It’s taken 33 years, but Marvel is finally managing to fix the most confusing X-Men retcon of all time. The story of Psylocke took a dramatic turn in 1989’s Uncanny X-Men #251. Sister of Captain Britain, Betsy Braddock was a powerful telepath who’d come into possession of the mystical Siege Perilous. A powerful artifact, the Siege Perilous could be used to open a gateway that would grant you your heart’s desire. The X-Men used the Siege Perilous to escape an attack by the mutant-hunting Reavers, each of them gaining a new life.
For Psylocke, this meant a dramatic transformation. She returned in a new Japanese body, now transformed into a psychic assassin and even going by the “Lady Mandarin” name for a while. The Hand had discovered Betsy Braddock, and they hit upon the idea of implanting her mind in the body of a fallen ninja warrior named Kwannon, essentially merging the two souls into one. That became Psylocke’s new status quo… at least for three years, anyway.
In 1993, the X-Men Wound Up With Two Psylockes
All this changed in spectacular fashion in 1993’s X-Men #20, in a story penned by Fabian Nicieza. This was the climax of an ongoing arc in which Psylocke had been attempting to seduce Cyclops, and it ended with Betsy actually cutting down Jean Grey herself with her psychic knife in a surprise attack. Matters escalated even further when the original Psylocke suddenly appeared on the scene, claiming the ninja version was an impostor, and it took the X-Men quite some time to figure out the truth. It seems the Hand had engineered a body swap, with Betsy’s mind in Kwannon’s and vice versa.
It was a messy story even then, and there was a simple reason for it; Nicieza had misunderstood what happened back in 1989, and then desperately tried to fix continuity when he realized his mistake. As he explained to CBR, “I started a storyline about the two different bodies because I screwed up the research and no one else in editorial noticed it. In fact, no readers noted it until many issues after the storyline had started.” Nicieza rightly points out this was well before the advent of the Internet and “instantaneous fact checking.”
In the original story, Kwannon (in Betsy’s old body) died of the Legacy Virus. That was until 2018, when Marvel rewrote Psylocke lore yet again; by now, the idea of a British psychic in the body of a Japanese assassin was seen as cultural appropriation, meaning it was time for a fix. Jim Zub’s Hunt for Wolverine: Mystery in Madripoor #4 saw Psylocke fall victim to a soul assassin called Sapphire Styx, who tore her consciousness apart. Incredibly, we wound up with two versions of Betsy once again. Kwannon has now claimed the name Psylocke, while Betsy has become Captain Britain.
Marvel’s Trying to Straighten Out This Confusing Retcon (Again)
Marvel’s new Psylocke: Ninja miniseries, by Tim Seeley and Nico Leon, is essentially an attempt to straighten things out. Far from an entirely original story, it steps back into the past to reveal how Betsy Braddock wound up in the ninja body to begin with. The various panels retell flashbacks from previous issues, but with subtle changes to dialogue to try to straighten things out. Importantly, there’s a scene in which it is revealed that the Hand believed a fragment of Kwannon’s soul would find its way into Betsy’s original body during their transformation process.
The original story of Psylocke and Kwannon is, frankly, one of the most confusing in X-Men history. This is largely because it contained a straightforward continuity error, and Nicieza did an admirable job trying to fix it, but it just didn’t quite work. By retelling the story in this way, though, Marvel is essentially completing the retcon. This is the kind of opportunity few comic book characters have, and it will be fascinating to see how the narrative continues.
What is significant, of course, is that the modern Psylocke is no longer Betsy Braddock; rather, she is Kwannon. It’s an odd inversion of the original story, given Betsy took Kwannon’s body but Kwannon has now taken her name. It will be fascinating to see how Seeley and Leon tie everything together.
What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!