Should Jean Grey have stayed dead after Dark Phoenix Saga?

[RachelGrey]

I was half joking but honestly I'm just sick of this tired ass question and the whole "Jean should have stayed dead cause muh darek phonix" mindset in general. If you're a fan of Jean, you wouldn't really want for her to stay dead forever. If you're not a fan of Jean, then Dark Phoenix doesn't really matter that much to you for you to bother about how it's sacrecy got blasphemed.

People like to blame her for kind of starting a trend as back then it was more unusual at the time for characters to come back, but even then she was the fucking PHOENIX. If it makes sense for anyone to ever come back to life, it's her. In fact they should have just went with that instead of the convoluted retcons that came with her return. And to me the idea that no characters deserve a second chance, and deaths absolutely HAVE to stick in a sci-fi/fantasy world like the MCU is dumb in the first place, so... Thank Jean's return for the fact some of y'alls faves aren't dead.

They even covered that a bit with Rachel.
1. She fought Necrom and died, was resurrected by the Phoenix that same day.
2. She went into the future 2000 years and fought against the Acolytes of Apocalypse, she died in her first battle and resurrected immediately. After that Rachel started taking massive risks as Askani and died at least six times before finally pushing the Phoenix force into Diamanda Nero as the only way to defeat Diamanda. Technically after that Rachel only had a small echo of the Phoenix force and she stopped being so reckless and started being more careful. However, after she died of natural causes in the Askani timeline Rachel resurrected again in the timestream where she reappeared at Gaunt's prison at the end of time where Cable ended up having to rescue her.
3. In current X-Force the Askani timeline still exists, so that means that when Rachel died as mother Askani, the Phoenix force resurrected her again and restored her to the timestream.

So yeah, I don't begrudge Jean getting a shot at multiple times to come back. It seems to me that Rachel and Jean both bore the Phoenix force longer than anyone else and they both probably have an echo of that power in them, so it's not unexpected that they they would keep coming back since the whole point of the Phoenix is to rise from the ashes of your death and resurrect. Life > Death > Rebirth in an endless cycle.

I would kind of like the comics to explore a bit more about the repercussions of being a long term Phoenix host, are Jean and Rachel immortal now, will they always resurrect even when they aren't even hosts anymore. Is there always a part of the Phoenix force permanently bonded to both of them. Rachel/Phoenix once told the members of Excalibur, Jean, and Charles that "Now and Forever I am Phoenix!" So my question is if you are resurrected even one time by the Phoenix does that mean you are permanently tied to it's power for good. Young Jeen appeared to be destroyed by the Phoenix at the same point that it resurrected older Jean, but then Jeen returned again from the White Hot Room. So after doing that one time as a teenager, was it almost pre-ordained when she went back in time that inevitably she would become a Phoenix host because she was already primed for it because of her experience while transported into the future.

Haha, I love trying to make sense of X-Men time travel, it messes with your mind.

[Force de Phenix]

Jean's death in New X-Men was weak and terrible. It shouldn't have happened in the first place in my opinion, but it did. They should create a new rule - if you've died and come back, you can't die a second or third time.

[Omega Alpha]

Yes, she should have been someone like Mar-vell or Uncle Ben, whose death is a fundamental part of the characters they affect; her returns lessens the impact of DPS and, while not the first, was the death that pretty much opened the revolving door of resurrections and cheap deaths.

Of course, Claremont himself was the first to lessen the impact by trying to have his cake and eat it too creating Madelyne as an exact copy and substitute of Jean, but still, it was clearly a mistake. Sure, some good stories were told with the character afterwards, but surely someone could create a good Uncle Ben returns from the grave or Mar-vell defeats cancer with magic or some non-sense and have good stories about him, but it still would be a horrible idea.

[Ulfhammer]

There's a big issue in comics when it comes to death and resurrection. I know there are fans of Jean Grey out there but what are her best stories and character development. I would argue that Dark Phoenix was Jean at her best. I wasn't really a fan of the 90's stuff and definitely not Morrison's garbage. So should Jean have remained dead after Dark Phoenix?

Because the X-Books are fantasy\sci-fi entertainment to me there's only two objective ways to look at this question.

