Characters / Marvel Comics: Exodus

WARNING: There are unmarked spoilers on this page for all comics before issue #1 of Sins of Sinister (January 2023).

Bennet du Paris / Exodus

Nationality: French

Species: Human mutant

First Appearance: X-Factor #92 (July, 1993)

I come not as an enemy, children of the atom, but as an emissary— a ferryman to a better place!

One of the earliest known mutants, Bennet du Paris was born in 12th century France and participated as a soldier in the Crusades. On a quest to find the mythic Tower of Power, he was tested by the ancient mutant Apocalypse who unlocked his astounding mutant powers after finding him worthy but subsequently trapped him in stasis when he refused to slay his friend and fellow crusader Eobar Garrington. Awakened by Magneto in the 20th century, Exodus was anointed as the Master of Magnetism's new right-hand man and charged with the mission of recruiting the best and brightest mutants to Magneto's Acolytes. A true believer in Magneto's philosophies, Exodus wants nothing more than to protect and defend his people, a task that is complicated by his run-ins with the X-Men and his own fluctuating mental stability. As of the 2019 Soft Reboot of the X-Men universe, he has finally been given a chance to do this as one of the twelve members of the Krakoan nation's Quiet Council.

For tropes relating to his counterpart from the Age of Apocalypse, see here.

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Exodus appears in:

Notable Comics

• X-Men (various titles and volumes)
  • Fatal Attractions (1993)
  • Blood Ties (1993)
  • X-Men: Messiah Complex (2007 — 2008)
  • House and Powers of X (2019)
  • Immortal X-Men (2022)

Literature

• X-Men Mutant Empire Trilogy (1996 — 1997)

Video Games

• Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (NPC, appears in Magneto's ending)
• X-Men: Children of the Atom (NPC, appears in all character endings)
• X-Men: GamesMaster's Legacy (NPC, boss battle)
• X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse (NPC, boss battle)
• X-Men 2: Clone Wars (NPC, boss battle)

Exodus provides examples of:

