Sir Patrick Stewart has died at the age of 86. His spokesperson said he died at his home in Los Angeles on Wednesday, October 28, after a short illness with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia. To most of the world he was Captain Jean-Luc Picard. To a lot of us who grew up in the 2000s, he was Professor Charles Xavier first. This is our look back at the Patrick Stewart X-Men movies, the films that made our childhood awesome, in the order he made them.
Who was Patrick Stewart?
Born in Mirfield, Yorkshire in 1940, Stewart spent decades as a stage actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company before Star Trek: The Next Generation made him famous in 1987. He was knighted in 2010. Then in 2000 a bald, calm, impossibly wise man in a wheelchair turned up in a superhero film, and a whole generation met him there.
Patrick Stewart X-Men movies, in order
X-Men (2000)
This is where it started. Bryan Singer’s film introduced Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, Cerebro and the X-Men in black leather, and Stewart played Charles as the still centre of all of it: the teacher who takes in Rogue and Logan when nobody else will. It also set up the friendship that would run through every film after it. The last scene, Charles visiting Ian McKellen’s Magneto in his plastic prison for a game of chess, is two old friends on opposite sides who still respect each other.
X2 (2003)
The sequel turned Charles’s greatest gift against him. William Stryker kidnaps him and uses a copy of Cerebro to try to kill every mutant on Earth, with Charles’s own mind as the weapon. It is still one of the best superhero sequels ever made, and Stewart spends much of it playing a man who is not in control of himself, which is the scariest thing the film could do to Professor X.
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
The third film did the unthinkable and killed him. Charles goes to the old Grey family house to reach Jean before the Phoenix takes over, and does not come out. The film has plenty of critics, but that scene hit hard when we were kids. A post-credits scene then hinted that he had found a way back.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) and The Wolverine (2013)
Two short appearances. In Origins, a digitally de-aged Charles arrives at the end to rescue the young mutants. In the post-credits scene of The Wolverine, Charles and Erik turn up together at an airport to warn Logan about a new threat, setting up the next film.
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
The film that brought both X-Men casts together. Stewart’s older Charles meets James McAvoy’s younger, broken one through Logan’s mind, and talks him back towards the man he would become. It is a passing-the-torch scene where the old version of a character teaches the young one how to hope.
Logan (2017)
Of all the Patrick Stewart X-Men movies, this is his most powerful performance as Charles. In his nineties, sick and dangerous, the mind that once protected the world is now a threat to it, and Logan is caring for him in hiding. It is quiet, funny and heartbreaking, often in the same scene. At the time he called it his final time in the role, and it was a perfect goodbye.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
He was not finished. Stewart came back as a different Charles Xavier, the leader of Earth-838’s Illuminati, in the yellow hover chair from the 1990s cartoon, which was a love letter to anyone who grew up with that show.
Avengers: Doomsday (2026)
The last of the Patrick Stewart X-Men movies is also his final film. Stewart returns as Professor X in Avengers: Doomsday, his ninth time in the role, opening on December 18. Marvel has confirmed that his Professor X ends with this film, and Ian McKellen has said that his old friend’s farewell performance is still to come. The first Doomsday trailer opened on him, shielding his eyes at a ruined Xavier’s School, and he is in our Doomsday cast list beside McKellen, James Marsden and the rest of the original X-Men.
What Professor X meant to us
We watched all of them, from the first X-Men to Logan, and what stays with us is not a fight scene. It is Charles as the calm mentor: the teacher at the school, the father figure of the X-Men, the one voice in the room that never shouted. Every one of these Patrick Stewart X-Men movies had chaos in it, and he was always the person holding it together. That is the Professor X we grew up with, and nobody else will ever quite be him.
Marvel Studios and Ian McKellen are among those who have paid tribute this week. We will see him one last time in December.
Rest well, Professor.
Image credits: featured image and in-article photo of Patrick Stewart by Gage Skidmore (2013) and Gage Skidmore (2019), both CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. The featured image is cropped, converted to black and white and has text added; it is shared under the same licence.
Sources: NPR, CNN, CBS News, PBS NewsHour, NBC News, Variety, ABC News, Wikipedia.
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