x-men re-examined: the dark phoenix

I haven’t read nearly as many comics as these reviews would suggest. Most of the background I provide on the comics is just me doing my homework. But I did read the original “Dark Phoenix” issues, probably the summer before these episodes aired. As a kid, I loved the action and the drama, the fabulous powers and the ever rising stakes. On top of that, I don’t think I’d ever read anything resembling a tragic romance before, so the ending hit me like a train. The collected issues of the Dark Phoenix Saga were, briefly, the greatest thing I’d ever read.

The Dark Phoenix Saga was one of the biggest events in comics, and its importance to the X-Men franchise really cannot be overstated. Its ten issues introduced The Hellfire Club and all its members (including fan-favorite antihero Emma Frost), Kitty Pryde, and Dazzler. Senator Robert Kelly also makes his first appearance, chatting with Sebastian Shaw about restarting something called the Sentinel program. It’s the first time Wolverine demonstrates a healing factor. The story culminates in the death of Jean Grey, which Marvel managed to honor for the next six years. The Phoenix Force would become a part of her and telepathic mutants generally from then on, for better or worse.

The original idea was that this was going to be a permanent villain turn for Jean. Chris Claremont had been amping up her Phoenix-based powers for years, and eventually she was so much more powerful than the rest of the team that she made more sense as an antagonist, or so the writers’ room felt. But they overshot. When Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter realized that the Phoenix would be snuffing out an entire star system, killing billions of people, he argued that it was too evil an act to go unpunished. So the Saga ends with the suicide of Jean Grey. Before the rewrite, the Shi’ar were just going to depower her.

Running alongside the galactic dramatics are the personal stakes. The Dark Phoenix Saga is a romance and a tragedy. It’s Jean’s feelings that really get her (and the universe) into trouble, feelings which intensify as she and Cyclops become more intimate. Cyclops even quietly proposes to her just before the climactic final battle that will end her life.

But that’s the comics. The show’s take on the story is different in some very important ways. The Phoenix doesn’t commit genocide in this story—the star system she destroys is lifeless. She’s still a tremendous threat to the universe, so she still ends her own life, but gets resurrected moments later. After all, the show just did a dramatic self-sacrifice in the previous saga, which as originally aired, was only three episodes ago. Ironically, the show delivers us the “Jean gets depowered” ending that the comics didn’t.

The show stays faithful to the comics in other ways, creating a set of episodes that feels unlike most of the series, in a good way. Cyclops is extremely effective in a fight and manages to be an interesting person, for example. The Hellfire Club/Inner Circle’s psychological manipulation of a young woman is still mostly there, shockingly. Jean and Cyclops may already be married on the The Animated Series, but this is the first time they show real chemistry, and it works. Catherine Disher finally cuts loose and delivers the cackling demon I’ve wanted to see for two seasons now. When I think of the ’90s version of Jean Grey, this is who I’m thinking of.

Overall I’d give this story a “pretty good,” with “Part 2: The Inner Circle” being the standout. The story deals with topics that most Saturday morning cartoons would never touch, and it does a decent job of it. I just wish the show’s version of “The Phoenix Saga” hadn’t preempted so much of the drama in “The Dark Phoenix”, but I’ll have more thoughts on that in the season 3 wrap up.

Part I: Dazzled

Season 3, Episode 14. Air date: November 12, 1994

Remember Jean Grey’s climactic sacrifice at the end of “The Phoenix Saga”? Well never mind, she’s back now. The X-Men have her chained up at Muir Island, and are desperately trying to figure out why the Phoenix has gone from benevolent to bonkers. Professor Xavier hypothesizes—and each of these four episodes will reiterate—that the Phoenix seems addicted to the emotions and sensations that it can experience through a physical body. Infinite power plus human urges are a dangerous mix. The end result is Phoenix as ravenous demon, and Xavier’s treatments are barely keeping her in check.

Cyclops is, for once in his life, trying to take his mind off things. “You’ve been worrying too hard about Jean,” Gambit tells him, which is a remarkable thing to say about someone who recently became the avatar of a cosmic power, saved the universe, committed suicide by plunging into the sun, and then mysteriously reappeared, uncontrollably shooting fire out of her face. Anyway, the boys are out at the club to see downtown’s latest hot act, Dazzler.

