The X-Men are one of Marvel’s biggest superhero teams. They fight for the dream of a world where all people can live however they choose without fear of discrimination or prejudice. They’ve long stood as mutantkind’s staunchest protectors and have battled against threats to the world and universe at large. The X-Men have proven, time and again, that they will never back down, no matter how dangerous the threat. They will always fight to make the world a better place, even when on the verge of extinction. However, while the X-Men are always heroes, the individuals who make up the team can’t always hold onto their virtues quite as well.
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The X-Men have almost all taken a ride on the darker side of things at least once in their careers. For some, they almost seem to be more keen on being villains than heroes. Today, we’re looking at five X-Men who spent a good deal of time as antagonists to their own heroes, and exploring why this change of heart actually worked. All too often, when heroes break bad, it seems contrived or for shock value, like everything that’s happened with Professor X in the last twenty years. These are some of the few exceptions, where them being villains was both interesting and made sense. With all that said, let’s examine these extreme X-Men.
5) Angel
Warren Worthington III is one of the founding X-Men, usually going by the codename Angel. After the original five went their separate ways, he struck out on his own, occasionally returning to help his fellow mutants. He flew back into X-superheroics full time when he helped create X-Factor, only for a horrible battle to leave him broken, with his wings needing to be amputated. Apocalypse took this opportunity to kidnap and brainwash Warren, turning the former winged hero into his loyal Horseman of Death, complete with retractable metal wings and blue skin.
Warren was rechristened as Archangel, a name which defined his career to this very day. Archangel was in a bad spot long before Apocalypse found him, battling grief at his loss, pain, and the never-ending pressure of a world that hated him on two fronts. Becoming Archangel gave him a new purpose and let all those tensions explode onto the world in glorious action. Archangel became the ultimate embodiment of Warren’s negative emotions, and his time as a Horseman gave him a special niche in the hearts of X-fans of all kinds. The best part was easily the fallout, watching Warren put his life back together after such trauma and destruction.
4) Beast
Beast was another of the original X-Men who went over the deep end, only he didn’t need mind control. Hank’s fall was slow, taking decades and countless little compromises that eventually sold his soul. As the genius of the group, Hank often pushed himself and was pushed to create solutions for the constant threats of extinction the team faced. Couple that with crippling self-worth issues and a constant barrage of grief, and you have a recipe for disaster. In time, he started pushing his morals to the side for results. By the time he was in charge of Krakoa’s own version of the CIA, he was willing to lobotomize an entire country. Now, he serves as the Chairman of 3K, planning to convert the whole world into mutants.
Beast has always been a man at the edge of going full mad scientist. Heck, the entire reason he’s blue and furry is that he created a serum meant to enhance mutations, monologuing like a madman the entire time. His kind heart balanced his unchecked intellect and ego, but when he’s pushed, he’s proven that he’s willing to choose the latter. Beast is either the gentle heart of the X-Men, or the monster lurking over their shoulders, pointing them towards the “right” direction. He walks on a moral tightrope, and his fight to stay heroic is just as entertaining as when he falls into villainy.
3) Bishop
Bishop hails from a dystopian, authoritarian future where he was raised on bedtime stories of the X-Men. Eventually, he traveled to the past to avert his timeline and save countless lives. From there, he regularly worked alongside the X-Men to prevent horrible potential futures or to save the present. He was one of the X-Men’s staunchest allies, but all of that changed with the Mutant devastation by Scarlet Witch, followed by the birth of the Mutant Messiah, Hope Summers. He was convinced that Hope would bring about his apocalyptic future, and sought to murder her as a child. He would go to unimaginable lengths, pursuing Hope and Cable through time and murdering millions throughout alternate futures.
Bishop came from a very dark world, raised in an authoritarian regime. He’s always been an ends-justify-the-means person, and his crusade to stop Hope’s potential villainy was taken to the ultimate extreme. At first, he hesitated when he had the chance to shoot Hope, but he kept pushing farther and farther until he could justify wiping timelines off the map in pursuit of his goal. His journey to the dark side was the best showcase of what a slippery slope his justifying mentality is. Once one line is crossed, it becomes far too easy to keep crossing others.
2) Professor X
Professor X is the man whose dream inspired the X-Men. It’s through his endless optimism and pushing for a better tomorrow that the X-Men draw their hope and guidance, but around the 2000s, it became very popular to make Charles as scummy as physically possible. Nowadays, this psyop has people questioning if Charles has ever been a hero at all. He has, and he will be again, but as much as I hate what’s been done to his character, that doesn’t mean Charles being a villain can’t work. Funnily enough, the best instance of that came well before his fall from grace, when he absorbed Magneto’s hatred and transcended as the villain Onslaught.
Onslaught was a horrifying, monstrous threat that shook the Marvel Universe to its foundations, and is easily the best version of evil Charles. The good professor constantly keeps his worst impulses on a very short leash, forcing himself to be as positive as possible and not give in to despair, always beating it back with hope. However, Magneto’s hatred infected him and unleashed all of Charles’s worst impulses, showing us all how dangerous he could be if he ever cut loose. This works so well because it goes against everything Charles stands for. It’s something he would never do. Now, this would just be par for the course.
1) Jean Grey
The original five X-Men sure do love to go evil, don’t they? Jean was the heart of the team, bringing out the best in everyone else and inspiring them to be better. She was even willing to give up her life to save her team from a crashing spaceship, but when she emerged from the wreckage, her unlimited power as the Phoenix was unlocked. Jean soon realized that she wasn’t the same woman as before; she was something more. And after some prodding mind control, her darker impulses consumed Jean’s mind, transforming her into Dark Phoenix. In this state, she wiped out an entire planet of five billion people, and would have done the same to the entire universe.
The Dark Phoenix worked because, while she relished in her villainous actions and was a genuinely terrifying force of nature, she wasn’t truly a villain. It was more that Jean was evolving into something akin to a goddess, and her human nature didn’t know how to handle that transition, leading to her new persona as the Phoenix to completely lose herself to human experiences. It was a messy, interesting extrapolation of what could happen to any person who loses themselves to a storm of power beyond their comprehension. It also helped that Dark Phoenix left an impact like no other villain before her, to the point where she’s still one of the scariest villains to ever do it.
The X-Men are bastions of hope and champions of coexistence, but even they can fall to darker impulses. What was your favorite time an X-Man lost themself to their dark side?
5 X-Men Who Embody Everything the Team Stands For (And #3 Needs His Own Series Now)
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