Spoilers through the original Dark Phoenix Saga. No stories beyond my current reading point at the end of Muir Island.

Spoilers through the original Dark Phoenix Saga. No stories beyond my current reading point at the end of Muir Island. The part of Dark Phoenix that gets lost when you reduce it to a quick summary is how much Mastermind does to her before she finally breaks. He gets into her life as Jason Wyngarde and keeps pulling her into this other reality. He builds up a history between them that never happened. The Hellfire Club wants to use her as its Black Queen, and he keeps pushing her further into that role. Emma Frost’s technology helps him get those illusions directly into her mind. So by the time the X-Men get caught up in it, they’re fighting for somebody who’s already been manipulated for a long time. Scott tries to reach her through their psychic connection. Mastermind attacks him there, and the shock of seeing Scott apparently killed helps Jean break free of the illusion. She gets control back long enough to help free the others. Then she goes after Mastermind herself. He wanted power, and she gives him a glimpse of what that level of perception actually feels like. His mind can’t handle it. But getting free of him doesn’t undo what’s happened to her. Dark Phoenix emerges anyway. That’s where the story goes from the X-Men trying to rescue their teammate to the X-Men facing somebody whose power is completely beyond them. And the destruction of the D’Bari world makes it impossible to treat this like a normal superhero fight. She consumes their sun, and an inhabited world is destroyed. Billions of people die. The X-Men love her, but there’s no way for them to make those lives stop mattering. Xavier manages to contain the Phoenix side of her for a while. You get that moment where it looks like Jean might be back and they might actually have a chance to deal with this. Then Lilandra brings them before the Shi’ar, and they have to face what happened outside their own circle of friends. I like that the story lets the team struggle with it. They don’t all have exactly the same response. They have doubts. Some are thinking about justice, some about loyalty, some about whether Jean can even be separated from what Phoenix has done. They still decide to stand with her. Xavier challenges the Shi’ar, and the X-Men fight the Imperial Guard on the moon. Jean wears her old Marvel Girl costume. After everything she’s become, she’s back there beside Scott in the outfit from that earlier part of her life. The team loses ground until Scott and Jean are the last ones left fighting. When Scott goes down, the Phoenix power breaks through again. Jean realizes that what Xavier did may not hold and that this could happen all over again. She ultimately chooses to end her own life rather than let that destruction continue. That’s a lot to take in after reading everything that led there. Scott has to watch it happen. The others fought as hard as they could and still couldn’t bring her home. Then you get the funeral and the history of the team coming back through Scott’s memories. This is one of my favorite X-Men stories for a reason. There’s the cosmic power and the huge fights, obviously, but you’ve spent so much time with these people that the ending matters. You know who they’re losing.