Madelyne Pryor: Red Queen Appreciation 2019

[nx01a]

The Maddie that ran around in the 90s was a psychic ghost created by Nate Grey. She wasnt the original Maddie, but considering she had all her memories, she was treated as such for all intents and purposes. Its similar to Magik 2.0 that currently exists in the comics. The 2nd Maddie that was in ANX and Blue is an alternate reality version that has nothing to do with the original. The OG Maddie did merge with Jean in Inferno and that has not been retconned

And Jean got rid of/was purged of the Phoenix and Maddie personalities during that fun Celestial excursion.

[phoenixzero23]

I wonder if Hickman will use her. Apparently there is a second Inferno coming

[nx01a]

I wonder if Hickman will use her. Apparently there is a second Inferno coming

He'd better. Hickman loves Sinister and Sinister loves Maddie. Oh, the drama Maddie could create for Jean, Scott, Cable...!

[phoenixzero23]

He'd better. Hickman loves Sinister and Sinister loves Maddie. Oh, the drama Maddie could create for Jean, Scott, Cable...!

I like Maddie but I don't think that drama would be good for any character involved. Specially Maddie who is likely to made look like a maniac.
At this point I honestly think that it would have been better for Maddie and Jean to be the same person all along and that the closest thing would be Maddie and Jean merging.
I would like that more than being the evil clone that will never find peace.

[RachelGrey]

I like Maddie but I don't think that drama would be good for any character involved. Specially Maddie who is likely to made look like a maniac.
At this point I honestly think that it would have been better for Maddie and Jean to be the same person all along and that the closest thing would be Maddie and Jean merging.
I would like that more than being the evil clone that will never find peace.

Plus I think people make a mistake when it comes to Maddie and Sinister, Maddie hates Sinister and would want to kill him probably more than anyone could ever guess. I think if Inferno happens and Sinister is somehow responsible for it in some way, if Maddie returns she is going to come back to stop the Inferno and try to kill Sinister once and for all!

[FUBAR007]

I know Maddie has existed after Inferno and that there are in fact two Maddies but last time someone asked , JDW said that she was fused with Jean.
That's kind of what happened at the end of Inferno but by that logic Maddie shouldn't exist if she is part of Jean now or was that retconned?

Ah, the afterlife and times of Madelyne Pryor...

Madelyne merged with Jean at the end of Inferno, and continued to exist as a separate personality until X-Factor vol. 1#50. During this period, she could take over Jean's body for brief periods of time. In X-Factor #50, Jean combined her powers with Scott's to defeat the Celestials. This had the side effect of ridding Jean of Madelyne's personality (though she still had Maddie's memories). But, writer Louise Simonson didn't specify whether that meant Maddie was destroyed, made dormant, or expelled from Jean's mind.

A couple of years later, in Uncanny X-Men #283, Xavier sensed another presence when he undid a telepathic body swap been Jean and Emma. In a later issue's lettercol, a reader pointed this out, and the editorial response was that the presence was Madelyne escaping Jean's mind. However, this was never made explicit on-panel.

In 1995, in X-Man #5, Nate Grey psychically reached out for Jean but got Madelyne instead. She returned as an amnesiac ghost with no memories or flesh-and-blood body, and her physical presence was initially tied to Nate's powers. Over time, she got telepathic and telekinetic powers of her own and could function separately from Nate. In one of the X-Man annuals, Tessa, while still working for Sebastian Shaw, probed Maddie's mind, accidentally restoring her memory. At that point, Madelyne became a villain again. She became Sebastian Shaw's girlfriend for a while, briefly worked for Selene and joined the Hellfire Club, and got into fights with Nate, Jean, and Cable. This version of Madelyne last appeared in an issue of Cable during "Apocalypse: The Twelve", hiding out in the astral plane.

Then, things got a little confusing...

In 2000, as part of the "Revolution" relaunch, Warren Ellis and Steven Grant took over as co-writers of X-Man. The main baddie of one story arc was an evil version of Jean from an alternate Earth who called herself the Red Queen. She wanted to use Nate for her own ends and got close to him by impersonating Madelyne. IIRC, she claimed to have killed Madelyne and taken her place, but this wasn't shown on-panel. Ellis/Grant didn't specify exactly when the switch took place, either. So, some people interpreted it to mean that Madelyne had never really come back at all and that evil-alt.-Jean had been impersonating her the whole time going back to X-Man #5. Anyway, Nate defeated evil-alt.-Jean, and she hasn't been seen since.

Fast forward several more years, and Matt Fraction reintroduced Madelyne as a villain in his Uncanny X-Men run. Calling herself the Red Queen (just like evil-alt.-Jean from the Ellis/Grant X-Man run), she was still a psychic ghost. She seduced Scott under false pretenses and tangled with the X-Men in a scheme to possess Jean's dead body. The X-Men defeated her, and she disappeared. Fraction's stated interpretation was that this wasn't really Madelyne, but a kind of psychic remnant of the Goblin Queen.

Later on, in Brian Wood's X-Men run, the Enchantress put Madelyne's mind into the dead body of Ana Cortes a.k.a. Lady Deathstrike II. Working for Arkea, she then reshaped the body to genetically match Jean/Madelyne. They fought the X-Men until Storm cut Madelyne a deal, allowing her and Selene to walk away in exchange for letting the X-Men defeat Arkea. I think that was the last time Madelyne appeared on-panel.

(Another version of Madelyne, a Goblin Queen from one of the Secret Wars alternate Earths, showed up in X-Men Blue, but she isn't 616 Madelyne).

So, anyway, unless she lost them during one of her recent resurrections, Jean should still have Madelyne's memories. Per Brian Wood's run, there is a version of Madelyne alive out there somewhere. Whether or not she is the original Madelyne depends on how you interpret her appearances since 1995.

[phoenixzero23]

Jean having Maddie memories loses meaning if Maddie is still the evil clone lurking. I think the whole point of that exchange was to give closure to this in a way that somewhat reconciled both characters, making Maddie a part of Jean.
But if they existed separately it is just Jean having other woman memories.

[FUBAR007]

Jean having Maddie memories loses meaning if Maddie is still the evil clone lurking. I think the whole point of that exchange was to give closure to this in a way that somewhat reconciled both characters, making Maddie a part of Jean.
But if they existed separately it is just Jean having other woman memories.

I agree.

Unfortunately, that ship sailed in 1995.

[Hypestyle]

so what is Ms. Pryor's current status? Alive? Dead? Something else? Evil? Good?

[Havok83]

so what is Ms. Pryor's current status? Alive? Dead? Something else? Evil? Good?

unknown. You should read FUBAR007's post for her last appearance in 2013's X-Men