Could the villain of Fox's New Mutants secretly be the equivalent of their very own Dark Phoenix - Dani Moonstar herself? After years of delay, New Mutants - the last X-Men film commissioned by Fox - is finally coming out in April. Disney has released a new trailer, promising a PG-13 superhero horror with homages to everything from Nightmare on Elm Street to One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.
The trailer gave a glimpse of the monstrous Demon Bear. In the comics, the Demon Bear was a mystical monster that hunted Dani Moonstar, a member of the New Mutants, and brought terror to the rest of the students. On the face of it, New Mutants appears to be playing that straight; the trailer focuses upon Blu Hunt's Dani Moonstar as the viewpoint character, and opens with her fleeing a Demon Bear attack before she is brought to the institution run by Dr. Cecilia Reyes. But Boone has warned that the trailers will conceal as much as they reveal. "There's stuff you'll never see in the trailers that are big parts of the movie," he told IGN back in 2017.
During the same interview, Boone was asked whether or not Demon Bear was the primary antagonist - and he gave a fascinating answer. "I wouldn't go so far as to say that," he responded cautiously. "I'd just say it's very much inspired by that run of the comics." The clear implication is that there's something else going on; and one intriguing possibility is that Dani Moonstar herself is the true villain, in the vein of Dark Phoenix.
The average moviegoer can be forgiven for not knowing who Dani Moonstar is; the characters of New Mutants don't really have the brand recognition of A-list X-Men like Cyclops and Wolverine. In the comics, Dani Moonstar was a Native American mutant who possesses a degree of psychic power. Her particular talent is the ability to pull a person's deepest fears out of their mind, and to project them as terrifying illusions. As Dani's powers expanded, she learned to turn these illusions into solid form.
When Dani's powers first began to manifest, she found herself hunted down by the Demon Bear, a mystical predator that sought to devour Dani and her entire family. Dani herself was defeated by the Demon Bear, but fortunately, the New Mutants were able to defeat the creature. It proved vulnerable to Magik's Soulsword, a weapon with the power to harm magical creatures. The New Mutants trailer hints that Josh Boone is playing the story straight; there's even a final glimpse of Magik summoning the Soulsword and her eldritch armor, and confronting the Demon Bear.
According to Josh Boone, New Mutants is the superhero equivalent of a haunted house horror; and the trailer proves that there's a lot more going on than just the Demon Bear. In fact, anyone who's familiar with the comics will recognize that the various New Mutants' fears seem to be going alive. Cannonball's powers were triggered in a traumatic mine collapse, and he's seen walking through a vision of it, shaken to the core. Wolfsbane had been abused by her father, Reverend Craig, and hides in a church confessional - to be attacked there by the Demon Bear. Magik is shown screaming in terror at monstrous creatures; they're visually reminiscent of comic book characters who were stranded in Limbo, the Hellish dimension Magik's powers are connected to in the comics.
This is exactly what you'd expect to see if Dani Moonstar's newborn mutant powers were out of her control. As noted, her ability is to give manifest to the greatest fears of those around her, potentially even to turn them into solid objects. There are other hints in the New Mutants trailer that reality is malleable around Dani Moonstar as well; a door fades to black, Magik's stuffed toy becomes a purple dragon at her side, and Dani runs through a snowswept forest that's pulled straight from artist Bill Sienkiewicz's New Mutants run.
In fact, it's possible that the Demon Bear itself is the ultimate manifestation of Dani's powers. The creature's initial attack is apparently on the day Dani's powers develop, and in the final shots it appears to be blurred and indistinct in form - just like a nightmare. Perhaps in New Mutants the Demon Bear is Dani's own greatest fear brought to life, her out-of-control abilities turned against herself.
If this theory is correct, then New Mutants tells a story that's remarkably similar to the classic X-Men "Dark Phoenix Saga." There, creators Chris Claremont and John Byrne envisioned the telepath and telekinetic Jean Grey developing what they called a "schizoid personality," the Phoenix, which increasingly lost control and ultimately consumed an entire star-system when it turned into the Dark Phoenix. In the same way, Dani's powers are acting independently of her conscious mind, attacking herself and those around her.
There are other parallels as well. In the original "Dark Phoenix Saga," Jean Grey's fall was prompted due to the manipulations of a villain who has an agenda all of his own. This was the telepath Mastermind, who sought to turn Jean into the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club. In exactly the same way, the New Mutants are essentially institutionalized, watched over by Dr. Cecilia Reyes. She seems to be running some sort of conversion therapy, attempting to "cure" people of their mutantcy. Reyes may well have a very personal reason for establishing this facility; in the comics, she's a mutant herself. If the same is true in New Mutants, if Reyes is a repressed mutant who desperately desires to abandon that part of her identity, then she would no doubt be fascinated by a teenage girl whose subconscious can shape reality at a whim. Little wonder Dani begins to suspect that she and her friends aren't there to get better; she is nothing but a tool to Cecilia Reyes, albeit one who is far more dangerous than the doctor truly suspects.
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