The X-Men are mutantkind’s premiere protectors and one of the most important superteams on the planet. While the Fantastic Four and the Avengers get all the recognition and the praise, the men and women of X are in the trenches doing the work that no one else wants to, fighting the greatest threats to mutantkind and the rest of the universe. They have been on the forefront of some of the most important conflicts in Marvel history, their actions having reverberations that color the way the mutant race is looked at by the world. They have saved their people – and the universe – many times over the decades. They’re the leaders every mutant looks to for guidance and defense.
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Some of their decisions have worked out rather well for mutants, helping make their lives better. However, the X-Men, under all of the superpowers, are only human; they make mistakes, and many times those mistakes lead to the lives of the mutants on the streets becoming that much harder. In fact, the team has made some mistakes that were downright disastrous for the mutant race in the short and long term. These five X-Men mistakes almost destroyed the mutant race, showing that maybe you shouldn’t put the traumatized soldiers in charge of anything.
5) Xavier Mindwiping Magneto
Xavier and Magneto are looked at as what amounts to husbands nowadays, but it wasn’t always that way (well, kind of; Claremont basically wrote everyone as bisexual). Once upon a time, their relationship was much more violent, with the two of them actually fighting each other. This is what happened in “Fatal Attractions”, which saw the mutant master of magnetism unleash a planet-crippling EMP. The X-Men’s Shi’Ar technology made them the only people who could get to Avalon, Mags’s new space station he stole from Cable, and a team went to end their rivalry once and for all. We all know what happened next – Magneto pulled out Wolverine’s adamantium skeleton and Xavier ended up mindwiping his former best friend. This was one of the most catastrophic events in mutant history; part of Magneto’s evil went into Xavier, leading to the 1996 event “Onslaught”, when an all-powerful being was born of the melding of the two, deciding to destroy humanity for mutantkind’s sake. This led to the world thinking that the X-Men killed the Avengers, which made tensions even higher, leading into “Operation: Zero Tolerance”, when Bastion was able to launch a major attack on mutantkind. It was a decision made in a moment of pain and it led in terrible directions.
4) Avengers vs. X-Men
Avengers vs. X-Men is way more complicated than Marvel tried to make it seem. See, in actuality, Cyclops was right; Hope Summers could have handled the power of the Phoenix; she was meant to do that by Jean Grey, her father (God, I love X-Men comics). His plan had no danger at all involved, but Wolverine was mad and Cap listened to his war buddy. However, that also doesn’t mean that Cyclops made the right decisions either. He didn’t trust anyone who wasn’t a mutant at this point, and even then only trusted his mutants. He knew the Phoenix Force was coming before everyone else and had a plan. If he would have included the rest of the superhero community in his plan, there’s a good chance that everything would have worked out just fine for every involved because everybody could watch and help. He also actively antagonized Cap and the Avengers – again, he was right in what he was saying, but he probably should have said it differently. It was a terrible situation for everyone and Cyclops was right for a lot of the book, but he also made some big mistakes that could have made everything different.
3) Not Working With the Inhumans Sooner
The Inhumans push was a major disaster for everyone. Marvel started it in 2013, trying to get fans into the concept of Inhumans sprouting out in the path of the Terrigen Mist clouds was the new normal of the Marvel Universe. At first, back when Matt Fraction was in charge and the whole thing was called “Inhumanity”, things were good. Then, after Secret Wars ended, the House of Ideas introduced the idea of the Terrigen Mists being poisonous to mutants (something that was never the case before; see Son of M), leading most mutants to Limbo where the X-Men could keep them safe and a burgeoning conflict between the two races. Beast went to the Royal Family to try to save mutants from Terrigen, but here’s the thing – the X-Men knew about the M-Pox before the Inhumans did and they knew about the Terrigen saturation that would have Earth uninhabitable for mutants first. They never stepped forward as a group to try and ask for help. Instead, they went out of their way to hide what they knew and plan for war. The Inhumans are definitely the worst of the two sides, but the X-Men could have made things easier for everyone.
2) The Destruction of Genosha
Genosha was an African island nation where the human elite used mutant genes to create mutate slaves, imprisoning mutants and experimenting on them. Eventually, Magneto was able to convince the UN to give him the nation and create a mutant homeland, which eventually led to Cassandra Nova destroying the sixteen million mutants who lived there. This event wiped out a significant portion of the mutant race and all because the X-Men had no idea what they were dealing with when they attacked Cassandra Nova. Wolverine and Cyclops went heavy on the fighting and less on the figuring out what was going on. It was honestly an easy mistake to make, but with some kind of information, there’s a chance more lives could have been saved. Of course, you could also say the X-Men were to blame because they didn’t take down Magneto before Nova attacked, making the mutant race spread out again. He lost his powers right before taking control of the nation, so it would have been way easier to kill him than they thought (Wolverine was using the Danger Room to wargame a mission to Hammer Bay to do the deed). There is a lot of blame to go around for the destruction of Genosha, but the X-Men deserve their share of it.
1) Krakoa
The Krakoa Era was often great for X-Men readers, not so much for the mutant race in the long run. It was honestly inevitable; Xavier, Magneto, and Moira MacTaggert laid the foundations of the island nation in secret, and there was a lot of rot in the center of Krakoa and its leadership. They allowed villains to have equal power to anyone else and decisions were made that allowed bigots to villainize the violent separatist ethnostate, making the job of the mutant-fighting Orchis Initiative ever easier. Everyone made mistakes in the Krakoa Era; the X-Men tried their best but they were forced to play a bad hand of cards in the best way they could. People like Cyclops were able to extend an olive branch, but it always felt like the Quiet Council did something that would cause everyone to take three steps back every time they went one forward. It often made for exciting stories, but anyone who thinks the X-Men did nothing wrong during this period has no idea what they’re talking about.
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