Phase Zero
Characters

Kurt Wagner / Nightcrawler

Bamf

Kurt WagnerX-MenEarth-10005

A devout German teleporter who looks like a demon, which is the joke and the whole tragedy of him at once.

Kurt Wagner is a German mutant with blue skin, a prehensile tail, demonic features and the ability to teleport. The opening of X2 is one of the best sequences the series ever produced: he goes through the White House in a series of bamfs, and it takes the film another twenty minutes to explain that he did not want to.

Storm and Jean find him afterwards in a church, which is where he was always going to be. He is a believer who has been told his whole life that he looks like the opposite, and Alan Cumming plays that as gentleness rather than self-pity.

Show detailsTwo Kurts, and a third appearance

Alan Cumming played him in X2 and Kodi Smit-McPhee in the prequel films, in which he is much younger. Cumming is set to reprise the role in Avengers: Doomsday.

Played by
Alan Cumming, Kodi Smit-McPhee
Role
Circus performer, then a student, then an X-Man
Affiliation
The X-Men
What they can do
Teleportation, a prehensile tail, and more agility than anyone expects.

The journey

What happens to this person, title by title.

  1. X22003

    Opens the film by attacking the President in the White House, under someone else's control, and spends the rest of it apologising for it.

  2. X-Men: Apocalypse2016

    Rescued from a cage fight by Mystique and taken to the school, this time as a frightened teenager.

  3. Deadpool 22018

    A cameo, uncredited, in a school full of people the films forgot.

  4. Dark Phoenix2019

    A full member of the team, and one of the few people still trying to talk Jean down.

Appears in

  1. X22003
  2. X-Men: Apocalypse2016
  3. Deadpool 22018
  4. Dark Phoenix2019

Sources

Facts last checked on Sep 10, 2026