Magneto is still responsible for the New Mutants during this transition, but responsibility and actual knowledge of their lives are drifting apart. The students keep encounterin…

Magneto is still responsible for the New Mutants during this transition, but responsibility and actual knowledge of their lives are drifting apart. The students keep encountering dangers outside the school, and they are increasingly reluctant to tell him what they are doing. Doug’s death makes that distance devastating. Magneto has been trying to locate the children while they face the Ani-Mator. Their return brings him the news that a student has died. His fear for the survivors becomes bound up with anger and the belief that tighter control might prevent another loss. The problem is that the students already have reasons to distrust how he exercises authority. His involvement with the Hellfire Club and his increasingly restrictive approach deepen the gap. They want him to understand why they feel compelled to help other people. He sees children repeatedly placing themselves in situations that could kill them. New Mutants #67 turns that disagreement into a rule Sam cannot comfortably live with: he is allowed to attend Lila’s concert only after promising not to use his powers. When an emergency occurs, the restriction provides no simple answer. The other students choose to act without bringing Magneto into the decision. By the approach to Inferno, the relationship is strained far beyond an ordinary argument about breaking school rules. Concern is present, but it is being expressed through measures the children increasingly experience as confinement. This thread stops before the formal break in #75, which belongs to the next phase. The groundwork is already visible. Magneto’s students have grown through experiences he cannot fully supervise, and he is responding to the possibility of losing them by tightening his grip. Both the grief and the decisions that follow it have to remain in the picture to understand why the arrangement is failing.