Jimmy Kimmel pretended to be seeing red—not much unlike the laser beam shot from Cyclops’ visor—when X-Men franchise vet James Marsden returned to his talk show Monday night.
Marsden last visited ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! in January 2025, at which time he spoke about footage from his X-Men movies playing over the Deadpool & Wolverine closing credits. But when nudged to confirm that he’d ever suit up again as Scott Summers, Marsden told Kimmel, “Ah, no.”
A mere eight weeks later, the infamous Avengers: Doomsday cast reveal confirmed that Marsden and some former co-stars would in fact reprise their roles in the December 2026 Marvel release.
As such, Kimmel lamented at the top of this Monday’s interview, “I felt a sense of confusion, and betrayal,” before reminding Marsden with a slo-mo replay of his “very, very shifty” denial.
“I’m not a very good liar,” Marsden admitted.
“I was being coy,” he explained, adding: “I learned that with these movies, you can’t say anything.”
“Now,” though, “I’m here to tell the truth,” Marsden affirmed.
“I think there were hints” and “chat about it for years,” he went on to recall. “But I didn’t believe it until it actually happened.”
And once the encore did come to fruition, how did the actual “suiting up” go for Marsden, who last played Cyclops in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand? Did he have concerns about getting back into costume?
“Of course — would I fit in it? What did it look like?” he nodded. But “I can tell everyone now,” Avengers: Doomsday will feature “the original costume from the comics, which is pretty cool.”
Watch Kimmel confront Marsden above.
