Marvel Comics' X-Men relaunch is finally making Kitty Pryde the leader she should be. Created by Chris Claremont and John Byrne in 1980, Kitty Pryde has become one of the most popular X-Men. One key reason is that readers have grown up with the character; she was introduced as a teenage girl who'd only just learned she was a mutant, and now she's matured into a strong and confident young woman. In Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men run, Kitty Pryde literally saved the entire world.
It's always been clear that Kitty Pryde has the potential to be one of the X-Men's greatest leaders. Kitty has always had a strong moral code, even if it does sometimes lead to her speaking first and thinking later, to sometimes controversial effect. She's grown to be a woman of influence in the team, even acting as leader of the X-Men for a brief period, but in truth she's never really seemed to live up to her potential. That's best displayed by looking at alternate future timelines, including one penned by Claremont in which Kitty became the first mutant President of the United States of America.
the Krakoan Council as well, making her one of the twelve leaders of the entire mutant race.
It's reasonable to assume that there's a reason Emma Frost wants Kitty Pryde involved with the Hellfire Corporation, and potentially on the Krakoan Council. The relationship between Kitty and Emma is rather a tense one, given Emma Frost was literally the first supervillain Kitty ever fought. Kitty has never forgotten that fact, and as a result, she completely distrusts anything Emma is involved in.
Back in Whedon's Astonishing X-Men run, Emma saw the value in that; at the time, she was stepping up into a leadership role in the X-Men, and she feared that she lacked the morality to handle that properly. She asked Cyclops to invite Kitty Pryde into the team to keep her in check, because she knew Kitty would second-guess everything she did. It's reasonable to assume that Emma has the same motives here; that she's wary of Xavier's new Krakoan dream, and indeed of her role in it, and that she wants someone she can trust to keep an eye on things.
There's a strangely cult-ish feeling to Jonathan Hickman's X-Men relaunch, with the Krakoans seeming to have an almost religious devotion to the cause. Indeed, in House of X #5, Storm felt like the High Priestess of a new religion. "On your feet, mutant," she declared to her friends, placing individuality second to their fundamental mutantcy. She then ran a strange ceremony in which the assembled Krakoan community celebrated these resurrected mutants. Meanwhile, looking to the Council, its likely include a large number of religious and philosophical figures among the mutant race - right down to Exodus, who was always portrayed as a Magneto cultist.
It's surely no coincidence that there are twelve of the Council, reminiscent of the Twelve Tribes of Israel or the Twelve Disciples; Hickman has always used numbers symbolically. If the latter is the meaning readers are to extrapolate, then it's possible Kitty will become the Judas figure, questioning Krakoa and ultimately betraying it if she believes the mutant race is headed in the wrong direction. It really does look as though Kitty Pryde could be one key mutant to watch in this latest relaunch.
