Rachel Summers

• 1. A Surname Withheld

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  Rachel Summers is a Marvel Comics character whose surname was kept secret when she first appeared in The Uncanny X-Men #141, published in January 1981. Writer Chris Claremont and artist and co-plotter John Byrne created her. Readers only later learned that she was the daughter of the alternate future counterparts of Cyclops and Jean Grey-Summers. Stranger still, the comics treat her as a multiversal anomaly. Other characters across the multiverse carry her name, but none of them is truly her. How does a girl from a ruined future become so singular? Why would a hunted mutant end up tied to the Phoenix Force? And what happens when writers keep describing the limits of her powers in different ways?

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• 2. The Hound of Earth-811

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  In the timeline known as Earth-811, everything turns on the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly. His death provokes the ratification of the Mutant Registration Act, and North America falls to the Sentinels. This is the dystopia of the Days of Future Past storyline. Rachel is abducted by operatives working for Ahab. They use drugs and hypnotherapy to turn her into a mutant-hunting weapon called the Hound. Her psychic powers link her to every victim she tracks, and that bond feeds her grief and despair. Eventually she attacks Ahab and scars him. As punishment, Rachel is sent to the mutant concentration camps. There she befriends the surviving rebels: Wolverine, Magneto, Colossus, Storm, Kate Pryde, and Franklin Richards. Kate Pryde would soon be the passenger on Rachel's first attempt to rewrite history.

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• 3. Lost in Time

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  Rachel's first experiment in time travel sends Kate Pryde's consciousness into the body of her younger self, hoping to prevent the assassination. The future does not change. Rachel then sends her own astral form into the past to learn why, and discovers that she had sent Kate into an alternate past. On the way back, she meets the disembodied Phoenix Force. Later, Rachel and Kate are trapped while trying to destroy a new model of Sentinel. The Phoenix Force tears Rachel out of her timeline and sends her body to that alternate past. In this world, Jean Grey has been killed and Cyclops has remarried Madelyne Pryor. Rachel briefly joins the X-Men before bonding fully with the Phoenix Force. Together with Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, Captain Britain, and Meggan, she founds the team Excalibur. While on that team, she learns that this universe's version of her mother is alive. Jean rejects her at first. She still resents the Phoenix Force for stealing a portion of her life. She also sees Rachel as a constant reminder of the dystopian future she feared might still come. Then an incident leaves Captain Britain lost in the timestream, and Rachel steps in to take his place.

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• 4. Mother Askani

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  Two thousand years in the future, Rachel emerges into a world conquered by Apocalypse. She gathers rebels around her and founds the Askani. She trains one of her followers to travel back in time and bring her "brother" Nathan forward, because he has been infected with a techno-organic virus. The Askani also clone Nathan in case he does not survive. Apocalypse's followers attack, take the clone, who would later become Stryfe, and leave Rachel critically injured. Hooked up to life support, she draws the minds of Scott and Jean into the future. They raise Nathan and tutor him in the use of his powers. Rachel finally dies ten years later and sends Scott and Jean back to their original bodies seconds after they had left. The story does not end there. After Nathan defeats Apocalypse, he retrieves Rachel, who had survived and been flung even farther into the future. She would come home with a new name, borrowed from her mother.

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• 5. Grey Blood and Shi'ar Vengeance

