Stop right there. If you've not already watched episodes one, two, and three of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (and maybe even Wandavision) you might want to make sure you don't mind spoilers because, oh boy, the series contains some cool connections to other Marvel properties.
So far, Marvel films have been pretty split on where heroes belong - it's a mess but as a general rule, X-Men and the Avengers don't mix on the big screen but that might be about to change. Throughout the last couple of decades, the X-Men films, (and the mutants as a whole) were reserved to 21st Century Fox but back in 2019 Disney bought the entire company. Now, it looks like, mutants could enter into the official MCU because of our introduction to Madripoor, the criminal city that has just appeared in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
If you watched Wandavision then you'd know there was a really big meta-reference to the existence of two cinematic Quicksilvers. There is Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who played Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron and then there is Evan Peters who played the hero in the X-Men series of films. Now, the cool thing here is that during Wandavision, Wanda and Quicksilver meet once again but the character is 'recast' as Evan Peters' version of the character. This is perhaps the biggest 4th wall break we've seen in Marvel films, as it's a reference to the fact that two actors play this one character. Sadly, Evan Peters is actually playing a normal citizen controlled by magic to pretend to be a reanimated Quicksilver. He's still dead, and Peters is just a puppet whose strings are eventually cut.
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But, now looking at The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, IGN spotted a reference to more potential X-Men add-ons. Madripoor is a new city we've done some exploring around with the two title characters as well as Zemo. We understand it to be a completely unruly part of the planet and acts as a city-state of criminal activity and both extreme wealth and poverty. Side note, I think IO Interactive should be allowed to make a Hitman 3 level based in the city, just saying.
While perusing these streets, one bar that stands out is The Princess Bar. This drinking hole is a reference to the comic books as it's partly owned by Tyger Tiger and a place Wolverine would frequently hang out in. Tyger Tiger, aka Jessán Hoan, has made a name as one of the largest bank owners in Madripoor as well as being a criminal mastermind, and has a sort of allyship with Wolverine in the comics to stop some of the terrible goings-on in the city.
It's Marvel waving at us once again from inside the screen, telling us that they're slowly, slowly dripping X-Men related content into the films. It feels likely that eventually, we'll be seeing more characters from that side of the universe come into play, but they're not just going to dump Wolverine into a scene with no warning we expect. We're just watching and waiting to eventually see where the series and films take us, and how mutants might eventually make it onto the screen.
Featured Image Credit: Marvel