Some of the X-Men series’ supervillains are a perfect example of how the Marvel Universe has generated some of the greatest villains of all time.
Madelyne Pryor of the X-Men series, created by Chris Claremont, is a powerful villain in the Marvel Universe. She’s a nefarious Jean Grey clone. In issue #168 of Uncanny X-Men, she makes her first appearance.
According to Krakoa’s newest army of misfits, the Hellions, Madelyne Pryor, one of the X-most Men’s formidable opponents, has a long and tumultuous history with the men in the Summers family as well as her creator, Mister Sinister.
In this video, we’ll learn how the greatest supervillain of all time was developed, how she got to be who she is, and how deadly and dangerous her moves are.
The Origin of Madelyne Pryor
Madelyne had a solid resemblance to Jean Grey, who was considered dead at the time. Several people mistaken her for Jean reincarnated. Madelyne’s mind was locked to Professor X, and she was the lone survivor of a mysterious plane accident that took place at the same time the Dark Phoenix tried to commit suicide on the Moon.
Originally, she was a clone of Jean Grey, that was created by Mister Sinister. Mr. Sinister discovered that bringing the X-Scott Men’s Summers (Cyclops) and Jean Grey (Marvel Girl) together would result in a formidable mutant. Sinister wanted to be able to control a mutant like this and use it to battle Apocalypse.
Sinister planned to have Madelyne and Scott have a kid who he felt would be genetically a superior mutant. Madelyne had no life and did not form any mutant powers as Sinister had planned when she reached puberty. As a failed experiment, Sinister abandoned Madelyne in her incubation tube.
A spark of the Phoenix Force was mistakenly placed on Madelyne’s body at the moment of the Dark Phoenix’s death, reigniting Sinister’s desire. Because Madelyne was a genetic clone of Jean, it eventually got attracted to her. After Dark Phoenix perished on the moon, the Phoenix wanted to restore Jean’s spirit’s “borrowed” portion to her body, which was suspended. The Phoenix traversed the planet, disoriented when Jean instinctively rejected it. The Phoenix Force looked for the next best thing and gave Madelyne a sliver of itself, giving her life and part of Jean’s memories.
Madelyne encountered Scott in Alaska, where he was meeting his grandparents for the first time. Scott was immediately drawn to Madelyne because of her physical similarity to Jean from when they met. As a pilot for his grandparents, Mister Sinister played matchmaking by creating Madelyne, a personality he knew Scott would appreciate. Even after being duped for a brief time by Mastermind into thinking she was Dark Phoenix, Scott was astounded by how much Madelyne resembled Jean.
Scott proposed to Madelyne on the patio of the Starjammer after a whirlwind relationship, and the two married on the grounds of the X-Mansion.
One day when Scott and Madelyne were flying a geological survey team across Alaska early in their marriage, they were forced to crash-land by a bizarre storm. Thanks to Loki’s Firefountain, all non-super-powered individuals on the aircraft (including Madelyne) were given supernatural abilities. Madelyne could cure almost any injury, disease, or physical flaw as Anodyne. Because of Madelyne’s miraculous healing abilities, Cyclops could also operate without his protective glasses.
After his schemes failed, Those Who Sit Above in Shadow commanded Loki to return everyone to their natural state. Loki revoked all of his bestowed powers, and everyone Anodyne had treated was likewise regressed. Madelyne said she was pregnant during the event.
The Becoming of Madelyne Pryor
After learning that Magneto had joined the X-Men, Scott rejoined them. Madelyne was left in the mansion while he went on assignments. After receiving calls from other X-Men regarding her well-being but not from her spouse, Madelyne believed she and Scott were drifting apart. While Scott was fighting Fenris during Magneto’s trial, Madelyne gave birth to her baby in the mansion’s kitchen, whom she named Nathan Christopher Charles Summers. Nathan came from a suggestion implanted by Mister Sinister in Madelyne, Christopher came from Scott’s father, and Charles came from his father figure.
Their marriage got strained during their time away from each other. Madelyne despised Scott’s frequent absences and that he continued to miss Jean. Scott only married her because of her similarity to Jean, and he left to be with her and the baby as he lost his quest to head the X-Men. Scott grew distant from Madelyne, often abandoning her in the middle of the night. Despite Jean’s promises that he wouldn’t be allowed back, Scott abandoned Madelyne and baby Christopher to be with Jean and help form X-Factor in New York. Scott had abandoned their family, and Madelyne was devastated.
Maddie was recruited to fly a cargo jet to San Francisco for a significant sum of money and decided to bring Christopher along at the last minute. Mister Sinister quickly responded to Jean’s homecoming and despatched his Marauders to kill Madelyne and take her son before exposing the truth of her origin. Maddie utilized her inherent psychic abilities to protect herself, but her adversaries took infant Christopher.
