The X-Men’s biggest problem has never been the hatred of mutants or the evil actions of supervillains, but their own inability to advance. It feels like every couple of years the X-Men move through the same plot points and the same arcs, only to be reset back to square one each time. This is of course a problem for every comic book character in some shape or form, but it is especially bad for the X-Men, who spend years carving out an exciting new direction in the face of tragedy, adversity, or hope, only for it all to be immediately thrown back to the comfortable status quo. And nearly every time Marvel resets them, they do so using Jean Grey. Jean is Marvel’s mutant reset button, both emotionally and physically and it’s something that is holding the X-Men back.
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Jean is an Emotional Crutch
Jean Grey, especially with the original team, is the heart of the X-Men. She is more often than not the team’s emotional center, being the one everyone can turn to when they need a shoulder to cry on, or someone to understand them. She is phenomenally caring character, who is always there to support her friends and those that she cares for. Most prominently, she and Cyclops are known to have one of the best relationships in Marvel, however, this is perhaps the biggest point where Jean is consistently used to reset a standard. Jean and Scott are Marvel’s premier love story, so they constantly want the two together, but at the same time they repeatedly tear Jean away. These periods always follow the same pattern, where Jean disappears and Scott moves on, such as with Madelyne Pryor and Emma Frost, only for Jean to return and for Scott’s other relationship to immediately fall apart as he runs back to Jean. This has resulted in massively controversial and out of character decisions, such as Scott and Madelyne’s marriage falling apart and Emma and Scott never resolving their own relationship before it was thrown under the rug and forgotten about.
Of course, the other most famous example of Jean’s existence resetting someone’s emotions is Wolverine. When he first joined the X-Men, there was a plot point of Wolverine developing feelings for Jean, which were decidedly unreciprocated. Eventually Wolverine moved on from Jean, developing several other relationships that were both much healthier and far less hated by fans. And yet, every time Jean returns from some convoluted absence, Wolverine almost immediately goes back to harboring intense love for her, which drags up the same tired, old love triangle that nobody really likes. These emotional resets always coincide with a break in the other person’s character, with Wolverine or Cyclops throwing away years of character development to go back to devoting themselves entirely to Jean. Of course, while these moments are annoying, what Marvel does with Jean on a cosmic scale is much worse.
Jean Always Signals a Return to the Comfortable
Take a look at every time Jean returns from the dead and what that does to the X-Men. Prior to the retconing of her original death, Cyclops had happily retired from superheroing and was living with his wife and son, and the rest of the original X-Men were members of other prominent superhero teams. Then Jean returns, and all of that is thrown away for the formation of X-Factor, which saw the original team reconnect. Then Jean died again, and soon after there was the ever so classic storyline of the Phoenix Force returning and corrupting one of the X-Men, thus leading to a beloved character’s tragic death, except this time it was Cyclops killing Professor X. And again at the end of the Krakoan age, it is Jean who restores all of the mutants’ lives, which inadvertently leads to the island of Krakoa ascending to a higher realm. This, against many fans’ wishes, brought the X-Men back to a much more familiar style of heroics, which although I think was for the best for the team, is seen by many as a step backwards yet again.
These are just a scant few examples of how Marvel always uses Jean as a reset button for its mutant characters. So many pivotal moments are defined either by Jean’s death, her return, or something relating to the Phoenix Force. Jean is an incredible character who deserves to be treated as such, but so often she is downgraded to the “person that makes the change that undoes everything” in the X-Men comics. Now, for the first time, Jean is on her own in her own title, and perhaps this means we will get to see Jean be allowed to grow as her own character, instead of being defined as a bulldozer for others.
