X-Men: Forever #2 - Review/Spoilers

[JB]

As the opening page tells us, this issue works as a companion piece to Rise of the Powers of X #4. This issue gives us a more focused, detailed look at what transpires on Atlantic Krakoa while the primary movement of the story happens in Rise. Because of this I'm going to do a very quick recap but it's worth reading the issue for a deeper look into things.

We open with the preview pages, Xavier communicating through the melting Mother Righteous avatar. He tells Hope, Exodus, and Destiny to bring Rachel back and give her whatever she needs to help Jean. He also tells them to apologize to Rachel's X-Men as they didn't understand the road their words would lead him on. As the avatar becomes a puddle Xavier tells them to resurrect all the X-Men who died in Orchis' purges and to lead them.

Rasputin is resurrected (as we saw in Rise) and Destinys suggest they bring back Sinister. She says it was his suggestion to keep the fifth Cerebro cradle on Atlantic Krakoa so it's thanks to him they can bring everyone back. He's brought back and immediately asks why. Destiny says she told him they needed to be on the same side.

Destiny talks about what Xavier has been up to and about Enigma, etc. Rachel enters and she argues with the remaining QC members who are in agreement with Xavier's actions. Hope says this is war and that for once humans are sharing the cost of casualties that mutants usually suffer. Exodus is all in, of course. Rachel eventually reluctantly agrees and Hope tells her of the plan to return to earth to defend Krakoa but first... Rachel already knows, she needs to be present for the Phoenix plan. (The art is so pretty.)

Before Xavier melted Destiny asked him about their "deal." Hope brings it up again and Destiny tells her and Exodus that Nightcrawler is her and Mystique's son. Hope is sweet about it and congratulates her. Kafka overhears them then say that the X-Men will be returning to earth to fight. He wonders what about the rest of them?

Rachel is visiting with Jean when Prodigy enters. For the sake of time I'm rushing through this but it's an interesting scene. Rachel pushes Prodigy into the Krakoa vines/branches that make up a nearby wall and, using her Askani powers, pulls out of him information he received from the M'Kraan Crystal shard that was in his chest and insert it into Krakoa. She says some of those dimensions have the Phoenix in them. She's imprinting all of this data into Krakoa which she'll include in the pyre. She says it seems that the Phoenix is at the end of its existence and has to be re-created.

Exodus and Kafka talk for a bit, Kafka feeling like those that are going to be left behind don't really matter. Exodus says they do matter, that they are the important ones because they are Krakoa. Kafka says he and the others won't be missed and Exodus says he will remember Kafka, remember all of them.

The group of X-Men are now meeting with Sinister in the middle, working in a puddle. Hellion is there as well as Archangel, Surge, four of the Cuckoos. Who else do y'all spot?

Sinister says he was able to move No-Place X between dimensions and, though it'll drain Atlantic Krakoa dry, he should be able to persuade Atlantic Krakoa to reality jump to connect with its Pacific self. This is quite sad as the remaining mutants will be with very little resources and they have no way to get home it would seem. Sinister pours a liquid on the ground and vines start to grow. The vines wrap around Destiny and the other X-Men and turn them into flowers. Hope, with Kafka beside her, wishes them luck. There's a bright flash and the flowers disappear, the entire area now looking barren where a moment ago it was lush.

Hope tells Kafka that when they bring the Phoenix back that it's going to take a lot of work to rebuild Atlantic Krakoa but that he and others can handle it. He asks her why she stayed behind and she says she has messiah &%$& to do.







Gorgeous art and very interesting ending.

[Jackraow21]

Feels like Hope is going to give her life somehow to resurrect Jean as Phoenix. Or maybe she transcends into the WHR or something along those lines. But it feels like she’s being removed from the board in the new era. Possibly her father too. Back to basics and all that, which probably means continuity-heavy complex characters go away for now.

[MythicalChicken]

I'm loving this era mostly because I skip Duggan's work and focus on Gillen. This week was a feast, and also some long-overdue Rachel love.

Otherwise, it seems this is Hope's swansong as much as Krakoa's which makes me sad because Gillen has made me fall in love with her, and Exodus, as he said he intended on doing when this all began.

[CGAR]

im not gonna like Gillen is saving this ending for me BUT also im kind of lost.

[SugarMan]

Feels like Hope is going to give her life somehow to resurrect Jean as Phoenix. Or maybe she transcends into the WHR or something along those lines. But it feels like she’s being removed from the board in the new era. Possibly her father too. Back to basics and all that, which probably means continuity-heavy complex characters go away for now.

Yeah, I'm thinking something along those lines. It seems that the Phoenix is at its end (still not clear why), and Xavier's big plan is to reboot the Phoenix. But Jean needs to be "killed" in the WHR for that to happen. So, there's a couple of scenarios that could be going on.

1. Jean says the Phoenix is scared, because it's never ended before, and is fighting it. I'm assuming she means the reboot. Jean then ask Hope if she can do "something". That seems to suggest Jean is asking Hope to take her out so the reboot can be completed. (But Hope said only Phoenix fire could hurt Jean).

2. Or, Jean asks Hope if there is something she can do, and Hope instinctively knows to sacrifice herself for the reboot (which would need further explaining). It was alluded to earlier that Hope would die in Jean's name. And X-Men Forever is supposed to get into the "secret history" of the relationship with the Phoenix. We'll see.

