The Phoenix – Death And Resurrection Of Jean Grey

Deaths Are Pointless?

Some characters serve a greater purpose being dead such as Ted Kord and Uncle Ben. Ted Kord’s death opens up the doorway for Jaime Reyes to take on the Blue Beetle mantle and Uncle Ben’s iconic death paved the way for Peter Parker to be the hero he is today. But some deaths aren’t meant to be forever and as you can see, no popular super hero stays dead for long. Barry Allen stayed dead for 20 plus years allowing Wally West to take on the role of the main flash and as detailed in a previous video, Wolverine, the one and only, is well on his way back from the dead and is expected to cause a huge ripple in the MCU.

These character deaths serves a great purpose and that is to allow said character to take a break from the limelight which allows other characters to have the spotlight which fuels that character’s development. X-23 was such a niche character until Wolverine died. Now she is the all new Wolverine and appears frequently in most of the X-men titles. Same thing can be said about Wally West, a character that didn’t get much development until Barry Allen’s death. And how awesome was it to have Bucky take on the SHIELD when Captain America went MIA? Then there’s the superior Spiderman, one of my favorite series run of all time. Who knew a villain would make such a great superhero?

So this brings us to a character that has been dead for over 13 years. To understand the huge impact of her return, lets rewind back to the 1980’s. During a mission in space, the X-Men find their shuttle damaged. Jean is exposed to fatal levels of radiation. She is dying but she is determined to save her friends so she calls out for help and is answered by the Phoenix force. The cosmic entity takes on the form of Jean grey and placed her in a state of suspended animation inside a cocoon. The space ship crashes in Jamaica Bay where the phoenix emerges believing that it is Jean grey. The real Jean Grey, while inside the cocoon, sinks to the bottom of the bay.

X-Men Dark Phoenix Saga

The Dark Phoenix saga came next where we see the Phoenix force believing itself to be Jean Grey go bonkers over her hunger for death and chaos. Side note guys – The Dark phoenix saga is one of the best written and shocking story line in x-men history and has been adapted several times in tv and now on the big screen.

The ending of the Dark Phoenix Saga showcases the Phoenix Force, still believing itself to be Jean Grey, committing suicide to ensure the safety of the universe from itself.

Back at Jamaica Bay, the Fantastic Four discovers the cocoon housing the original Jean Grey. Aided by Reed Richards and the Avengers, Jean Grey returns to the land of the living and discovers that her love interest Scott Summers aka Cyclops had already moved on with her clone, a woman named Madelyne Pryor. Ohh and they also have a young toddler, a boy named Nathan Christopher Summers who will grow up to be the time traveling X-man, Cable. AND FYI, Madelyne Pryor was created by Mr. Sinister to mate with Cyclops so that he can have his ultimate superior mutant. DAMN the X-Men history is so confusing!

Anyway, moving along, eventually Madelyne is removed from the picture and Jean Grey Marries Scott Summers.

Rampage Of Marvel’s Onslaught Entity

1996 rolls around introducing us to the genocidal Onslaught. Jean Grey solidified herself from the damsel in distress to a bonified Superhero during this saga in my books. She was the first to discover his existence and was a pivotal character in helping to take down the Onslaught monster. She was successful in sending out a distress signal to the time displaced X-man Bishop and she also gathered the other teams X-Factor, Excalibur and X-force for the upcoming war. Jean worked closely with Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four to help build a psionic armor that could block Xavier’s telepathic powers and during the final stand between Onslaught and the rest of the heroes, Jean Grey locked away Bruce Banner’s mind, leaving only the raging hulk in complete overdrive control and he went head to head with the red beast they call Onslaught.

2004 will mark the second death of Jean Grey. Magneto has infiltrated the Xavier School for higher learning under the guise of Xorn and it ends with the master of Magnetism fending off the X-Men. Magneto kills Esme, a young mutant, by using her metal earrings, piercing from one side of her head to another. Cyclops, beast, Fantomex and wolverine converges on the villain but it wasn’t until Xavier arrived with Jean Grey. Magneto’s last act was to send a planetary sized electromagnetic pulse through her body giving her a stroke that could kill 10 men. Wolverine went feral and executed the villain and Jean Grey lies dying in Scott’s arm.