Dazzler has a small role in this story, mostly to create an “it’s not what it looks like” moment between her and Cyclops that will push Jean into the arms of another man. So let’s take a minute to talk about Dazzler’s behind-the-scenes origin story, which is fascinating. She debuted in X-Men #130, November 1979, and was built to capitalize on two of 1979’s hottest trends: disco and Bo Derek. Derek had rocketed to sex symbol status that year courtesy of a raunchy Dudley Moore vehicle. She was such a hot commodity that Hollywood execs rushed to plan a whole multimedia extravaganza around her, which was to include a movie, an album, and yes, a Marvel Comics tie-in. But subsequent flops like Tarzan, the Ape Man sank Derek’s career as fast as it had risen, and the media blitz never happened. So Marvel was left with a tie-in character who was never going to tie in to anything, sporting an aesthetic that felt hopelessly dated the minute the clocks rolled over to 1980.1 It’s fun to see The Animated Series use Dazzler’s more updated punk look, but never forget that she started out as a flamboyant diva literally powered by disco.

What should have been a fun night is interrupted by some masked goons who attempt to abduct Dazzler. It’s our first taste of the Hellfire Club Inner Circle,2 a secret society of insufferable elitists in 18th century cosplay with three goals: control the world through politics and finance, collect the most promising mutants, and bicker like they’re playing Vampire: the Masquerade. Cyclops handles the goons without much trouble, and Dazzler blinds cyborg Donald Pierce for good measure. Back at Inner Circle HQ, we’ll meet the rest of the coterie: Sebastian Shaw (energy absorber), Harry Leland (can make objects arbitrarily heavier), Jason Wyngarde (illusions), and Emma Frost (telepath).

The Dark Phoenix Saga marked the debut of the Hellfire Club. They’d do a lot to enrich the franchise, but none more so than Emma Frost, who rapidly became a fan favorite. It’s not hard to see why. She uses her formidable psychic powers for social gain and looks great doing it, too. Over forty years of comics, she’ll go from villain to antihero (even leading the X-Men and teaching ethics at Xavier’s School), gain an awesome secondary mutation (she can transform into solid diamond), and mentor a quintet of her own clones known as the Stepford Cuckoos. But none of that has happened to her yet. This is the conniving, climbing, corseted version of Emma Frost. In this story, she’s there to recap the events of The Phoenix Saga, theatrically trash talk Xavier’s defenses, and help Wyngarde seduce Jean Grey, whom they’ve clocked as an exceptionally powerful mutant.

This is the key thing about the Dark Phoenix Saga. It’s about desire first and foremost, and how dangerous it is for women to have it. In the comics, Jean and Cyclops are becoming much more intimate, having recently established a permanent psychic bond (and a very physical one, too). This coincides with Wyngarde’s telepathic seductions, in which he makes Jean believe she’s a maiden in a colonial-era fantasy world. This is adult stuff, and the show only censors it in the sense that its treatment of these topics is compressed and not explicitly sexual. Yes, this episode has fights and energy blasts, but the primary action here centers on the seduction of one of the main characters. The breaking point comes when Jean mistakenly believes that Cyclops has been cheating on her with Dazzler. There’s no getting around what this story is about, and I’m surprised (and impressed) that the show decided to tackle this at all.

Jean becomes increasingly erratic over the episode, torn between her conflicting identities as Jean Grey, as the Phoenix, and as a pawn in Wyngarde’s romantic fantasies. By the time she sees Cyclops and Dazzler together, she’s completely addled. She “marries” Wyngarde just as the team converges on Inner Circle HQ. The good guys are a poor fit for the Circle’s weird power set. The coolest moment of the brawl—straight out of the source material—is when Leland waves his hand to dispatch Wolverine, making him crash through four floors and land in a sewer. It’s a short and kind of random fight. Crucially, it ends with Jean making her villain turn, subduing her former teammates and officially joining the Inner Circle.

Stray observations:

  • “You would leave me to be with another woman??? Go then!” It’s nice to see Catherine Disher finally ham it up as Dark Phoenix. Likewise, Tracey Moore’s campy take on Emma Frost makes the heavy exposition more entertaining than it should be.

