Originally Posted by
Spidercide
Remember between the late 1990s-mid/late 2000s Marvel made a cottage industry out of killing off the female love interests of male heroes, especially if they were married. Betty Banner, Mary Jane (she came back but was intended to be dead for over a year), Janet Van Dyne, Karen Page, Jean Grey. And many outright marital/long term relationships folded up one way or another. Whether it was Betty coming back but she’s not married to Bruce, or Lilandra and Xavier, Scott and Jean, Rogue and Gambit, Peter and Mary Jane, Jonah and Marla, Harry and Liz and yeah Cyclops and Jean it was a joke.
There obviously was/maybe still is an in-house mentality that those types of relationships are reductive, in particular to the male heroes in the equation. Noticably Cyclops for instance wasn’t killed off again so JEAN could be made more interesting and when he had been he came back much sooner than Jean did than when she died in the 80s or the 2000s.
So however you slice it Jean wasn’t going to come back in the run succeeding Morrisson’s no matter what.