Phoenix Force

• 1. Introduction

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  The Phoenix Force, a cosmic entity from Marvel Comics, once wiped out five billion inhabitants of a single planet. Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum created it, and it first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #101 in October 1976.

  Yet the saga that made it famous is not mainly about planets. It is about people. The Phoenix needs a host, and every host it chooses becomes bound to it in ways that can save, corrupt or destroy them.

  What is this force, and why was it born? Why does it keep reaching for particular minds, and why do its hosts so often lose control? And what happens to a person who tries to hand it back? The answers begin in prehistory and run all the way to the present day of the comics.

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• 2. Nature of the Flame

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  Born of the void between states of being, the Phoenix Force presents itself as an immortal, unchanging expression of life and passion. It is the meeting point of every psionic current of the past, present and future, in all realities of the multiverse. It also serves as Guardian of Creation and of the M'Kraan Crystal.

  Travel for such a being means folding its own energy inward until it collapses like a black hole, then rebuilding itself at the destination. It can swallow hostile energy whole, such as the optic blasts of the X-Man Cyclops, and it can drain the life-force of a foe.

  A host changes the scale of everything. Bonded to a Phoenix, a person's abilities grow beyond measure. The entity can rearrange matter at the sub-atomic level, turning wood to gold or stone to crystal. It can also teleport others across space and open portals between dimensions.

  Young Jean Grey, when the Phoenix possessed her, unconsciously melted the equipment that medics tried to attach to her. As an adult she held her cosmic fire under such complete control that she could defeat an opponent named Terrax, then let the flames die at her command, leaving him charred.

  The Phoenix seeks hosts with strong inherent psionic gifts, because weaker minds cannot withstand it. Each time it leaves a host, a fragment of its power stays behind. Even a fragment can outmatch an inexperienced wielder. Necrom, holding only a fragment, hurled moons at Rachel Summers even though she had full access to the Force.

  Death does not end a host's story. When an avatar is harmed or killed, an egg of cosmic power forms around them, incubates in a place called the White Hot Room, and hatches with them fully healed.

  The most staggering display came during Secret Wars II. Rachel Summers set out to kill the Beyonder, who met her with amazement and disappointment. He gave her full access to the Phoenix along with some of his own power, and with it she absorbed the consciousness of every sentient mortal being in the universe.

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• 3. The Burnt Place

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  A razed clearing called the Burnt Place marks the spot where the Phoenix once battled an entity named le Bete Noir. In prehistoric times, a baby girl was left there by her parents because of her red hair. A pack of wolves took her in, and she grew up feral. She became known as Firehair, and later as Lady Phoenix.

  Firehair's warnings led to a deadly conflict between her people, the Tribe Without Fear, and other xenophobic tribes. Overwhelmed by despair over her friends' deaths, she returned to the Burnt Place and contemplated ending her life. The Phoenix, drawn by her psychic power, stopped her and bonded with her. Its plan was to use her to raze planets to ashes.

  Control of the power slipped away from her until the wolf that had saved her as an infant calmed her. Once she mastered it, Firehair joined that era's incarnation of the Avengers.

  For reasons the story never explains, the Phoenix keeps her consciousness suppressed in the White Hot Room. Even so, she exerts a degree of subconscious influence. That influence makes the entity instinctively seek out hosts from Earth, with a preference for red-haired women who have psionic abilities.

  Rook'shir, a citizen of the Shi'ar Empire, wielded the Phoenix Force together with his blade. He became the first known host to give in to its destructive impulses. He went insane, became the Dark Phoenix, and destroyed many planets on a rampage through his own empire.

  The Imperial Guard killed him, and the Guard later became the Shi'ar Empire's first line of defense. The Phoenix fled, leaving a small remnant of itself in the blade, which only Rook'shir's descendants can lift. Fearing the entity, the Shi'ar demonized it and ordered the death or sterilization of those descendants.

  That remnant would still be waiting in the blade when a descendant named Korvus finally took it up.