  • Storm wears a fantastic red and gold hooded cloak while tending to Jean in the infirmary.

  • Early in the episode, Cyclops stumbles home from the initial Inner Circle fight to find Wolverine cutting up salami with his claws. Wolverine even asks after Gambit, who’s still out partying. We haven’t had a nice slice of life moment like this since “The Dark Shroud”.

  • On the toilet: Jubilee, for the entire multi-part saga. In the comics, the start of the Dark Phoenix Saga introduces a promising young mutant named Kitty Pryde, but there isn’t room for it on the show. With Kitty deleted from the story, there’s no role for Jubilee, either.

Part II: The Inner Circle

Season 3, Episode 15. Air date: November 12, 1994

When I was reading the Dark Phoenix comics and watching the show at age twelve, I’d completely missed what was really going on with the Hellfire Club/Inner Circle. This isn’t just some group of bickering baddies who get what they deserve in the end. It’s more than that. This is a boy’s club bent on controlling women, and in particular powerful ones like Emma Frost and Jean Grey.

You can’t miss it, the subtext is just text. The whole episode revolves around control of the Phoenix. Wyngarde brags about bringing the Circle its most powerful member yet. Then, to reassert his control over Phoenix, he subdues Cyclops in a too-long psychic duel (but fails to kill him due to Cyclops’s bond with Jean). There’s a lot of carping about whether Wyngarde really has things locked down, most notably from Emma Frost, who is much, much smarter than any of the men at the table (she’s also been holding off Professor Xavier’s psychic intrusions singlehandedly). Wyngarde goes so far as to claim that because he controls the Phoenix (his words, not mine), he should lead the Inner Circle over Shaw. When the Phoenix inevitably breaks free and leaves the Circle and the X-Men to fight it out amongst themselves, Shaw says, “I need no help from a woman to destroy the X-Men!”

Meanwhile, Wolverine is busy making his way up from the sewers. It’s a fun B-plot where he gets to intimidate goons (including a “Do I feel lucky?” line read from Cal Dodd) and munch on turkey legs while commenting on the lousy wine and the dumbness of the Inner Circle’s colonial aesthetic. Speaking of, the Circle’s histrionic politicking is surprisingly fun to watch, especially the sneering thumbs-downs that every member gives Shaw to remove him from the Chairmanship in favor of Wyngarde.

Wolverine shows up just in time for Wyngarde to point the Phoenix at him, again trying to prove that he’s the one in control. Phoenix starts setting Wolverine on fire, but flashes back to their romantic moment in “Captive Hearts”, and is unable to finish the job. This also jostles her out of Wyngarde’s trance. With the words, “I tire of your squabbling. Amuse yourselves!” she turns off the X-Men’s power suppressing collars (they’ve been standing there like furniture for most of the episode) and blasts out of the room, initiating the best brawl in these four episodes.

Harry Leland’s ability to make other objects heavier seems oddly specific, almost like it was tailor made for the moment when Wolverine lunges at him from a balcony, causing Leland to panic and use his powers, accidentally crushing himself. I will allow it because watching Wolverine pound this jerk straight through the floor is extremely cool. The fight’s other best beat is at the very start: the instant Cyclops has his powers back, he blasts Leland through a wall and demolishes the floor under Shaw. The sheer speed of it is shocking, a reminder of how formidable Cyclops is supposed to be. He does more cool stuff in the first five seconds of this fight than in the forty episodes that led up to it. Everything I’ve just described is straight out of X-Men #134, so thanks, Chris Claremont and John Byrne!

Wyngarde catches up to Phoenix on the roof and tries to get her back under control. It absolutely does not work, as Phoenix instead offers Wyngarde a small glimpse of her true self, putting him in a coma.3 As Cyclops reaches her on the roof, she declares, “The mortal Jean Grey is no more! I am fire made flesh, power incarnate!” Fire made flesh, folks! I wonder what that’s about.

This episode has it all. The melodrama of the Inner Circle, Wolverine John McClane-ing his way back up to the drawing room, delightfully over the top performances from every villain, a great brawl, and the interpersonal drama that’s been sorely lacking since season 1.

