Is Magik considered a Hero, Anti-hero or villain?

[JasonEsta]

She's does the right thing alot but she can have underlying motivations at times and says slick things to people in general.

[WhiteQueenEmmaFrost]

She hasn't really done anything that would make her a villain. Most of her actions are against villains. She's more of a hero with occasional shadowy means the ends to those means are altruistic and align with the Xmen. She's no darker than wolverine or Psylocke

[sunofdarkchild]

From 2007-2012 she could have been considered an anti-hero. Even when she was doing the wrong thing, it was almost always against a larger villain or threat. During the 80s and since Bendis started writing her she's been a full-fledged hero with no 'anti' involved.

[WhiteQueenEmmaFrost]

To me even when she manipulated Colossus to agree to take Cytorrak's power. That wasn't evil, or an antihero move. She was trying to show her brother what it was like to be her. That she wasn't some snowflake anymore and hadn't been for a long time.

[jamgut]

I think you're think about this too literally. It's been shown in the Marvel Universe that magic can be (generally is even) a corrupting influence. That's what happened to Magik and sometimes it can happen to Doc Strange or the Scarlet Witch, for example. But these characters have, in various ways, learned to control those influences, while Magik has never really had any formal training in doing so. So it's not a matter of teaching her how to defeat him, but more how to control her powers and abilities so she doesn't get corrupted and can maintain dominance over Limbo, which is a known corrupting influence.

It also seems like you're not totally up on the most recent Magik stories, which have seen her shift more towards a greater command of her powers, and even less of a "mean streak" for lack of a better term. That change really started post AvX, and while it was shuttle in the Bendis X-men, that's where it started. It's never been explained, but I always suspected that, unlike the other Phoenix 5 members (well aside from Namor who had no ill effects of possession) Magik showed no signs of being "damaged" after possessing the Phoenix force. If you look back at post-resurrection Magik, she's been kind of "off" even after she was seemingly able to recover the pieces of her soul (at least I think she recovered them). But I wonder if the Phoenix force didn't "fix" Magik - (maybe anchoring those soul pieces or something) essentially making it so she was more similar in nature to New Mutants Magik.

Magik did suffer Phoenix damage, however, it didn't get revealed until the Dormammu storyline.

[Maestroneto]

To me even when she manipulated Colossus to agree to take Cytorrak's power. That wasn't evil, or an antihero move. She was trying to show her brother what it was like to be her. That she wasn't some snowflake anymore and hadn't been for a long time.

To be fair, she did admit she was insane.

[magnuskn]

Clearly a hero at this point.

[Ulfhammer]

IMO she's first a foremost a victim. Her origins are some of the darkest any x-men can claim. The x-men have all experienced trauma, even some as children, but not to the extent that she did. All the decisions that follow must be looked at in that light. A real child that experienced what she did would be suffering from PTSD and likely dissociative disorders and\or bi-polar. The fact that she is generally lucid and coherent is a triumph unto itself. The question of hero vs villain in this case is IMO one more for a psychiatrist than a comic book reader.

[Colossus38]

I think she's a hero who is deeply unstable. She was desperate for Piotr to understand that she wasn't innocent and was in both of their words "insane". Forcing the brother you love to be possessed by and serve an alien rage God, is not a sign of mental health. Still Illyana's motives are almost always good, with the exception of when she's Darkchilde and even then she fights her evil tendencies. She's a hero.

[244]

I've always saw Magik's character similar to Jean Grey and her "dark" phoenix side. When Magik goes "anti-hero", she's holding back the "evil" inside of her. It wasn't explicitly said but that's the gist I'm getting. Magik from Zeb Wells' "New Mutants" however was more darker.

[Mitteloss]

Remarkably, she's come through as a hero in recent years, and that development from the state she was in when returned in 2007 has been quite organic. Her dark experiences however have allowed her to detach herself from traditionally heroic norms and principles. Yet she's pulled through as a hero because those with such principles have stuck by her despite all the chaos she's caused during her insanity/trauma.

[Mike_Murdock]

From her original story until at least the point that she was written out of New Mutants, she was a Tragic Hero. After that, she was a McGuffin. Since resurrection, I think anti-hero is probably closer. She's not a villain.

[Confuzzled]

She's very firmly in hero territory.

[Havok83]

She's a hero. I dont see how she would classified as a villian. Even anti-hero is a stretch

[Cykewasright]

Zeb Wells run she was a anti-hero, Kierron Gillen run onwards she was a hero.