Personally, I think it's FAR weirder that Jubilee got turned into a vampire for the better part of a decade. And then adopted a baby who was being used as a body by a supervillain bacteria and who is currently a dragon in another dimension.
One of the X-Men's brightest heroes, Jubilee, spent almost a decade as a vampire until one of Marvel's most powerful forces reignited her powers.
www.cbr.com
An orphaned child adopted by Jubilee. While in Otherworld he transforms into a dragon.
comicvine.gamespot.com
Why is Moira a villain now? And King Pin, Mystique and others are good guys? I mean, I realize there's always going to be heel turns and face turns. But what the heck is going on?
Daith hit the high points, so I'll try not to repeat what he covered.
But, I will add that, at the VERY start of this Krakoa Saga, it was revealed that Moira was secretly a mutant all this time. She had the mutant power to basically relive her life over from the start every time she died. And every time she died from different events wiping out the mutant race entirely. So, she tried using her powers to create a plan to stop mutants from being wiped out, since she couldn't keep reincarnating unlimited times. It was Destiny herself who actually told her that she could only do this 10 or 11 times, max, in one of these alternate timelines. So, Moira decided that THIS would have to be the time where everything went right, since she believes she's currently on her last life.
(This part is my headcanon: I think it's possible that the original head writer for this saga, Jonathan Hickman, was originally going to use Moira's different lives to try and attempt to explain why there are so many different alternate futures for the X-Men. Days of Futures Past. The Cable future. The Bishop future. Etc. I think Hickman was originally going to have them ALL be from different lives that Moira lived. Those timelines lived on, even if she reincarnated, and caused those alternate timelines that are so predominate in X-Men comics. Explaining why there are so many different bad futures and alternate future X-Men running around in the comics. And also explaining why these alternate future X-Men don't disappear whenever the timeline changes. (Other than Marvel's stance that all alternate futures BECOME their own realities and don't get over-written by one another) It's ALL the result of Moira's other lives. But that's just MY theory, and has never been confirmed.)
So, Moira told Xavier about ALL of that. And Xavier told Magneto. And all 3 of them ended up making a plan to create Krakoa to change the future, and avoid all the bad ends that Moira experienced in her other lives. They hid her in a underground bunker in order to avoid anyone finding out about her. And so that if needs must, she COULD try and use her power in order to reset the timeline and try again.
It's also worth noting, that Xavier granted amnesty to ALL the mutant villains, since this was supposed to be a fresh start for all mutant kind. And...frankly, they needed some of the skills and abilities some of the villains had to make Krakoa work as it's own independent nation. It DID backfire on them, in numbers of ways, over the course of DOZENS of books.
Moira tried to keep Destiny SPECIFICALLY from being resurrected, because Moira and Destiny had beef from that other timeline I mentioned before. Moira was worried that Destiny would tell everyone about how doomed the mutant race was, causing everyone to panic, ruining Moira's plans. Like she did in that OTHER past life that I mentioned, where Moira tried to create a mutant cure, but Destiny had stopped her. And everyone died from robots. Again. Mystique REALLY wanted her girlfriend back, though. And eventually found a way to bring Destiny back.
All these lives that Moira had lived had also left Moira bitter about the fate of mutant-kind, believing that they might be doomed no matter what she did, so she was already tempted to try to use a mutant cure she created in one of these past lives on all the mutants, so that they wouldn't end up dying. She thought if all the mutants all lost their powers, they wouldn't be targeted to be killed. Like in every other timeline she had lived through. Mystique actually ended up using Moira's own cure on Moira herself, in order to prevent her from over-writing this timeline with another of her lives. Moira did end up escaping, though.
Oh, and Moira turned herself into a cyborg, after she lost her mutant powers and found out she had lung cancer. She was also being hunted down by Mystique, who wanted to kill her. So, ALL that kind of lead to her going to the villains, just to protect herself from getting murdered.
So, Mystique is basically a "good guy" now, as a combination of amnesty for her past crimes as well as basically being treated as a Catwoman-type. A sympathetic villain who only really wanted to live a happy life with her girlfriend in a immortal mutant paradise. That didn't work out, either.