Stray observations:

  • Pierce and Shaw narrowly escape the building, vowing revenge. Emma Frost, meanwhile, exits on her own.

  • Rogue, fighting the cyborg Donald Pierce: “Thanks for the hand, sugah. I’ll bet these cybernetic thangs cost an arm and a leg.” I promise it sounds funnier than it reads. Lenore Zann continues batting 1,000.

  • Phoenix can’t bring herself to kill any of the X-Men, despite multiple opportunities to do so (really, she could have obliterated the entire building at any point). The episode does a nice job reminding the audience that Jean is still kicking around in there somewhere.

Part III: The Dark Phoenix

Season 3, Episode 16. Air date: November 19, 1994

This chapter is neatly divided into three parts: the Phoenix toys with the X-Men, departs to go eat a star, and then returns for a rematch in which Jean’s love for her husband and teammates ultimately contain the out of control desires of the Phoenix (with a significant assist from Xavier). Then the Shi’ar show up and demand that Jean Grey be executed.

It’s a decent enough episode, but kind of straightforward compared to the last couple of chapters. I find it’s more interesting to think about this episode relative to its other versions. The most important difference between The Animated Series and the source material is that in the comics, the star that Phoenix consumes is part of an inhabited system, resulting in the deaths of ten billion people. On the show, however, the D’bari star system is lifeless and uninhabited, as a nearby Shi’ar science vessel will strenuously explain. It’s this act that necessitated Jean Grey’s death at the end of the original story, mind you, so I can already tell we’re in for a different conclusion on the show.

The X-Men debate how to handle Phoenix and realize (courtesy of Cyclops’s insights) that Jean is still in there, somewhere. So the rematch is conceived as a rescue mission rather than an execution. There’s even a moment when Wolverine could have ended Jean’s life, but can’t bring himself to do it—you can tell because Cal Dodd screams, “I CAN’T DO IT!” This is strictly better than the events of X-3: The Last Stand, in which Wolverine definitely does kill Jean Grey in the most grunty, Powers Face-y, unimaginative way possible, because in the movies Wolverine is the only character who matters.

Catherine Disher carries this episode, repeatedly shifting between arch-villain Phoenix and the Jean we know and love. One of her first lines in the opening fight is, “You wish me to return to the cold nothingness of space? You wish me to give up the body?? Never!” Again, what could the Phoenix be a metaphor for?

Stray observations:

  • Blink and you’ll miss it, but Beast has a picture from Carly beneath his computer’s monitor.

  • The opening fight also includes a little Gambit/Rogue flirting. I’m glad to see it, as the show has basically given up on this thread since season 1, but the middle of a losing fight against a living inferno is a weird time for it.

  • Jean has a cyclops doll in her childhood bedroom.

  • The heavy eyeliner and crazy hairdos of the Shi’ar make it seem like they rule the galaxy through glam rock.

  • I know it’s supposed to be Jean’s parents and adult sister in her childhood home, but the show gives them no lines and shoves them so far into the background that they kind of read as a terrified throuple who’ve rented Jean’s old house.

Part IV: The Fate of the Phoenix

Season 3, Episode 17. Air date: November 26, 1994

The big melee that takes up the back third of this episode, between the X-Men and Lilandra’s Shi’ar randos, is not great. More than any other brawl to date, it feels like action figures smashing against each other. Rogue gets to have the most fun with it, particularly in her rematch against Gladiator.

Gladiator: We have fought before, Rogue. You know you cannot match my power.

Rogue: Aww, give a gal a little credit!

And then she punches him through a wall.

But the point of the episode, and indeed this whole four-part story, is not the fight. It’s about Jean Grey’s heart, and what sets it on fire. Human emotions combine poorly with the limitless powers of the Phoenix, presenting an incredible threat to the universe. While the Phoenix did not commit genocide in the show’s version of events, there’s nothing to stop her from doing so next time, as Lilandra points out. While the Empress of the Shi’ar would have preferred to simply execute Jean on the spot, Xavier roots around in Lilandra’s mind (which he’ll pay the price for later) and digs up an irrefusable rite of trial by combat. That an empire as ancient as the Shi’ar still honors something so barbaric is awfully telling, but Beast is the only person to remark on it.

