unique ability. As seen in The New Mutants, she unconsciously presents to those around her their darkest fears. The more stressed she becomes – for example when she is having a nightmare – the more vivid the visions become.
This means that even those she loves can be subjected to relive their traumas, just as Rahne (Maisie Williams) had to when she saw the cruel Reverend who hurt her all those years ago come back to life before her eyes. It’s a powerful mutation, that’s for certain, but only if Dani can learn to control it.
Who was Magik's brother?
Remember the big metal Russian guy from Deadpool and the X-Men movies? That’s right, you can’t miss him. His name is Colossus, and he just so happens to be the older brother of Anya Taylor-Joy’s Illyana Rasputin aka Magik.
The familial link has always been present in the comics, though to include even a throwaway line acknowledging it in the movie is a bold move. Could the sequel have reunited them or explored their family history a little further? Director Josh Boone certainly had plans in the works. He told ComicBook.com: “We definitely wrote [a scene] where Ilyana was in like a field in Russia that was being tilled, and suddenly her brother comes in and you see all the armour come on him and stop the thing from running her over.”
What is the Essex Corporation?
The Essex Corporation is an evil conglomerate run by Nathanial Essex, better known as Mr Sinister. Doctor Reyes even wears a diamond-brooch, which is likely a nod to the diamonds associated with Mr Sinister’s iconic design. It appears Fox had been dropping breadcrumbs and building up to a Thanos-style overarching mega-villain with Mr Sinister, as this is not the only time we’ve seen Essex Corp. show up in an X-Men movie.
The first time Essex Corp. appeared was in the post-credits scene of X-Men: Apocalypse: as a team clean up the mess left behind by Wolverine following his escape, men in suits arrive to collect a vial of his blood in a suitcase marked Essex Corp. It then makes sense as to how the mutant’s DNA was used to create X-23 in Logan, though the 2017 movie made no mention of the organisation.
What did the Essex Corporation want with the New Mutants?
All of Doctor Reyes’ notes care less about the new mutants' wellbeing and more about their suitability as controllable killing machines – she even notes how pleased she is by Magik’s general hatred of humanity. The Essex Corp. was looking to train a mutant army, and the same is also teased in Deadpool 2. The orphanage where we find Firefist is called the Essex House for Mutant Rehabilitation – another fake facility training killer mutants? With known facilities in Mexico, Essex House, and The New Mutants’ Milbury Hospital, Mr Sinister (one of his aliases is Nathan Milbury) clearly had a web of operations around the globe to help him weaponize mutant children for his little project.
In the comics, Mr Sinister had always been obsessed with the idea of evolution – he even studied it at Oxford University – and thought that humans simply weren't living up to their potential. Ousted from London's Royal Society for his dangerous ideas, he began experimenting on young mutants who had ended up on the streets. He even went as far as to exhume his own late son to use within his experiments. Eventually, Apocalypse made Sinister immortal and gave him the ability to incorporate mutant DNA into his own genes. He continued his work with this encouragement and as his testing and experiments expanded, so did Essex Corp.
Where are the New Mutants going at the end?
In short? We have no idea. Throughout the movie, Magik says that Doctor Rayes has always said the nearest town is at least 20 miles away – though the young mutant speculates that may have been simply to stop them trying to escape. As the mutants bid farewell to the cruel hospital's walls, they head to find out just how far away this town is. Perhaps they wind up happy and healthy in Westchester at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters? Or, more likely, they find themselves fighting for their lives against a great evil...
What would New Mutants 2 have been about?
Director Josh Boone has previously revealed that The New Mutants was to be the first movie in an ambitious trilogy. “...eventually we dovetail with [Simon Kinberg’s X-Men movies,” he said. “They’d come together in a big Marvel type way. But, you know, that’s not what happened.”
Had X-Men: Apocalypse been a bigger success, and had The New Mutants been released as initially planned, everything would have been in place for the X-Men movies to come together. Perhaps Dani and her new friends would wind up meeting the X-Men, and Mr Sinister would finally emerge from the shadows to take on those who seek to put a stop to the evil Essex Corporation?
Boone has even shared that the final movie in his planned trilogy would have adapted the beloved '80s Inferno storyline from the comics which sees Magik transform into the Darkchilde, a demonic version of her character. “We told her that in the third movie, there would be two of her... and she’d have to play two sides of herself," said Boone. "We were hyped on it!”
Was that Logan footage in New Mutants?
Yes! When Dani sees into Doctor Rayes’ mind, we are shown the same footage from the Transigen cloning programme that we see in Logan. Was Rayes’ involved in the experiments on mutant children in New Mexico, and if so, is Transigen an extension of Essex Corp? It's all adding up...
How does New Mutants tie into the X-Men movies?
Well, as we figured out earlier, Logan’s DNA likely got to Transigen in New Mexico following the post-credits scene of X-Men: Apocalypse. This means that, already, The New Mutants has ties with Logan, Deadpool 2, and the rest of the X-Men movies.
With all of these breadcrumbs hinting at Nathaniel Essex and his evil deeds, Josh Boone had planned that The New Mutants would have seen an appearance from the man himself in a post-credits sequence. “Before we knew about the merger, we always planned out our post-credit scene introducing Mister Sinister,” Boone told Den of Geek. We spotted even more X-Men links too, read more here about how New Mutants ties into X-Men, Logan, and more.
What accent was Maisie Williams doing?
In the comics, Rahne Sinclair aka Wolfsbane is Scottish, so we can only assume that’s what they were going for with Maisie William’s accent. Whether she did a good job or not? We’ll leave that up to the Scots.
The last we see of our teen mutants is them walking off into the world on their own as comrades and friends. With a third Deadpool movie in the works, however, this may not be the last we hear of the Essex Corporation and its founder...
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