Gambit (Marvel Comics)

• 1. The Thief Nobody Trusted

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  Remy LeBeau, known to readers as Gambit, is a Cajun thief from New Orleans who became one of Marvel Comics' X-Men. Writer Chris Claremont and artist Jim Lee created him. When he joined the team, few of his new colleagues trusted him, and his history gave them reason. He fought with a staff and with everyday objects that he turned into bombs. His closest bond was with Rogue, a teammate whose power made touching her dangerous. Three questions run through his story. What does a thief owe the villain who once helped him control his own power? How does a couple build intimacy without contact? And why did a character so beloved struggle to hold a series, or a film, of his own?

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• 2. Printed Out of Order

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  Readers who hunt for Gambit's first appearance must choose between two comics, because of a printing mistake. The Uncanny X-Men Annual #14, dated July 1990, reached shelves three weeks early. That put it ahead of The Uncanny X-Men #266 from August 1990, which was drawn by Mike Collins and introduced Gambit within the story. The annual is set after that issue, so collectors still argue over which one counts as the true debut.

  After that, Gambit appeared in almost every issue of The Uncanny X-Men until #281, then moved to the X-Men title for several years. Later he joined Storm's splinter group, which was hunting for Destiny's diaries in X-Treme X-Men. He arrived in issue #5 and co-starred until the series ended.

  His own ongoing series came in three waves. X-Men: Gambit ran 25 issues and two annuals, from December 1998 to February 2001. Astonishing X-Men: Gambit lasted 12 issues, from November 2004 to August 2005. Gambit: King of Thieves ran 17 issues, from August 2012 to September 2013.

  Marvel announced that third series at the C2E2 convention in August 2012, with writer James Asmus and artist Clay Mann. Asmus said the book focused on "the two most important aspects of Gambit." The first, in his words, was that he is sexy. The second was that he is "the preeminent bad-ass thief of the Marvel Universe."

  In 2013, Peter David wrote All-New X-Factor with Gambit as a principal character. It was cancelled after issue #20. David suggested that persistently low sales meant Marvel would wait a while before giving Gambit a leading role again. Asmus, for his part, had hoped to reimagine Gambit as bisexual, but "word came down we would not be redefining the character as such."

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• 3. Le Diable Blanc

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  A ten-year-old orphan once tried to pick the pocket of the wrong man on the streets of New Orleans. The man was Jean-Luc LeBeau, patriarch of the Thieves' Guild, and he pulled the boy off the street and adopted him. That boy was Remy Étienne LeBeau. By the story's account, he was born in New Orleans and kidnapped from the hospital. He was raised by the LeBeau Clan Thieves Guild and handed to the Antiquary as a tribute. The guild called him "Le Diable Blanc," the White Devil, and believed he was prophesied to unite the warring Thieves Guild and Assassins Guild. Before his adoption, a gang of street thieves called Fagan's Mob had taught him the trade.

  His power to charge objects with energy appeared in his early teens, and he practiced it in secret, away from family and friends. At 15 he went with his cousin Étienne Marceaux on the Tithing, the guild's ritual initiation test. They were ordered to rob the immortal mutant Candra. She captured them, claiming to recognize Remy from a meeting that lay in his future, after a time-travel mission to the 19th century. She sold the boys to a deformed gangster called the Pig, who meant to sell children their age to Hydra as boy soldiers.

  Remy escaped the holding pen, but the Pig caught up with them. Remy picked up a playing card that Étienne had dropped, charged it, and threw it into the Pig's face, taking out his eye. He then dived from the clifftop headquarters into the sea. The guild rescued him, but Étienne drowned.

  Soon afterward, Mister Sinister, disguised as Dr. Nathaniel Essex, hired the guild to recover his diaries from the Weapon X program. Scouting the facility in the cold, Remy swore he would steal a long, stylish jacket in New Orleans once the job was done, and he did. Inside, he saw Wolverine escaping from his adamantium procedure and found the diaries. Remy did not fully trust Essex, so he burned them instead of handing them over.

  To reconcile the two guilds, Remy married Bella Donna Boudreaux, granddaughter of the head Assassin, whom he had met at the age of eight. After the wedding, his brother Julien challenged him to a duel. Gambit killed Julien and was exiled from the city, which ended his romance with Bella Donna.

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• 4. Sinister's Debt

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  The price of control was a portion of Gambit's brain stem. After his exile, he wandered the world as a master thief and found that an uncontrollable surge of energy ran through him, more than he could withstand. Desperate, he went to Mister Sinister, who removed that portion of his brain stem. The surgery made Gambit far less powerful but able to manage what remained. Years later, a much younger Sinister restored it at Gambit's request, when Gambit traveled back to the 19th century.

