It was just last week that director Bryan Singer revealed some concept art that confirmed the character of Warren Worthington III, a.k.a Angel, would be in the forthcoming X-Men: Apocalypse, played by young British actor Ben Hardy (best known for the television series Eastenders). What many speculated — that Angel would undergo his transformation into Archangel by Apocalypse as he famously did in the comics — has now been confirmed by Bryan Singer himself, in an interview with Empire magazine.

“Ben Hardy is Angel – I shall confirm it for you!” he told the magazine. “But he’s not a very nice Angel! And that’s all I’ll say…”

In a defining storyline for the character of Angel, who in the comics was a founding member of the X-Men along with Cyclops, Beast, Jean Grey and Ice-Man, soon after he reunites with his old classmates and forms the team X-Factor, the ancient mutant Apocalypse amputates Angel’s natural feathered wings, and replaces them with razor sharp metal wings, along with blue skin. Apocalypse brainwashes him into becoming one of his four horsemen, and Angel then goes by the title of “Death.”

Eventually, he’s freed of Apocalypse’s influence and becomes Archangel, but he keeps his badass new look, which was designed by comics legend Walt Simonson (and looked even cooler when drawn by Jim Lee.) It looks like X-Men: Apocalypse is sticking to at least the broad strokes of this classic Marvel story.

X-Men: Apocalypse starts shooting this summer with a May 2016 release date. Below are two newly-released pieces of concept art for what Ben Hardy will look like as Archangel, at least from the back. Hopefully we’ll get a front view soon, and hopefully Ben Hardy will be working the blue skin/yellow eyes look with it too.

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HT: Empire