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• 4. Jean Grey Rises

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  Annie Richardson was dying when her friend Jean Grey linked their minds telepathically to keep Annie's soul from reaching the afterlife. The link dragged Jean's mind across to the other side with her. Centuries after Rook'shir, the Phoenix had come back to Earth without a host after sensing a human mind transcend the physical realm. It lent its energy to break the connection and then kept a close watch on Jean, because it felt a kinship with her.

  Years later, Jean lay dying on a space shuttle. Her mind called out for help, the Phoenix answered, and it transformed her into the Phoenix.

  Her time with the X-Men was short. She repaired the damaged energy matrix at the core of the M'Kraan Crystal and so prevented the complete destruction of the universe.

  A skirmish with Magneto then left Phoenix and Beast separated from the other X-Men, each group believing the other had died. In Greece she met a man named Nikos, who was really Mastermind, a mutant able to alter the perceptions of others. He compared her to a god and insisted she could do whatever she wished. In Scotland she met him again as Jason Wyngarde, and believed him to be the work of the reality-warping mutant Proteus and the lover of one of her ancestors.

  An encounter with the Hellfire Club, together with manipulation by Mastermind and Emma Frost, the White Queen, turned her into their Black Queen. She broke free of Mastermind's control, but she transformed into the Dark Phoenix.

  The Dark Phoenix fought the X-Men and fled to the stars. In the D'Bari star system she devoured energy to satisfy her "hunger," and she destroyed a nearby Shi'ar observatory vessel that opened fire on her. Back on Earth, Professor X defeated her in psionic combat, and Jean regained control.

  The Shi'ar teleported the X-Men and Phoenix into space and demanded a trial by combat. Just as victory seemed certain for the Imperial Guard, Jean became the Dark Phoenix again. She then apparently took her own life on Earth's moon, in front of Cyclops.

  Several years later, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four would find something that changed the meaning of that death.

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• 5. Two Jeans

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  In the original telling, Jean Grey herself was the Phoenix. She had reached her ultimate potential as a psi, become a being of pure energy and reformed herself. Manipulation by foes such as Mastermind and Emma Frost corrupted her slowly. Unable to adapt to such enormous power, she went mad.

  Bringing her back required a rewrite. The revised version revealed a cosmic Phoenix Force entity that had built a duplicate body of Jean, believed itself to be her, and acted in her place. The real Jean lay in a healing cocoon at the bottom of Jamaica Bay, where the Avengers and the Fantastic Four discovered her. She was revived as a member of X-Factor.

  How separate the duplicate and the original are depends on who is writing at the time. Some stories treat them as inherently separate beings, while others show a shared consciousness.

  After the death on the Moon, the Phoenix Force reached the White Hot Room, met a manifestation of Death, and returned itself to the Jean in the cocoon. Horrified by what it had done, Jean rejected it. The Phoenix fused instead with Madelyne Pryor, Jean's clone, and stayed with her until Madelyne ended her own life while fighting her genetic template and then joined into a merged consciousness.

  The mini-series X-Men: Phoenix - Endsong brought the Phoenix back to Earth, where it resurrected Jean from her grave. It needed to feed on the energy of the optic blasts of Scott Summers, the X-Man called Cyclops. Confused by her own emotions, Jean thought she was in love with him. Then she learned that Scott loved Emma Frost, the former White Queen of the Hellfire Club and headmistress of the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning.

  With emotional support from the X-Men, Jean asserted herself and gained control of the Phoenix Force. She declared that she and the entity were one, and that together they had risen into the White Phoenix of the Crown, signaled by a new white and gold costume. In that form she could reach back in time and urge Cyclops to move on with his life, changing the future of an entire universe.

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• 6. Rachel Summers

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  Rachel Summers came from the Days of Future Past alternate future, the daughter of Scott Summers and Jean Grey. The Phoenix Force bonded with her and made her its next avatar. She became one of its longest-reigning hosts, and the longest of any Earth-born one. Although she eventually adopted the Phoenix uniform, she never became the Dark Phoenix. The entity itself has called her "The One True Phoenix."

