Marvel’s mutant plans have taken a new turn: Kevin Feige has reportedly asked Anya Taylor-Joy to return as Illyana Rasputin, the Magik she played in New Mutants. The report arrives as Marvel’s next live-action X-Men iteration starts to take shape around familiar names rather than a clean break from the past.
That is why Dafne Keen is being searched alongside Marvel’s mutant talk now. At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, the spotlight was already on Avengers: Doomsday, and the assembled cast included familiar faces from the 2000s X-Men, making any talk of another mutant carry extra weight. Feige has reportedly shown interest in another new mutant, and Taylor-Joy’s name quickly became the one drawing attention.
Taylor-Joy’s connection to the character is not a small one. She was cast as Illyana Rasputin in Josh Boone’s New Mutants, a 2020 release from 20th Century FOX that was marketed as a horror action film and did not overtly connect to the established X-Men chronology. The film followed five adolescents treated as threats to themselves and the outside world because they had mutant powers and dissociative issues. Sam Guthrie was played by Charlie Heaton, and Rahne Sinclair by Maisie Williams, while Taylor-Joy’s Illyana stood out as the younger sister of Colossus.
That comic history gives the reported interest some logic. Illyana first appeared in Giant-Size X-Men #1 in 1975, was kidnapped as a six-year-old, and later became trapped in a hellish limbo before emerging with teleportation powers and a dark secret. The character has long carried built-in sequel fuel, which is exactly why a return would matter to Marvel’s reset-minded mutant strategy.
But the key detail is still missing: a reported ask is not the same as a signed return. Marvel is said to be courting Taylor-Joy, not announcing her back on screen, and that leaves the next X-Men step tied to one simple unanswered point — whether she says yes.