One thing about all of this, the "reboot" of the Phoenix could be Marvel's way of clearing out the convoluted history of the Phoenix. A rebooted Phoenix with Jean could probably do that.

[Kingdom X]

Positives:

Like others have said Gillen is salvaging this finale, and really trying to honor the work of other writers. Also this is the most defined Hope has been in a WHILE, and if she gets taken off the board for a while I’m confident it’ll be a satisfying conclusion to the character.

Negatives:
1. I TRULY wish they had just combined this and RoTPOX into one series. Neither issue makes sense without the other. And it’s a not the fun kind of puzzle, it’s just oddly out of order.
2. Reviving Sinister again and making HIM the key to the mutant counterattack is just so over the top. We get it. If they needed Doug’s power idk why they didn’t just write Doug a role in this finale.
3. I wish they had made it clear that all the background, named mutants had been dead this whole time. Interviews they had said that if someone wasn’t showing up then they were just in the WHR (which seemed odd because none of them were appearing in Immortal). Turns out Orchis killed way more named characters than we thought, which SHOULD have been a bigger deal.

[Viteh]

Positives:

Like others have said Gillen is salvaging this finale, and really trying to honor the work of other writers. Also this is the most defined Hope has been in a WHILE, and if she gets taken off the board for a while I’m confident it’ll be a satisfying conclusion to the character.

Negatives:
1. I TRULY wish they had just combined this and RoTPOX into one series. Neither issue makes sense without the other. And it’s a not the fun kind of puzzle, it’s just oddly out of order.
2. Reviving Sinister again and making HIM the key to the mutant counterattack is just so over the top. We get it. If they needed Doug’s power idk why they didn’t just write Doug a role in this finale.
3. I wish they had made it clear that all the background, named mutants had been dead this whole time. Interviews they had said that if someone wasn’t showing up then they were just in the WHR (which seemed odd because none of them were appearing in Immortal). Turns out Orchis killed way more named characters than we thought, which SHOULD have been a bigger deal.

Agree 100%. Reading one without the other feels so weird. We also have 2 issues of X-Men Forever before the next (and last) RotPoX issue, so a lot of the Phoenix stuff will go unexplained in RotPoX. Also I was so glad Sinister was finally dead, only for him to be revived here. We really could have just used Doug, since it was Gillen himself who hid him.

[MythicalChicken]

1. Jean says the Phoenix is scared, because it's never ended before, and is fighting it. I'm assuming she means the reboot.

I relate to the Mythical Chicken. I'm fighting the reboot too :-)

[PyroFN]

Yeah, I'm thinking something along those lines. It seems that the Phoenix is at its end (still not clear why), and Xavier's big plan is to reboot the Phoenix. But Jean needs to be "killed" in the WHR for that to happen. So, there's a couple of scenarios that could be going on.

1. Jean says the Phoenix is scared, because it's never ended before, and is fighting it. I'm assuming she means the reboot. Jean then ask Hope if she can do "something". That seems to suggest Jean is asking Hope to take her out so the reboot can be completed. (But Hope said only Phoenix fire could hurt Jean).

2. Or, Jean asks Hope if there is something she can do, and Hope instinctively knows to sacrifice herself for the reboot (which would need further explaining). It was alluded to earlier that Hope would die in Jean's name. And X-Men Forever is supposed to get into the "secret history" of the relationship with the Phoenix. We'll see.

One thing about all of this, the "reboot" of the Phoenix could be Marvel's way of clearing out the convoluted history of the Phoenix. A rebooted Phoenix with Jean could probably do that.

It could simply be that Enigma is progressing the omniverses end faster than intended. The Phoenix is supposed to die and be reborn into the birth of every omniverse.

[JB]

Yeah, I'm thinking something along those lines. It seems that the Phoenix is at its end (still not clear why), and Xavier's big plan is to reboot the Phoenix. But Jean needs to be "killed" in the WHR for that to happen. So, there's a couple of scenarios that could be going on.

1. Jean says the Phoenix is scared, because it's never ended before, and is fighting it. I'm assuming she means the reboot. Jean then ask Hope if she can do "something". That seems to suggest Jean is asking Hope to take her out so the reboot can be completed. (But Hope said only Phoenix fire could hurt Jean).

2. Or, Jean asks Hope if there is something she can do, and Hope instinctively knows to sacrifice herself for the reboot (which would need further explaining). It was alluded to earlier that Hope would die in Jean's name. And X-Men Forever is supposed to get into the "secret history" of the relationship with the Phoenix. We'll see.

One thing about all of this, the "reboot" of the Phoenix could be Marvel's way of clearing out the convoluted history of the Phoenix. A rebooted Phoenix with Jean could probably do that.

Agreed about the convoluted history possibly being rebooted which would be great. Starting fresh with Jean.

[cranger]

Destiny referring to Sinister as a mutant and on the same side is so bad. Hope being happy for Destiny is so forced. I don't want to read through the Destiny/Mystique/Nightcrawler reunion but at this point I am just sticking with this story to see if Gillen wraps up some Hope story and maybe tell if it was something he always had in mind before AvX ruined it.

[razzmatazz360]

Nice to have Hellion appearing in this issue

[Rift]

I love him so much

[CGAR]

I love him so much

He looks so good. And NO MORE ROBOT HANDSSSS

[Rift]

He looks so good. And NO MORE ROBOT HANDSSSS

Assuming he was resurrected, it makes sense. But it's okay, they can always get cut off later.