‘The Marvels’ Concept Art Unveils Alternate Design for Kelsey Grammer’s Beast

When the credits rolled on The Marvels, the return of Kelsey Grammer as Hank McCoy from the X-Men franchise was a surprise for audiences. And now, Andy Park, the visual development supervisor for the sequel, has revealed concept art for Beast’s return on social media. The character was seen during the post-credits sequence from The Marvels, when Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) wakes up after traveling to a dimension different from her own. Believing to be reunited with her mother, Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch), she’s surprised to realize that she’s no longer in her universe, and that she’s actually met a variant of her deceased relative.

Grammer portrayed the character for the first time in X-Men: The Last Stand, the third installment in the series which followed Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) as he tried to train his students in order to protect the planet. McCoy was introduced as a former student of Xavier’s academy who now worked as the Secretary of Mutant Affairs for the United States government. Two decades after he was introduced to audiences, Grammer’s Beast entered the MCU with a design reminiscent of how the character is portrayed in the 90’s X-Men animated series, just as Patrick Stewart did when appeared in last year’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

His appearance in The Marvels isn’t the first time Grammer has returned to the character after it was assumed he was done with the franchise. In 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) establishes a new timeline after going back in time to prevent the mutants extinction. Even though the hero had already been introduced to the younger version of Hank played by Nicholas Hoult, when he returned to the new timeline, Grammer appeared once more as the adult version of the scientist.

Why Was Beast in ‘The Marvels?’

While Beast was introduced in the X-Men franchise produced by Fox, he was able to appear in The Marvels because of the MCU’s current focus on the Multiverse Saga. The time travel depicted in Avengers: Endgame, combined with Disney acquiring Fox during the same year the blockbuster was released, has allowed the studio to work with the characters pertaining to that franchise. When the Avengers went back in time to fix what Thanos (Josh Brolin) had done to their universe, they discovered that changing something in the past wouldn’t change their own future, but open up a diverging timeline, instead. Those timelines…