Maddie was shot numerous times and left to die before being transported to a San Francisco hospital as a “Jane Doe.” Madelyne survived and awakened months later from a coma after experiencing nightmares about surviving an aircraft crash and the Phoenix’s flame bird. Sinister had wiped all records of Maddie and the baby, so there was no trace of them remaining.
With just eight X-Men present at the moment, Forge needed the essence of nine souls to shut the portal, so Madelyne decided to be the missing piece, and the group was changed into pure energy. The X-Men were finally brought back to life by the Omniversal Guardian Roma. After being revived, the X-Men and Madelyne resolved to take advantage of the chance to hide their reincarnation.
The X-Men returned to Australia, defeating the Reavers and reclaiming their headquarters. They also freed the villains’ enslaved teleporter, Gateway, a mute mutant aborigine who can make gates with his bullroarer. Roma arrived and handed them the Siege Perilous- a stone that produced a gateway offering judgment and a fresh opportunity in life (job, home, etc.) to anybody who passed through it, making them invisible to mechanical vision.
Maddie stayed inside the facility to familiarise herself with the computer systems while the X-Men went on missions, and Madelyne observed Scott with Jean while watching the news. Maddie was contacted in her nightmares by the demon S’ym, who played with her doubts and lured her with enormous power. Madelyne gradually succumbed to the evil part of her nature and assumed a torn black costume.
Maddie trailed Storm to the Savage Land when she fled in the middle of the night, and the X-Men left soon after that. Maddie was abducted and brought to Genosha with Jennifer Ransome and a newborn after responding to a bogus emergency call from the Press Gang and flying a plane for the Australian Flying Doctors. N’astirh, a demon in captivity, tried to reach Maddie, but she urged him to try again later.
The Genosha scientists couldn’t decide whether Maddie was a mutant or a human, and when the Genegineer arrived to check on her, Madelyne’s latent powers had killed all the Magistrates investigating her and destroyed her observation lab; they had also mentally attacked a representation of Dr. David Moreau himself, but Maddie had no memory of what had happened. When the X-Men arrived to save Madelyne, she had broken out from her cage and held the kidnapped child. Madelyne, lonely and enraged, began an affair with her brother-in-law, Alex.
Some Major Turning Points in Madelyne Pryor’s life
She went to Jean Grey’s grave, where she was discovered by John and Elaine Grey, who mistook her for their daughter. Maddie became enraged and transformed them into monsters. She traveled to the orphanage where Scott grew up after following a hint N’astirh provided her regarding her son. She saw Sinister, who eventually revealed that she was only a clone manufactured by him to produce a child from the Summers bloodline and that she had already served her purpose.
N’astirh persuaded her to sacrifice the infant Nathan so that he could maintain the demonic presence on Earth. She reasoned that by doing so, she would be able to exact retribution on the ones who had wronged her the most, i.e. Cyclops and Sinister. She reverted to her original Madelyne Pryor form and persuaded the X-Men that Cyclops and X-Factor were pursuing her child. Both squads engaged in combat. She captured Havok and transformed him into her “Goblin Prince.” She was far more powerful than he had anticipated, and she managed to flee.
The X-Men and X-Factor resolved to work together to combat the demons at one point, and they accomplished so, eventually destroying N’astirh. Only the Goblin Queen remained after Illyana Rasputin, AKA Magik, managed to return all the demons to Limbo. She has tremendous abilities and represents a significant threat. She wrapped herself and Jean in an unbreakable telekinetic bubble at one point.
Her hate for Jean drove her to decide to telepathically link the two of them and murder herself, allowing Jean to feel the full extent of her suffering. When she died, the Phoenix Force that had invaded her body and all her memories were transferred to Jean. Jean inherited Maddie’s memories and maternal instincts, and she and Scott were raising the child. Until Apocalypse infected him with the techno-organic virus, Scott had no choice except to send him to an unknown presence who guaranteed that the kid would live. This is how Cable came to be.
Nate Grey was seeking a helping hand when he arrived on Earth 616 from the Age of Apocalypse, and he met Madelyne’s ghost on the Astral Plane. Selene, the Hellfire Club’s Black Queen at the moment, recognized her and whisked her away to Paris. Selene dispatched Maddie to beat and capture Trevor Fitzroy, and she succeeded. Sebastian Shaw tested her when Selene introduced her to him as the new Black Rook, and she quickly passed by fighting the Scribe of the London Hellfire Branch and yanking Mountjoy from her. On the Astral Plane, she had a rendezvous with her son, Cable.
She told him everything about himself and his birth. She invited him to join forces and control the world with her, but he politely declined. After that, he met with her and reconciled with his mother. She was last seen with X-Man before being slain and sent to the astral dimension. She lingered there like a ghost.
She stayed confined in the astral realm for a long time until she realized she wasn’t as powerless as she believed and that she still had access to the demonic abilities she had as the Goblin Queen. Hence, she materialized herself in the physical world once more under the title “Red Queen.” She began a sadomasochistic relationship with Empath as the Red Queen to learn everything she could about Cyclop’s current companion, Emma Frost. She even fooled Cyclops into thinking she was Emma Frost and slept with him without realizing it.
