WARNING: Spoilers for Hellions #18 ahead!
There is no-one in the Marvel Universe more passionate about mutant freedom and independence than the iconic Master of Magnetism himself, Magneto. And yet, if the newly released Hellions #18 is to be believed, the once-supervillain Magneto is now comics’ biggest hypocrite, having been convinced by Professor X to abandon all of his ideals and values just to further their own long-term agenda at the expense of the individual freedom of mutants.
Magneto is the X-Men’s most famous villain, and his role as a mutant supremacist terrorist has been central to his character for decades. Of course, it is Magneto’s personal experiences during the Holocaust that gave him such passion and fervor for his mission of mutant liberation at the expense of humanity, but that just makes the hypocrisy he is currently displaying during the Reign of X era even more troubling. The nation of Krakoa was founded on the “compromised” principles of the two biggest proponents of what mutant liberation should look like, Magneto and Professor X, with Xavier successfully convincing Magneto that coexistence with humans is possible, albeit at the expense of total freedom for mutants.
In Hellions #18 – from Ze Carlos, Rain Beredo, Stephen Segovia, and Zeb Wells – the team has just returning from a disastrous rescue mission where Orphan-Maker brutally slaughtered two humans. This killing breaks a central tenet of Krakoa, their law “Kill no man,” and Magneto is almost immediate in condemning Orphan-Maker to the terrifying prison called the Pit. Magneto has literally killed hundreds of humans during his time as a major supervillain, and has even teamed up with major villains like the literal Nazi Red Skull in attempts to defeat humanity and its superheroes. This is not the first time that the Quiet Council, and Magneto, have agreed to sentence a dangerous mutant to Krakoa’s unseen prison, but Orphan-Maker’s mental state and past trauma make Magneto’s absolutism truly appalling.
Magneto’s whole philosophy used to be that every mutant is special and unique and that even a mutant with inconvenient abilities (or mental health issues) is more important to mutantkind than any number of humans. He agreed as much in Hellions #1, in which Mr. Sinister proposed that he should be given control of the team’s rehabilitation after their criminal acts, arguing that if Krakoa asks some mutants to go against their true nature, it can never be paradise. To see Magneto so quickly agree to throw Orphan-Maker – raised in perpetual childhood by the villainous Nanny - into what is essentially state-sponsored solitary confinement shows how far he has strayed from his principles. In the recent Inferno #3, Magneto discusses how Xavier was able to successfully convince him that mutant coexistence with humans is possible, and it’s clear now how far he’s prepared to go in service of that dream.
Magneto’s new philosophy might be understood as a true change of perspective were it not for other recent events. X-Force has revealed the black-ops team have been approved by the Quiet Council to kill human and machine life outside Krakoa’s laws, and X-Men: Trial of Magneto has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that when Magneto himself falls afoul of the law, he’ll fight tooth and nail to do whatever he thinks is best.
While Magneto’s terrible decision is certainly hypocritical, one thing that can be said about him is that he is at least consistent in how ruthless and cold he is towards mutants and humans. The newly broken-up Hellions team are incredibly angry at the Quiet Council’s decision to imprison Orphan-Maker (and Nanny, since she offers to join him), and as Inferno shifts the balance of power in the mutant nation, Magneto may soon be in a position to actually pay for his callous treatment of the most vulnerable mutants.
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