It’s been a long time coming, but Mike Carey’s uber-arc of “X-Men: Legacy” is coming to a close, with some massive changes for Professor Charles Xavier and Rogue.
Since Carey started writing “X-Men” with issue #188 (becoming “X-Men: Legacy” with issue #208 in the wake of the Messiah CompleX crossover) there has been an inevitable lead-up to something involving Rogue and her powers, from downloading multiple personalities to having them wiped by the child mutant “Messiah” and then using her powers against Mystique. For the last few issues, Mystique’s personality has been sharing Rogue’s body, influencing her and helping her out with the occasional fight, even though all Rogue has wanted was some peace and quiet.
It’s taken the combined efforts of Professor Charles Xavier and the sometimes-villainous (but not quite) training robot (and former room) Danger to realise what’s been wrong with wrong since her powers first manifested. The realisation has been teased at for the last few issues, but has only been mentioned in this one. Still, as a fan of both Rogue and Carey’s run on the book, it’s provided some amazing character progression that the character has been lacking in for the last fifteen years.
There’s been so much to-and-fro involving Rogue and her powers that this has proven a refreshing change to her character, and finally gives us some potential progression in the relationship between Rogue and Gambit. While Rogue claims to need some more time before deciding how she really feels about Gambit (and his multiple betrayals of the X-Men at various points in the past), we’re finally at the end of one of the longest-running (and most frustrating) plot points of the X-Men series, and mean that one of the most interesting characters in the X-Men universe can finally achieve her full potential.
