Spoilers through Uncanny X-Men #280 and X-Factor #70, the end of the Muir Island Saga. That’s where I’m stopping.

Spoilers through Uncanny X-Men #280 and X-Factor #70, the end of the Muir Island Saga. That’s where I’m stopping. The Muir Island Saga brings the X-Men back together by making them fight their way back to each other first. Xavier is back from space. The X-Men have just survived the War Skrull situation in the Shi’ar Empire, including rescuing the real Professor from the people using his powers. Coming home should mean they finally get a chance to regroup. Instead, they find that one of their own places of safety has become the center of another nightmare. And this hasn’t come out of nowhere. Something has been wrong on Muir Island for a while. Moira’s behavior has changed. The aggression has been building. By the time the team arrives, people are fighting in an arena for the entertainment of the others. These are people who should be helping one another, and the Shadow King has turned them against each other. That’s the fight here. Not just whether the X-Men can beat somebody powerful, but whether they can stop him without destroying the people he’s using. Xavier doesn’t lead the first group straight into the island and fix everything. He sends the team to investigate while he goes to New York to find his original students. The island team gets overwhelmed. Meanwhile, Xavier reaches the wreckage of his school and finds Stevie Hunter being hunted by a possessed Colossus. His home is in ruins, and one of his own X-Men is coming after him. Colossus has been living as Peter Nicholas without his old memories after the Siege Perilous. Xavier has to reach past that and restore his identity to break the Shadow King’s hold. Getting him back means bringing back the history he had lost, not simply winning a fight against his armored body. On the island, Forge starts making the difference. Wolverine is resisting, but resistance alone isn’t getting everybody free. Forge’s neuro-synaptic buffer breaks the control over Logan, and he also takes Rogue out of the Shadow King’s hands. They can start rescuing people instead of just adding more bodies to the enemy’s side. Forge deserves real credit here. The solution isn’t waiting around for the biggest telepath to arrive. Somebody has to build a way to interrupt the control, survive long enough to use it, and keep figuring things out while their friends are trying to kill them. Then X-Factor gets pulled into it. Scott, Jean, Hank, Bobby and Warren aren’t some unrelated rescue squad. They’re Xavier’s original X-Men, coming back into a crisis involving the people who carried the team forward after them. The Shadow King is also working inside that rescue effort through Jacob Reisz. This is the same enemy Xavier originally fought as Amahl Farouk, but Farouk, Reisz and Legion aren’t three separate masterminds. Reisz is a possessed host. Legion becomes the host through whom the Shadow King unleashes the catastrophe on Muir Island. Mystique, disguised as Valerie Cooper, shoots Reisz and interrupts that part of his attack. But getting rid of that body does not finish the Shadow King. He takes over David, and the island is torn apart. Jean’s telekinetic shields are what keep the team alive through the explosion. And Polaris is the other part of this that they have to solve. After losing her magnetic powers, Lorna developed powers tied to negative emotion. The Shadow King has made her his nexus between the physical world and the astral plane. She’s a captive being used to sustain his power, not the person behind the takeover. So the ending needs two fights happening at once. Xavier confronts the Shadow King on the astral plane. Jean and the others help him there. On the physical side, the rescue group has to get to Lorna and break that connection. Winning an argument or landing one impressive psychic attack isn’t enough while the nexus is still feeding him. Even getting to her means dealing with more people they care about. Rogue helps clear the way. Forge frees Moira, and Sean is there for her when she comes back to herself. Logan has to stop Jubilee. He tricks her and punches her rather than using his claws. It’s an ugly situation, not a clean superhero fight where everybody can pretend the person in front of them is just an enemy. Psylocke is still under the Shadow King’s control when she attacks the group. Forge realizes that after using his synaptic scrambler on her, he can use her psychic blade on Polaris. That breaks the nexus without killing Lorna. That’s the decisive combination. Forge and Psylocke sever the connection. Xavier and Jean shield the others from the psychic energy released when the Shadow King comes apart. The people on the ground matter just as much as the battle happening inside their minds. They win, but nobody gets to call it painless. Lorna survives. The controlled people are themselves again, but Xavier describes them as scarred in spirit. David is left in a coma. Xavier’s back is shattered, and he has lost the use of his legs again. He comes back to the X-Men and immediately pays another enormous personal cost, but the victory still belongs to the whole group. X-Factor #70 gives that ending room to breathe. Xavier is trying to reach his son. There’s wreckage to deal with, people checking on one another, and the question of what this reunited group is going to be. Beating the Shadow King doesn’t mean David just wakes up or that everybody’s experience disappears. But after all the separations, missing people and different paths, Xavier has his original students and the newer X-Men together. Rogue and Colossus are back with them. It isn’t the old class restored exactly as it was. It’s that class meeting everything the X-Men have become. And then Xavier gets the line that closes it out: “What am I going to do with fourteen X-Men?!” The story starts with the Shadow King turning their own people against them. It ends with those people together again, trying to figure out how to move forward. That’s the Muir Island Saga’s place in this stretch of the run. Not an ending where all the damage gets erased, but one where the scattered team finally has a chance to rebuild together.