  Sinister wanted the favor repaid, and Gambit carried out missions for him. The last one was to gather mercenaries, whom Sinister named the Marauders. He ordered Gambit to lead Sabretooth, Blockbuster, Prism and Riptide into the tunnels beneath New York City. Gambit did not know that Sinister had sent a second group into the tunnels, including Scalphunter, Arclight, Harpoon, Malice, Scrambler and Vertigo. Their goal was to wipe out the Morlocks. Gambit could not stop them from killing many, but he saved one child named Sarah. She grew up to be Marrow, leader of the mutant terrorist group Gene Nation.

  Storm, de-aged, powerless and amnesiac, crossed his path while he was still wandering. Gambit helped her escape the Shadow King and then rescued her from Nanny and Orphan-Maker. Storm had gone back to thieving to stay alive, and she joined Gambit before eventually bringing him to the X-Men.

  Only Wolverine voiced doubts about the Cajun, and the two settled it in a Danger Room duel. Gambit won by sending a robotic double of Lady Deathstrike to distract Wolverine, then exploiting the injuries the Reavers had given him.

  Gambit kept his role in the Morlock massacre hidden from his teammates for a long time. Many publishing years later, Sabretooth began dropping hints during his stay at the X-Mansion that Gambit was concealing something dark.

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• 5. A Woman He Could Not Touch

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  Rogue's power was uncontrollable, so no one could touch her, and Gambit began flirting with her anyway. Her manner was off-putting at first, yet he kept romancing her. The relationship was first written as a one-time flirtatious moment. It grew into one of the longest and most popular romances in the X-Men series, probably second only to Jean Grey and Cyclops. His early courtship was all swagger and devil-may-care charm. Later issues revealed that real feelings lay beneath the bravado, and Rogue turned out to be equally drawn to him.

  The secret came out at a mock trial held by Magneto, who was disguised as Erik the Red. Rogue was forced to kiss Gambit again, and the memories she absorbed showed that he had gathered information on the Morlocks and assembled the Marauders. Rogue rejected him, the X-Men cast him out, and he was abandoned in the frozen wastes of Antarctica. The psionic essence of a dead mutant named Mary Purcell bonded with him and kept him alive until he reached the Savage Land. There he made a deal with a being called the New Son, who was later revealed to be an alternate-universe version of Gambit himself.

  Back among the X-Men, the couple's trouble was physical. Gambit was temporarily blinded when one of his own energized cards went off in his face. While blind, he found he could read his cards as if they were tarot cards. During the Golgotha story arc, he confessed his insecurities in his own dialect: "Maybe dis no-touching thing is getting to me... more den I thought." Before the final battle, the two "kissed" through their spacesuit helmets.

  Mystique, Rogue's foster mother, disliked her daughter's choice of lover. She infiltrated Xavier's Institute as a student named Foxx and tried to ruin the relationship. Gambit denies that he slept with Mystique.

  The breakthrough came in the 2008 "Divided We Stand" storyline. Charles Xavier used his telepathy to tear down the mental walls that had kept Rogue's powers from developing, and she finally kissed Gambit with no ill effects.

  Gambit later proposed at Kitty Pryde and Colossus's cancelled wedding, after a conversation with Storm and Nightcrawler. A rabbi who had been there for Kitty's ceremony married them. Nightcrawler and Iceman formed Rogue's bridal party, and Storm and X-23 stood as Gambit's best women. During their honeymoon in space, the bio-engineered Xandra offered to fix Rogue's abilities so she could touch anyone. Rogue refused, because the last time her powers were changed, she never learned to control them herself.

  A mysterious gift then teleported the couple into the Mojoverse. Mojo reset their lives into a Noir setting, where Rogue's growing self-awareness left her powers unstable and she killed Remy. Mojo kept resetting them through Fantasy, Western, Horror, Romance, Sci-Fi and Comedy. In a bar, Gambit met a mysterious woman who turned out to be Spiral, and she offered him a deal.

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• 6. Becoming Death

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  His hair turned white and his skin turned a deep black when Apocalypse made Gambit the Horseman Death. Gambit had submitted to the villain on purpose, hoping to infiltrate his ranks and protect the X-Men from Apocalypse's eventual betrayal. He miscalculated, because the transformation warped both his mind and his body. Even so, he told Apocalypse, "I'm both Death and Gambit." He remembered his love for Rogue, yet later, trying to cut every tie to his old self, he tried to kill her. Pulse neutralizing his powers stopped him.

  As Death, he could turn inert materials into toxic substances, such as breathable air into poisonous gas. He could also ingest diseases and plagues. His Death Charge fueled his cards with dark energy that either disintegrated people or trapped them inside the cards. He also gained more control over the path his thrown cards took.

  After Apocalypse fell, Gambit returned to his original look and powers, apparently with the help of Mister Sinister, and reappeared among the Marauders. On Providence, a recently evacuated island, he and Sunfire confronted Cable. Gambit remarked, "I dropped that whole new look, wit' the help of a friend." He asked Cable's computer about the phrase "one minute before dawn." The fight ended when Cable activated a self-destruct sequence that destroyed the island. Cable noted that Gambit's accent sounded forced, hinting that things were not as normal as they seemed.

