Asa Germann has found his mutant. Deadline reported Wednesday that the Gen V actor is set to play Angel in Marvel Studios' new X-Men movie, closing out a casting hunt that trade outlets have tracked for months.

Germann was in the running for Cyclops earlier this year. That part went to Kit Connor instead, and it looks like Marvel simply moved him to a different corner of the roster rather than let him go. Angel, born Warren Worthington III, is one of the original five X-Men from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's 1963 run, the one with the feathered wings who spends his early comics life hiding what he is before Professor Xavier brings him in. Marvel hasn't confirmed the casting through official channels yet. Reps for the studio did not respond to Deadline's request for comment.

A cast that's been filling in for months

This film has been one of the more closely tracked productions of the year purely on casting alone, and Disney used its D23 panel recently to lock in a chunk of it at once. Christopher Abbott is Professor X. Adam Driver plays the villain Mr. Sinister. Samara Weaving is Emma Frost, Inde Navarrette is Rogue, and Maya Boyd takes on Storm. Sadie Sink had already been introduced as Jean Grey earlier this summer, inside Spider-Man: Brand New Day, well before this project had a full cast to speak of.

Germann himself isn't new to the genre space. He came up through The Boys universe on Gen V for Prime Video, and turned up in Scream 7 earlier this year too. So this isn't a newcomer being thrown into a tentpole, it's someone Marvel has clearly had an eye on across two different mutant roles before settling on where he fits.

The film comes from Jake Schreier, fresh off Thunderbolts* and the Hulu series Beef, with Lee Sung Jin and Joanna Calo writing and Kevin Feige producing. That's a combination that reads less like a straight superhero reboot and more like Marvel trying to bring some indie sensibility to a franchise that's been dormant on the big screen since Disney folded Fox's X-Men universe into its own continuity.

Comic readers will already be doing the math on what an Angel casting means down the line. In the source material, Apocalypse eventually mutilates Warren's wings and rebuilds him as Archangel, the metallic-winged, blue-skinned version of the character. Whether this film has any appetite for that arc, or whether Angel stays feathered and hopeful through this outing, is the kind of thing nobody's confirming yet.

What is confirmed is the date. X-Men lands in theatres on May 5, 2028, which gives Marvel close to two years to finish filling out a roster that, right now, still has gaps nobody's talking about publicly.