Few things in the Marvel Universe go hand in hand more than the X-Men and convoluted family histories. That's certainly true for Nightcrawler and his mother Mystique, with Marvel offering several conflicting takes on the story of Kurt Wagner's birth. Is Mystique truly his mother? Who is his father? Now Marvel has published the definitive account of Nightcrawler's origins, and the truth is far different than what X-fans had always been told.
Read on to learn the full story behind Nightcrawler's birth, but beware of spoilers ahead for X-Men Blue: Origins #1!
X-Men Blue: Origins sees Nightcrawler (currently masquerading as the Uncanny Spider-Man following the disastrous events of the latest Hellfire Gala) confronting Mystique in a park. Mystique's mind has become fractured due to her resisting Professor Xavier's telepathic command for all mutants to flee Earth. That, in turn, has opened up a flood of memories about her past that dramatically changes what we thought we knew about Nightcrawler's origin.
Originally, Marvel established that Nightcrawler was the son of Mystique and a German nobleman named Baron Christian Wagner. As the story goes, Mystique was forced to flee Wagner's home when the local villagers discovered her baby had blue skin, and Nightcrawler was found and adopted by the sorceress Margali Szardos.
Later, Marvel made the controversial choice to revamp that origin story in 2003's Uncanny X-Men: The Draco, which revealed that Mystique had an affair with a demon lord named Azazel. That was meant to explain why Nightcrawler has a demonic appearance and the power to teleport through Azazel's hellish realm.
But in X-Men Blue: Origins, writer Si Spurrier and artist Marcus To present a very different take on this old story, one that incorporates the romance between Mystique and Destiny (a relationship Marvel only began openly acknolwedging within the last few years). Mystique is shown to be carrying on an affair with Destiny during her time spent as Wagner's wife. When Destiny voices a desire to start a family with Mystique, Mystique transforms herself into a man and successfully conceives a child with her wife. Her shape-shifting powers are so great that she's able to transform herself from female to male on a genetic level, taking on attributes of both Wagner and Azazel in the process.
Mystique then carries on a ruse, pretending to be pregnant even as Destiny carries their child. The ruse is finally exposed when Wagner walks in on the two lovers at night, and Mystique is forced to kill her husband. She then begins masquerading as Wagner himself up until the baby is born, at which point she insists on revealing her true self to her son. That's when Mystique and Destiny are discovered and driven out by the furious, mutant-wary villagers, leaving Mystique to abandon her newborn child in the woods and Margali to step in.
Years later, Mystique and Destiny approach Charles Xavier, hoping to have the painful memories of their broken family erased. Xavier agrees, rewriting Mystique's mind so that she believes herself to be Kurt's mother and Wagner his father. That's the reason for her fractured mental state in Fall of X. Xavier's telepathic onslaught broke through the mind wipe and exposed her true memories.
So now it's official. Mystique isn't Nightcrawler's mother, but his father. Destiny is his actual mother. This plot twist isn't entirely new, either. Uncanny X-Men writer Chris Claremont reportedly once considered a similar revelation back in the '80s, but presumably Marvel was wary of courting too much controversy or clashing with the Comics Code Authority.
In 1995's X-Men Unlimited #4, Scott Lobdell wrote, "It was always Chris' plan that Mystique and Irene Adler (Destiny) were lovers, and that Mystique at one point had transformed into a man and impregnated Destiny and she gave birth to Nightcrawler. So Mystique and Destiny were actually Nightcrawler's father and mother."
With the truth finally out there, maybe there's still hope for this family to find happiness together. But maybe not, as 2024 is shaping up to be a very dark year for mutants in the Marvel Universe.
What do you think of this twist? Does Mystique make sense as Kurt's father, or do you prefer the classic origin story? How should the MCU handle Nightcrawler's origins? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