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  The name "Marvel Girl" is what Rachel chooses when she rejoins the X-Men, in honor of her mother, who had recently died yet again. She wears a costume Jean had designed but never worn, a variation on Jean's first green costume. She also changes her surname to Grey. The comics suggest this may express disapproval of her father's betrayal of Jean and his continuing relationship with Emma Frost. Soon afterward, Rachel bonds with her grandfather Corsair. At a family reunion, a commando unit acting on orders from the Shi'ar attacks and kills everyone, hoping to wipe out the Grey genome. The unit cannot kill Rachel. Instead, she is given a "deathmark" on her back that lets the Shi'ar track her. Later, her paternal uncle Vulcan kidnaps her along with Cyclops, and he frees Darwin from inside himself. Professor X then recruits Rachel, Havok, Nightcrawler, Warpath, Darwin, and Polaris for a space mission to stop Vulcan from laying waste to the Shi'ar empire. Knowing her vendetta, he also intends to find out who ordered the murder of the Grey family. In space, a Shi'ar warrior named Korvus attacks the team. His ancestor Rook'shir was a previous host of the Phoenix Force, and a small portion of its power remained in his sword, the Blade of the Phoenix. Korvus defeats the other X-Men with ease. When Rachel blocks the blade, their minds link. She learns that the Shi'ar government murdered his family because of their Phoenix connection. The remaining echo of the Phoenix then passes to her. Rachel claims the power chose her rather than being taken. She realizes the echo is only a "blue shadow" of the Force. It begins to influence her, and she designs a darker uniform and starts a romance with Korvus. She ends it when she understands their bond comes only from the residual Phoenix power. Vulcan later kills Corsair. Rachel, Havok, Polaris, Korvus, Ch'od, and Raza Longknife then form a new version of the Starjammers. They vow to restore Lilandra to the throne or die trying. Rachel, Korvus, Havok, and Polaris eventually return to Earth. On the journey home, Rachel tries to send a message to Professor Xavier or Emma Frost.

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• 6. Schools, Wars, and Krakoa

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  Moira, a powerful alternate personality of the mutant Legion, warps reality just as Rachel tries to deliver that message. Her mind is taken with it, and the amnesic Revenant is created. Once reality is restored, Rachel's mind is separated from her body and keeps the form of her Age of X counterpart. She no longer remembers the message. She is invited to join the senior staff of the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. The school was rebuilt from the Xavier Institute, with Wolverine as acting Headmaster and Kitty Pryde as Headmistress. During Avengers vs. X-Men, Rachel tells Cyclops where Hope is. She says she knows the Phoenix Force better than anyone on Earth and is living proof it can be controlled. She promises to help if the Phoenix has chosen Hope. Then Cyclops and Emma Frost begin to be corrupted by the Phoenix's power. Rachel joins the other X-Men in opposing their rule, battles Cyclops, and helps both teams in the final fight. In 2013, Marvel launched an all-female series named X-Men, written by Brian Wood with art by Olivier Coipel. It features Storm, Jubilee, Rogue, Kitty Pryde, Rachel Grey, and Psylocke. When Kitty returns from space to lead the X-Men, Rachel joins her team in X-Men Gold and takes the code name Prestige. After House of X and Powers of X, Professor X and Magneto invite all mutants to live on Krakoa. Rachel spends time with her family at the Summer House, the Summers family residence on the Moon. After Xavier is killed by bioengineered human terrorists, Cyclops sends her with Kid Cable on a mission in the Atlantic Ocean concerning a piece of Krakoa. She then joins Polaris, Daken, Northstar, Eye-Boy, and Prodigy in a new initiative. They investigate any mutant death and report to the Five as part of the Resurrection Protocols. Their first case is the supposed death of Northstar's twin sister, Aurora. In 2022, she joins the Knights of X under Captain Britain, who leads a group of mutants into the Otherworld. Tini Howard wrote the title, a follow-up to the 2019 Excalibur relaunch. In its fourth issue, Rachel and her long-time friend Betsy Braddock confess their romantic feelings, and their kiss is shown on a splash page.