#-H

• A God I Am Not: In 2007's X-Men Annual #1 he pointedly tells new recruit Random that for all his power, he is not God, and that he cannot predict what the X-Men will or won't do, only prepare for it.
• A House Divided: This is what brought him back in X-Men Legacy — upon realizing that the X-Men have split in two, he declared to be this and decided it was his new mission to reunite them. In a way, he does.
• Actually a Doombot: The version of him that is fought as a boss in Clone Wars is not really him, but rather a Phalanx clone of him.
• Adaptational Wimp: He's usually much less powerful in the games he appears in, with only X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse coming close to portraying him accurately, and even that game featuring him only as a Mini-Boss with a fraction of his powers.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: While it might be an intentional artistic choice, Exodus skin is often illustrated as reddish.
• Ambiguously Bi: Implied for a long time. As a Crusader Knight, Bennet swore a vow of celibacy, but there were some (one-sided) Ho Yay undertones to his relationship with Magneto, and in the alternate universe Age of Apocalypse his kinder, gentler counterpart is in an active relationship with fellow X-Man Dazzler. Later on during the Krakoan era, it is revealed that he had a male lover during his Crusader Knight times.
• Anti-Villain: Type III. He is inherently noble, and unlike Fabian Cortez, truly believes in making the world a better place for his people. Unfortunately, being from an earlier period in history makes him dangerously prone to Black-and-White Insanity, and he doesn't exactly have the most stable set of powers either.
• Apologetic Attacker: In X-Men: Legacy, and specifically to his former Acolyte Frenzy.
• Ascended Extra: He was originally conceived to be Magneto's successor as main villain of the X-Men but this didn't pan out and after The '90s he degenerated into just another powerful C-list villain who would disappear for years at a time only to come back as a Villain of the Week for lazy "____ Returns!" type stories. Jonathan Hickman uplifted Exodus tremendously by making him one of the twelve leaders of his new mutant nation and while he hasn't been in focus as much as some of the other Quiet Council members, he's still a more prominent and popular character under the current status quo than he ever was before.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Half of why he so easily took leadership of the Acolytes from Fabian Cortez. The other half was him having the actual legitimate blessing of Big Mags. Also, he was quite a popular leader and no one actually liked Cortez.
• Astral Projection: Fought Professor X on the astral plane in X-Men Legacy.
• The Atoner: He briefly was shown as this in the 1999 mini where he took control of Genosha in an attempt to bring it peace. The spectacular failure that ended up turning into led to a kind of Heel–Face Door-Slam, with Exodus just renewing his earlier Humans Are Bastards convictions after the fact.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: He can temporarily gain skills by reading the minds of those who possess them and breaking out his telekinesis to use them. In the prologue to X-Men: Messiah Complex he captured Cable and tapped into his future knowledge to build a perfected 40th century version of Professor X's Cerebro machine.
• Badass Boast: A frequent giver of these, the best one being to SHIELD Director Maria Hill in a 2007 annual:
  Maria Hill: Okay, people. First priority, we contain this. Then we—
  Exodus: You could sooner contain the ocean in a cup, Maria Hill. I am Exodus. And I refuse to be contained.
• Badass Cape: Just look at it◊.
• Badass Decay: Exodus was originally created to be Magneto's successor as the top mutant threat to the X-Men and throughout the first half of the '90s he more than lived up to his lofty claim of being "Magneto's heir in spirit and in power", flattening all of X-Force in just his second appearance before starring as the Big Bad of the Blood Ties crossover in which he effortlessly defeated a fully-armored War Machine, matched and overcame the Eternal Sersi, and in the story's climax fought off virtually the entirety of both the Avengers and X-Men teams singlehandedly while also crushing the entire island of Genosha beneath the force of his telekinesis. Then he succumbed th Orcus on His Throne and spent a few years just sort of sitting around, until the Age of Apocalypse villain Holocaust was transported over to the regular timeline and the decision was made to have him fight Exodus sans his Powered Armor to show how strong he was (despite Exodus logically being able to defeat him with his telepathy if he'd just bothered to use it). Much like Juggernaut above, Exodus would be further dragged downhill by Chuck Austen, who wrote him as a very generic sort of baddie who struggled to match Havok and got told off by one of his own lackies, a teenage elephant boy. Unlike Juggernaut, this bizarre dip in competence has never been addressed, save for later allusions to his Psychoactive Powers (which are driven by the faith of others and his faith in himself), and later appearances only dragged him down further, with Messiah Complex using him as a victim of The Worf Effect (again) to build up Nightcrawler and Emma Frost. He's been handled with more respect since then, but it took until 2022's Immortal X-Men before the decay was finally cured.
• Badass in Distress: X-Men 2: Clone Wars for the Sega Genesis sees him kidnapped by the Phalanx and replaced with an Evil Counterpart Phalanx clone. He and his fellow Acolytes are rescued in the ending.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: Not usually the case, but the Krakoan era revealed that his powers are partially dependent on in-universe Popularity Power via the faith of others. This retroactively explains a 1996 story he was suddenly transformed into a psychic vampire - prior to that, his powers weren't naturally harmful to others, but at the time, Exodus was recovering from near-death after a battle with Holocaust, and the change was linked to his injuries and weakness. The vampiric element was only really seen when he attacked Nate Grey (who was leaking psychic energy everywhere), a battle that ended with Exodus overloaded and buried alive in an Alpine crevasse - which seemed to cure the 'vampirism' issue.
