How Marvel can solve The Magneto Problem

Magneto is one of the most popular Marvel villains. Canonically, he should also be a hundred years old. How will the MCU handle that? I have some ideas.

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[ThatGuyWithAComment]

I trust Marvel to find someway to keep the Holocaust origin story intact, you just can’t have Magneto without that story. Nothing will ever beat the moment in X3 when those young mutants see Magnetos numbers and he responds “no needle shall ever touch my skin again”.

[ItsIntelligentDesign]

I’d go a step further - not only is the historical context of Magneto’s origin “not worth changing”, it is absolutely required and the character should not be written without that origin. It informs everything from his motives to the heroes’ best argument against his actions

[guillermogonzalezmarin]

I really don't like the idea of having the nazis experiment on Magneto, haven't liked it since First Class, I think it's detrimental to the message.
Magneto shouldn't have (or barely have) his powers during his capture, the nazis shouldn't know he's a mutant. He wasn't captured, tortured because he was useful to them, or a menace. He, as his mother, as the rest of the people there must be faceless, anonymous, dehumanized by the fascist regime. That's the tragedy, that it was arbitrary violence fuled by no real goal, no benefit.
He had his life ruined just because of how much hate the nazis had for jews, no other goal or need for him other than his complete and utter obliteration.
The nazis didn't do what they did to him for a reason, they just hated him and wanted to erase all his kind from history

[maxh]

If they retcon Wanda’s MCU origin and make him her father, I hope they set it up well enough to have a Vader moment.

[johnpaulcross]

Magneto’s origin is one of the best comic elements that I believe should stick around, it gives his character so much more depth and serves as an interesting moral quandary for other characters to grapple with.

[WhimzyInteractive]

Nah magneto needs to be tied to the Holocaust it’s part of his lore. That and his Judaism. His Hannukah moment. The representation. They’re inseparable

[BriarDare]

You've convinced me and now I badly want them to go with that last option. Him being venerated and kept alive by his people adds such an interesting shade to his character and could elevate him to a sort of mythical status from the very start.
Similarly, I think the very fact of him still being written to have lived through the Holocaust at this point in history, while still being someone young and healthy enough to be playing a very active, very political role in the world, adds its own interesting dimension in regards to how he would feel about modern antisemitism, watching his generation age and pass, etc.
Lot of fertile ground for interesting character work in all of that.

[mr.moviemafia]

The cartoon “X-Men: Evolution” touches upon a similar topic of Magneto’s age. There’s an episode where Erik uses the show’s equivalent of the super-soldier serum that created Captain America to keep himself alive

[StephenLeGresley]

It's long been established in the comics that Magento ages slowly and heals due to the effects of the magnetic poles on Earth.

It's a simple explanation that works and gets the issue solved without a massive plot structure needed.

[pattyotk]

I like the idea of another character de-aging Magneto on his deathbed and him being compelled to return to the fight. You could even have it be McKellen de-aged into Fassbender or whatever new actor they get.

[mauriciovillegas]

I'd totally watch a 100-year-old Magneto played by Mel Brooks.

[Moffles]

Speaking on Magneto not aging in the comics, how about Michael Fassbender not aging in his run? By Dark Phoenix he should be in his 50s-60s

[zejeffmeister]

Am I the only one that thinks that it's important to have Prof X and Magneto be peers? Whatever you do to Magneto to keep him young, you would have to do with Prof X which really makes none of these options work

[keithhunt]

I always felt that the best explaination for Magneto's prime physical condition, at such a ripe old age, was just an side effect of the countless times that he has been healed by his mutant allies.

[chrisosterhoudt]

I feel like Magneto's power slowing his aging might be the cleanest solution but that might just be me.

[briantaulbee]

At this point I think it's pretty clear that Feige likes to keep things relatively simple (notwithstanding that he's not afraid of deep cuts), so I think if they decide to keep the Holocaust origin for Magneto, he'll just age more slowly because of his powers.

[Raptor]

I much prefer keeping his origins as a holocaust survivor, having him portrayed as an elderly man is also the best option. Depending on how mutants are finally introduced will be the reasoning behind the origin. If they are wedged into the timeline saying "we were here all along" then Magneto might not even be the character to use as it would severely undermine the character. It'll really depend on how they introduce the mutants.

[Cerulebell]

You could also keep him old, make him Wanda and Pietro’s grandfather and then have Polaris be their mother. I really like the idea of magneto being an absolute powerhouse but being physically a small old man. Like don’t underestimate the strength of survivors just because they grew old, they grew old because they are strong.

[CassiusDrake]

I like the magic route principally because the Romani were also victim's of the holocaust, and having Magneto meet Natalya while they are both in a concentration camp, or bonding over that shared experience afterwards, allows the film to both acknowledge the Romani people's trauma, something that I think tends to get overlooked in how we teach and discuss this period, while also providing a clear reason for why these two characters initially bond, allowing them to fast track that relationship in a way that could feel earned without needing a ton of screen time to flesh out.

[benjaminwaters]

One of these has to be the Magneto solution. The further away we get from the second world war the more important characters like Magneto become. They help people who never lived through the war understand and connect with how brutal it was. The older Magneto gets, the more important he becomes to popular culture.