Warning: contains Major Spoilers for Dark X-Men #5The demonic mutant Azazel has been getting more X-Men attention in recent weeks than he has in years, and Dark X-Men #5 – the conclusion to the spine-tingling Madelyne Pryor adventure – sees Azazel unleashing the truly gory potential of Nightcrawler’s teleportation abilities. Azazel has always been a force for evil, a dark mirror to who Nightcrawler could be in his worst nightmare, and his role in Dark X-Men exemplifies this.
Dark X-Men, from writer Steve Foxe and artists Jonas Scharf and Frank Martin, has seen Madelyne Pryor and her team of brutal mutants fighting against the forces of Orchis while trying to keep the residents of the Limbo Embassy safe
Dark X-Men #5 reveals the final confrontation between Madelyne and her Dark X-Men, and Orchis and their “secret weapon,” the evil Goblin Queen from Secret Wars. Orchis quickly realizes they are losing, and are not in control of the Goblin Queen, so when Agent Vallens attempts to escape the carnage, Azazel brutally murders the occultist with a BAMF!
Azazel Is A Dark Mirror Of Who Nightcrawler Could Have Become
For more than a decade now, Azazel has been known as Nightcrawler’s biological father, a demonic mutant who manipulated Mystique when she was in a vulnerable state. This led to years of conflict between Azazel and Kurt, and a reckoning within Nightcrawler about his Catholic faith and “demonic” lineage. Thankfully, the recent acclaimed one-shot X-Men Blue: Origins retconned this origin, revealing that Nightcrawler was a pawn in a plan by Destiny to prevent Azazel from ruling the world and that Destiny and Mystique are Kurt’s true biological parents.
Dark X-Men #5 sees Azazel using Nightcrawler’s teleportation abilities to brutally murder Agent Vallens, transporting her halfway through a wall and then leaving her there, effectively encasing her organs in brick and killing her instantly. While Vallens was monstrous and may have deserved her fate for her actions while with Orchis, it is a grim reminder of how violent and bloody Kurt’s power could be if he wanted. However, it also serves as a reminder of how compassionate and hopeful Nightcrawler remains… even when he is being hunted and almost murdered, he would never thoughtlessly kill as Azazel does.
Azazel Is Not The Only X-Men To Use Teleportation For Murder
In fact, Kurt has explicitly worked incredibly hard to never accidentally teleport someone into an object, knowing how horrible a death it would be. Unlike Nightcrawler, there are other X-Men who have used similar abilities in moments of great strife or conflict, murdering others with the same ease that Azazel does in Dark X-Men. Famously, Magik used her stepping disks to decapitate the vile Dark Beast in Uncanny X-Men (2019) #20, to the shock of her peers. The iconic Kate Pryde also recently used her phase-shifting to murder multiple Orchis agents in a similar fashion, in X-Men (2021) #20, throwing them into the ground or each other to kill them instantaneously.
While the X-Men try their hardest not to kill, many will do so when push comes to shove, begging the question of whether Nightcrawler needs to fight with more brutality. Nightcrawler has always been the heart and soul of the X-Men, and they have often become lost without his wisdom and guidance, so while some might want him to use his powers in a gorier fashion, his real weapon is his hope, compassion, and love. By the end of Dark X-Men Azazel has been murdered by a demonic version of his former “son” Nightcrawler, a fitting end for one of the vilest X-Men “heroes” to ever cross a comic panel.
Dark X-Men #5 from Marvel Comics is available now in stores.
