The X-Men are one of Marvel’s most popular teams. They are a walking metaphor for every form of oppression, working towards a world where tolerance and co-existence are the standard. The X-Men have starred in some of Marvel’s best-known and greatest events, from “The Dark Phoenix Saga” to Age of Apocalypse. In their never-ending quest to prove that humans and mutants can live in harmony, they’ve run into countless tragedies. They’ve faced genocides and dystopian futures, but one of the biggest threats to the X-Men has always been their conflicting ideas. Ever since the founding of the original X-Factor, the mutant teams have often been at each other’s throats.
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The X-infighting only got exponentially worse in the late 2000s and 2010s, when Professor Xavier was retconned from the ultimate symbol of pacifism to a control freak with a God complex. As the stories grew darker with ever-escalating stakes, the X-Men fought about their best way forward. Some wanted to keep fighting for coexistence, while others wanted to treat humanity as an opposing force that had to be countered. That problem still exists in the X-Men today, but it was just made exponentially worse in X-Men United #1, where the titular team was anything but. It brought back one of Cyclops’s two worst traits, and no matter which one it is, it’s downright annoying.
A New School, the X-Men’s Living Dream
The X-Men had been disparate since the fall of Krakoa. Between the loss of faith in Professor X and the lack of a unifying voice, mutantkind had fallen to small groups, each pursuing their own ideals. Emma Frost and Kitty Pryde thought it was time to change that. They needed a uniting force and goal to strive for again. They needed another school. X-Men United #1 started with Emma telepathically summoning the X-teams to Greymatter Lane, a psychic school where the experienced heroes could tutor a whole new generation of mutants without taking the risk of physically gathering together.
The new school rode the line between reality and imagination, as it exists in the mind of everyone present, but any injuries they get inside carry over to their real bodies. To make sure a powerful psychic like Cassandra Nova can’t just tear everything apart, they created defenses with tech taken from Mister Sinister. While most of the X-Men are on board for a new school, Cyclops is vehemently against it. He said that mutants gathering like this could only end in disaster. He stormed out, and when Glob confronted him about it, he responded that he was doing what was best for everyone. The final panel showed the school burning, with Cyclops’s words overtop.
The Problem(s) With Cyclops
This ending implies that one of two potential events occurred. Either Cyclops burned the school down to teach the X-Men a lesson, or he was immediately proven right, and an outside threat destroyed the school. To speak against the first, if it’s true, this would be wildly out of character for Scott. Sure, he’s a hard case who needs to be in control, but this would practically be a declaration of war against his teammates. That’s an insane thing to do and is straight out of his extremist terrorist phase, which was Cyclops’s worst era. Scott has never been perfect, but he’s supposed to be one of the best strategists and leaders in the Marvel Universe, and this is just plain stupid.
If this wasn’t Scott and was actually a third-party attack, then this is another infamous “Cyclops was right” moment, which is just as bad. This would be confirmation that Cyclops’s wildly cynical opinion that humans will always destroy mutants is correct, which goes against everything the X-Men stand for. Yes, they will always face opposition and hardship in this lifetime, but they fight for coexistence. This opinion basically says that is impossible. The X-books’ biggest issue for the past twenty years has been an obsession with escalation and proving that humanity will always hunt mutants. It’s so prevalent that the X-Men’s dream has all but been forgotten, which is the entire point of the team. This spits in the face of everything they stand for in every regard.
So, either Cyclops is a jerk or humanity and mutants can’t coexist. Both, obviously, are terrible for different reasons. Cyclops shouldn’t be a jerk or cynical to the point where hope is a fairytale. He should be a jaded realist, sure, but never without the belief that things can get better. Without that dream, the X-Men don’t matter. They need to represent something better, and schools are the perfect location to marry that theme with their reality. The new X-Men school needs to exist, or at least a school does, and Marvel needs to remember what the X-Men are supposed to be.
What do you think Cyclops’s worst trait is? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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