Jean’s return is a strange kind of homecoming. The Avengers find the cocoon, and the Fantastic Four become involved in finding out what it contains. When Jean comes out of it, h…

Jean’s return is a strange kind of homecoming. The Avengers find the cocoon, and the Fantastic Four become involved in finding out what it contains. When Jean comes out of it, her life has carried on without her in ways she couldn’t possibly have anticipated. Scott has married. He has a child. The X-Men have changed, and the people she knew have been through things she wasn’t there to see. From her own experience, she was trying to save her friends on that shuttle. For everyone else, so much has happened since then. That gives X-Factor more tension than just a reunion of the original team. Jean has to work out where she belongs while other people are responding to what they thought had happened to her. Scott’s failure to be immediately honest about Madelyne and Nathan makes that much worse. Jean’s return did not give him permission to stop being a husband and father, and she has to learn that there is a whole family involved. She also has her own ideas about helping mutants. The original five coming together gives her something active to do with her life again, rather than leaving her in the position of being the person everyone is explaining the past to. Even then, using the familiar Marvel Girl name doesn’t make everything familiar. She has survived, but she still has to find her place in the life waiting for her.