The director of the next X-Men movie just dropped a huge hint with this sneaky Instagram caption

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"X-Men: Apocalypse" director Bryan Singer-ever the plugged-in, social media-loving, 21st century filmmaker-just dropped a pretty huge tease about the upcoming movie via Instagram on Tuesday. It looks like the 2016 film will be the first X-Men film to feature a pretty important group of X-Men characters: The Morlocks.

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Shooting Caliban's place of "business" #Xmen #XMenApocalypse

A photo posted by Bryan Singer (@bryanjaysinger) on May 26, 2015 at 10:56am PDT

According to Singer's post, one of the sets to be featured in "Apocalypse" will be "Caliban's place of 'business.'" For the uninitiated, Caliban is notorious for two things: being a member of the Morlocks, and becoming one of Apocalypse's Horsemen. 

It's that first bit that's a big deal. 

The Morlocks-intentionally named after the creatures from H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine"-first appeared during writer Chris Claremont's seminal run on "Uncanny X-Men" as a group of mutants that felt they were outcasts that could never live among humankind and decided to retreat to the sewers. They're led by the fierce Callisto, and come into conflict with the X-Men after they kidnap Angel to be her mate. It's a little weird, but it leads to one of Storm's defining moments when she fights Callisto in a duel to the death in order to save him. 

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Here's the group in a clip from the '90s animated "X-Men" series:

 

Caliban, then, is one of the original Morlocks, an albino mutant gifted with the ability to sense other mutants. Since Apocalypse is the villain next summer's movie is named after, chances are he'll follow his comic book counterpart and join Team Apocalypse somehow-but how much of the Morlocks will we see?

caliban first appearance uncanny x men

Marvel

Caliban in his first comic appearance back in Uncanny X-Men #148 back in 1981.


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The photo from Singer appears to show the sort of underground hideout favored by the Morlocks, and is a good sign that they might appear-but we'll have to wait and see how deeply Singer will plumb one of the most classic X-Men stories in his new film.