X-Men Here Comes Tomorrow

Jean’s death was supposed to end things between Scott and Emma but in the story ‘here comes tomorrow’, a dystopian future forms where humans are all eradicated and mutants are a dying breed. Beast is the being responsible for this dark future. Cassandra Nova, Xavier’s twin sister, leads a new team of X-men in a battle to save earth with only Wolverine being one of the originals. The beast, aka the bacteria Sublime brings Jean Grey back to live via hatching her from the Phoenix egg.

The heroes eventually win with Jean Grey’s help but the earth is in ruins. So with her remaining powers from the phoenix force, she sent a sign back 150 years to the day where Cyclops stood at her tombstone. The message Jean sent back was to tell Scott to live and be happy. So the story of Jean Grey ends with Scott accepting Emma Frost’s offer to restart the Xavier school and start a relationship between the two.

This decision didn’t go well with the X-Men due to the fact that the team saw their relationship as an insult to the memory of the great Jean Grey. Wolverine exchanged some heated words and basically assaulted Cyclops. Beast stated that he no longer respected Scott and Racheal summers felt so hurt by her father’s actions that she changed her last name to Grey.

X-Men Phoenix Endsong

One year later, the Shi’ar accidentally woke the phoenix entity but without a host. Being the entity of life itself, the Phoenix seeks out its favorite host in Jean Grey. The problem, Jean is still dead but that doesn’t stop the parasitic cosmic entity. It revives her and once again, they are bonded.

The final climactic battle brings us to the North Pole where Jean imprisons herself in the ice below hoping to subdue the phoenix. This fails to work and the Phoenix leaves its host and now seeks out a new one in Emma Frost. After gaining back its strength from Cyclops’ optic beam, the phoenix is more of a threat than ever so Scott frees Jean from the ice as she is now the only one who has any hopes in controlling the Phoenix and freeing Emma.

Jean Grey rose in her iconic green phoenix costume. With authority, she rips the phoenix from Emma. But due to the fact that Jean Grey can no longer feel the love from the people closest to her, the phoenix gets the upper hand, bonds with its favorite host and becoming the dark phoenix once again. This is when Cyclops calls to Emma and the Stephord sisters. With the aid of Cerebro, the telepathic x-men connected the entire X-men roster to pour out their loving memories directly into Jean grey which allows her the ability once again overcoming the Phoenix force and this brings out the most powerful form of the entity. The white phoenix of the crown is a state of balance where entity and host are at their most powerful living in complete harmony. Only Jean grey has been shown to reach this level of enlightenment and later, Hope summers also reached this power level.

After reaching harmonic balance as the white phoenix of the crown, Jean Grey ascends into the white hot room bringing in Scott Summers for one last time before sending him back to earth. Now for those who don’t know, the white hot room is a realm within the M’krann Crystal, which is the afterlife and a safe house for the phoenix and anyone who has ever been kissed by its immense power. It is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and end of all. It is the nexus of realities and where the physical universe merges with the world of imagination and dream and this is where the phoenix’s work is done.

Remember when we were thrusted 150 years into the future after magneto killed Jean? At the end, a revived Jean Grey went into the white hot room where she killed the bacteria Sublime and this is where she met all of the phoenix hosts. This is also where she compressed the galaxy and used her powers as the white phoenix of the crown to heal the future by sending a message back to the past to Cyclops to restart the school and begin a relationship with Emma Frost.

The ending to Phoenix endsong saw the Stephord sisters waking up to the phoenix force which leads into the X-Men phoenix warsong. This story does not have a resurfaced Jean grey and maybe it can be a story for another day.

X-Men End Of The Greys

2006 arrives and we get a story centering on Racheal summers called the End of the Greys. The Shi’ar is back at it again on their merciless mission to destroy the phoenix force once and for all. To do this, they must cleanse anyone with the Grey genome believing that Jean Grey’s family tree could potentially be a host to the phoenix force.

The Shi’ ar death commandos are successful in cleansing the house of Grey with only Racheal remaining. The X-Men eventually triumphs over the Shi’ar but the damage is done and Racheal swears Vengeance. Jean Grey as the white phoenix of the crown appears after to take her family away into the white room.

All New X-Men Time Displaced

2013, after watching Cyclops kill their mentor, and turning into a war criminal; Beast saw no other option than to pluck the original 5 x-men into the present in hopes of showing his friend how far he has fallen. Young Jean Grey got brought along for the ride where she discovered all of the horrors that she has yet to do following her possession of the phoenix force.

