If you’ve seen the new Dark Phoenix trailer, you know it begins with a shocking SPOILER: The apparent death of Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) at the hands of Jean Grey (Sophie Turner). Mystique gets attacked by Jean, then there’s a funeral scene, and Jennifer Lawrence doesn’t appear in the trailer after that.

So is it legit? Is Mystique really dead? Dark Phoenix director Simon Kinberg says yes. He gave an interview about the movie and the trailer to Entertainment Weekly, and confirmed the twist. Saying this is a movie “where shocking things happen, where intense, dramatic things happen” he wanted to show the consequences of Jean’s transformation into the Phoenix.

Here’s more on Mystique’s death (#RIP) from Kinberg:

The larger story really is Jean cracking up, losing control because she’s more powerful than anyone else in the world. To dramatize that properly, you have to show real loss, you have to show real pain and show real threat and menace. I didn’t want to do that by her blowing up a building with anonymous people in it. It had to feel really personal for the X-Men, and I wanted it to be something that would fracture the X-Men as well. Mystique is someone who in our universe has been part of the X-Men and has been part of Magneto’s world. Her death impacts literally everybody.

Let’s face it: Jennifer Lawrence is way too big a star to keep playing the third or fourth biggest role in X-Men movies. It’s surprising she even came back for this one, her fourth, at all. So if you were going to kill someone to show the consequences of Jean’s transformation, Mystique makes a whole lot of sense.

In case you missed it this morning, here’s that new trailer:

Dark Phoenix opens in theaters on June 7, 2019.

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