The rest of the team was chosen for their investigative capability: Eye Boy for his x-ray vision, Rachel Grey as the resident telepath (“She’s our team’s James Dean,” Williams’ says), Prodigy because “his powers make him an investigative Swiss Army Knife,” Daken because the team needed a “fucky thot enforcer.”
And Magneto’s daughter, Polaris? “Northstar may be the team leader,” Williams said, “but Polaris is the north star. For everything.”
Northstar is one of Marvel’s earliest openly gay characters, and his wedding to his husband Kyle was the first depiction of a same-sex superhero wedding in a main DC or Marvel continuity. His inclusion in X-Factor offers Williams and Baldeón an opportunity to unpack a different kind of minority relationship in the X-men world: A mutant married to a baseline human.
“Kyle is a human living in a world built for and by mutants — comparatively an outsider [...],” Williams said. “We’ll see a lot of their married life and will be exploring all the important nuance to their living situation in Krakoa. (We’ll actually see a lot of every X-factor team member’s romantic life...) Tini Howard [Excalibur, Thanos] and I might also be collaborating on a really exciting story involving human existence in Krakoa, so be on the lookout for clues about that in one of our books!”