• Barrier Warrior: In his early appearances primarily, and most notably during the Blood Ties crossover.
• Biblical Bad Guy: It's right there in his name, and he's also given to grandiloquent, Biblical turns of phrase, such as calling himself 'the resurrection and the life'.
• Black-and-White Insanity: This is the major flaw that makes Exodus a villain: being a literal Knight Templar from an earlier period in history, he is dangerously prone to this kind of thinking, seeing mutants as good no matter who they are and humans as evil no matter who they are. He seems to have slowly been growing out of this, though, and if his 2014 appearance as an agent of SHIELD (reporting to totally human Maria Hill, even!) is any indication, he may have even grown out of it entirely. This development continues through the Krakoan Age, where he's still a zealous believer but no longer has that 'fundamental disregard for the lives of ordinary humans' he was described as having by Val Cooper.
• Braids of Action: Introduced with a downplayed version of this hairstyle.
• Break the Haughty: Charles Xavier hands him an (admittedly eleventh hour) defeat in X-Men Legacy that clearly shocks him, so much so that he renounces his title on the spot and practically begs Xavier to take up leadership of the Acolytes. Even after Chuck doesn't, he still has a newfound respect for the man that stuck through later appearances.
• Church Militant: Prior to his mutant abilities being awakened, Bennet was a crusader knight in the service of the medieval Catholic church.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: An aspect of his power is drawing strength from the faith others have in him. At his strongest, with trillions believing in him, he can become equal to a Cosmic Entity.
• Combo Platter Powers: A mutant with high-tier Psychic Powers so advanced they borderline the Superpower Lottery at times.
• Convenient Coma: The usual bus pass he gets issued.
• Cool Teacher: When he joins the sovereign nation of Krakoa he takes the role of educating young mutant children on the history of Mutant kind and Krakoa’s culture. The children are very fond of him.
• Cosmic Entity: In at least one timeline's distant future he becomes this, having ascended through the faith of trillions of mutants into a gigantic space-traveling being on the scale of Galactus.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Twice, and both times involved a scene where he puts someone in a Neck Lift.
  • Back in the nineties he did this to the junior Acolyte Scanner for daring to take a peek at the mindwiped Magneto who Exodus had sequestered to protect his dignity and privacy.
  • Much more recently he did this to Cypher in an attempt to demonstrate to Doug the foolishness of Honor Before Reason (specifically that he was insisting on fighting in a Trial by Combat despite still being a novice to combat).
• Depending on the Writer: Several aspects of Bennet's character vary from writer to writer — most notably his powers, resulting in plenty of cases of Forgot About His Powers and Strong as They Need to Be, but also his motives, his morals, even his very sanity. This is a character who has gone from being a Noble Demon and borderline Hero Antagonist to a Drunk on the Dark Side megalomaniac interested only in his own ascension and right back again. In 2014, Exodus was seen as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, a massive Heel–Face Turn for a character that just seven years before had forcefully seized a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier for his own ends.
• Deflector Shields: Can protect himself and others with telekinetic force fields of amazing strength and durability.
• Die or Fly: This is how Apocalypse awakened his mutant powers — namely, he chucked a giant boulder at him.
• Diving Kick: Not seen so much in the comics, but as a mid-boss in X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse this is practically his Signature Move.
• Does Not Like Magic: Being a displaced 12th century knight, it's no surprise that he has this attitude. He rebukes the High Evolutionary for his "occult dabblings" and considered the Scarlet Witch to be mutantkind's #1 enemy after she brings about M-Day, referring to her as 'The Pretender'. He softens on this after the Trial of Magneto, when Wanda uses her death and resurrection to become 'The Redeemer', creating a mutant afterlife and ultimate Cerebro back-up that also a) neatly bypasses the need for the Crucible, b) allows the resurrection of every mutant that ever slipped through Cerebro's sensors, and tells her story alongside her.
• Doublethink: In Immortal X-Men he justifies believing in both Christianity and mutant sanctity by claiming that Jesus was just a mutant with healing powers, rather similarly to the Islamic belief that Jesus was just one in a line of prophets that all led up to Mohammed. Everyone else thinks he's insane.
• The Dragon: To Magneto, replacing the treacherous Fabian Cortez. He stayed Magneto's Dragon throughout most of the 90s (and earned appearances as a mid-boss in most of the X-Men video games of the day as a result) but parted ways with the master of magnetism offscreen.
  • Dragon Ascendant: Ironically became this despite not wanting it, being forced to assume Magneto's place as leader of the Acolytes after Charles Xavier brainfried Mags in Fatal Attractions.
  • Dragon Their Feet: In Fatal Attractions, where the X-Men got around having to fight him and Magneto at once by teleporting him (along with all the other Acolytes) into Avalon's escape pods and jettisoning them (why Exodus didn't simply return with his teleportation is never specified, but can be inferred as a consequence of his being Unskilled, but Strong).
