Now that Disney’s acquisition of Fox is finalized, Marvel zombies are frothing at the mouth to know when the X-Men (whose movies were previously produced by the Fox studio) will join the Marvel Cinematic Universe over at Disney. While promoting Avengers: Endgame in typically cagey fashion, Marvel’s Kevin Feige did tell io9 that even though the X-Men are technically under his control, he is not rushing to introduce them to the MCU. In fact, it could be a “very long time” before they get their own Marvel movies.

His exact quote:

It’ll be a while.“It’s all just beginning and the five-year plan that we’ve been working on, we were working on before any of that was set. So really it’s much more, for us, less about specifics of when and where [the X-Men will appear] right now and more just the comfort factor and how nice it is that they’re home. That they’re all back. But it will be a very long time.

Unless Feige is straight-up lying, and Endgame ends with a post-credits scene teasing some mutant action, this makes a lot of sense. There’s still one more X-Men movie (Dark Phoenix) and one spinoff (New Mutants) due in theaters this year. If you don’t give those films some space, it could confuse the audiences who might start wondering why the X-characters they know have all vanished or are played by new actors.

Feige did promise that Marvel’s future and past are “two very distinct things” joined by a similar mentality of “How can we continue to tell stories with some of the characters that audiences already know and love in a unique way?” and “How can we introduce new characters that even hardcore fans, comic fans, have barely known or barely heard of?” So maybe some of our own Phase Four ideas aren’t as far-fetched as they might appear.

Avengers: Endgame opens in theaters on April 26.