  Gambit's loyalties came into focus during the 2007-2008 "Messiah Complex" storyline. After Wolverine tortured him, he revealed that Cable had the baby. He then let the X-Men track him with Cerebro to the Marauders' hideout on Muir Island. The plan was Mystique's, who had killed the real Sinister using Rogue's intensified powers and was posing as him. When Mystique tried to touch the baby to Rogue to save her, Gambit snatched the child away. He said Rogue would never want an innocent life used to save hers. The baby cured Rogue of her intensified powers.

  Death returned in the 2010 "X-Men: Second Coming" storyline, deep in Limbo. As demons attacked, Gambit sank into darkness and said, "Remy's not home right now." Hitting Dazzler and Northstar with his charged cards, he changed them into beings like himself. Magik and Pixie stabbed him with their magical swords, which let him reassert control.

  In Astonishing X-Men #62, years later, Gambit adopted three cats and named them Oliver, Lucifer and Figaro.

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• 7. Charged Cards

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  A charged playing card explodes with the force of a grenade. Gambit is a mutant who converts the potential energy stored in an inanimate object into pure light kinetic energy, which he calls charging. He prefers small objects because they charge faster and fly farther when thrown. Time is the only real limit, since larger objects take longer. Most charging happens through skin contact, and the blast scales with the mass of the object. He can also accelerate an object's existing kinetic energy instead. A charged staff has been shown with enough power to level a house.

  Because his body constantly generates bio-kinetic energy, it is built for motion. He has superhuman speed, reflexes, agility, flexibility and endurance, though his strength is enhanced rather than superhuman. The charge also builds static electricity that shields his mind from some of the strongest telepaths, including Emma Frost, Jean Grey and Charles Xavier.

  He has an unusually strong hypnotic charm as well, which nudges people to believe what he says. It once worked even on the Shadow King. It fails on anyone who is aware and prepared for it.

  In combat, Gambit wears light, highly articulated armor and carries an extendable metal staff. He is trained in Savate and in the staff art of Bōjutsu, and he fights with street techniques and acrobatics. His thievery comes from the Thieves Guild that adopted him.

  For his battle with the New Son, Gambit briefly held the full strength of his abilities. At that level he controlled kinetic energy down to the molecular level and could heal himself, charge objects he could only see, and even travel through space-time. Those enhanced powers burned out in the fight, and he returned to a lower level. Sage later jump-started his powers again, and he regained the ability to heal his blinded eyes.

  After Gambit was killed in a clash with a drug lord, Faiza Hussain restored him before the death set in. The experience boosted him, and he charged a bullet with twice its usual explosive force.

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• 8. Nineties Cool, Cancelled Films

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  Larry Houston first planned the lineup for X-Men: The Animated Series, which ran from 1992 to 1997, without Gambit, and Colossus was in the original team. Marvel asked him to replace Colossus with Gambit. Chris Potter voiced the character for the first four seasons and Tony Daniels for the fifth. A.J. LoCascio voices him in the revival X-Men '97, which began in 2024.

  Gambit quickly became a fan favorite during the X-Men's rise in the 1990s. He was written as an edgy, gruff ladies' man with a mysterious past, which drew comparisons to Wolverine. Wolverine was serious and tough, while Gambit was charming and unpredictable. His smoking reinforced the rebel image until Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, in the early 2000s, ordered every character to quit. Gambit gradually shifted from reckless rogue to responsible team player.

  Entertainment Weekly called him a symbol of "90s cool," with his trench coat, Cajun slang and "goofy powers." They argued that he stands out because he is fun and playful rather than dark and gritty, and suggested a Gambit movie should play like Rounders with explosions. In 2011, IGN ranked him 65th in a list of the top 100 comic book heroes. ScreenRant later ranked him first among the best X-Men characters created by Claremont.

  On film, his path was far rougher. A planned cameo in X2: X-Men United in 2003, with James Bamford, was cut. For X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006, Channing Tatum auditioned. Josh Holloway was offered the part but declined because of scheduling conflicts with Lost. Gambit was written as a new student and Iceman's rival for Rogue's affections, but he was cut and survived only in the novelization.

  Taylor Kitsch finally played him in X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 2009. In 2014, Tatum was set to introduce the character in X-Men: Apocalypse and then star in a solo film, scheduled for release on the 13th of March 2020. On the 14th of March 2019, after Disney's pending acquisition of Fox, director Rupert Wyatt said, "Now Disney has the reins, so I don't know what their plans are." By May 2019, the film was officially shelved.

  Tatum finally played Gambit in Deadpool & Wolverine in 2024, with support from star and co-writer Ryan Reynolds, who later released a deleted scene showing Gambit surviving the film. In March 2025, Tatum was announced to reprise the role in Avengers: Doomsday, set for 2026.

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