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The X-Men are keeping dangerous secrets and one of the inner circle is willing to trade them for answers to her own mystery.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for Marauders #37, on sale now from Marvel Comics.
Marauders #27 (by Gerry Duggan, Matteo Lolli, Phil Noto, Rain Beredo, VC’s Cory Petit, and Tom Muller) presents a frustrated Kitty Pryde searching for a solution to unlocking the Krakoan gates. Forge points Kitty to science and, in response, she seeks out Reed Richards, becoming one of only three people to make it all the way into the Baxter Building into Richards’ lab without sounding an alarm. To help her solve the mystery of the Krakoan gates, Richards asks for a trade: she must help him discover the knowledge Xavier stole from his mind. She agrees.
From the earliest moments of Hickman’s relaunch of the X-Men and the new nation of Krakoa, Kitty Pryde has been the odd mutant: she can not use the Krakoa gates. So, she is forced to travel the old-fashioned ways on land, sea, and air. Leaning into her role with the Hellfire Club, Kitty has taken on a pirate aesthetic sailing the oceans. Her inability to use the gates was not her only difference: Kitty Pryde was also the very first mutant unable to be resurrected. They had to discover that she was something truly different.
All of this is still a mystery. Richards and Pryde are now focused on what is at the core of Kitty’s difficulty with the gates. Is it as Forge says truly her ability to disrupt technology? Even more baffling is that Krakoa itself does not understand why. Yet, Kitty isn’t hesitant at all to trade in secrets to obtain a solution. In her role as Red Queen of the Hellfire Club, this is daily business. Kitty’s decision to work with Richards will have long-lasting repercussions, further separating her from Xavier and the X-Men and keeping her closer to the spirit of the Hellfire Club.
The mutants have been keeping secrets starting at the highest levels. The members of the Quiet Council have each had their own secrets that they held from each other. In Inferno, Doug Ramsay and Krakoa itself were discovered to have been secretly listening in to everything happening on the island. The very story of Inferno is of the most dangerous secret in the foundation of Xavier: Moira McTaggert and her many lives. Both Xavier and Magneto knew of Moira’s hidden mutant ability and kept the secret of her prior lives—more so, her death would restart the entire endeavor, erasing all that had been made.
Beyond this, the biggest secret might be that the mutants have found a reliable way to circumvent death with the resurrection protocols. This secret almost found its way into the public through reporter Ben Urich. However, X-Men #6 (by Gerry Duggan, Pepe Larraz, Marte Gracia, and VC’s Clayton Cowles) sees Urich’s investigation into the resurrection protocols foiled as Cyclops dies violently and publicly only to return, secretly, as Captain Krakoa. Cyclops is permanently out of the picture in the public eye less the secret of resurrection is revealed. The recent murder of Wanda Maximoff and her subsequent reappearance came close to revealing the secret to the Avengers. This is a secret that’s become increasingly more difficult to hide.
The entire mutant nation of Krakoa and its sprawling domain has been a leap ahead for the very nature of mutantdom in the Marvel universe. Yet, the isolation of the entire mutant race on an island that prevents nearly all access by outsiders creates suspicion. This is added to the already significant distrust of mutants in general. The mutants are distrusted for several reasons—one being their nebulous and shifting relationship with former evil villains such as Magneto and Apocalypse. Fans have speculated for years that the X-Men as a whole might be more villainous than heroic.
If Kitty Pryde is willing to reveal Xavier’s secrets to Reed Richards, other paths into the vault of mutant secrets are bound to happen. Richards also won’t just stop at one mystery—he’s relentless when pursuing a solution. His efforts are sure to reveal far more than Xavier wants out in the open. The ground is being laid for a Krakoan war between mutantdom and the Fantastic Four, potentially the Avengers, and many others of the superhero community. The big question though is whether there are still more secrets that have yet to come to light. There surely are and they’re sure to rock the future of the mutant nation and the world as a whole.
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