Warning: SPOILERS for Legion of X #9!The past few years have been good for most of the Marvel may be tearing apart. Karma has corrected her name, found love, and freed her brother from psychic captivity. Magik has reached new levels of status on Krakoa and freed herself from Limbo's responsibilities. Sunspot has become an intergalactic power player. Even Cypher has experienced enormous growth on Krakoa, but this often came to the detriment of Warlock. Best described as soulmates, Cypher and Warlock have been inseparable for decades, but it seems the two have reached a breaking point that they cannot come back from.
To varying degrees of success, Cypher has interspersed Warlock's techno-organic material throughout the island of Krakoa. The Sentinel's Nimrod has possessed Warlock to exploit this connection in a shocking development from Legion of X #9 by Si Spurrier, Netho Diaz, Sean Parsons, Álvaro López, Java Tartaglia, VC's Clayton Cowles, and Sarah Brunstad. The soul connection between Warlock and Cypher causes Doug significant psychic pain while Nimrod controls Warlock. To save him and get some clarity on the situation, Vox Ignis uses the full might of their 'Scream of Change' on Cypher. In poetic, painstaking detail, the narration notes, "something is changing in Douglas Ramsey. A bond is breaking in the language of his soul. And this sound (this scream like the birth pangs of an angel, like the laughter of a genderless god, like the electric howl of a gene disobeying its rules) allows him to escape its frayed edges and trace the cause of his trauma." No indication is given if this broken bond can ever be repaired.
Cypher and Warlock Were New Mutant Soulmates, But Not Anymore
Warlock has been going through it in the Krakoan Era. Initially, he and Cypher felt that his presence on the island had to be concealed from the Council. Once that was resolved, his longtime companion and soul-bound, Cypher, gets married out of nowhere. Eventually, Bei, Cypher, and Warlock were able to address Warlock’s feelings of being ostracized, and it seemed as though Cypher and Warlock were again in unison through their connection with Krakoa. Only now, Warlock's father and X-Men villain Magus is dead, and now he has been possessed by Nimrod after trying to help defend Krakoa from the threat of Astral Technarchies. Adding insult to injury, Vox Ignis has severed the last pieces of the soul bond between Cypher and Warlock. It’s unclear if that kind of connection could be reforged between the two, or if this classic New Mutant duo is done for good.
Warlock and Cypher have been a key pairing since the two first met in the classic New Mutants era. A mutant with the power to understand any language and an alien with no understanding of English is a natural set-up for a meet-cute. This is a duo that lives on the blurred line between friends and lovers. They are a pair that is so deeply a part of one another that the Douglock period evolved them into a being that was unable to distinguish if they were born from Warlock or Doug Ramsey. It could be argued that there's no new level of intimacy left for the two to explore. Therefore, it makes sense to take their story in a direction that tests the boundaries of their bond, but it seems that Cypher is finally being taken to a place that Warlock cannot follow.
Things seem pretty dire for the quintessential duo of the New Mutants. Even as Doug is freed from immediate danger, the choices he's made behind the backs of the Quiet Council are bound to catch up with him sooner or later. As for Warlock, being violated on a soul level by Nimrod to hack into Krakoa is immediately worsened by the fact that his most intimate connection with another living entity has just been severed. On top of that, Kurt and his Legionnaires only have one issue to solve this crisis before the Sins of Sinister dominate the X-Universe. With all this in mind, it seems entirely possible that Marvel is breaking up this iconic New Mutants pair for good.
Legion of X #9 is available now from Marvel Comics.
