Marvel Brutally Ends the Krakoa Era in X-Men: Hellfire Gala

Over the past few years, Marvel’s merry mutants have been in a major new status quo, with 2019’s House of X and Powers of X revitalizing Marvel’s entire X-Men line. The ensuing years of the “Krakoa Era” have been filled with some landmark moments and shocking developments, but the concept of the annual Hellfire Gala has become one of the most beloved. This year’s proceedings took that attention and propelled it into something unexpected — which just may have rewritten the story for mutantdom once again. Obviously, major spoilers for X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 by Gerry Duggan, Adam Kubert, Luciano Vecchio, Matteo Lolli, Russell Dauterman, Javier Pina, R.B. Silva, Joshua Cassara, Kris Anka, Pepe Larraz, Rain Beredo, Cecil De La Cruz, Matthew Wilson, Erick Arciniega, Marte Garcia, and Virtual Calligraphy below! Only look if you want to know!

This year’s Hellfire Gala one-shot opens on noteworthy, but ordinary footing — Kamala Khan waking up on Krakoa and discovering her mutant heritage, the assembling of the actual gala, and Jean Grey announcing that she and Cyclops are stepping down from the main X-Men team. This is brutally shaken up by the arrival of Nimrod and the members of Orchis, who unveil a chilling plan to stop the X-Men once and for all. Stasis reveals that, at the previous Hellfire Galas, he had secretly sabotaged Krakoa’s life-saving drugs, installing a kill switch that he and M.O.D.O.K. can activate. Stasis orders an ultimatum to Professor X: surrender and force the entire mutant population off of Earth, or Orchis will kill an ever-growing number of humans with the kill switch. Professor X agrees, and mind-controls most of the mutants to successfully enter the Krakoan portrals that go off-planet. A select few, such as Emma Frost, Kamala, Kitty Pride, and the surviving members of the new X-Men team, are able to resist Professor X’s telepathy and hide away — only to discover that the remaining Krakoan portals are locked altogether, leaving them stranded on an increasingly-hostile Earth.

After a surprising amount of additional carnage and bloodshed, Rogue begins to fly Professor X to safety, but he asks her to stop and bring him back to Krakoa. As he sits on the beach of the island, he reveals that he believes the Krakoan portals were sabotaged even further by Orchis, as he can’t telepathically feel the mutants who went through the gates. He is adamant that he forced the vast majority of mutantdom to be killed in “a meat grinder”, and asks Rogue to leave and avenge them, while he remains on the beach. And with that, the “Krakoa Era” is over. 

What’s Next For the X-Men After The Hellfire Gala 2023?

While there’s absolutely no telling if and how any component of this storyline could be resolved in Fall of X, — after all, even beyond the mutants who went through the Krakoan gates, the issue contained multiple major deaths (like Jean Grey, Dazzler, Mystique, Jubilee, and Iceman) that seemed pretty definitive on the page. The only detail that could prove helpful for keeping the mutant population alive might lie with Mother Righteous and Exodus, who are shown trapping Krakoa’s Atlantic Island in a protective bubble, and pushing The Five through a very specific gate. Maybe The Five — or maybe all of the mutants who went through the gates — ended up on that secret island, and Charles isn’t able to detect them.

We do know Marvel’s immediate plans for X-related titles in the coming months, including Dark X-Men, Children of the Vault, Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant, the one-shot X-Men Blue: Origins, and some sort of The New X-Men launch in 2024. Even then, those titles are all cast in a new light amid the carnage of the Hellfire Gala, and we’ll have to see how they (and the remaining mutants not featured in those books) are impacted.

What do you think of the Krakoa Era ending in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!