Spiral did the best she could to recreate Revanche’s body. She injected the body with Psylocke’s psi-force using the magical spell. She wanted to test the technique, so she dispatched some Sisterhood members to catch Psylocke and others to retrieve Revanche’s body from the cemetery.
She dispatched her Sisterhood to battle the X-Men as she worked on her plot to implant her consciousness into Jean Grey’s body. She thought she had succeeded, but the X-Men replaced Jean Grey’s body with a decoy at the last moment. Madelyne was stuck inside the body until it burned up, and she was liberated into the astral realm.
Mr. Sinister’s abandoned State Home for Foundlings is where Madelyne returns to her natural body sometime after founding the mutant state of Krakoa. The newly created Hellions are ambushed by the Marauders, whom Madelyne has revived and manipulated with her sorcery on their quest to destroy the facility.
However, before the ceremony can be finished, Scalphunter shoots Madelyne, sending the demons back to reality and leaving her to die in Havok’s embrace. Havok and Cyclops subsequently request that Madelyne be revived by the Five, but the Quiet Council votes against it after considering the matter. Madelyne was a clone of Jean, and they don’t want two of the same person on Krakoa simultaneously.
Dangerous Feats Performed by Madelyne Pryor
Madelyne/Goblin Queen sought to take the Beyonder’s power once more. She attempted to spread her evil across the Multiverse by using her enhanced abilities and the Nexus of All Realities within Havok’s mind. Still, Havok could defeat her, erase the Goblin Force from existence, and return the freed Madelyne to her home reality before he, too, returned home.
After the last fight for control of Limbo’s invading troops, Goblin Queen attempted to gain power and permanently open the gateway by sacrificing her baby son Nathan Christopher Charles Summers/Cable and some of the other children as a demonic sacrifice, but the X-Men stopped her.
Mister Sinister was sent to supervise a troublesome gang of mutants commanded by Kwannon/Psylocke. Sinister ordered them to close down one of his old cloning facilities in Havok’s orphanage. They discovered that Madelyne Pryor had returned, tortured, and enslaved Sinister’s cloned Marauders squad and used them as her zombified attack force in her as-yet-unknown plans.
Pryor attempted to remove Jean Grey’s body from her coffin to take over her body because she was a clone of Jean Grey made by Mister Sinister and given life by the Phoenix Force. Still, the X-Men were able to exchange the bodies, and Madelyne’s return was postponed.
After Pryor pledged to resurrect someone they had lost, Lady Deathstrike, Chimera, Spiral, and the Mastermind sisters joined her, and she even revived Kwannon/Psylocke as an angry ghost. Though the Sisterhood was beaten and disbanded, the ancient entity, Arkea, would later rebuild them, freeing Pryor to plot her imminent return.
After Madelyne was abandoned by her husband, the demons S’ym and N’astirh approached her. They offered her the evil power of the Goblin Queen, which she accepted while dreaming, but she would use the power and the pact to help discover her unborn son, the mutant who would grow up to become the man known as Cable.
Madelyne’s Powers and Abilities
Madelyne was cloned from Jean Grey’s DNA; therefore, she was effectively another version of Jean, with Jean’s telekinetic and telepathic powers manifesting much later. Madelyne stated that, like Elizabeth Braddock, she could only be held in a body capable of harboring such tremendous psychic abilities when she was a psychic ghost, equating her powers to Psylocke’s.
Madelyne’s telekinesis is strong enough to move, lift, and control massive objects, use her telekinetic talents to fire powerful, mental, concussive blasts, concentrate her psionic energy into a near-impenetrable force barrier, and elevate herself to fly at high speeds. She can Reality Warp, which means bending the quantum strings that make reality within a localized area through precise telekinesis.
She was blessed with significant Telepathic abilities. She possesses the power to camouflage her existence and the presence of others from those around her. She can hide her existence from others and create a mental barrier around herself and others to safeguard their brains. She has other powers like Mind Control, Mind Possession, Mind Alteration, Mind Transferal, and Mental Detection. She can cause temporary mental or physical paralysis or induce total amnesia.
Madelyne is capable of casting a wide range of primary and sophisticated spells. She can transfer her astral form into astral worlds or physical planes from her mortal body. She may teleport over significant distances by psychokinetically shunting herself in and out of the astral world. She can absorb psychic energy from other psionic mutants. She can call numerous goblins, demons, and other beings via evil sorcery.
Madelyne Pryor: The Powerful Mutant
Madelyne Pryor is undoubtedly one of the most powerful mutants that the X-Men ever had to deal with. Her numerous strategies tend to hit a particular nerve with the X-Men because of her link to Jean Grey and her history of atrocities she has performed against the X-Men, the Earth, and even the Multiverse over the years.