Spoilers ahead for X-Men: Days of Future Past
I think we can all agree that X-Men: Days of Future Past was a rather good film and is a film that some would consider to be the best in the X-Men series. X-Men: Apocalypse on the other hand, not so much. Days of Future Past ended with a tease that was expected to be addressed in the next film. The scene revolved around William Stryker taking Wolverine into custody. Before the scene ends, his eyes flash yellow indicating that it was the shape-shifting Mystique.
Stryker was the villain in X2: X-Men United, leading the Weapon X program that bonded adamantium to Wolverine’s bones. The ending of Days of Future Past caused fans to assume that Mystique was taking Wolverine into custody, causing a change in the timeline due to the time travelling exploits of the film. It would be expected that this would drastically switch things up and that the next film would explore this. Well, it didn’t as Apocalypse revealed that Stryker was back at Weapon X capturing mutants and doing his usual Stryker stuff. Not only that, Mystique was busy travelling the world to discover herself…. okay fine, she was rescuing mutants to bring them to the Xavier Institute.
Director of the films, Bryan Singer addressed this upon seeing a question about it on Reddit. He offers an explanation on Instagram:
“I have to be honest, the idea to have Stryker’s eyes turn yellow was added to the film very close to its completion. However I ended up liking it because it showed Mystique’s path of secretly helping mutants. In that case Wolverine. It is a path that continues into X-Men: Apocalypse.”
In other words, you f–ked up! Okay maybe not as it does make some sense. There’s a chance that Mystique was helping Wolverine and failed as Stryker caught on and eventually got a hold of him. Though, based on how the film actually presented it, it does look like the filmmakers were definitely going a different route with this. Well, with X-Men: Dark Phoenix to be released next year, sounds like a good time to revisit these films.
Source: Bryan Singer
