What happens at the end of X-Men: Dark Phoenix? The ending you saw isn't the one they first filmed
Dark Phoenix opened on 7 June 2019 as the last Fox X-Men film before Disney absorbed the studio. Simon Kinberg directed, his first time behind the camera. The third act on screen was shot months after principal photography wrapped, and it replaced something considerably bigger.
The finished ending: Jean Grey pulls the alien Vuk into the upper atmosphere and detonates, killing her and vanishing in a burst of energy shaped like a phoenix. The surviving X-Men go home, the school is renamed in Jean's honour, and Charles Xavier retires to Paris.
What happens on the train
The government rounds the mutants up and loads them onto an armoured train bound for a containment facility. Vuk (Jessica Chastain) and her D'Bari forces attack it. Charles reaches Jean telepathically; she forgives him, shields the others from the wreck, and disintegrates the remaining aliens.
Vuk tries once more to drain the Phoenix Force out of her. Jean starts to release it — then sees Scott beginning to disintegrate in the blast radius. So she grabs Vuk and takes the explosion off the planet.
Where everyone ends up
- Jean Grey — gone in the blast, though a flaming phoenix appears in the sky in the closing shot.
- Charles Xavier — retired, drinking coffee outside a Paris café when Erik turns up and offers him a game of chess and a home on Genosha.
- Hank McCoy — the new dean of the renamed Jean Grey School for Gifted Youngsters.
- Storm — promoted to teacher.
- Raven — killed by Jean earlier in the film, in Jennifer Lawrence's last appearance in the role.
The ending they filmed first
The original climax was set in space. Accounts from test screenings described a full alien invasion, the X-Men repelling it at the United Nations, and then an armada arriving — with Jean flying up to destroy the fleet and dying in the process. Tye Sheridan later described a version in which Jean fights aliens outside the UN, says goodbye to Scott and Charles, and blasts back into space.
Kinberg reshot it and brought the finale down to Earth so the team could be present for it.
"The story ended in space in a much more significant way," Kinberg told Entertainment Weekly in 2019.
James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender put a different gloss on it that year, telling Yahoo Movies UK the change was forced by overlap with another superhero film they declined to name. McAvoy's version: "The finale HAD to change." The film most people point to is Captain Marvel, released three months before Dark Phoenix, which also ends with a superpowered woman fighting in space.
For the record: this was Kinberg's second crack at the same story. He wrote 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand, which also killed Jean Grey off.