Anson Mount Opens Up About His Return To A Huge Franchise
He's back!
Anson Mount is back and yes, he’s back in the Star Trek franchise with the new series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds — which is getting wonderful reviews so far — but that’s not the return we’re talking about. We’ve known for a while that Mount would reprise the role of Captain Christopher Pike on Strange New Worlds, but the return we’re referencing is one no one was expecting and with good reason. At this point we must tell you there are huge SPOILERS for a recent big-budget release, and just revealing the title will give at least one spoiler away, so we consider you as fairly warned as we can fairly warn you.
So, assuming your’e not turning away because you can already guess what we’re getting at; Anson Mount reprised the role of the Inhuman King Black Bolt — or, at least, a multiversal variant of the character — in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Black Bolt is one of the 838 universe’s Illuminati, who dies fighting the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). Today, 11 days after the release of the film, Mount felt comfortable enough to post about the experience on Twitter. You can see his tweet below.
You may notice, of course, the “mind blown” emoji Anson Mount includes at the end of his tweet — referencing how his 838 variant meets his end. Wanda uses her abilities to literally erase Black Bolt’s mouth from his face — reminiscent of Hugo Weaving’s Agent Smith doing something similar to Keanu Reeve in 1999’s The Matrix — causing the Inhuman’s destructive voice to effectively backfire and blow out the back of his own head. He’s the first of the Illuminati to die, though certainly not the last.
It’s understandable that Anson Mount considered the call from Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige “one of the most unexpected” of his life. He first played the role in ABC’s Inhumans, which is often seen as one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s few definitive failures. With a horrible reception from fans and worse from critics, Inhumans was canceled after only eight episodes.
While we’re not expecting an Inhumans revival any time soon, it is possible that Black Bolt’s return in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness could mean fans and critics might be willing to give Inhumans a second look, or that Anson Mount could make more cameos. After all, many of the same fans who were calling Andrew Garfield’s The Amazing Spider-Man films irredeemable in the mid-2010s seem to be the same ones who were suddenly singing their praises in the wake of Garfield’s return in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
If you’re waiting for Anson Mount to eventually once again reprise the role of Blackagar Boltagon, in the meantime you can catch him as Captain Christopher Pike — the captain who immediately preceded the iconic Captain Kirk — on the original Enterprise. Set between the events of Star Trek: The Original Series‘s unaired pilot “The Cage” and the rest of the series, the new episodic show chronicles the adventures of the Enterprise and her crew pre-Kirk. Only the first two episodes have streamed on Paramount+ so far, with its third due this Thursday.
