6/7 · Jason Wyngarde · Mastermind and aspiring insider

6/7 · Jason Wyngarde · Mastermind and aspiring insider Jason Wyngarde makes himself indispensable by offering the Inner Circle control of Phoenix. His illusions give Jean an invented eighteenth-century life, with him installed as her husband and the Hellfire Club waiting to welcome its Black Queen. There is a terrible intimacy to the scheme. He does not simply hide an enemy or disguise a room. He works on Jean's understanding of herself and the people she loves, making the X-Men seem like intruders in a life he has manufactured. Emma Frost's technology helps his illusions reach her with the force the plan requires. Scott tries to reach Jean through their psychic rapport and instead finds himself inside Wyngarde's period fantasy. He is forced into a duel whose conditions favor the man who built it. Even the attempt to help Jean becomes another scene in the story Wyngarde wants her to believe. The device matters because Mastermind is an illusionist, not a telepath with unlimited access to Jean. He has help, and he has chosen a vulnerable moment to use it. When Jean finally confronts him, she makes him explain how he managed it. There is something especially ugly about his handsome, composed presentation once the mechanisms behind it are exposed. Wyngarde's ambition finally outruns his judgment when he appears to kill Cyclops inside that psychic drama. The shock helps Jean break his hold, and the power he thought would buy him a place in the Inner Circle turns against him. His campaign depends on treating another person's inner life as something he can author. Once she recognizes the fraud, he has very little protection from the woman he has abused.