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It’s Official, This Classic X-Men’s Arc Is the Best They’ve Had Since Magneto
The X-Men have been one of Marvel’s biggest teams for decades, and a huge part of that is because they masterfully combined the human drama and superhero action that put Marvel on the map. The X-Men are, at their core, a character-driven team that is at its best when their emotional arcs are on full display. Magneto is one of the best-known X-Men characters, and he’s the perfect example of this emotional arc being on full display. His growth from a supervillain taking his anger out on the world, to a misguided man trying to protect people in the wrong ways, to a fully-fledged hero is one of the greatest in comics, and he is justifiably loved for it.
Now, after decades of Magneto’s dominance, another classic X-Man is going through an arc that is just as entertaining as Magneto’s, and might even dethrone the character development king of comics. Beast is known as the X-Men’s happy-go-lucky scientist who struggles with his self-loathing and remembering not to put logic before morality. In the past several years, Beast has transformed into an entirely different character, and his arc deserves to be celebrated.
A Fall From Graceful Man to Beast at Heart
Beast used to be one of the most optimistic X-Men. He suffered from serious self-confidence issues, but he genuinely believed in doing the right thing and that they could make the world a better place. Unfortunately, as is the case with almost all of the moral centers of the Marvel Universe, the 2000s hardened his heart. Beast started making compromises for what he saw as the greater good. He worked with the Illuminati and made deals with Mister Sinister, but his worst actions came later. After years of watching mutantkind fall apart and enduring multiple instances of being tortured, Beast decided to always put the ends before the means.
His worst turn came in X-Force (2019), where he was elected head of the titular team, which served as Krakoa’s version of the CIA. Beast truly lost his mind, acting as a monster to ensure his new country’s prosperity. He repeatedly murdered Wolverine and turned his various clones into his assassins. His worst actions included his purposeful sabotage of the Central American country Terra Verde, sabotaging their president’s son, and ultimately mind controlling the entire nation for months to ensure a treaty. When Beast tried to exile all the world’s mutants so he could remake the world into a utopia for them, he was killed and replaced by a younger, more heroic version of himself.
The Man Who Wants To Be a Hero, But Always Becomes a Villain
The new, younger Beast has spent every issue since meeting himself trying to prove he was a good man. But he’s an old-fashioned hero in a broken world, coming back to find all of his friends, and the concept of the X-Men themselves, to be much darker and more willing to kill. He has been repeatedly tortured by the thought of his future self and the idea that he could become like him, and the conclusion of “Age of Revelation” has finally pushed his arc to the next level.
While everyone thought the new Beast was pulled into the future alongside Cylcops, it was actually the original Beast, who had survived and taken up position as the Chairman of 3K, the main villains of the X-Men (2024) run. Not only must Beast grapple with the knowledge that his evil self survived and is still in operation, but the knowledge of what his own future self would have done. The new Beast called the future Cyclops a traitor and a monster for wanting to kill Doug instead of helping him avoid making the mistakes he would. Cyclops responded that Beast helped him plan it, that Beast had become a monster himself.
This is the crux of Beast’s incredible arc. He is the moral center of the X-Men and a heroic idealist at heart, but seemingly all of his future selves become murderers who put the goal before the means. He is a man struggling to remain human at heart, who lives in a body he is afraid will turn monstrous, and a heart and mind that routinely do. His struggle to be the hero he knows he should be versus the man the world always makes him into is so darn interesting. Where Magneto was the king of redemption arcs, Beast is the king of potential villain arcs, and his spiritual fight makes for some of the best X-Men stories in decades.
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