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It’s an incredible achievement to play the same character for over two decades and multiple franchises. But it’s arguably even more of an impressive achievement to die multiple times as the same character, and keep coming back. Spoilers for, I don’t know… Movies… Past this point… but we’re talking about Patrick Stewart playing Professor Charles Xavier, in case you didn’t pick that up from the headline of this article.
First introduced as the psychic mutant in 2000’s X-Men, Stewart has played different versions of Xavier in eight different movies, including various timelines and guest appearances. And not only that, fans of Marvel’s merry mutants have had the delightful treat of watching Xavier die in four truly horrifying ways.
But because anything that has at least three iterations of it must be ranked, it’s time to do exactly that: here’s every time Patrick Stewart dies as Professor Xavier, ranked.
'X-Men: The Last Stand' (2006)
I’m ranking this death from 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand at the bottom partially because the movie is a hot load of garbage, but also because in the middle of that garbage pile, Xavier’s death stands as one of the hottest loads. After Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) gets a power boost and discovers Xavier hid some secrets in her past, he confronts her inside her childhood home. While a bunch of mutants fight outside, Xavier tries to calm Jean with his mind, but it’s too late. She lifts him — and the house — into the air and rips him into molecular shreds. Rather than get upset about it, Xavier seems relatively calm. He tells Jean, “Don’t let it control you,” the “it” being her power, and then smiles at Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) before he dies forever. And by “forever” we mean he’s back and fine in the next movie.
Though being complete nonsense and yet another unnecessary death in the middle of a movie filled with unnecessary deaths, it does get some points for looking kind of neat, at least. I guess. Also he maybe wakes up in another body in the post-credits scene, which is also stupid. Anyway, this movie stinks. “It stinks!” – The Critic
'X-Men: Days Of Future Past' (2014)
While you technically don’t see Professor X die in X-Men: Days of Future Past — his fiery obliteration by evil sentinel robot is reflected in Kitty Pryde’s (Elliot Page) eyes — it still packs an emotional punch towards the end of the film during the climax. However, it’s all undone mere seconds later when Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) makes a different decision in the past that rewrites the future timeline Xavier is murderized in, muting the effect somewhat. There’s also a lot going on in the sequence, with a lot of different characters in two different timelines, making Professor X’s death a pivotal point, but not the only one.
'Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness' (2022)
I did say spoilers for all movies, right? Well, that’s because: yes, Professor Xavier does appear in an extended cameo as part of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. And as you might expect from his inclusion on this list, he dies. This seems to be, to clarify, a live-action version of the Professor X from the 1992’s X-Men: The Animated Series, though they never say that out loud (obviously, he’s not going to say, “Hello, I am from 1992’s X-Men: The Animated Series” in dialogue). Anyway, hot on the trail of a teen who can travel the multiverse, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) invades the stronghold of The Illuminati, an alternate universe team of human Easter eggs that includes Xavier. She slaughters them one by one, and last — but not least — is Xavier.
Showing a continued penchant for badly underestimating how much over-powered redheads want his help, Xavier goes inside Wanda’s mind. There he finds another version of Wanda who is trapped under rubble, the same rubble Wanda was trapped under for days as a child (as established in WandaVision, among other places). He briefly tries to rescue her, when a red cloud starts to take over Wanda’s mindscape. Out of the cloud comes a demonic version of Wanda, which snaps Xavier’s neck. Cut back to the “real” world, and that Xavier’s neck gets snapped, too. To quote Stay Alive, if you die in the game, you die in real life.
Though we don’t get much time with this Xavier, so it’s hard to form a strong emotional connection there, this does get some bonus points for being quick, brutal, and well-paced by director Sam Raimi. Your mileage may vary with the whole Illuminati conceit, which also includes other surprise cameos, but at least they saved Stewart for last and gave enough time to make his death feel like it counted. He also wears a sweet turtleneck in the mindscape.
'Logan' (2017)
Full disclosure: watching Professor X die in Logan gave me a full-on panic attack in the theater, made me question my own mortality, and briefly sent me to therapy. So yes, this goes in at number one. In the film, Xavier — called Charles here — is suffering from some sort of mutant dementia. His powers went wacky and killed all his students, leading to a dark future for mutants overall. Discovering one new mutant with Logan (Jackman), they set off on a road trip with the girl to take her to a safe haven.
In the middle of the harrowing trip, they take a rest stop in a nice cabin and have Xavier’s best day in years. He goes to sleep, finally rested and happy… Only to be stabbed through the chest by a clone of Wolverine. He dies in the back of a pick-up truck, and true to form for the movie it’s not a superhero ending; it’s an old man dying of multiple stab wounds. In the back of a truck.
Though Stewart returned as Xavier later in the aforementioned Doctor Strange 2, more than any of the other endings this hurt. And it hurt so painfully not just to watch someone you had grown to love over the years as the character die, but also to see them die not heroically saving the world, the same way real humans die: quietly, painfully, and alone.
