Warning: contains spoilers for X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 #1!The Master of Magnetism's death in X-Men Red #7 has once more forced Charles Xavier to re-evaluate everything he knew about his longtime friend and nemesis: including his name. Slaughtered in battle against the Eternal Uranos, Magneto deliberately opted out of the X-Men's resurrection protocols - a decision Xavier has been unable to understand.
Kieron Gillen and Lucas Werneck's Immortal X-Men #13 has Professor X facing a crisis of faith in his leadership of the mutant island of Krakoa. When presented with the populace's grievances by mutant advisor Cypher, who shares a unique connection to the living island, Xavier bitterly reflects on the tangle of competing ideas about the future of mutants that led to this moment. During the conversation, Xavier consciously refers to Magneto as "Max," despite usually calling him "Erik."
Professor X Finally Calls Magneto by the Right Name
Since the '90s, X-Men has established that Magneto's birth name is, in fact, Max Eisenhardt. The more famous 'Erik Magnus Lehnscherr' is in fact a false identity that Magneto adopted after escaping a Nazi concentration camp. This retcon to X-Men canon was made due to Magneto's original human name being accidentally incongruous with his Jewish identity - an oversight that it took decades for Marvel to correct. In a smart detail, Xavier has continued to use "Erik," subtly refusing to recognize his old friend/nemesis' identity and past.
Charles Xavier has always defined himself in opposition to the man he knew as Erik - aka the mutant Magneto. Now, grappling with Magneto's refusal to be resurrected, he has begun to distinguish between the personas he knew and the real person behind them: Max, who remained unknown to him until it was too late. All of this builds on a heated conversation between Storm and Xavier in the pages of X-Men Red #11 - "Erik Lehnsherr... Magnus... He was my oldest friend, who I knew as well as I knew myself," Xavier tells Storm, "But I never knew Max. He never let me."
Professor X Never Truly Knew Magneto
For Xavier, coming to a new understanding of his closest friend and most dangerous enemy means also confronting what he does and does not know about himself. Magneto was always guarded with his interior self - indeed, he wore a helmet specifically to keep Xavier out of his mind - but for Charles to realize that the person he thought he knew was another costume, he must redefine his own legacy. All of this weighs on him as he is confronted by Cypher in Immortal X-Men #13, and while he surrenders control over Krakoa, his realization is too late where it counts.
In the recently released X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 #1, fans see Professor X tricked into sacrificing 250,000 mutants in order to save human lives - fulfilling Magneto's deathbed prediction that his lack of self-knowledge would lead him to sacrifice his mutant charges. Despite being co-conspirators and ideological opponents, Xavier never truly knew the human behind Magneto's persona, and it turns out he never knew himself either - at least not well enough to understand that he overly equates righteousness with sacrifice. In symbolically using Magneto's real name, Professor X began to accept that he cannot live in a world purely made of grand ideals - that life is messy, and even Magneto was a person, not a philosophy made flesh. Sadly, this realization came too late, and in reverting to his own purely idealistic persona when it counts, Xavier has kicked off a dark new era for the X-Men.
Immortal X-Men #13 and X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 #1 are available now from Marvel Comics!
