X-Men Star Teases a Mister Fantastic Team-Up in Avengers: Doomsday

Reed Richards a.k.a. Mister Fantastic is generally accepted to be the smartest person in the Marvel Universe. But he’s hardly the only super-genius or powerful person of that world, just one of many who gather in a group called the Illuminati. Joined by Tony Stark, Doctor Strange, and others, the Illuminati deal with problems the average person couldn’t even comprehend. And with the Fantastic Four and the members of Fox’s X-Men joining the MCU for Avengers: Doomsday, there’s a chance for the mutant members of the Illuminati to come together, such as Professor X or his successor Dr. Hank McCoy, a.k.a. the Beast. Certainly, such a meeting would be memorable.

Or so one would think. When asked by Entertainment Tonight about his experience shooting Doomsday, Beast actor Kelsey Grammer said, “I had a great time with the new guy from Fantastic Four.” When the interviewer tried to get more clarity by suggesting the name of Pedro Pascal, Grammer responded, “Pedro, thanks. Wonderful guy. I really, really enjoyed hanging out with him, and we worked together some.”

By this point, Marvel fans shouldn’t be too surprised that the stars don’t always understand what their characters are doing. Not only has MCU chief Kevin Feige been notoriously secretive about larger storylines, even with those acting out those stories, but the studio increasingly patches the movies together in editing. As a result, characters who share scenes together are performed by actors who never meet, as seen in films such as Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Moreover, Grammer is getting up there in years and still works at a steady clip. In 2024 and 2025 alone, Grammer appeared in six movies and 20 episodes of the Frasier reboot. In other words, he’s worked with a lot of people in just two years, let alone the scores of co-stars he’s had in a career that goes back to the late 1970s. We certainly can’t expect him to remember each weird superhero plot point or interaction he has as Beast.

But for those of us who obsess over this kind of thing, the prospect of an interaction between Beast and Mister Fantastic is exciting, especially in light of the movie that follows Doomsday, Secret Wars. In the comics, and in the alternate reality glimpsed in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Mister Fantastic is a founding member of the Illuminati. And when Professor X died in the comics (he got better), he appointed Beast to be his successor, and join brilliant men like Black Panther, Black Bolt, Iron Man, and Doctor Strange in dealing with multiversal threats.

We know that Doomsday will involve such a threat, as alternate realities will collide in universe-destroying events called Incursions. And we know that not only will Doctor Doom (played by Robert Downey Jr., for reasons we don’t yet understand) have his own plan for dealing with those events, but that Marvel’s heroes will have to come together to find a way to save their reality.

With the entire universe on the line, there are few people in the MCU more capable than Reed Richards and the Beast. Let’s just hope the on-screen action is more memorable than the shooting of those scenes apparently was.

Avengers: Doomsday comes to theaters on December 18, 2026.