Disney will soon be distributing FOX's take on the New Mutants. We're covered many of the important characters who will be featured in the film, but there's one more that is vital viewers get to know before they settle into the cinema experience.
The Demon Bear may just be a crucial character in the narrative of the film. Because of his importance, we're taking a look at 10 things you may not have known about the character or pieces of information you should be aware of before entering the film.
10 HAUNTING MOONSTAR
Moonstar, who is sometimes known as Mirage, is a member of the New Mutants that has been targeted most by Demon Bear. The young member of the Cheyenne Nation has experienced multiple nightmares about the creature.
It haunts her when she closes her eyes and has manifested itself into reality, chasing her down and trying to kill her by any means possible. Although she is the chief target of the attacks, the bear has still tried to harm plenty of other people.
9 MIRAGE'S PARENTS
The reason that the Bear is usually hunting Moonstar is that it has a personal connection to her. Moonstar lived most of her life as an orphan and was brought up by tribe leader Black Eagle. Her parents were supposedly killed by the Demon Bear.
In actuality what happened was her parents were mutated into this monstrous creature against their will. They therefore make up the Demon Bear and when it was defeated the pair actually fell out of it, reverting back to their human forms.
8 UNKNOWN ORIGINS
We're not totally sure how this bear originated though. The assumption is that someone created it in order to target the young member of the New Mutants. However, the reason for this remains unclear and could be a coincidence.
Others have suggested that this was a type of mutation for the parents and nobody was responsible at all. This seems less likely though as there appears to be some sort of demonic force possessing the bear and indeed those around it, as we'll talk about later.
7 BADLAND DIMENSION
The Demon Bear doesn't have a home as such. It spends a lot of time living in habitats that other bears would live in, although even more of its life has been spent hunting down its prey; finding them wherever they have run off to.
There's a suggestion that the bear isn't originally from Earth though, or at least its creators aren't. During one fight with the Demon Bear, he took his victims to the Badlands, which appeared to be the alternate dimension that he comes from.
6 DANGER ROOM
The Danger Room is a key piece of X-Men history. Most heroes have passed through the room at one stage or another and it's even been featured in some of the films when the team faced off against the robotic sentinels for the first time.
The New Mutants have also taken advantage of this space to help train. One of the first reasons they actually used the room was to prepare for the Demon Bear. They ran a number of simulations to prepare to combat it; we could imagine something similar for this movie.
5 MULTIPLE VERSIONS
After the initial version of the Demon Bear was defeated, there have been numerous other versions of the creature since then. It's never quite clear where the bear keeps coming from, or how heavily linked it is to these mutants in its other incarnations.
One version of the bear actually appeared after Eli Bard had desecrated the bodies of an important tribe. The Warpath tribe clearly had a curse set and the Demon Bear was unleashed on Bard, trying to kill him for his actions.
4 POWERS
The powers of the bear are varied. For starters, it's larger than a normal bear, with enhanced strength, long sharp teeth and claws and a surprising amount of speed. It's very good at tracking and has a number of mutant abilities too.
It clearly possesses a ridiculous rage which moves him into a violent state. We've previously mentioned how he took the New Mutants to the Badlands; this was through another ability, the use of teleportation which he utilizes to get around.
3 POSSESSION
One of the other abilities of the Demon Bear is that he can actually possess humans and turn them into some kind of slave. We've seen this a couple of times and we could imagine it happening as part of the threat in the upcoming film.
The bear can actually take a human and turn them into a Native American warrior using his curse. They mindlessly follow orders and this can actually happen to allies, as it did with Tom Corsi and Sharon Friedlander.
2 FUELLED BY FEAR
The Demon Bear had a good reason for appearing in the dreams of Mirage. Her fear only made the creature stronger. Every time she found herself scared of the monster, it would make it even more likely to kill her.
This fear helps to manifest it in our reality and can enhance the powers of the beast. While a lack of fear doesn't necessarily weaken it (a sword can do the trick in that department), any victim needs to check their fear levels when fighting the demon off.
1 NEW MUTANTS
The latest couple of trailers for the film, New Mutants, has been teasing the potential villain of the piece. It appears that the Demon Bear will be heavily featured across the film and will be the creature haunting this hospital.
Part of the comic run actually took place in a hospital so the storyline is clearly inspired by the source material. However, there is probably someone else pulling the strings and getting the Demon Bear to go after the team of young mutants.