Marvel’s latest successful game Marvel Rivals is just about to start its second season and the character debuting with the new content is the White Queen herself, Emma Frost.
Originally an antagonist to the X-Men, Emma Frost has been a pivotal character to the X-Men franchise for the last 20 years so her joining Marvel Rivals to represent the group makes sense, but did you know that she was originally planned for Marvel vs. Capcom 3 as well?
Emma Frost, also known as the White Queen, was originally part of a group called the Hellfire Club which are antagonists in the X-Men series, but her profile as a character would rise massively during the early 2000s when Grant Morrison implemented her in his run on New X-Men.
She established a relationship with iconic X-Men leader Cyclops early on and ever since, she’s been one of the most central characters to the X-Men as a whole. This big increase in popularity and screen presence actually lined up pretty perfectly with Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and she was a very present character in Marvel’s general roster at the time.
Back in 2010, there was a panel at that summer’s Comic-Con where Marvel vs. Capcom 3 producer Ryota Niitsuma talked on stage about lots of different details regarding Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
The panel was streamed, but this was back on uStream which has not existed for a very long time and I have unfortunately not been able to find any archive of this stream, but there are written accounts which talk about details from the panel such as our article linked above.
This was before the full roster for the game was known, so obviously he remained tight-lipped on some subjects, but he was surprisingly candid about characters that they had wanted to implement or had begun work on but unfortunately had to remove from the game.
One of the characters mentioned here was Emma Frost, and while most sources (including our own EventHubs article from the time) doesn’t elaborate on her dismissal from the game, there is a source from a few years ago which does.
Reddit user slib wrote a big dissertation on the now-defunct /r/Kappa subreddit relaying more details from the panel since he was there in person to witness it way back in 2010.
Now, obviously this information is anecdotal and comes from this user’s memory, though there are several details in this account which have also been corroborated by Niitsuma himself throughout the years, so while you can take it with a grain of salt there’s likely a decent amount of truth to it.
According to slib, Ryota Niitsuma explicitly referred to Emma Frost as “one of his favorite characters to create” but after starting development on her, Marvel approached the team with a different idea which ended up taking precedence.
The reddit user speculates that this idea was likely Phoenix, who had not been revealed at the time. This adds up with comments pre-release where Seth Killian would talk about a specific character concept he was looking forward for people to see, which ended up being Phoenix.
It’s kind of interesting how in the comics, Emma Frost romanced Cyclops, the husband of the then-presumed deceased Phoenix, and then for Phoenix to in turn steal Emma’s spot in Marvel vs. Capcom 3… almost makes it feel like some sort of planned revenge.
While there’s no news on any new Marvel vs. Capcom projects in the future, Emma Frost has stayed a significant presence in the X-Men books even today, as you can likely tell from her early inclusion for Marvel Rivals, so if we ever were to see the return of the franchise, she might still get her shot.
Until then, we hope that Mr. Niitsuma will at least try out Emma Frost in Marvel Rivals instead of dwelling on what could have been.
Source: Event Hubs
