Amanda Sefton has a surprisingly complicated place in Nightcrawler’s life. She first appears in X-Men #98 as a flight attendant who becomes involved with Kurt, but there’s a muc…

Amanda Sefton has a surprisingly complicated place in Nightcrawler’s life. She first appears in X-Men #98 as a flight attendant who becomes involved with Kurt, but there’s a much older connection underneath that identity. Her real name is Jimaine Szardos. Her mother, Margali, raised Kurt alongside her own children, Jimaine and Stefan, in the circus. So Amanda and Kurt knew each other long before he joined the X-Men. They grew up in the same household, which makes their later romantic relationship a complicated part of the story on its own. When she comes back into his life as Amanda, Kurt doesn’t initially know who she really is. She’s using magic to hide that connection. That’s a pretty significant thing to leave out when talking about their relationship, because he thinks he’s getting to know someone new while she already knows so much of his past. X-Men Annual #4 is where all of that comes together. Margali believes Kurt deserves punishment for Stefan’s death, and the X-Men end up going through her version of Dante’s Inferno with Doctor Strange. Amanda is tied directly into what’s happening because Stefan was her brother and Margali is her mother. Kurt had killed Stefan while trying to stop him after Stefan began taking innocent lives. Margali doesn’t have the whole truth when she goes after him. Jimaine helps bring the situation to the point where it can actually be confronted, and Doctor Strange’s Eye of Agamotto reveals what happened. Margali’s judgment changes once she sees the truth. That’s also when Kurt learns that Amanda has been Jimaine all along. Suddenly the woman he’s dating, the family he grew up with and a part of his history that has followed him for years are all in the same room. There’s a lot packed into that annual, especially for a character who had previously appeared around the edges of his life in New York. Her magic gives her an active role when the X-Men run into trouble, too. During the Hellfire Club conflict in Uncanny X-Men #151–152, she uses an illusion to make their enemies believe Wolverine has been killed. That gives him an opening they wouldn’t otherwise have had. She can change what an enemy thinks is happening, which can be just as useful as hitting them with something. She also helps during the Dire Wraith attack around Forge’s home. In #188, her spell disrupts the dark mass holding the X-Men and lets them struggle free. Her magic has limits, and she doesn’t solve that entire situation by herself, but she contributes when the team needs help against a threat that ordinary fighting isn’t handling very well. Then there’s her relationship with Kurt after his encounters with the Beyonder. He’s questioning his faith, his place in everything and whether anything he trusted is real. Amanda tries to get him to talk to her, and he lashes out by asking whether she used magic to make him love her. That accusation is enough to drive her away. It’s also different from saying she actually did it. The story gives us Kurt doubting her while he’s in a very bad place, not proof that their entire relationship was a spell. Her concealed identity is real history between them; his accusation about their love shouldn’t automatically be treated as another established fact. Later, she tries to find him at Excalibur’s lighthouse, but he isn’t there. That leads into her involvement with the people on Muir Island and the Reavers’ attack. That’s where I’m leaving her for now, before the Muir Island Saga I haven’t read yet. Between her connection to Kurt’s childhood, her family’s magic, her help in several fights and the trouble between them, there’s already plenty to talk about without jumping ahead.