X-Men Traitor Revealed (Already) In Uncanny X-Men #1

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Uncanny X-Men #1, out today.

Much of the marketing around Brian Michael Bendis's Uncanny X-Men series has revolved around the notion of an "X-Men traitor," a tried-and-true trope of the series that the writer is reinstituting with a new twist for the new run. And we thought he'd tease that out for a while, but he's jumped right into the action, revealing the identity of the traitor in the first issue, which debuts today. With a ragtag lineup including three leads who have spent at least some of their character history as villains, it was difficult to guess who might be the traitor in question, although it appears that the writer has gone exactly the opposite direction from what we at ComicBook.com expected back when the first teaser was released. Last chance for a spoiler warning.

At the time, we wrote "What the particular agenda of the traitor on Uncanny X-Men will be is unknown, although it's likely that it won't be Magneto, who will be the immediate go-to suspect of the other characters, setting up some interesting character drama." As it turns out, we got it backwards--it doesn't appear as though they'll even know there IS a traitor, but Magneto? He's the guy. In the past, it's always been "Who is the traitor?!" That's been not a marketing thing, though, but an actual story beat, played out between the pages and discussed at length between the players on the page. Here, the treason is happening quietly, in the shadows, but the readers know up front who it is. Magneto has gone to S.H.I.E.L.D. to enlist their aid in bringing down Cyclops, his nominal team leader, who of course has dampened Magneto's powers and killed Charles Xavier, Cyclops's own father figure and Magneto's former best friend. Magneto has, under the helmet, taken on a bit of the Xavier appearance--an interesting twist, and a cool way of keeping the reveal fairly hidden until the last page, since all we saw was, basically, Professor X. What do you think of this one? Is Magneto (who's toggled back and forth between hero and villain more than almost anyone else in his career) on the level, or do you think he's got a larger plan at play?