This article contains spoilers for X-Men: The Trial of Magneto #5.
The future of the X-Men‘s mutant race has been transformed by Scarlet Witch – more effectively than even she realizes. Scarlet Witch has a troubled history with the mutant race. For years she believed herself a mutant, even Magneto’s daughter, but her powers proved as unstable as her mind – and she was responsible for a spell that depowered 98 percent of the mutant race. She was ultimately revealed to not be related to Magneto at all – and in fact she wasn’t even a mutant. When the mutant race settled on the living island of Krakoa, they called her the “Pretender,” basically the mutant version of the Devil.
Wanda Maximoff has been attempting to put matters right for some time, and this culminated in a bizarre plan to extend the X-Men’s Resurrection Protocols – a tale told in the X-Men: The Trial of Magneto miniseries by Leah Williams, Lucas Werneck and David Messina. Magneto tells Scarlet Witch the mutants have conquered death, and she resolves to become part of the process so she can weave a new layer of magic into it. She creates a new realm in the Astral Plane, outside time and space, able to draw in the spirits and souls of mutants who were missed by Professor X’s Cerebro technology – mutants who are outside the X-Men’s Resurrection Protocols. Because of Wanda, Cerebro can now scan across time and space itself to discover mutants who existed before Xavier figured out how to record mutant consciousnesses, or those whose powers never manifested. In a single night, twenty million mutants are added to the resurrection queue. Now no mutant is lost, and no mutant can ever be lost again. Little wonder the Scarlet Witch has a new name on Krakoa now – the Redeemer.
But, in truth, Scarlet Witch is unaware of the enormity of what she’s done. She’s not been part of the mutant community for quite some time, and consequently is unaware the X-Men have learned the true history of mutants. Mutants have previously been portrayed as the next step in human evolution, but Marvel has revealed there have always been mutants – with Jason Aaron’s Avengers run even introducing mutants who lived 1,000,000 years ago. Scarlet Witch’s spell means all the millions of mutants who lived across the millennia can be resurrected.
![Scarlet Witch Just Rewrote The Future Of The Mutant Race](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Avengers-39-Cover-First-Phoenix.jpg)
It’s a shocking twist, and it will completely reshape Krakoan civilization. Now, any mutant who has ever lived can be resurrected on Krakoa to live in a mutant paradise. That means countless mutants will lack any knowledge of the modern world, and will need to be educated. Mutants from ancient civilizations with forgotten beliefs and strange, mysterious cultures will be restored as well. And secrets lost in the mists of time will be remembered – how long will it be before Firehair, the ancient Phoenix host from 1,000,000 BC and former lover of Odin himself, is brought back from the dead? How would the Phoenix Force itself respond to that?
Scarlet Witch has performed a miracle, amplifying the Resurrection Protocols to an unprecedented degree. In doing so, she has redefined the future of the mutant race, because now no mutant has ever been lost – or need ever be lost again. It will be thrilling to see what the X-Men do with the newfound hope that Scarlet Witch has given them.