Ray's transformation gives the Theatre one of its most obvious attractions: a fighter who can become a huge serpent. In an arena built around unusual bodies and dangerous matche…

Ray's transformation gives the Theatre one of its most obvious attractions: a fighter who can become a huge serpent. In an arena built around unusual bodies and dangerous matches, that is a spectacle before a fight has even begun. It is also a different kind of threat from an opponent swinging a weapon. Coils can take away space and movement. Once a match becomes a struggle to get free, the fighter inside them has very different problems from somebody trying to block the next punch. Ray appears in this short New Mutants arena story without a large personal history attached. The useful part of the spotlight is what he contributes to the pit, rather than pretending a few appearances explain an entire life. He is one of the named fighters who makes the Gladiators more than a uniform crowd of interchangeable guards. That variety matters to the people running the show. Every different power suggests another match they can sell, another mismatch they can arrange and another reason for the audience to keep watching. For a captive, it means never being entirely sure what survival will require next. A character like Ray also sits inside the story's uncomfortable question about choice. Being dangerous doesn't settle whether somebody is free. Being a regular performer doesn't establish that every action in a psychically manipulated arena expresses that person's own wishes. The serpent form is easy to remember. The setting makes it harder to separate the fighter from the entertainment business wrapped around him, which is exactly the sort of confusion the Theatre profits from.