Marvel has found its new Beast and Professor X for the upcoming X-Men reboot — and the franchise once built on the idea that people should be judged by character, not category, is now being assembled through the very identity-driven casting mandates its stories once critiqued.
According to Knight Edge Media, reported by Polygon, Irish actor Peter Claffey has been cast as Beast in the 2028 X-Men film. Claffey, a former professional rugby player who graduated from Bow Street Academy for Screen Acting in 2020, is best known for playing Sir Duncan in HBO's A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Charles Melton had reportedly been in the running but dropped out to pursue the lead in a live-action Naruto adaptation.
Meanwhile, Screen Rant reports that Christopher Abbott — confirmed at D23 in August as the MCU's new Professor X — directly denied he will appear in Avengers: Doomsday. When Rolling Stone pressed him on a cameo, Abbott was blunt: "Look, no coyness. I'm not in that movie." Screen Rant notes that Marvel actors have a long history of denying roles they later appear in — Andrew Garfield's repeated denials before Spider-Man: No Way Home being the most famous example.
Kelsey Grammer, who played Beast in earlier X-Men films, will reprise the role in Avengers: Doomsday before presumably handing the character off to Claffey. Polygon also reports that Oscar-nominated Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve met with Marvel about playing Moira MacTaggert — despite having previously said she wouldn't fit in a Marvel movie.
The casting announcements come as Marvel continues to lean into identity-first selection for its marquee properties. The X-Men were created in 1963 as a metaphor for civil rights — mutants persecuted not for what they did, but for what they were. The allegory was powerful because it argued against categorical thinking. Now the studio building that franchise operates with the same diversity-mandate logic the comics once warned about. Polygon framed the casting as straightforward entertainment news. Screen Rant focused on whether Abbott was being truthful about Doomsday. Neither outlet touched the deeper irony.
The stakes for ordinary Americans aren't about who plays a blue mutant. They're about a culture industry that talks endlessly about inclusion while narrowing the criteria for who gets considered. When every casting decision runs through an identity filter, the message to working actors — and working people — is clear: your category matters more than your craft.
Marvel's X-Men is slated for 2028. Whether audiences still show up for a franchise that now practices what it once preached against remains an open question.
