Babies can't catch a break in film and TV this summer
The Fantastic Four: First Steps presents its titular super team with a nightmarish trolley problem.
Galactus (Ralph Ineson) promises to spare Earth from total annihilation, but only if Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal) and Sue Storm/the Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby) give up their newborn baby Franklin.
Of course, Reed, Sue, Ben Grimm/the Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and Johnny Storm/the Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) refuse these terms. They're not going to sacrifice a family member! Plus, they've got superpowers and brilliant minds. Surely they can find a way to save both the Earth and Franklin.
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However, Reed and Sue's decision not to give up their baby goes over terribly with the denizens of Earth. They protest outside the Fantastic Four's headquarters in the Baxter Building, decrying their heroes as selfish.
Oddly enough, that perception of the Fantastic Four as selfish seemed to spill over into the real world as I watched the movie. A few audience members at my screening let out exasperated sighs or threw their hands up in frustration every time Reed or Sue made the very understandable point that no, they weren't just going to hand their baby over to a cosmic entity whose whole job is eating planets. I guess that instead of wanting to see superheroes struggling with moral quandaries and finding a way to save everyone, they'd rather the Fantastic Four had taken the utilitarian way out, thus ending the movie 40 minutes in.
The "save Franklin or save Earth" dilemma is fascinating enough on its own, but it's crucially not the only instance of massive summer film and TV titles having life-or-death beef with babies.
In Superman, Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) holds Metamorpho's (Anthony Carrigan) baby son Joey hostage, promising to kill him if Metamorpho doesn't comply with his demands. In 28 Years Later, Spike (Alfie Williams), his mother Isla (Jodie Comer), and Swedish soldier Erik (Edvin Ryding) witness a woman infected with the Rage Virus give birth to a seemingly uninfected baby girl. Terrified that the baby will become a monster like her parents, Erik threatens to kill her, along with Alfie and Isla if they stand in his way.
But the award for Most Baby-Hating Characters of 2025 goes to the players in Squid Game Season 3. (The Fantastic Four: First Steps' protestors come in at a close second.) Halfway through the season, pregnant player Jun-hee (Jo Yuri) gives birth, only to die soon after. The Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) and the VIPs, being the sick freaks they are, decide to keep Jun-hee's daughter in the game in her mother's place, making her the new Player 222.
Do the remaining players try to protect the baby from the hellhole of the games? No way! For them, that baby's death means they get an extra chunk of the prize pot, so they are champing at the bit to murder her. Only Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) tries to help baby 222, spending the season's final episodes swaddling her while fending off a crowd of players baying for her blood.
The Squid Game scenario is by far the darkest of all of 2025's "babies in peril" plotlines, but in essence, it's similar to both The Fantastic Four: First Steps and 28 Years Later's baby plots. People like the game players, the Fantastic Four protestors, and Erik envision the baby as an obstacle to the needs of a larger group. In Squid Game, that group is the players who want more money. Look, advocating for the death of a baby any time is inexcusable, but this is absolutely the most despicable — dare I say, evil — instance of it in film and TV this year.
Then we have 28 Years Later, where Erik speaks for survivors who don't want to deal with a growing population of infected. His fear of infection may be understandable, but the baby isn't infected at birth, suggesting that the same goes for all other infected offspring. Once again, trying to kill a baby? Bad!
Finally, in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the anti-baby group is the entire population of Earth, who don't appreciate their collective lives being weighed against that of one child. Even Reed acknowledges that giving up Franklin would be an "ethical" solution. But that still doesn't make the possibility of sacrificing your child to a space god any less awful, nor does it rid Reed, Sue, Ben, and Johnny of the emotional baggage of that choice.
Thankfully, all these babies, including Superman's Joey, survive their dangerous circumstances, with 28 Years Later's baby and Squid Game's baby getting the last laugh and outliving their would-be killers.
Saving babies in film and TV is nothing new — remember when 2023's The Flash stuck a baby in a microwave to protect it? (I wish I could forget.) It's a surefire way to get audiences on a hero's side. After all, babies are the ultimate innocents, deserving of total protection. (In 2022, donkeys, of all things, occupied a similar role in three awards season contenders.)
But the focus of these scenes in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Squid Game Season 3, 28 Years Later, and, to a lesser extent, Superman isn't just on heroes saving babies. It's on people trying, horribly, to justify the theoretical deaths of these babies for the greater good, and the protagonists stepping in to prove their undeniable good and humanity.
In the case of characters like Galactus, Lex Luthor, and Squid Game's game heads, VIPs, and the more bloodthirsty players, audiences already know they're bad guys. Throw a baby in the equation, though, and you're drawing an even clearer line in the sand between heroes and villains. Sure, it's not subtle — in Squid Game in particular, it feels like you're being hit over the head with a hammer — but it immediately raises your hackles and makes every bone in your body think, "That's wrong, and I need to see someone put a stop to it." And guess what? Someone does exactly that in all four of these major summer titles. But next summer, I'm really going to need film and TV to cut these newborns some slack!
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is now in theaters.
Topics Marvel
Belen Edwards is an Entertainment Reporter at Mashable. She covers movies and TV with a focus on fantasy and science fiction, adaptations, animation, and more nerdy goodness. She is a member of the Critics Choice Association and the Television Critics Association, as well as a Tomatometer-approved critic.
