Originally Posted by
RachelGrey
Also, we forget that part of the reason Magneto was so unstable on Avalon is because he found out Moira messed with his head, this is canon and happened at the time! He couldn't trust that anything he was doing was his own choice or Moira's programming and it made him paranoid and may have had him have a mental breakdown! They even showed that during the Avalon storyline, Magneto was unstable and it was so bad that Xavier did the only thing he could think of to stop him, Xavier wiped Magneto's mind!
Even after Magneto recovered several years later, he was on and off in conflict with the X-Men! During Avengers Disassembled Magneto was so worried about Wanda that he whisked her away to Xavier and this is where it was 100% confirmed that Magneto was not responsible for what happened in New York because he was actually laying low at the time trying to figure himself out after getting his mind back! New York was a result of Xorn being angry at Magneto for not rising up to lead mutants, so he stole Magneto's name!
So Magneto rescued Wanda from the judgement of the Avengers and took her to Xavier in the hopes that Charles could somehow help Wanda recover mentally! But when Quicksilver found out that Wanda and Magneto had been tracked to the ruins of Genosha he rushed to his sister and convinced her to create the House of M! After the world reset, Magneto lost his temper with Pietro and was angry at him for using a very unstable Wanda to change reality when Wanda was so mentally unstable so he struck Pietro down! Wanda was unstable and saw her brother die so she punished her father by doing "no More Mutants"!
Magneto went on a long journey to get his powers back with the help of the High Evolutionary! Finally his journey brought him to Utopia and he decided to support Scott's leadership! Magneto has been helping the X-Men ever since!
Even when he decided to become a "villain" again, it was because he saw the future, he was going to draw the human hate onto himself and free as many mutants as possible from the human governments imprisoning, experimenting on, and killing mutants! Magneto attacked several mutant detention centres that the US Government had built and freed all of the illegally imprisoned mutants and killed the O.N.E. agents that were killing and experimenting on mutants!
Magneto came at Jean's request to help in X-Men Disassembled to fight X-Man and Legion! That is why Magneto was also pulled into the Age of X-Man because he was standing with Jean during the event!
When they all returned, Magneto stood with the other heroes after helping Scott defeat the O.N.E. forces and freeing all of the imprisoned mutants! Obviously Moira and Charles reach out to him soon after this to try again with a unified front, and so the three of them layed down the plan to help the mutants flee the world wide genocide to Krakoa!
So yeah, Magneto has been a villain a few times, but he is also a passionate freedom fighter for mutant rights in the face of continuous human attempts at genocide! He allies with the X-Men multiple times, and he has even helped save the world several times! He uses morally questionable tactics, he is an arrogant prick, and kind of a narcissist sometimes, but he genuinely wants to help his fellow mutants, and he is willing to set aside his vendetta against human racism by trying to do things a bit more peacefully as Charles wants!
This is the novel of Magneto's life, a story that took several years to right, has setbacks and progress for his character, but there is also growth, and a growing development of understanding with all of the X-Men! He has also realized how badly he messed up with Pietro and Wanda, to the point that Wanda erased their relationship from reality! They even showed how haunted he was by this in the Age of X-Man when he and Storm were both remembering the old universe! Magneto was having dreams of Pietro and Wanda and kept scratching at the surface of the Age of X-Man reality! Now that Magneto is back in the normal reality he is working harder to work with Charles and follow Charles' lead! Magneto is also trying really hard to repair his relationship with Lorna and to fully acknowledge that he needs Lorna in his life!
Magneto is a flawed man, and he makes terrible mistakes, but at the same time when times are tough he often rises above his own faults to be a hero for both mutants and humans!