'Dark Phoenix’s lost ending had this surprising crossover with 'Captain Marvel'

There’s been rumours about which specific comic-book movie caused Dark Phoenix to go into reshoots, after Yahoo Movies UK revealed that the ending had to be changed because there were too many similarities with another film.

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Now, a new interview with Tye Sheridan (Cyclops) has confirmed what we all suspected - it was definitely Captain Marvel, mainly because the Dark Phoenix villains were supposed to be Skrulls.

“It’s really hard for me to remember what the ending of this movie is. [laughs],” Sheridan said. “Originally, it was scripted that Charles and Scott go to the U.N. because — man, I’m totally going to mess this up — they go to the U.N. because they’re going to try to tell the President that, ‘Hey, we’re under attack by aliens, and they’ve now captured Jean Grey.’ Or, you know, whatever it is that we’re going to tell him.

“And then Jean comes down in the front of the U.N., and causes… there is this huge battle between the guards at the U.N. and Jean Grey, and all the guards turn out to be Skrulls. And then Jean and Scott are — Scott is fighting Skrulls in the fountain.

“He gets thrown into the fountain in front of the U.N. And then Jean comes down and basically fights all of the Skrulls off, and then blasts back off into space. [She] basically says goodbye to Scott and Charles. And then it’s all over, I guess.”

Looks like once the Disney deal to acquire Fox went through, Marvel took one look at the Dark Phoenix ending and spat out their coffee. It would have caused major confusion, especially as, in Captain Marvel, one of the big twists of the Skrull reveal is that they’re actually good guys. Or, at the very least, victims.

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Having two completely conflicting films with essentially the same ending being released six months within each other would have created annoying inconsistencies, so we can see why Marvel would want to keep things more uniform.

But did it affect Dark Phoenix’s reviews? Many have pointed out how vague Jessica Chastain’s villain is - maybe a Skrull reveal would have fixed that.

We’ll never know - unless we get the original ending on a Blu-ray release. Though, we suspect it’s more likely that the MCU is ready to pretend this whole thing never happened.

Dark Phoenix is in cinemas now.