1. Would her permanently dying have improved the Dark Phoenix Saga as a story?
2. Did her resurrection create entertaining stories without devaluing her original death story?

For myself I have to answer no to question 1 because her death was impactful enough in the story, because she was gone a significant period of time and because her death had a major impact on those around her that wasn't erased by her resurrection. For question 2 I have to answer yes, because for the most part her return and the major plots that's followed, which couldn't have been replicated as well with another character, are stories I enjoyed.

[Snoop Dogg]

Jean is a special case, where her resurrection without argument devalues her death because the method of resurrection is so incredibly bullshit that the entire premise revolves around the character not actually being there for her big story and one of the franchise's best stories and that it was actually a cwone wid awl uv hwer feewingzzz UWU

It is literally so bad that the entire human race, including all of us in this topic, are acting like in '86 she actually came back from the dead. We're calling it a "resurrection."

[Omega Alpha]

Jean is a special case, where her resurrection without argument devalues her death because the method of resurrection is so incredibly bullshit that the entire premise revolves around the character not actually being there for her big story and one of the franchise's best stories and that it was actually a cwone wid awl uv hwer feewingzzz UWU

It is literally so bad that the entire human race, including all of us in this topic, are acting like in '86 she actually came back from the dead. We're calling it a "resurrection."

Good point. Even if it was a good idea to resurrect her- which it wasn't, IMO- the method they chose was UNQUESTIONABLY stupid.

[spirit2011]

Good point. Even if it was a good idea to resurrect her- which it wasn't, IMO- the method they chose was UNQUESTIONABLY stupid.

Jean died not to make Dark Phoenix memorable, but because Shooter thought she couldn't come back from genocide.
It's funny that people think that Jean dying and keeping her dead make the story memorable. No, it isn't. It has nothing to do with keeping Jean perma death.
Like the story was adapted on tv, movies.

[Snoop Dogg]

Think about how messed up it is that DPS is so good, that Marvel readers, Marvel creators, Marvel editorial, Marvel corporate, and every single DPS adaption pretend that Jean was actually in it.

[Wiccan]

Jean is a special case, where her resurrection without argument devalues her death because the method of resurrection is so incredibly bullshit that the entire premise revolves around the character not actually being there for her big story and one of the franchise's best stories and that it was actually a cwone wid awl uv hwer feewingzzz UWU

It is literally so bad that the entire human race, including all of us in this topic, are acting like in '86 she actually came back from the dead. We're calling it a "resurrection."

Yeah. It's so stupid that they chose that way to retcon her death when they could have literally just resurrected her, which, wouldn't even be a retcon.

[Omega Alpha]

Yeah. It's so stupid that they chose that way to retcon her death when they could have literally just resurrected her, which, wouldn't even be a retcon.

I mean, the name of the character is literally Phoenix.

[GodfatherIV]

Why erase the thread. It's a simple question for intelligent discussion. Even writers have talked about it and there are differing viewpoints. The question could apply to any character in comics.... basically should dead mean dead? Personally I don't think I would have had her die in the first place

[Wiccan]

Why erase the thread. It's a simple question for intelligent discussion. Even writers have talked about it and there are differing viewpoints. The question could apply to any character in comics.... basically should dead mean dead? Personally I don't think I would have had her die in the first place

It's technically a totally fine thread, but is a subject that has been talked about to death(..ha?) and every Jean fan has to constantly see lots of people talking about how their favorite character shouldn't have ever been allowed to exist again after 1980 so of course it sucks.

[PrezValentine]

Nobody is acting like some posters do when Scott ir Emma are mentioned on interviews or talked about positively, so people on this thread wanting it gone is quite telling. As far as I have seen, nobody is bashing Jean or her fans, so it's a weird complaint to do. If you have an issue to report, this is a moderated forum, after all. The mods will surely listen to whatever you have to say.

[Omega Alpha]

I don't see why the question is illegitimate. Claremont himself wanted her to stay dead in the 80's.

[spirit2011]

I don't see why the question is illegitimate. Claremont himself wanted her to stay dead in the 80's.

He wanted her back, Shooter didn't want her back. Claremont just wanted her dead, because he already had Madelyne married to Scott