FALL OF THE MUTANTS: THREE TEAMS, THREE VERY DIFFERENT LOSSES

FALL OF THE MUTANTS: THREE TEAMS, THREE VERY DIFFERENT LOSSES Spoilers for Fall of the Mutants across X-Men, X-Factor, and New Mutants. Nothing past where I've read, through the Muir Island Saga. I want to cover all three sides of Fall of the Mutants, because just talking about the X-Men in Dallas leaves out a huge part of it. X-Factor is dealing with Apocalypse and what happened to Angel. The New Mutants are dealing with Bird-Brain, the Ani-Mator, and losing Doug. These aren't three teams showing up to fight the same villain. They're going through separate disasters, and each book comes out of it in a different place. For the X-Men, it builds into the fight with the Adversary in Dallas. Storm's story with Forge feeds directly into this, including her getting her powers back. Forge's past also matters. A spell he cast during the Vietnam War, using the souls of his dead comrades, helped open the way for the Adversary. Now the consequences are right in front of everybody. Dallas becomes a place where reality and different periods of time are colliding. Freedom Force starts out trying to arrest the X-Men, but the danger gets so much bigger that they're helping protect people instead. There are civilians caught in it, and Neal Conan's reporting means people can see what the X-Men are doing. The way out costs nine lives. It's eight X-Men and Madelyne Pryor: Storm, Wolverine, Rogue, Psylocke, Dazzler, Longshot, Havok, Colossus, and Maddie. Forge performs the spell. He's not one of the nine sacrificed. They agree to it knowing what they're giving up. Madelyne isn't just standing nearby while the superheroes handle everything. She makes that choice with them. And Mystique has to watch Rogue die. Whatever else is going on between those characters, that's her daughter. Roma brings them back afterward, but that doesn't mean they knew they were going to get a second chance. The sacrifice was real. Once they're alive again, they decide to let the world keep believing they're dead, hoping that will help protect the people connected to them. That takes us toward the Australian period I've already read, with all the complications that come from their friends and families not knowing the truth. Then there's X-Factor. Warren had already been through the destruction and loss of his wings, and his friends believed they'd lost him altogether. Apocalypse brings him back into their lives as Death, with metal wings and a completely different appearance. He's alive, but now he's being used against the people who love him. The other Horsemen are War, Famine, and Pestilence, and the attack on New York puts civilians right in the middle of it. Warren finally breaks away from Apocalypse's control after believing he's killed Iceman, when what he's actually destroyed is an ice duplicate. Even after that, getting him back doesn't mean everything that happened to him has gone away. Caliban makes a different decision. After what happened to the Morlocks, he wants the strength to fight back, and he chooses to go with Apocalypse. It's worth separating those two situations. Warren was turned into a weapon. Caliban is reaching for power because of what he's already survived. X-Factor's aftermath is unusual because the public starts accepting them as heroes. They help with the destruction and rescue people around the city, gain Ship as their base, and move beyond the mutant-hunter cover story. There's even a parade. But Warren is still apart from that celebration. Public approval doesn't put him back the way he was. The New Mutants' story is much smaller in scale, but it doesn't let them off any easier. Bird-Brain brings them into the nightmare on the Ani-Mator's island, where living creatures are being experimented on and treated as disposable. The Right is involved too, so this isn't some harmless scientist working alone. Doug's ability to understand language matters here. He can communicate with Bird-Brain and the other Ani-Mates. Then the Ani-Mator fires at Rahne, and Doug takes the shot protecting her. Cypher dies. There's no Roma showing up to undo that for the New Mutants. They have to bring him home. They have to deal with their friend's body, their own guilt and anger, and Magneto realizing what happened while they were away. At the same time, they're seeing the reports from Dallas and believing they've lost the X-Men too. For Illyana, that includes her brother. I'll get into Doug more in the separate post about the deaths, but he belongs in this discussion because his loss changes what this event means for that team. So you have the X-Men alive but letting everyone mourn them, X-Factor finally being celebrated while Warren is still struggling, and the New Mutants dealing with a death that doesn't get reversed at the end of their story. That's why I don't want to boil Fall of the Mutants down to one battle. All three books lose something, and none of them just go back to normal afterward.