The X-Men are the top of the mutant superhero community. For a mutant hero, joining the team is like a regular hero getting to join the Avengers. They are the first line of defense against human bigotry, and the group has created some of the greatest heroes on Earth. However, the X-Men aren’t perfect. There have been numerous members of the team who have fallen to evil. If you look at their history, it honestly makes sense that they would be more liable to fall. To begin with, the team faces off against the more powerful telepaths on Earth, so mind control can be pretty common. They also face one of the hardest battles of them all, always looking into the eyes of those who would commit genocide against mutants.
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These factors and more have all played into members of the team turning to evil. Most of the time, these heroes will return to the team, working to redeem themselves and regain the trust of others, and other times they don’t. X-Men have been driven to villainy before, and here are seven more who went to the dark side.
7) Sabretooth
Frankly, this one isn’t that surprising. Sabretooth is one of Wolverine’s most dangerous villains, and is more well-known as an enemy of the team. However, he’s joined the group several times and each time went back to being a villain. The first time this happened after Birdie, a telepath whose powers calmed Victor Creed, died. He went to the X-Men for help, and was forced to wear special restraints that would keep him from attacking. Eventually, Wolverine lobotomized him in battle when he tried to escape, and after fooling everyone by pretending to be a mindless animal, he attacked Boom Boom and almost killed Psylocke. He later joined Rogue’s rapid response team, but was working with Romulus at the time, and joined him in an attack against Wolverine (although, to be fair, Wolverine decided to kill him first that time). He was also morally inverted by AXIS after Wolverine died, and would again returned to villainy.
6) Psylocke
After defeating the Adversary, the X-Men walked through the Siege Perilous. This separated and changed the team, and it led to Psylocke becoming a villain for a short time. She was taken by the Mandarin, and had her mind transferred to the body of the ninja assassin Kwannon. She became a servant of Mandarin and the Hand, and battled Wolverine. He was able to beat her and rescue his friend, and she went back to being a hero. It wasn’t all that long of a period — three issues in total — but it still counts.
5) Havok
Havok is the poster child for being mind-controlled into villainy. Alex Summers has been made to attack the X-Men numerous times. Shi’Ar agent Erik the Red took control of him and Polaris, with the two of them attacking the X-Men to assassinate Xavier. Later, Havok began a relationship with Madelyne Pryor, his brother Cyclops’s wife, and she began mind-controlling him, using him against the team in “Inferno”. He was turned evil while a member of X-Factor by the Dark Beast, ending up fighting for Onslaught and fighting X-Factor until he “sacrificed” himself (he was actually thrown into another universe) to save them. In AXIS, his morality was inverted and stayed that way for a while, with Havok becoming something of a mutant terrorist. His brain is almost certainly Swiss cheese after all the mental damage done to him by now.
4) Emma Frost
Emma Frost became an ally of the X-Men in the mid ’90s after years of villainy, helping train Generation X. She eventually joined Magneto’s Genosha after he was given the country, survived the destruction of the population, and then joined the X-Men. She stayed mostly on the straight and narrow, except for when she joined the Cabal, but even this eventually became a part of one of Cyclops’s plan against Norman Osborn and HAMMER. However, she ended up fully returning villainy after the release of the Terrigen Mists and the death of Cyclops. She manipulated the mutant teams into attacking the Inhumans, and meant to use reprogrammed Sentinels to slaughter the entire Inhuman race. She escaped the combined heroes and took up leadership of the Hellfire Club again, but would become a hero after Cyclops was resurrected.
3) Sunfire
Sunfire has long been a secondary member of the X-Men, his arrogance making him something of a handful to deal with. He was Japan’s greatest hero for a while, but a battle with Lady Deathstrike saw him losing his legs. He almost killed himself, but eventually went to Apocalypse for help, becoming the Horseman of Apocalypse named Famine (who for some reason started wearing the costume he wore in the legendary “Age of Apocalypse”, where he fought against the villain). He battled the X-Men, working with Gambit and Polaris who both also became Horsemen, and he and Gambit ended up joining Mister Sinister’s Marauders to attack the team again in X-Men (Vol. 2) #200. However, they both helped the X-Men triumph, and since then, Sunfire has been an Avenger and a member of the X-Men.
2) Wolverine
Wolverine has been made into a villain several times over the years. After being killed by Gorgon, he was resurrected as a Hand assassin and in more recent years was made into a weapon by Beast. In alternate universes, he’s ended up a villain numerous times, even in the Age of Apocalypse universe. After Jean Grey returned as Phoenix and the two of them took over Magneto’s team, he decided that the only way to truly save the world was to take the power of Apocalypse, using a Death Seed to become the next iteration of the villain. He re-conquered En Sabah Nur’s empire, and fought a war with the X-Men of that universe. Eventually, he was defeated, but for a time he was his world’s greatest villain.
1) Professor X
Professor X has spent years as a villainous character, driven there by the war against bigotry. Xavier enslaved the Danger Room when its computer became sentient, reasoning that it was more important to train mutants than having its own life. He sacrificed a whole team of X-Men and then mind-wiped everyone of their memories of them. He helped the Illuminati cover up their mistakes and made the Xavier Protocols”, ways to kill the X-Men if they ever went evil. He started secretly preparing Krakoa by working with Magneto and Moira MacTaggert, and became the leader of the new mutant nation, using often evil, or at least immoral, methods of keeping power and protecting the nation, even mindwiping Reed Richards. He was mind-controlled by Mister Sinister, and helped bring about the Sins of Sinister universe, and became a host for the villain for a time. He recently manipulated the X-Men into allowing him to resurrect Empress Lilandra so he could escape from prison (where he was put after Krakoa because of his actions as an “ally” of Orchis, although that was a part of the plan he had made). Xavier has become a major antagonist for the team, despite also being a founder of the group.
What other X-Men turned to villainy? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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