Spoilers through the end of the Muir Island Saga. That’s where I’m at, so I’m stopping there.

Spoilers through the end of the Muir Island Saga. That’s where I’m at, so I’m stopping there. I want to talk about Moira and Sean, because with everything happening around Xavier and the Shadow King, there’s a moment between them that deserves some attention of its own. Moira has been around the X-Men for a long time at this point. She’s helped take care of these people, studied their powers, and given them somewhere to go on Muir Island. Sean built a life there with her. After damaging his voice and losing the use of his powers, he stepped away from the team and stayed with Moira. They had already been through the whole Proteus situation together. There’s a lot of history there before the Shadow King gets involved. Then you spend all this time seeing something go wrong on the island. Moira is acting differently. The place gets more aggressive, and eventually they’ve got people fighting each other in an arena while the others watch. Sean knows her well enough to realize something isn’t right, but getting back to her and actually fixing it is a whole different problem. And the Shadow King has been around for a long time too. Xavier fought Amahl Farouk in Cairo years before he founded the X-Men. That was also where he encountered Storm as a young thief. Xavier won that psychic fight, but Farouk’s influence didn’t end with his body. Later, the Shadow King took over Karma and used her body while controlling the Gladiators. By the time we get to the Muir Island story, we’ve already seen what he does to people. He takes somebody you know and uses them against you. He can use their powers, their face, and everything you care about to get close enough to hurt you. Storm’s trouble with him when she was a child again is part of that same buildup. Gambit helping her escape puts him right in the middle of it too. On Muir Island, it gets much bigger. Polaris has lost her magnetic powers and developed this ability connected to negative emotions. The Shadow King uses her as a nexus between the physical world and the astral plane, magnifying his power. Hatred and violence are boiling over beyond the island, and the people trying to stop him have to figure out how to break that connection without killing Lorna. Meanwhile, he’s taken over Legion. So Xavier comes back and finds himself fighting an old enemy through his own son, with his students and friends caught up in it. Even Sean gets controlled before Forge and the others free him. There’s no easy way to go in there and just fight the bad guy when the people standing in front of you are your family. That’s where the Moira scene comes in. Sean is looking for his daughter, Siryn, when Moira attacks him. She’s standing over him with a weapon, saying things meant to hurt him, and he can barely believe what’s happening. Forge stops her with his scrambler and injects her with the neuro-synaptic buffer. Then she comes back to herself. She recognizes Sean, starts crying, and apologizes. He holds her and tries to calm her down. A few panels earlier she was trying to kill him. Now she’s finally herself again, and he’s got her in his arms while the fight is still going on around them. That’s the part I wanted to put some focus on. We’ve watched this change in Moira for a while, and Sean has had to watch somebody he loves become somebody he barely recognizes. When she breaks down, you’re seeing her come out of that. Forge gets her free, and Sean is right there when she does. They still have to finish the fight. Xavier confronts the Shadow King on the astral plane, and Jean brings the others in to help him. On the physical side, Forge uses his synaptic scrambler on Psylocke, then directs her psychic knife into Polaris to break the nexus. Lorna survives, and the Shadow King loses the connection that’s been feeding him. But it’s cost them a lot. Legion is left in a coma, Xavier can’t walk again, and the people who were controlled have to live with what just happened. Moira and Sean are together again, but none of this was small for either of them. There’s a lot happening at the end of this era. The team is coming back together, Xavier is back, and everything is getting ready to change again. I wanted to stop on this moment before moving on, because Moira getting herself back and Sean being there for her is part of that ending too.