X-Men: Fear The Beast - 8 Biggest Takeaways From The Abandoned Movie Script

2. Mr. Sinister Was Planned As A Multi-Film Villain

In the middle of the film, Hank encounters a character called the Scarred Man, a mysterious, near-blind local. The Scarred Man gives Hank some information about Wendigo, before disappearing from the film entirely - until the final scene.

The very last scene in the script is set at the edge of a forest, with the Scarred Man watching the X-Men fly home. Here, the character is holding a vial of Dr. Cartier's reverse-engineered serum, and has an evil grin on his face. We then learn that the Scarred Man is in fact Mr. Sinister, a mutant with the power to alter his appearance.

This seems like it would've made a solid post-credits scene that teased future X-Men instalments, because according to scriptwriter Byron Burton (via THR), the intention here was to setup Mr. Sinister as the franchise's equivalent of Thanos - i.e. a behind-the-scenes mastermind pulling the strings:

"The idea was we would have Sinister as this multi-film villain orchestrating things... we wrote a late-'80s outline of an Omega Red film where the idea is Sinister is testing the X-Men."

Sinister was actually teased in X-Men: Apocalypse's stinger, which showed an ominous figure retrieving vials of blood labelled "Weapon X". This figure carried a briefcase that had "Essex Corp" written across it, a reference to Nathaniel Essex, Sinister's alter-ego. In true X-Men movie fashion, this tease went nowhere, but still, it was there.

In Fear The Beast, the true identity of the Scarred Man is cleverly hinted at in his first scene, where the script states that he emits "a sinister laugh." Who knows if this tease would've gone anywhere if the movie actually got made, but it sure sounds like Fox had big plans for Sinister at one point in time.