The following contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Deadline reports British actor Kit Connor (Heartstopper) will play Cyclops/Scott Summers in the MCU’s X-Men reboot. The 22-year old purportedly became director Jake Schreier and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige‘s top choice for the mutant team’s field leader last week. Marvel and Connor’s representatives have no comment on the story at the time of writing.
The news comes shortly after Spider-Man: Brand New Day introduced Sadie Sink as the MCU’s Jean Grey, and reports that Samara Weaving will portray its version of Emma Frost. Connor will become the fourth actor to play Scott on the big screen, following James Marsden (who played him in X-Men, X2, The Last Stand, and Days of Future Past), Tim Pocock (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), and Tye Sheridan (X-Men: Apocalypse, Deadpool 2, and Dark Phoenix).
Connor is best known for playing bisexual schoolboy Nick Nelson in the British Netflix romance series Heartstopper (based on the webcomic of the same name by Alice Oseman), for which he won the first Children’s and Family Emmy Award for an Outstanding Lead Performance. His character was established as being a big Marvel fan (even dressing up as Captain America in one episode), while his co-star Joe Locke previously joined the MCU as Wiccan/Billy Maximoff in 2024’s Disney+ series Agatha All Along.
Connor is himself bisexual, and will join a still very small group of openly queer MCU leads. His other credits include Warfare, The Wild Robot, Rocketman, a high-profile stage run of Romeo and Juliet co-starring Rachel Zegler, and the upcoming film version of Elden Ring, due out in 2028. He most recently reprised the role of Nick Nelson for Heartstopper Forever, the recently released film finale of the series.
Few details are still known about Schreier’s X-Men, which hasn’t even had a release window officially confirmed yet, although hopefully we’ll learn more during Disney’s D23 event on the weekend of August 14-16. In the meantime, Marsden will reprise the role of Cyclops in Avengers: Doomsday, which will blast its way into theaters on December 18, 2026.
