Scott’s family history is another part of him that gets much bigger as the books go along. He and Alex survive the loss of their parents’ plane, but that doesn’t mean they get t…

Scott’s family history is another part of him that gets much bigger as the books go along. He and Alex survive the loss of their parents’ plane, but that doesn’t mean they get to grow up together afterward. They are separated, and Scott spends much of his childhood without the family he remembers. Finding Alex again matters, but discovering that his father is Corsair is a completely different kind of shock. The father Scott thought he had lost has an entire life in space with the Starjammers. There is an explanation for what happened, but an explanation doesn’t give either of them those years back. Scott has already built so much of his life around Xavier and the X-Men by then. That makes Xavier’s role more complicated than just being the man who teaches him how to use his powers. The school gives him somewhere to belong, people who understand him, and a purpose he can follow when the rest of his life has been so unstable. Alex has his own identity as Havok, too. He isn’t there just to be Scott’s little brother. Their relationship brings family history into the same space as leadership and mutant responsibilities, and those things don’t always sit comfortably together. Scott can organize a team. Working out how to be someone’s son or brother is a different problem.