Originally Posted by
Harpsikord
The thing is that before Byrne hopped on board, Claremont was actually perfectly fine continuing Phoenix as she was without going full on Dark with her. That's where a lot of my issue with Byrne and this story comes from - it's entirely out of left field, and he convinced Claremont that Jean HAD to go dark because it was a woman with power on par with other cosmic level heroes, who were men, so they were allowed to have that power. I agree that she does have more agency than just being left as 'the wife' in the Dark Phoenix Saga, but I can't help but feel that it was ultimately unnecessary. Even if he was going to write out Jean and Scott all along there was no reason not to just have them retire, at least for a bit.