Just a few years ago, Inde Navarrette was joining the final season of a Netflix teen drama and wondering how viewers would respond to a character they had never met.

Now she is preparing to become Rogue.

Marvel Studios officially announced at D23 that Navarrette will play the mutant in its upcoming X-Men movie, currently scheduled to arrive in theaters on May 5, 2028. She joins a new ensemble that includes Sadie Sink as Jean Grey, Kit Connor as Cyclops, Maya Boyd as Storm and Christopher Abbott as Professor Xavier.

That alone would make for an impressive career jump.

But the timing makes the story even better.

Only about two weeks before Marvel’s announcement, Navarrette had publicly confirmed that she had met with X-Men director Jake Schreier.

At the time, she had another mutant in mind.

She wanted Mystique.

Marvel apparently had a different plan.

And looking backward, Navarrette’s path from Netflix newcomer to Marvel’s Rogue happened remarkably fast — while being far less smooth than it now appears.

In 2020, She Was the New Kid on a Show That Was Already Ending

Navarrette joined 13 Reasons Why in its fourth and final season as Estela de la Cruz, the younger sister of Monty.

It was not exactly an easy role for a newcomer.

Monty had become one of the show’s most controversial characters, and Navarrette admitted at the time that she was nervous about how fans might respond to his sister.

She wanted Estela to represent someone capable of loving a family member while still confronting the damage that person had caused.

In a 2020 interview, Navarrette talked about wanting Estela’s story to show growth rather than simply inherit her brother’s reputation.

Then, almost immediately, another opportunity arrived.

During that same period, she was preparing to enter a completely different universe.

Then Came Superman

Navarrette landed the role of Sarah Cushing in Superman & Lois, playing the daughter of Lana Lang and Kyle Cushing.

She had auditioned in early 2020, sending in a self-tape before moving through callbacks.

The series gave her something 13 Reasons Why could not: time.

Instead of arriving during a final season, she became part of Smallville’s world across multiple years.

Sarah was not a superhero.

That was important.

While Superman fought enormous threats, Sarah’s problems were recognizably human — relationships, parents, mistakes and figuring out what kind of adult she wanted to become.

When Superman & Lois eventually concluded in 2024, its creators revealed that Sarah’s story had been accelerated because the final season was shorter than originally envisioned.

For Navarrette, however, another chapter was already waiting.

And it would change the way Hollywood saw her.

Obsession Changed Everything

In Curry Barker’s Obsession, Navarrette played Nikki, a young woman whose friend’s supernatural wish for her to fall in love with him turns horrifying.

The movie gave her material dramatically different from Sarah Cushing.

Nikki could be funny, vulnerable, romantic and deeply frightening.

Navarrette threw herself into the performance so completely that she later said some of what she saw onscreen frightened even her.

When Obsession opened in May 2026, the response began changing the conversation around her.

Suddenly, she was no longer primarily “the girl from Superman & Lois.”

She was being discussed as a horror breakout.

The movie grew through unusually strong word of mouth, while Navarrette’s performance attracted attention far beyond the audience that already knew her from television.

But this is where her story becomes considerably less glamorous.

Before Everyone Wanted Her, She Was Walking Dogs

The success of Obsession can make Navarrette’s rise look inevitable.

It wasn’t.

She later revealed that between Obsession and the film she booked afterward, she went through a period in which acting work simply was not coming.

She walked dogs.

She streamed.

She found other ways to make money while auditions repeatedly failed to turn into jobs.

Navarrette said the rejection affected her confidence.

Then Obsession came out.

Suddenly, the kinds of auditions she was receiving began to change — and so did the confidence she brought into the room.

That detail makes what happened next feel much bigger.

The actress who had recently been finding ways to make ends meet between acting jobs was suddenly having conversations with some of Hollywood’s biggest filmmakers.

One of them was Jake Schreier.

She Met the X-Men Director — And Had a Dream Character

By July 2026, speculation about Navarrette and Marvel was already circulating.

She confirmed that she had met with Schreier, who is directing Marvel’s new X-Men film.

And when the subject turned to characters she would love to play, Navarrette made her preference clear.

Mystique appealed to her.

It made sense.

The shape-shifting mutant would have offered the kind of psychologically complicated material that fit well with the fearless performance audiences had just seen in Obsession.

Fans began imagining it.

Then D23 arrived.

Marvel had something else in mind.

Instead of Mystique, She Got Rogue

On Aug. 15, Marvel Studios officially unveiled its new X-Men cast.

Inde Navarrette was Rogue.

The announcement placed the 25-year-old actress inside one of Marvel’s biggest upcoming franchises and alongside a completely new generation of X-Men performers.

It also created a wonderfully unexpected conclusion to the speculation from just weeks earlier.

Navarrette had publicly dreamed about playing one mutant.

She ended up being handed another.

And Rogue offers a very different challenge.

The character’s inability to safely touch other people has historically made intimacy, isolation and identity central parts of her story.

For an actress whose breakthrough came from turning an extreme relationship into something emotionally unsettling, there is intriguing territory there.

Exactly what Marvel’s version of Rogue will look like remains to be seen.

But Navarrette now has the opportunity to make the character her own.

The Career Jump Looks Even Wilder When You Put the Years Together

2020: 13 Reasons Why.

2021: Superman & Lois.

2026: Obsession.

Then X-Men.

There are additional projects along the way, including the upcoming survival thriller Invertigo, which casts Navarrette in a story about young people trapped high above the ground on a malfunctioning roller coaster.

But the fascinating part is not simply that the projects got bigger.

It is that they kept asking something different from her.

Teen drama.

DC television.

Psychological horror.

Survival thriller.

Now Marvel.

That is a considerable amount of movement for someone who is still only 25.

Two Weeks Can Change Everything in Hollywood

Perhaps the best illustration of Navarrette’s current moment comes from those two Marvel stories separated by only weeks.

At the end of July, she was publicly talking about meeting the X-Men director and dreaming about Mystique.

By the middle of August, she was standing among Marvel’s newly announced mutants as Rogue.

A few years earlier, she had been nervous about joining the final season of 13 Reasons Why.

Not long ago, she was walking dogs and streaming when acting jobs were not arriving.

Then one horror performance changed the temperature around her career.

Now she is helping introduce the MCU’s next generation of X-Men.

For Inde Navarrette, the overnight success story took years.

The overnight part just happened very, very quickly.