New Mutants post-credits scene would have teased Hellfire Club connection

Following years of delays, The New Mutants is finally hitting theaters in April — that is, if the Coronavirus pandemic doesn’t threaten to delay the film once more. Considering the likelihood for a sequel is slim to none at this point, The New Mutants director Josh Boone has gone ahead and divulged a few surprising tidbits about what a follow-up film would have entailed. The includes new details about Antonio Banderas’ post-credits scene and a Hellfire Club connection straight from the comics.

Back in 2018, Antonio Banderas was tapped to film a post-credits scene for New Mutants. We now know that the actor would have played Emmanuel da Costa, tyrannical businessman and father of Roberto da Costa, aka the mutant called Sunspot. While the post-credits scene was never actually filmed, Boone recently told Entertainment Weekly that the stinger would have not only introduced Emmanuel da Costa, but also referenced his connections to the Hellfire Club. If the name rings a bell, you may have already seen the mutant-heavy cult on the big screen in 2011's X-Men: First Class.

“It was intentional that we didn’t shoot it," Boone says. "We had always planned to have a tag at the end of the movie that introduced the villain for the next movie. We even had an actor cast, but because of the merger and because Marvel owns X-Men now and is going to do their own thing, there was no reason to go shoot it.”

In the comics, da Costa is a ruthless entrepreneur who put himself above his family. After he divorced his wife, he was invited to the Hellfire Club’s Inner Circle by leader Sebastian Shaw. While working with the devious group of mutants, da Costa operated under the name White Rook, remaining one of the Hellfire Club’s only non-powered members.

A centuries-old organization, the Hellfire Club’s goals are simple: amass power, wealth, and influence to exert their dominance worldwide. It’s possible that their inclusion in the New Mutants sequel would have more directly connected the films to the larger X-Men universe. We know that the upcoming movie is set in present-day, though it does not have many ties to the X-Men films beyond the presence of mutants. A sequel may have changed that.

According to Boone, the plot of The New Mutants sequel would have sent Roberto and the rest of the New Mutants to Brazil to visit his estranged family. While there, they would have likely crossed paths with the Hellfire Club, precisely because of Emmanuel’s connection to the elite group. However, with Disney acquiring 20th Century Fox and their assets last year, hopes for a New Mutants sequel have dissipated. We’ll probably never get the chance to see what Boone and his team had envisioned for Antonio Banderas’ Emmanuel da Costa or the Hellfire Club. As fans of mutant hybrid Onslaught say: "The dream is dead."

The New Mutants hits theaters April 3.