Throughout her history on the X-Men, Kitty Pryde was often coded to be queer, and her co-creator Chris Claremont was able to add to this legacy in a story that saw the former Shadowcat elected president. In the trilogy of miniseries, X-Men: The End, Claremont had the opportunity to flesh out his ideal finale for Kitty, who now goes by Kate in current comics. He envisioned Pryde as the first mutant President of the United States, with a queer First Lady waiting in the wings.
In 2016, Claremont sat in as a guest and interviewee on the fan podcast Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men. He discusses how he always pictured Kate’s true love to be her longtime best friend, Rachel Summers. While he was not able to outright make this canonical in his comics, he intended this to be implied in X-Men: The End, which was written by Claremont and drawn by Sean Chen. Speaking on his vision for Kate Pryde and her role in X-Men: The End, Claremont notes:
The significance of Kitty’s two-term stint as POTUS is not that she’s the first mutant President of the United States. Ideally, all the way through the story … the person who’s constantly by her side is Rachel [Summers]. And when you get to the White House, you never see who is the First Spouse. But the key visual is that one of the kids is a redhead … the coloring wasn’t quite right, one of the kids should have been a redhead.
He also adds that the coloring on the child’s hair isn’t as obvious as he would have preferred. Still, the implication is clear that Kate’s election is so momentous because she is in a sapphic relationship: that the President could be a Jewish mutant woman, married to another mutant woman with whom she started a family.
Chris Claremont Intended One X-Man To Be Kate Pryde’s True Love
Despite this story being relegated to the alternate world of X-Men: The End, Claremont claims that Shadowkat and Askani’s longtime friendship turning into romance was something he viewed as essential to the characters’ future. Qualifying that he’s no longer the writer in charge, Claremont states with certainty, “while [Kate] dated lots of people when she was an adolescent, the primal love of her life has always been Rachel.” Reflecting on the Fox X-Men films, Claremont also mused that there was a sense of ironic symmetry that Elliot Page was cast as Kitty Pryde due to a shared connection to the LGBTQ+ community.
At the time of recording, both Kate Pryde and Rachel Summers’ queerness had only ever been presented in subtext. In the years since, Kate shared her first kiss with another woman, meaning the door to exploring that side of herself is now open for future stories. Even more concretely, Rachel stepped out of the glass closet and into the arms of her current girlfriend, Betsy Braddock, to great fanfare in 2022. Though neither have been strictly labeled as bisexual or lesbian, the chances of Kate and Rachel becoming a textual sapphic pairing are stronger than ever.
Claremont’s Plans For Kitty Pyrde & Rachel Summers Could Be Realized Now
Many of the queer themes that Claremont loaded into his 16-year tenure on the X-Men were censored and reduced to subtext due to that era’s editorial practices. However, many of his dreams deferred have found new life now: most notably, his original plans for Destiny, her wife Mystique, and their son Nightcrawler have finally been realized in Marvel canon. But if anything, recent flashes of Kate Pryde’s sexuality and a recent team-up in X-Men #32 point to Magik as her potential love interest. For now, Kate Pryde and Rachel Summers are the queer X-Men couple that got away, but there’s a possibility that future stories could see Chris Claremont‘s plans become a reality.
Source: Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men