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• 7. Powers and Their Limits

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  Psychometry, telepathy, telekinesis, and limited time manipulation make up Rachel's psionic toolkit. Her telepathy is described as "virtually unlimited." She can build durable mind-links across distances, shield her own mind, create illusions, and make someone imperceptible to the five senses. She can suppress other people's powers, control, repair, and exchange minds, and safely edit memories. She can also track beings by their thought patterns, yet she is morally uneasy about doing so because of her time as a Hound. Her raw power is immeasurable, but it is held back by limited training and finesse. Emma Frost outflanked her in a contest on the astral plane. Rachel later received training from Professor Charles Xavier while he was depowered. Her telekinesis works even at the sub-atomic level. She has created a micro black hole, levitated an entire city for a time, and sustained shields that withstood Jovian atmospheric pressures. She has directed blows from Thor's hammer, Mjolnir. She has also made a psionic sword much like Psylocke's telekinetic katana, a hammer strong enough to knock Thor off his feet, and even rewritten human genomes. Yet some stories show her struggling against lesser developed telekinetics such as Psylocke. Her chronoskimming lets her send a person's mind through time into a younger or older version, an ancestor or descendant, or a disembodied astral form. Rachel also unconsciously gives off a fourth dimensional pulse that forms a chrono-shield against changes in the timeline. While bonded to the Phoenix Force, she showed heightened psi-powers, control of energy and life-forces, and limited cosmic awareness. That connection was lost in the distant future and did not come back with her. The Phoenix echo from Rook'shir's sword let her survive and fly in the vacuum of space and hold her own against the physical power of Gladiator. The echo vanished, and Rachel attributes its disappearance to Jean Grey. She has since shown the ability to manipulate Phoenix Fire from the Multiverse. Her power signature has changed over time. In her 2000s Uncanny X-Men appearances, a gold Phoenix emblem appeared over her left eye whenever she used psionic feats. After the echo, the emblem became a static shape made of electric blue flame. In X-Men: Emperor Vulcan #3, she finally produced the familiar fiery raptor. Rachel also learns quickly. She mastered a set of "demon ninja" sword skills just by watching Shadowcat, and has experience in lock-picking and vehicular repair. Many consider her an Omega-level mutant, but the only reference in the comics is the future Sentinel Nimrod classifying her as an "Omega class subject" years before the term existed. Magic also resists her. When the Soulsword appeared near the Excalibur lighthouse seeking Kitty Pryde as its new wielder, Rachel used every bit of power the Phoenix allowed and still could not pull it from the bedrock. She concluded that only Kitty could.

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• 8. Other Rachels, Other Screens

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  In House of M, Rachel Summers is the bodyguard and traveling companion of Betsy Braddock. The other Rachels are linked to her only by shared names or attributes. In at least three futures derived from Days of Future Past, she marries Franklin Richards and has several mutant children. One is the villain Hyperstorm. Another is Dream Summers, who appears in the Spider-Man/X-Men: Time's Arrow novels. In a third reality she has a son named David Richards. The interdimensional Exiles rescue David from a concentration camp, and the Age of Apocalypse version of Sabretooth raises him. His traumatic experiences there turn him into a fanatical murderer. In Weapon X: Days of Future Now, Weapon X captures Rachel and holds her in a concentration camp called Neverland. In the Exiles reality called Legacy Earth, where the Legacy Virus mutated into a techno-organic plague, she is a member of the Avengers. In the miniseries X-Men: The End, written by Chris Claremont, she is the campaign manager for Kitty Pryde's run for mayor of Chicago. Cassandra Nova later kills her and takes the Phoenix Force. On television, Rachel appears as Hound in a non-speaking cameo in the X-Men animated series episode "Beyond Good and Evil, Part 4." As Mother Askani, she appears in the X-Men '97 episode "Tolerance Is Extinction," voiced by Gates McFadden. She is playable in X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants, X-Men: Battle of the Atom, and Marvel Future Fight. Hasbro and WizKids have made figures of her, Diamond Select has made busts, and she also appears in the HeroClix line and a Marvel Super Hero Squad two-pack with Cyclops. Critics have ranked her often. Entertainment Weekly placed her 98th on a list ranking every X-Man in 2014. CBR.com ranked her 4th among the strongest Summers family members in 2018 and 1st among the most dangerous Starjammers in 2019. In 2022, Screen Rant ranked her first among the most powerful members of Excalibur. That same year, Newsarama listed her among 20 X-Men characters who should make the jump from the comics to the MCU.

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