Everything that happens in the run-up to that combat is much more interesting than the fight itself. Jean and Cyclops share a private moment, debating whether she should even be allowed to live. Jean is well aware of the risk she poses to the universe, and even uses her powers to show that to Cyclops in no uncertain terms (all of Earth on fire, etc.). “You’re worth the risk,” he says. Back in “The Phoenix Saga”, he asked Corsair, “Is one woman’s life enough to risk the fate of an entire galaxy?” For him, the answer is yes. If this seems objectively dumb to you, well I hate to tell you, boys, but you’re watching a romance in superhero drag. Deal with it.

Meanwhile, Xavier tries to make nice with Lilandra, taking her on a psychic walk through a beautiful garden. She’s having none of it, though. She overtakes Xavier’s vision, reappearing in steel armor on a mountaintop and dumping him into a chasm. This is very badass and I wish the show had given it more time. Although the show hasn’t really developed the Xavier/Lilandra relationship, the message is clear: she’s an Empress first, and in the face of this galactic threat, her heart must come second.

As I said up top, the fight is exciting if you’re twelve, but not very interesting. Jean and Cyclops hide toward the end of it to steal one more romantic moment, one last declaration of their love. Then they rush back into the fight, and Cyclops takes a critical hit. Jean flies into a rage and unleashes the Dark Phoenix, proving Lilandra’s worst fears right. The X-Men team up to chip away at her, weakening her just enough for Jean to reemerge. Cyclops begs her to find a way to control the Phoenix, but she can’t fight against it forever, “not every second of every day”. She uses her powers to reactivate the weaponry on Lilandra’s orbiting ship, and with the words, “A part of me will always be with you,” vaporizes herself.

It’s a legendary moment in comics, and a powerful one for the show. Or it would have been, if the Phoenix Force—now separated from those troubling human desires and back to its old reliable self—didn’t immediately manifest as a flaming bird and resurrect Jean Grey. The one catch is that the body is lifeless; it needs a “spark” to become truly alive. Cyclops and Wolverine argue about which of them is going to sacrifice themselves, before the entirety of the X-Men volunteer to share the cost (like a timeshare, but for a human soul, I guess). Jean comes to, and the Phoenix Force helpfully teleports everyone back to the mansion.

The “everyone gives Jean a piece of their souls” thing is obviously a messy attempt to make up for the fact that Jean gets to live. As in “The Phoenix Saga”, where Jean’s final journey into the sun puts her out of reach but doesn’t technically kill her, the story is trying to have it both ways here. Kill Jean, but only for a few seconds. The main problem is that “The Dark Phoenix” is a romance, a story about emotions told on an epic scale, and that’s not really Saturday morning cartoon material. The show does a decent job with it, but the constraints of children’s TV (no sex, no death) inevitably lessen the stakes. The way the show portrays Jean and Cyclops’s relationship (again, very close to the comics here) is a real highlight. These two have been married since the start of season 2, but this is the first time they’ve had chemistry.

Stray observations:

  • Beast, after the team is teleported onto Lilandra’s ship: “I believe that the technology involves molecular dispersal and reconstitution. In the vernacular, we were moved.”

  • Lilandra must explain the trial by combat to her counterparts in the Kree and Skrull empires. I love that the Kree representative sounds like an aggressively normal guy, while the Skrull empress sounds like a seething lizard monster.

  1. There’s a lot of scholarly debate about whether the sudden demise of disco was a backlash against its heavy commercialization, or a manifestation of Reagan-era homophobia. But disco never really died. Listen to Jake Shears’s Last Man Dancing (2023), which rules. 

  2. The name “Hellfire Club” was deemed a little spicy for a kids’ show, so the writers opted to use the name of its elite Inner Circle for the whole organization. The club’s highest ranking members also have titles modeled on chess pieces. The writers wisely avoid using these, too, as names like “White Queen” and “Black Queen” would probably come across as a little problematic, even for 1994. 

  3. In the comics, this moment also reveals that Wyngarde was recurring villain Mastermind all along. Since there’s no precedent for him on the show, however, Jean leaves it at, “I’ve ripped away your disguise to reveal your true, ugly self.”