Following in the footsteps of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, July’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps will see Marvel’s First Family forced to contend with the cosmic entity known as Galactus. Between the Devourer of Worlds and his herald Silver Surfer, played in this continuity by Julia Garner, you’d think that’d be enough on Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Thing and Human Torch’s plate in First Steps. However, Joseph Quinn, who’s bringing Torch, a.k.a. Johnny Storm, to life, has confirmed another villain who’s set to appear in the upcoming Marvel movie, and this is a showdown I’m eager to see.
While appearing at CCXPMX 25 (via Culture Crave) with his co-stars Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Quinn let slip during an audience Q&A that we’ll be seeing Mole Man in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, though he’s obviously playing second fiddle to the (figuratively and literally) big bad who Ralph Ineson is playing. In Quinn’s words:
We’ve got a lot of fantastic characters in there. There is also Mole Man, who is wonderful in it, but Galactus is the big bad. He’s the big, evil, planet-gobbling space god…He’s played brilliantly by the wonderful Ralph [Ineson]. And Silver Surfer, played by the brilliant Julia Garner. We were very lucky to work with her, she’s excellent in the film. There are lots of brilliant characters in this film, that’s for sure.
Although there’d been rumors about Mole Man appearing in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, now we finally have official confirmation about this from one of the actors. So who’s playing Mole Man? That’s still a mystery, although given what few actors still haven’t been identified in First Steps, I think it’s probably safe to say Paul Walter Hauser would be the best fit. An extremely loose adaptation of Mole Man was played by Tim Blake Nelson in 2015’s Fantastic Four, but it sounds like we can count on a much more faithful take on the character this time around.
Mole Man, real name Harvey Elder, was the very first supervillain the Fantastic Four battled in the comics, as he also debuted in 1961’s The Fantastic Four #1. Doctor Doom, who appeared four issues later, may have taken the mantle of the team’s arch-nemesis, Elder has remained a persistent foe to them over the decades. Between his genius-level intellect, his heightened senses that compensate for his near-blindness, and commanding an army of Moloids, Mole Man is not an enemy to be underestimated, and I can’t wait to see what a conflict between him and the MCU’s Fantastic Four looks like on the big screen.
We don’t have that wait too much longer for that to happen, as The Fantastic Four: First Steps opens July 25 on the 2025 movies schedule. After that, the title team will be back in action for Avengers: Doomsday, which is now coming out on December 17, 2026.
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