  Galactus, the planet-devouring being, forced the Phoenix to look at itself. Rachel, completely overtaken by the Phoenix, fought him to save a planet he was preparing to consume. The Phoenix disrupted his feeding and easily beat him. Galactus answered by accusing it of hypocrisy. He told it that its physical existence is sustained by robbing the energy meant to give birth to future generations.

  Realizing this was true, the Phoenix vowed to return to its earlier existence of "touching all that is." It allowed only an echo of its power to remain with Rachel, whose own consciousness now dominated.

  Rachel returned to Earth with all her memories and made her way back to the future she had come from. She could not change her past. But she and her teammates did change the directives of every Sentinel of that era so that they would preserve all life, which ended a genocide that had lasted for years.

  On the way back to her own time, Captain Britain was lost in the timestream, and Rachel had to switch places with him, since she did not belong in the timeline she had known. She emerged about 1,900 years in the future and formed the Clan Askani, which brought her brother Nathan to their time to fight Apocalypse.

  There she met Diamanda Nero, Apocalypse's High Councilor and viceroy. Rachel tried to overpower her and was left powerless after a brief bond with the Phoenix Force. Nero later hosted the entity herself, could not contain it, and begged Rachel to release it. Rachel sent it into the cosmos, which depowered Nero.

  The Shi'ar, still determined to prevent the Phoenix from ever ascending again, sent their Death Commandos to Earth. Their aim was to wipe out the Grey genome and to kill Quentin Quire, so that no new Omega-level psionic mutant could become a host. They struck at the site of Rachel's family reunion and killed every member of the Grey family except Rachel, who was marked, and Cable, who was absent.

  At the Grey family graves, Rachel swore revenge. She said: "I'm not my mom. I'm not the Phoenix. I'm my own woman. And by the time I'm done... they'll wish I WERE the Phoenix."

  Then, in the last issue of Kingbreaker, the Phoenix abandoned Rachel and Korvus in the middle of a battle with Vulcan's new guard. As it left, Rachel muttered "Please, not now... Mom." Afterward she said she could no longer feel it or hear it, and that "It's like it was never there."

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• 7. Splintered Fire

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  The Shi'ar had tried a suicide bomb attack on the Phoenix Force, and Jean Grey survived it by returning to the White Hot Room to restore herself. The attack left the entity incomplete, and Jean had to hunt for the missing pieces. In the series Warsong, one piece joined the Stepford Cuckoos. After nearly losing control, the Cuckoos developed a secondary mutation that turned their hearts to diamond and let them imprison it.

  Writer Greg Pak later explained that "perhaps the Phoenix requires a willingness to open oneself up or give oneself away." He said Emma Frost had not been able to do that at the time, which is why Celeste Cuckoo was the only Emma Frost clone to truly become Phoenix. During a fight with the genetically engineered mutant hunters called Predators X, the fragment forced its way out of the Cuckoos' diamond hearts.

  An interdimensional portal once pulled the Phoenix into the Ultraverse, where it was critically damaged and needed a human host to recover. It bonded first with Prime, then with Amber Hunt. Amber could not control it and attacked her friends. She would have destroyed the planet if the X-Men and a new hero named Foxfire had not arrived.

  Hope Summers carried the Phoenix in a different way. During the fight against Bastion, she turned into what looked like the Phoenix and blasted him. Later the Phoenix called her its "child." According to Cable, and later the Scarlet Witch, she is the incarnation of the Phoenix Force itself, which explains her resemblance to Jean Grey.

  In Avengers vs. X-Men, the Phoenix approached Earth, presumably to reclaim Hope. The Avengers feared the destruction it could bring, while Cyclops hoped to use it to restart the mutant population. On the Blue Area of the Moon, Iron Man fired a disruptor weapon prepared with Giant-Man. It divided the entity into five fragments, which bonded to Cyclops, Emma Frost, Namor, Colossus and Magik. They became the Phoenix Five.

