WARNING: The following contains spoilers for X-Force #3, by Benjamin Percy, Joshua Cassara, Guru-eFX, VC’s Joe Caramagna and Tom Muller, on sale now.
The X-Men have always had a fickle relationship with death. Most superheroes have died and dramatically resurfaced at one point or another, but the X-Men and the rest of Marvel’s mutants have an especially pronounced reputation for coming back to life, like clockwork. While fans have come to expect the inevitable resurrection of any fallen X-Man following decades of sudden returns, House of X made it a tangible part of the X-Men’s world. On the new mutant homeland Krakoa, the Five, a powerful group of young mutants, have combined their powers with Charles Xavier’s psychic copies of mutant brains to create a standardized way to resurrect mutants.
With all of that in mind, the recent assassination of Xavier takes on a very different light. Where Professor X’s death would’ve been a cause for mass mourning a few years ago, it’s just another problem to solve in the age of Krakoa. Although Beast and Jean Grey had some concerns about their ability to use Cerebro to restore Xavier’s mind, the X-Men are successfully able to revive Xavier in X-Force #3.
At the end of X-Force #1, Xavier was killed by an unnamed group of genetically engineered superhuman commandos. While the X-Men are still learning about them and the mutant-hating organization that sent them, rumors of his demise were starting to circulate around the greater Marvel Universe.
To address the situation, Magneto steps out to talk a small crowd of reporters who’ve gathered outside of a Manhattan portal to Krakoa. Before he can say anything, Xavier emerges from the portal, wearing the black suit and modified Cerebro helmet that he’s hardly been without since founding Krakoa.
Without ever mentioning that he died, Xavier makes a grand public spectacle of his return before assuring the media that he’ll always be around to honor Krakoa’s obligations and treaties with humanity.
As a data page in the issue reveals, Xavier received a warm welcome on Krakoa, where the mutants he gathered together all embraced him in their own way. Contrary to the jubilant celebration that surrounded Xavier, Magneto gave his old friend a far more ominous homecoming gift: a sword forged from the shards of the Cerebro unit that was shattered by the assassin’s bullet.
Taking the gift and its implied meaning to heart, Xavier and Magneto quietly gather the key figures in the investigation of his death and subsequent resurrection. Then, Xavier recruits Wolverine, Beast, Jean Grey, Sage, Domino and Quentin Quire into X-Force, a covert operation meant to quietly counter foes like the organization that assassinated him.
Earlier in the issue, Xavier opened his eyes in the amniotic fluid of the pod where he was reborn, which marks the first time his full face has been shown in months. Thanks to the constant presence of Cerebro, the top half of his head has been covered since House of X introduced Krakoa to the world.
With plot points revolving around extradition treaties and international exports, the establishment of Krakoa has already been treated with more relative realism than most fictional countries. However, this issue opens Xavier’s eyes, in a less literal sense, to another harsh fact of nation-building.
Even though the collective might of mutants represents the ultimate superpowered deterrent, Krakoa still has enemies who aren’t afraid to strike. To combat those threats, Xavier realized that Krakoa needed a clandestine intelligence-gathering operation and a covert strike force to act on that intelligence.
Even though Xavier hoped that mutants had evolved beyond the need for that kind of X-Force, his decision to reform the team shows that the need for it is still there. By doing this, Xavier proves that Cyclops was right to reform the team as a strike force for similar reasons in the 2000s and that Wolverine was right when he kept the team going for the same reasons throughout Uncanny X-Force in the 2010s.
Despite X-Force’s history, it wasn’t clear if that team had a place in Xavier’s vision of the future. As Xavier realized in this issue however, the team can still be a positive force that does the necessary work of protecting mutants from those that still hate and fear them.