Marvel’s outgoing Senior X-Men Editor, Jordan D. White, revealed that early in his tenure, he nearly retconned iconic X-character Kate “Kitty” Pryde’s mutant status, in a storyline that would have revealed she was not, in fact, born with the X-gene. The potentially controversial creative decision was only averted by the franchise’s 2019 relaunch, which ushered in the Krakoan Era.

Speaking with AIPT for X-Men Monday, White was asked about the cliffhanger ending of 2018’s Hunt for Wolverine: The Adamantium Agenda, in which Tony Stark shockingly stated: “I think the X-Men have a sleeper agent.” The line was ultimately never followed up on, and the plot was left unresolved by the dawn of the Krakoan Era.

White’s explanation of his original conception for the storyline offers a fascinating “What If?” for X-Men fans to consider; further, it is a detailed insight into cultivating X-Men stories, a process in which many potential plots are seeded, but not all take root.

X-Men Editor’s Proposed Retcon Would Have Fundamentally Changed Kate Pryde

Shadowkat’s Mutant Status Was Nearly Nullified

According to Jordan D. White, his idea for the “mutant sleeper agent” storyline was going to be an opportunity for Kate Pryde to experience significant character growth, while further progressing the franchise’s conception of what it actually means to be a mutant, and more specifically, an “X-Man.” White explained the rationale behind his pick:

I was pitching it should be Kitty Pryde. Kitty should find out she’s not a mutant. And the reason I thought that was an interesting idea was because so much of her story has been about learning that she’s a mutant and what that means. I thought it would be an interesting twist on her story to say, ‘what if she learned she wasn’t a mutant?’ And then she can learn that it doesn’t matter. She is still who she is, she believes what she believes, she’s still an X-Man, and she still stands for everything she’s always stood for — whether she was born mutant or not.

Had this plot idea reached the page, it would have been a shocking recontextualization of one of X-Men’s most fan-favorite characters. However the story might have played out, many readers would have rejected the premise outright.

Their negative reaction would have stemmed from the exact same place that White’s idea came from. Famously, ‘Kitty’ Pryde was created by Uncanny X-Men writer Chris Claremont as an audience proxy, a young character who could grapple with being a mutant, and being a hero. The character served as a stand-in for readers, who recognized their own identity discovery in her story arc. Revealing that she was not “actually” a mutant would have been a fundamental “twist” – as White called it – on the character’s core role in the franchise, but it would have proven to be a controversial decision.

A satisfying pay-off can often justify an uncertain set-up, but considering the storyline never went anywhere, it can only be speculated upon whether Jordan D. White’s idea for Kate Pryde’s mutant status would have been able to win fans over. It is, without a doubt, a bold idea – but also the kind of familiar X-Men arc that the Krakoan Era intentionally subverted and supplanted. For those who consider Kate Pryde’s mutantdom essential and irrevocable, there is another reason to be grateful for 2019’s House of X.

The Advent Of The Krakoan Era Scrapped X-Men’s “Sleeper Agent” Storyline

Anatomy Of A Dropped Plot Point

As he leaves X-Men following a groundbreaking run, Jordan D. White’s discussion of the concept offers a valuable insight into the state of X-Men at the time of the Krakoan Era relaunch. White took over as Senior Editor of the X-Office in 2018, and the way he describes it, the “mutant sleeper agent” story idea was born during a very uncertain period. As White explained:

This was done at a time when there was a lot of stuff up in the air. We didn’t know what was going on with Jonathan. I’ve mentioned before that when I first heard about him coming to X-Men, I was not aware of the scope of what we were talking about. I was told Jonathan was working on something and it was probably going to be a mini-series before a relaunch.

In other words, while X-Men’s Senior Editor knew the shape of what was to come, he hadn’t yet been given the details of how radical the details of the relaunch would be.

Nevertheless, he was tasked with continuing to produce X-Men stories up until the relaunch came – and as he explained, the “sleeper agent” storyline was intended to be one of them. White told AIPT:

This was an idea to seed a mystery, as X-Men obviously has a history of mysteries that were seeded and played out over long periods of time. The third Summers brother, the X-traitor — those sorts of things.

I will be real with you. The plans that I tried to seed wouldn’t have been like, “This person is secretly evil and working for someone.” It was going to be much more about them having no idea. There was no story behind it when I was pitching who it was going to be in my head. I was going to go, “Here’s my suggestion, writer, who is a person who writes stories for a living, come up with a story that makes some sense out of all this.”

The specifics of the story never materialized, because, as White put it, “then Jonathan came in and everything got abandoned.” However, the initial seed did make its way into the final lines of Hunt for Wolverine: The Adamantium Agenda, thus giving rise to an X-Men mystery after all, albeit off the page.

Though Jordan D. White’s idea for the X-franchise’s “mutant sleeper agent” might meet with criticism from fans, the editor’s detailed answer about the dropped plot is worth acknowledging, because it gives readers a greater sense of the complex, organic process of storyline evolution at Marvel. Even if the arc had progressed, for example, the final identity could have been changed along the way – perhaps to preserve Kate Pryde’s mutant status, or maybe for any number of other reasons that could have arisen during the development of the plot.

Shadowkat Was One Of The Krakoan Era’s Most Dynamic Characters

Still A Mutant Icon

In the end, Kate Pryde’s character journey over the past several years of X-Men stories will make the majority of fans grateful Jordan D. White’s pre-Krakoa idea for Kate Pryde’s mutant status didn’t come to fruition. As White described, the plot line could have carried over to the Krakoan Era:

I mentioned that to Gerry and Jonathan later, but I wasn’t going, “Hey, what if we did this?” I was going, “Oh, this is a thing I had been thinking for a minute that we might do. Does anybody want to do anything with this?” And nobody picked it up.

While some version of the “mutant sleeper agent” story might have fit into the Krakoan Era, for it to be Kate Pryde would have been a less integral use of the character than fans eventually got.

The Krakoan Era took Kate Pryde across space and time, and developed her character in novel, unexpected ways. Through all of that, her mutantdom was unquestioned, and it was essential to her character. In a sense, her arc exemplified the ambitions of the the Era, and moreover, emphasized how consciously different it was from prior X-Men storytelling. Though the character often confronted – and at times, embraced – the Era’s darkness, she was routinely one of the most joyous characters to follow through whatever X-Men’s writers threw at her.

In its own way, the Krakoan Era furthered the idea of what it means to be a mutant in the Marvel Universe, and how some non-mutant heroes can fit into the X-Men franchise. How it did this was vastly different from the approach the “mutant sleeper agent” storyline would likely have taken – though the underlying way of thinking about X-Men that motivated Jordan D. White’s initial idea clearly made its way into stories throughout the past five years, in other forms.

Source: AIPT, X-Men Monday