At this early stage in their arrival to our present time and during the battle of the atom event where the x-men from the future arrived, the original 5 still had a chance to go back home evidenced by the fact that young Cyclops took a blast from a sentinel head causing him to stop breathing which caused a ripple effect that removed the present day Scott from where he was standing. It wasn’t until a young powerful mutant healer Christopher Muse healed Young Scott which realigned the time stream continuum and allowed Present day Scott to reappear. But this here lays an issue that the original 5 never knew coming. The time stream is off balance and it is seeking ways to correct itself. We will get into this in more detail soon.

The Shi’Ar Empire once again intervene after they discovered Jean Grey is alive and well not realizing that this is a time displaced version of her. The Empire kidnapped her and placed her on Trial for the crimes of her older self. Her team with X-23 along with the Guardians of the Galaxy and Cyclops’s pirate dad Corsair and his crew the star jammers came to lend aid. They brought such an epic fight to the Shi’Ar Empire that their powerhouse Gladiator could barely defend against. Combined with the Shi’Ar telepath Oracle finally realizing that this Jean Grey is not the one they have encountered before, The Shi’Ar made the gamble to not kill an innocent life and retreat back to their sector of the Galaxy.

Jean Grey and her team of original 5 couldn’t go back to their timeline so they carved a place in present day.

The reason why they could not go back is that they are an anomaly and Father Time is always trying to repair itself. So Beast uses a magical artifact gifted to him by Dr Strange to take his team back to when they left. The problem is that they never left. The past moved on without them and to keep the present intact, the original 5 was shown to have never left in the first place. The team couldn’t stay in the past and they don’t belong in the present but that doesn’t stop them from making their mentors dream into reality in the present day.

Back in present day, the original 5 struck a close friendship with current Wolverine Laura Kinney and found kindred spirits in young x-men Kid Apocaypse and Idie. But in the pages of X-men Blue, the original 5 added 2 new members to the team: Jimmy Hudson, son of the Wolverine from the Ultimate universe and a vampiric version of Ororo Monroe from a different reality.

Return Of The Phoenix Force

During her adventures with the team, Jean Grey had her own story arc where she stopped the wrecking crew but the aftermath brought forth a warning that the Phoenix has been reborn and that it is coming for her. Jean seeks advice from all living heroes who has been touched by the Phoenix but to no avail. She even sought they help from Avengers member such as Thor, Dr Strange and the Scarlet which so she may be ready for when the Phoenix finally returns. But to her surprise, a voice in her mind has been revealed to be the spirit of the original Jean Grey. The original Jean Grey aids her younger self in taking back a sliver of the phoenix force from former X-man Emma Frost. But in doing so, Young Jean gets consumed by a power that she can barely comprehend.

Even with the help of the Stephord Sisters, Emma Frost, Hope Summers and the omega level mutant Quintin Quire, young Jean Grey couldn’t fend off the arrival of the Phoenix force. It consumed her and burned her physical body down to bones leaving the spirit of Jean Grey grieving.

Phoenix Resurrection Return Of Jean Grey

We are finally here at the Phoenix resurrection the return of Jean Grey. The original Marvel Girl is alive and well with but without memory of being an X-Men or a mutant. Her family is alive and well and we even see the return of Scott Summers who didn’t get too much screen time so we don’t know if he is the X-Men leader or if he has lost his memories as well. We don’t know too much right now but we do know that this isnt a dream sequence. Jean Grey and those closest to her are back with a loss of memory. The only thing that could explain this is that the White Hot Room opened up allowing Jean and some of the Grey family members to come back to life. Cyclops was temporarily in the white hot room so that could explain his resurgence but it is way too early to say.

The story is continuing right now in the phoenix resurrection which promises the return of the iconic Jean Grey so go to your local comic book store, go online, support the industry that we all love so much and read the Phoenix resurrection the return of Jean Grey.

and finally the timing for Marvel to bring back such an iconic X-men member couldn’t be better since Marvel and 20^th century fox are working on a Dark Phoenix movie with Game Of Thrones actress Sophie Turner as the red head X-men member. So it just makes sense that Marvel would want to hype the resurgence of Jean Grey in the comics before the movie begins its marketing campaign and not to mention, her return lines up perfectly with Marvel’s Legacy event where the company is focusing a lot more attention on their core super heroes.