Magneto is a character primarily portrayed by Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender in 20th Century Fox's X-Men film series. Based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, he has appeared in eight installments of the franchise. McKellen played Magneto in the original trilogy films X-Men (2000), X2 (2003), and X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), in addition to making a cameo in The Wolverine (2013); while Fassbender portrayed a younger version of the character in the prequel films X-Men: First Class (2011), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), and Dark Phoenix (2019). Both actors' iterations appeared in different time periods in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). McKellen's version of the character will appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Avengers: Doomsday (2026). As in the comics, Magneto is depicted as a powerful mutant, a subspecies of humans born with superhuman abilities, who can manipulate and generate magnetic fields. He is a Holocaust survivor who regards mutants as being superior to humans, and seeks to enable them to replace mankind as the dominant species on the planet.
Fictional character biography
Early life
Erik Lehnsherr was born in 1930. His parents were Jews from Düsseldorf, Germany. During the Nazi regime, the family is taken to Auschwitz concentration camp, where Lehnsherr, then a boy, is separated from his parents, causing him to manifest his mutant power and bend the metal gate separating them until the Germans knock him unconscious. Shortly thereafter, the boy is taken to the office of Dr. Klaus Schmidt in the camp. Schmidt, who had observed Lehnsherr's earlier display, attempted to coerce him to demonstrate his power by having him move a coin. When Lehnsherr is unable to do it, Schmidt has Lehnsherr's mother brought in, and when that does not produce results, Schmidt shoots and kills her. This triggers Lehnsherr to use his powers to crush metal items in the room, killing the German guards by crushing their helmets, and destroying an adjacent laboratory room. After the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet forces in January 1945, the young Erik Lehnsherr emigrates to the United States by 1949, arriving at Ellis Island. Later in his life, Erik Lehnsherr had a brief relationship with a woman named Maximoff. For unknown reasons, he left her before their son Peter was born. During this time, Erik hunts for Nazi war criminals across the globe, including Schmidt, whom he tracks down on a cruiser near a dock in Miami. Lehnsherr is surprised by Schmidt's ally, the powerful mutant telepath Emma Frost, who casts him off the ship. Another telepath, Charles Xavier, is also looking for Schmidt and senses Lehnsherr nearby while probing. Lehnsherr uses his magnetic powers to control the massive anchor and its chain to destroy the ship with, though Schmidt and his compatriot's escape. Xavier rescues Lehnsherr in the water and brings him to Division X, a CIA project to bring mutants over to the side of the US government and prevent them from becoming hostile instead. Lehnsherr learns that Schmidt is himself secretly a mutant who worked with the Nazis out of convenience and has now assumed the identity of Sebastian Shaw and is working with the Russians instead, and the CIA hopes to use their own team of mutants to help in learning what Shaw's plans are and stop him. Lehnsherr also gets to know Raven, Xavier's shapeshifting mutant foster sister, and Hank McCoy, a mutant with a genius intellect. Lehnsherr and Xavier track down other mutants, Havok, Banshee, Darwin and Angel Salvadore until they have a team ready to challenge Shaw. The group designates the sobriquet of Magneto for Lehnsherr as a codename. Going to the Soviet Union to track Shaw down, the team finds Emma Frost, who is restrained by Magneto. Xavier probes her mind and learns of Shaw's grand plan: to cause a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and other countries to accelerate the mutations of humanity through nuclear radiation, thereby rapidly swelling Shaw's ranks and ushering in a new era of a mutant-ruled planet. After practicing the use of his power further and learning to work with the team, Lehnsherr once again comes face to face with Shaw, who had hijacked a nuclear submarine and is now wearing a telepath-proof helmet designed by the Russians. Lehnsherr agrees with Shaw's ideas of mutant supremacy, but nonetheless makes it clear that he is still on a path of revenge for Shaw's murder of his mother. Lehnsherr uses his magnetic powers to deprive Shaw of his helmet, allowing Xavier to freeze him. Lehnsherr takes the helmet himself to lock Xavier out while exacting his revenge on Shaw: using the very coin that Shaw once tried to make the young boy move, he forces it into his brain, killing him. He then addresses his team and Shaw's compatriots as his mutant brothers and sisters, using the missiles sent out by Soviet and American battleships now working together, turning them against the fleet. Xavier wrestles with Lehnsherr, making him lose control of the missiles and saving the men on the ships. Lehnsherr acknowledges the incompatibility of his and Xavier's philosophies and leaves Division X and the X-Men and embraces his mutant identity of Magneto. He then frees Emma Frost from her military prison, hoping that she can replace Xavier as his new ally. After the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, Erik Lehnsherr is captured by the government and imprisoned in a prison made of concrete beneath The Pentagon. He had in fact been trying to save the president, who he had learned was a mutant himself, but could not fully control the bullet and it still hit and killed Kennedy. Due to the events of X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), the X-Men film series branches off into two separate timelines starting in 1973.
Original Timeline/Earth-41578 variant
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