Moira was made a mutant with reincarnation powers for one obvious reason. If Krakoa era X-Men failed sales wise, all they’d have to do is kill Moira and wash all that way. In fact, I think they may have been the plan at some point. But because the Krakoa era was an amazing success, they removed Moira’s reincarnation powers and did the next obvious step. Make her into a machine.
Plus this gives the X-Men and Krakoa someone who really has a personal grudge against them. As for the dramatic change in her character, she was dead for 20 years. They brought her back as Moira X when they had some use for her.
It makes a lot more since as to why she worked so closely with Xavier and the X-Men. She had a mutant son, but so do a lot of people. There’s was something missing from her agenda. Glad Hickman filled it in.
“Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.” Goethe
Frankly, she would have been just as bad.
The only reason to make the plot devise that is Moira X any old supporting cast member is to needlessly throw all past canon into doubt, and to elevate Hickman's retcon's importance in the franchise, without doing any damn work.
Now, all past canon is some weird 'long game', and nothing matters until now. And we only care about the plot devise because it's wearing the face of a character we used to like.
“Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.” Goethe
Well that's true, the sad reality is that every character will eventually become only is superficial features with time. Some already had many times over. The fact is, Marvel's refusal to age them will always force some sort of reboot to the character. What we're seeing with Moira is just an accelerated version of what's already done with everyone else. Now, you can like it or not, but that's just unavoidable with this sort of media.
I don't see much of a problem with the retcon because to me EVERY character gets rebooted/retcon in some fashion when a new creative team comes at it. That's also why I don't really believe in the ooc argument anymore either, the voices will always sound different once someone else comes on. It's why a lot of people get into debates of how should Batman really be/act, because different writers have written him differently.
The problem was that Moira was used - it was that no effort was put in to connect this version with her past appearances. Nor the fact that Moira-X doesn't act or sound like old Moira. Hickman (a great writer) should have used her more by connecting those missing dots. Like what was she doing behind the scenes while she was on her island? How did the Muir Island Saga affect her plans? Did the Shadow King know about her past lives when it possessed her? What are her feeling for Kevin and Rahne? What was she doing after she faked her death? How did Xavier convince Lilandra to create a clone for him? Did he thrust his wife with his plans?
An one-shot could have answered most of those questions and more.
Yeah, can't have someone ally with mutants just because it's the right thing to do, that'd be crazy.
This is utterly ridiculous. By this logic, Cyclops can lose his powers and turn into a pro-human terrorist who hated mutants all along, and that'd be just fine.
Hmm this mademe think about it. Indeed any author write a character wildy differently but the core elements usually reamin the same. With Moira we got a complete overhaul. Honestly I do ot mind as she was effectively "dead" for so long, and while important she was always a supporting character, albeit an important one, close to Jameson-level of importance (can you imagine Spiderman without Jameson. Well at time , in ultimate and first reboot arc happened). But still she had not much for her characterization, only notable thing is that she was human friend of mutants, and over time just this fact had become a goddamn rarity (humans? Friends with mutants!? What is this madness!). As such it become more noticeable any changes changes that. But as I saidshe was "dead" for so long that it really did not matter.
As someone said, it was either Hickman or another soon or later. Or she would have ended as OG Captain Marvel...or Genis Vell....or Harry Osborne(ohhhhhh boy, Moira has NOTHING on what they did to the memory of poor Harry!).