Hot take: the future of the X-Men on the screen shouldn’t seek to emulate the MCU. It should follow the blueprint of DC Universe’s/HBOMax’s Doom Patrol.

Okay, first of all, if you aren’t watching Doom Patrol, you should be. It starts slow, but it develops into something really special, something that really demonstrates the weirder, messier, queerer potential of the DCU. And ideally that’s what the X-Men should do for Marvel.

X-Men stories, at their best, aren’t blockbuster film-sized chunks. They excel in long form, serialized storytelling. More so than with the Avengers, a film format makes it much harder to preserve the essence of what makes the team special.

I like several of the X-Men films. I really do. But they failed to capture so much of what makes the team unique and interesting. I mean, nearly 20 years, and I don’t think they managed to truly do right by a single one of the X-women.

Doom Patrol’s intense character focus is exactly what the X-Men need. Avengers stories can be about the threats they overcome, but the X-Men need a degree of intimacy to really work. They need that familial bond that becomes hard to sell in 150 minutes of CGI action.

But what triggered this thread wasn’t a general ethos or approach to the material. It was one specific narrative decision that Doom Patrol made that the MCU has avoided. Doom Patrol chose not to start at the beginning.

There’s a vast tapestry of history preceding the first episode of Doom Patrol. These characters have lived in this world for quite some time. And when the show introduces us to the past, it does it as it becomes relevant.