POST 4 OF 4: WHAT DO YOU DO WITH 14 X-MEN?

POST 4 OF 4: WHAT DO YOU DO WITH 14 X-MEN? And then you get to the end of the Muir Island Saga, and Professor Xavier is sitting there asking, “What am I going to do with fourteen X-Men?!” That was such an interesting place to end up after everything I'd just read. We went through a period where the X-Men were fractured. People were scattered, people went through the Siege Perilous, and the team we'd been following wasn't together in the way it had been. Wolverine was barely surviving in Australia. Storm had been turned back into a child. Everybody was dealing with pieces of this larger mess from different places. And while all that was happening, we got two new characters introduced through two different relational dynamics, from two different backgrounds. Those weren't the only things going on. They're just the examples I wanted to focus on here because of how much their partnerships stood out to me. Jubilee helped keep Wolverine alive, and they grew together from there. Storm and Gambit worked together as thieves, and their partnership brought him into the group. Those connections were developing while the larger team was still coming back together. Then the Muir Island Saga brings so much of that scattered story into one place. Xavier is back, the original X-Men have been operating as X-Factor, and now you're looking at the people who've returned alongside people who've become part of this world during the separation. So I got to the end of it thinking about how far that situation had shifted. Earlier in the reading, I was watching the team break apart and following where everybody ended up. Now Xavier has a whole different problem: how do you organize all these people? I'm stopping here, at the end of Muir Island, before the next team lineup. I want to sit with this point for a minute because the path to it was a big part of what made these relationships interesting. Wolverine and Jubilee, Storm and Gambit. Each pair has its own dynamic, and each one gives you a different way of seeing an established character while getting to know somebody new. By the time they come together with everybody else, you've already watched them protect each other, depend on each other, and decide to stay together through some pretty rough situations. That's why I wanted to write about these two relationships together. Following them through this fractured period made it really interesting to reach the end and realize Xavier now has 14 X-Men to figure out what to do with.