Marvel’s X-Men: Why Magneto’s New Disease Makes No Sense After Krakoa

X-Men follows Cyclops’s team of X-Men, a team which includes Magneto. Magneto helped Cyclops found this new team, but has been an X-Men ally for a long time. Magneto rejoined the X-Men during the Utopia Era, working with Cyclops to protect mutants and has stayed with the team ever since. The current X-Men books — published under the “From the Ashes” publishing initiative — are all about bringing the X-Men back to basics, so Magneto’s role on the current X-Men team is similar to Xavier’s role on previous teams — a mentor more than someone who goes into the field.

Readers noticed something was different about Magneto almost immediately in the ad material for “From the Ashes” and the first issue of X-Men. He was often seen in a wheelchair and his powers didn’t seem as potent as they had been in stories like The Resurrection of Magneto and Fall of the House of X. The truth behind this was soon revealed — that Magneto was afflicted with a mysterious new disease. However, as time went on and more was revealed about the disease, the less it made sense.

Magneto’s Disease Comes From Krakoan Resurrection but There’s Something Wrong With That

During the Krakoa Era — a time when the X-Men were based on the living mutant island of Krakoa — the X-Men were very different than the team that many got reacquainted with during X-Men ’97. Mutants had their own nation, one that combined heroes and villains. While there were technically no leaders on the island, Xavier and Magneto were the ones everyone looked to for guidance. Xavier and Magneto’s friendship was foundational to the island nation, and the two did everything they could to allow their people to flourish.

The combination of mutants allowed for them to experiment by working together and they were able to create a method of resurrection by combining Xavier’s telepathy, Mister Sinister’s DNA library, and the mutant powers of the Five — Hope Summers, Proteus, Tempus, Egg, and Elixir. This resurrection method allowed dead mutants to be brought back to life, giving the Krakoans an edge over their enemies.

Magneto had several resurrections over the Krakoa Era, mostly while trying to destroy the ultimate Sentinel Nimrod, but nowhere near as many as other mutants. After some of the island’s more unsavory secrets, secrets Magneto and Xavier kept, were revealed, he went to Arakko — Mars terraformed by mutants (the Krakoa Era was… complicated). Magneto worked with Storm to gain leadership of the Arakkii and as such had to embrace their culture, which meant giving up his resurrection back-ups. Magneto ended up dying defending Arakko and was unable to be resurrected.

Of course, Magneto was always going to come back, so Marvel put out The Resurrection of Magneto series. The Krakoa Era ended not long after — don’t worry, we’re getting into the home stretch here — and Magneto helped found the new X-Men team, when a mysterious disease started to affect him and his powers. Beast worked to try to find the origins of this disease, and learned that it came from Krakoan resurrection. Anyone resurrected by the Krakoan method could come down with this disease.

However, there’s a huge problem with this when it comes to Magneto. While Magneto has Krakoan resurrections, his last resurrection wasn’t using the Krakoan method. Magneto’s latest resurrection came from Storm journeying into the Elysian Fields, a place for mutant souls set up by Scarlet Witch in The Trial of Magneto, to retrieve him. His body was recreated as a perfect version of his original body with magic, not one of the bodies cloned from Sinister’s DNA library made by Egg, Proteus, Tempus, Elixir, and Hope.

Not much is known about the resurrection disease right now. Magneto isn’t the only person afflicted with it, but he is the highest profile. In some ways, it seems like a way to make Magneto more Xavier-like — weakening him physically and keeping him away from the field. This disease keeps Magneto from being the powerhouse and solving all of the team’s problems, one similar to the role he played in the early stages of Season 1 of X-Men ’97. It serves an interesting thematic reason, but it doesn’t really make sense when taking into account the events of the end of Fall of X.

The Real Reason Magneto’s Disease Makes No Sense

There is an actual reason that Magneto’s disease doesn’t make any sense and it comes long before the end of the Krakoa Era. Basically, Marvel decided to begin the work on the post-Krakoa Era X-Men comics before the ending of the era was turned in. So, new X-Men editor Tom Brevoort had no idea how Magneto was going to be resurrected, he just knew he was going to be resurrected. When Brevoort and the writers he brought on board were coming up with ideas, they came up with the Krakoan resurrection disease idea before knowing everything that had happened at the end of the Krakoa Era. By the time they knew Magneto’s last resurrection wasn’t going to come from the Krakoan method, they had finished multiple issues of X-Men.

The Krakoan resurrection disease is actually a pretty good idea. Krakoan resurrection always felt a little too convenient and relied on too many factors that could be suborned. In fact, Mister Sinister had messed with the DNA of every mutant so he could take control of them. Introducing a disease based off of it is a smart idea; the problem was they decided that Magneto would come down with the disease without knowing exactly how he was coming back.

Marvel wanted to put out X-Men comics that would be easy for fans of X-Men ’97 to get into and that could lead the mutants to an MCU-friendly status quo at some point soon. They rushed the ending of the Krakoa Era and the beginning of work on the current “From the Ashes” Era. This led to mistakes and the nonsensical nature of Magneto getting the Krakoan resurrection disease is one of these.