Revisiting Revanche

Hear me out

The more I think about it — which is clearly too much for any sane person, but also, hello, I run an X-Men blog — the more it becomes clear what this Revanche story should have been.

This for a start (courtesy of D’Manda Martini on Bluesky)

So Revanche shows up — that is, Caucasian Betsy. This causes a lot of confusion, naturally, because for the past several months this Japanese woman has been claiming, and not without merit, to be Betsy.

The X-Men aren’t heartless. They take this other Betsy in so that Professor Xavier can help suss out who is who, but the Betsy we “know” is offended. She won’t give any credence to the notion that she is not who she says she is. She leaves the mansion.

But there’s another reason for her to go: this Betsy — the Japanese one — has contracted the Legacy Virus and, feeling betrayed by her supposed teammates, she would rather die in isolation than spend her last months with them.

Of course, this white woman isn’t Betsy. She’s a brainwashed killer Kwannon here to fulfill a hypno-assassin mission of some kind. Only she’s overcome that conditioning with the help of (psychic powers, therapy, goodwill). She’s more mad at the Hand for erasing her old life now that she realizes what she’s lost.

We’re dropping the “lost love” angle (because who cares), and Lord Nyoirin altogether (because whoooo caaaaares) Revanche owes her existence to Spiral’s trickery, sure, but she was just some weird leftover who was scooped up as a backup by Matsu’o once it became clear that the “Lady Mandarin” gag wasn’t going to work out.

Matsu’o leads the Hand to the mansion to try to finish what he had started, only for “our” Betsy, illness and all, to return and help fight off the attack.

The bad guys defeated, the Psylockes reconcile and Kwannon confesses she now knows her own true identity. She insists that she and Betsy switch back using [the focused totality of their mutant psychic powers or whatever]. Betsy at first refuses, having been resigned to die, but Kwannon bests her in combat and forces the switch so that she may die in her original body, in Betsy’s stead. Betsy mourns someone that she came to regard as a kindred spirit and a sister — someone she fought, but understood and ultimately cared for.

In the end, Betsy is back to being white and one of the ickiest long-term storylines in X-Men history is cut short by something like 2 decades, in a conclusion that actually features the X-Men as active participants, sorta, a little bit.

Obviously, since this story was published 29 years ago I’ve had a lot more time to think about it, but bear in mind I hadn’t given it any thought whatsoever prior to last week, which means it took me much less time than Fabian Nicieza, Andy Kubert and Bob Harras would have had to resolve the story after initially introducing Kwannon/Revanche in early 1993.

Obviously, at the time, the thought was to keep Betsy Asian because the prevailing thought was that a comic with a sexy, skimpily-clad Asian female body was better than the same comic without, and the word “problematic” had seemingly not yet been coined, so this exact ending was clearly never on the table, but you can see how easily all of the same elements could have been maneuvered into something much more compelling than what it actually was.

But what do I know?

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