  Emma used her share to control all of Utopia, read the thoughts of everyone on the planet, and dismantle all Sentinels. Cyclops defeated her and rose to the level of Dark Phoenix, killing Professor X in the process. In the final issue, Captain America sent in Hope and the Scarlet Witch. Jean Grey appeared in Cyclops' mind and convinced him to let go. The Phoenix entered Hope, and together with the Scarlet Witch she wished away both the Force and the damage it caused, which activated the X-gene that creates new mutants around the world.

  The damage lingered. Cyclops and Magneto's control fell back to their first appearances, and Colossus's body fluctuated between organic and metal. These disruptions were later traced to nano-sentinels that Dark Beast had unleashed on them. Meanwhile, Iron Man discovered on a distant planet that a people called the Voldi worshiped the Phoenix and blamed him for its disappearance. Robotic police tried to arrest him for deicide.

  In the Secret Wars storyline, Cyclops stood on a Phoenix Egg during an incursion between Earth-616 and Earth-1610 and became one with the Phoenix again. God Emperor Doom later killed him.

  Namor, embittered by the surface world's disregard for his underwater kingdom, later called the Phoenix back to Earth. It chose Moon Knight instead and made him the Fist of the Phoenix, freeing him from Khonshu's sway. Moon Knight uppercut Khonshu back down to Earth. Then the voices in his head urged him to burn the world to purge the parasite of humanity. He understood that he had lost his mind, and after Thor beat him, the Phoenix left him.

  In the Enter the Phoenix storyline, the entity held a tournament to find its next host. Among the contestants were Doctor Doom, Man-Thing, Luke Cage, Howard the Duck, Wolverine, Shang-Chi and Captain America. Doom forfeited his match against Captain America, because the Phoenix refused to let Steve Rogers die. Echo won the role after Namor left her for dead under the Atlantic Ocean. The Phoenix was drawn to her suffering and her refusal to die.

  Echo eventually lost the connection after using it to defend the Quarry of Creation and the Multiverse from the Council of Red.

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• 8. Afterlife and Legacy

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  Tamara Jude of Sideshow called the Phoenix Force the most unforgettable element of Jean Grey's comic book history. She said the Dark Phoenix Saga has resonated with fans for decades. Tristan Benns of Screen Rant called it one of the X-Men's most iconic concepts, while observing that nobody can ever truly know its full story.

  List makers agree. In 2006, Wizard ranked Jean Grey's Dark Phoenix 38th on its list of the 100 Greatest Villains of All Time. In 2013, IGN placed her 9th among comic book villains, and Complex placed her 13th on a list of 25. In 2022, Newsarama ranked her 10th among the best Marvel supervillains.

  On screen, Jennifer Dale voiced Jean Grey in X-Men: The Animated Series, which gave the Phoenix a five-part episode and the Dark Phoenix a four-part one. Famke Janssen played Jean in the X-Men films beginning in 2000, including X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006. Her Phoenix is an instinctual entity from the unconscious side of Jean's mind, held back by psychic barriers that Charles Xavier placed there. Sophie Turner later played a second version in X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix, where the entity appears as a solar flare-like force. The Phoenix also appears in the three-part X-Men '97 episode "Tolerance is Extinction."

  Video games gave it endless forms. It is a playable character in Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds and in Marvel Rivals, and a purchasable outfit in Fortnite Battle Royale. In Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro it appears as Spider-Phoenix, an alternate skin for Peter Parker.

  New X-Men #154 revealed that the White Hot Room is an afterlife for the Phoenix and its hosts. It lies outside the Multiverse yet also within the M'Kraan Crystal.

  After Hellfire Gala 2023, during the Fall of X crossover, about 250,000 mutants of Krakoa were exiled through its gates into a vast desert. Immortal X-Men #16 reveals that this desert is the White Hot Room. Many mutants returned to Earth to fight Orchis, but a large number stayed behind there with Krakoa.

  Jean Grey died at the third Hellfire Gala, and her mind traveled to the room to join the Phoenix once more. The time-displaced teenage Jean, whom the Phoenix had killed for conspiring against it, became its full host again during Fall of X. In that same crossover, Hope Summers fulfilled her destiny by giving her life to restore the Phoenix Force.

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