So, yeah, it's POSSIBLE that going over to the villain's side is somehow all a part of Moira's plan, and that she's going to do something at the last minute to redeem herself, but...they're going to have to do some serious work, if they EVER want to make her a "hero" again, after what she did to her ex-lover, Banshee. And killing Jean (she's...probably coming back soon as the Phoenix returns to the X-Men comics after a LONG stint of the Phoenix playing a big role in Jason Aaron's Avengers).
Straight out of a horror film!
screenrant.com
There's a whole theme in the Krakoa era of mutants, who are the "natural" evolution of humanity, having to ultimately face off against robots and cyborgs. Because, that's the "artificial" evolution of humanity. Humans can just side-step mutantdom and augment themselves with robotics and AI, in order to avoid dying out to mutants. It's two different paths to the future fighting against itself, ultimately. Which I think is a neat high concept.
Also, it's worth noting it's not really the Sentinels who will gain sentience and eventually rise up. It's the Dominion. Who are...do you remember Warlock from the New Mutants? Well, they retconned it so that his race the Technarchy, are actually just ONE stage of a Matryoshka Doll style cosmic robotic hivemind, with different scales of complexity and power. The Phalanx were retconned to be the next step up on this new hierarchy. With the Dominion being the highest level of this robotic intelligence, living inside of black holes outside of time itself. Basically, they're a cosmic-level version of the Borg, integrating everything and everyone into their robotic hivemind. The goals of 3 out of the 4 Mr Sinisters is to try to BECOME the head of this Dominion. But, one of them has already succeeded, somehow, and there can BE ONLY ONE Dominion, since they rule all timelines and can manipulate the timeline itself.
(We haven't actually seen who the head/creator of the Dominion is yet, but it's HEAVILY implied to be one of the Sinisters. Again, I have my own theory for this: I think it MIGHT be NONE of the Sinisters we actually know. I think it might be a version of Mister Sinister from a timeline where Hickman's original plan played out. Basically, a world where Hickman never left the X-Men comics. That way, we can get a miniseries where Hickman can write HIS version of the story...and it can still be kinda-sorta-canon. It can just be the origin story for the Dominion-Sinister. The Dominion can manipulate timelines after all, and there's no reason to think that the Dominion originates from the world we've actually been following. Giving us a way to have our cake and eat it too. Quantum!)
So, currently, most of the mutants on Earth have been teleported off world. Some are on Mars, which the mutants terraformed to be habitable earlier, and it's HEAVILY implied that the villains are lining things up to just BLOW up Mars entirely. Most are actually in the White Hot Room, where the Phoenix comes from. And there's only a handful of mutants left on Earth to fight back against the cabal that framed them for trying to take over the world.
As far as the Kingpin being a good guy goes. It's less about him being on the side of the mutants, and more about getting revenge on the people who took his wife from him. I guess over in the Daredevil books, Kingpin really grew to love Typhoid Mary. Weird couple, but go figure. He thinks ORCHIS killed her, but she's actually in the suburbs of Asgard. It's complicated.
This has all been a VERY interesting saga, and I'm hoping they can do justice to the conclusion. It sounds like it's all going to wrap up by July or so. I would definitely recommend parts of these books. But...there are a LOT of books, that's the biggest problem. And there HAVE been some ups and downs. But, the road to the ending has been fun so far.
*Looks over what I wrote* This turned into more of a thing than I originally planned. But, that's what happens when you try to summarize 4 years of X-Men comics. Hopefully, this all made some semblance of sense.
). Dr. Stasis is a pro humanist version working with the ORCHIS group ( the anti mutant forces including the Sentinels). Mother Righteous is a version of Essex’s wife who has become a prominent magic user and has presented herself as a self styled god. And Orbis Steleris is withered old version stuffed in a giant orb who looks to the future in the stars and their alien technology. And each has the playing card suit of their own on their forehead. Sinister has the Diamond, Righteous has the heart, Stasis has the club, and Orbis the Spade.
