Right out of the gate, let it be known that the rumor you’re about to see is complete and utter cow patty, and if not for the opportunity to talk about the character’s will-be MCU nuances and how the franchise is beyond repair if it ever actually went ahead with this casting, it would not be worth calling attention to in any way, shape, form, or fashion.
Anyway, the rumor is that Billie Eilish is in the running to play Rogue in the MCU, and that the fan-favorite mutant will appear in Captain Marvel 3, which will also kick off the Mutants Saga of the MCU.
This isn’t a knock on Eilish’s acting, which may or may not be any good. She has one acting credit wherein she plays someone other than herself, and that’s in the Janine Nabers/Donald Glover-created horror-comedy miniseries Swarm, where she plays cult leader Eva. She only appears in the fourth episode, and I have not watched it.
But let’s face it: Marvel wouldn’t cast Billie Eilish as Rogue for her acting prowess. They’d cast her because her name is a marketing goldmine that would help invite the franchise’s increasingly casual fanbase to an almost cartoonish degree (cartoonish, that is, not in the amount of people it would draw, but in the methods that Marvel would be using to get people to consume their product). It would be no different than roping Robert Downey Jr. back into the fray as Doctor Doom, and would at once declare a commitment to market-driven storytelling, which is a phrase that should never exist.
Now that’s out of the way, we can talk about Rogue more directly
Casting an especially young Rogue is neither here nor there; you could make that work just as well as a more mature Rogue. There would be obvious wisdom, however, in introducing the character in Captain Marvel 3, as that would allow Rogue to absorb Carol Danvers’ powers; a key, recognizable plot point in plenty of X-Men media that the MCU could play with in a number of ways.
Maybe, for instance, Rogue absorbs them permanently and shifts the canon’s power creep — which would be a great occasion to mark the start of the Mutant Saga — or maybe the film’s tension would be built around whether Rogue gets away with it or not. This would all be additionally beholden to Rogue’s inevitable villain-to-hero arc. Would she start and end Captain Marvel 3 as an antagonist, or would she begin to grow into a hero as early as that the end of that film?
The one piece of legit mileage an Eilish casting would have is that Eilish is a queer woman, and given how queer comic readers have responded to Rogue over the years (her inability to touch others has long resonated with those suffering from legislative queer oppression and more social homophobia), there would be wisdom in writing a queer interpretation of Rogue (and Agatha All Along suggests that Marvel might even allow a queer character whose queerness is actually well-written). But even if a queer interpretation is what Marvel is going for — I would bet money that they aren’t — Billie Eilish makes no sense as a first choice outside of drawing more casual audiences.
Moreover, the dream casting of a lifetime exists in the spunky, sassy shape of one Keke Palmer, who has also spoken about her queer-adjacent outlook on life in the past. And considering Chris Claremont himself originally intended for Rogue to be modeled after Grammy-nominated R&B artist Grace Jones, the significance and depth of opportunity that a Palmer casting would bring is simply too nutritious for Marvel to up, even though they probably will.
Published: Oct 28, 2024 12:13 pm