• The Dreaded: Fabian Cortez, Astra, and even Mr. Sinister are all terrified of this guy. And rightly so, considering what he does to Fabian in Blood Ties and to Sinister in the distant eXpanse future.
• Dueling Messiahs: With Joseph in the 1996 Magneto miniseries. Most of the time, however, he's just looking for a messiah to serve - originally it was Magneto (who he later analogised as a prophet), and the trope is fully Inverted in Immortal X-Men, where he and oughts-era mutant messiah Hope Summers work together and prove to be quite the badass team.
• Early-Bird Cameo: His first appearance in X-Factor amounts to this, basically just popping up out of nowhere to play Mysterious Watcher for a few panels before flying away.
• Enemy Mine:
  • He allied himself and his Acolytes with Mr. Sinister in X-Men: Messiah Complex out of a despairing belief that the gerent geneticist was mutantkind's best chance for survival.
  • Also his 2014 appearance in Uncanny X-Men (v3), which saw him pulling an enormous Heel–Face Turn by becoming an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the head of their psi division.
• Enigmatic Minion: Early on, before his background was revealed.
• The Extremist Was Right: YMMV. In X-Men: Legacy he decided to kill Cyclops after reading Rogue and Wolverine's memories and becoming convinced that Scott was a threat to the mutant race. Shortly after this storyline happened we got the Crisis Crossover of Avengers vs. X-Men, during which Cyclops went full baddie, killed Professor X and became the new Dark Phoenix. Of course, not only was Cyclops pushed to the edge of sanity by constant attacks from the Avengers and Xavier himself (who should have known from the original Phoenix Saga how that would go), he only had the Phoenix because of what the Avengers tried to do to the Phoenix, and the end of the event sparked the regeneration of mutantkind. So...
• Eye Beams: Mostly used during the Blood Ties crossover and in his video game appearances. They're yellow, as opposed to Cyclops's red.
• Facial Markings: His strange forehead marks. Canonically they're scars from his duel with the Black Knight, but only a few artists seem to ever get that memo.
• A Father to His Men: While ignored by some writers, Exodus typically is on very good terms with the Acolytes, and he managed to keep the team together for some time after Magneto was given a psychic lobotomy in Fatal Attractions. Notably, he and Colossus were often depicted in supplementary material as Bash Brothers, which makes it strange reading some issues where Colossus refers to Exodus in no uncertain terms as a monster.
• Fallen Angel: Not literally one, but often referred to in such terms during the brief period where he was severely weakened after his battle with Holocaust and reduced to a "psionic vampire" state. Blindfold also referred to him as a "mad, scary angel" when he showed up at the X-Manson in the Lost Tribes story.
• The Fettered: Interestingly so. He has the power to chew up a whole team of X-Men and spit them right back out, but being a Well-Intentioned Extremist makes him pull his punches when forced to fight his fellow mutants. Best demonstrated in X-Men Legacy, where one memorable fight had several Apologetic Attacker moments on his part and it still took two whole teams of X-Men to take him down.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Of the "Past to Present-Day" variety. Not explored very much as of 2015, but as a 12th century knight in the modern day, Exodus is most certainly one of these.
• Flanderization: Under Kieron Gillen, Exodus's religious beliefs are ramped up into full-blown fanaticism, with everything he says and does revolving around them, and him being treated as Krakoa's resident "religious nut". While he does display enough depth to avoid being one-note, it can still be jarring.
• The Force Is Strong with This One: Telepaths tend to sense him instantly whenever he shows up in a story, partly due to his high power level and partly due to the wide-band Psychic Static he projects wherever he goes. His test of Professor X in X-Men: Legacy in particular put out enough psychic energy that telepaths literally on the other side of the world were able to feel it.
• Forgot About His Powers: Suffers this a lot, as frequently writers just haul him out of Comic Book Limbo to be a random villain team leader to throw at the X-Men. Good examples includes the Heroes and Villains arc that was Chuck Austen's last story for the X-Men and X-Men: Messiah Complex which features such lowlights as Nightcrawler neutralizing him by teleporting him away and Emma Frost managing to stalemate him a psychic duel... somehow.
• Forgot I Could Fly: Messiah Complex features not one but two instances of this on Bennet's part, done to facilitate jobbing to Nightcrawler and Emma Frost respectively.
• Forgotten Friend, New Foe: To the heroic Black Knight, Dane Whitman.
• French Jerk: When his more villainous traits are being played up.
• The Fundamentalist: Exodus is not stupid, but he has a very basic, very black-and-white view of the world. For most of his history that's translated to mutants=good and humans=bad. In Immortal X-Men, Jean wryly refers to him when discussing the siege of Krakoa by the Hex as "our resident religious nut."
• Future Badass: Naturally, being an X-Men character.
  • In X-Men: Blue, where he is among the members of a new Brotherhood of Mutants assembled by Magneto in the future to save mutantkind from the Reaver virus (which the Avengers and X-Men both fail to do).
  • The above example is surpassed by orders of magnitude in Immortal X-Men, which shows him ascending into a Cosmic Entity in a far-distant possible future.
  • Subverted in the 2005 storyline Weapon X: Days of Future Now which shows him as a hero on the side of the resistance but still dying easily at the hands of Sentinels.
• Generic Doomsday Villain: He comes so close to being this, but mercifully falls just a hair short. Wielding one of the longest arsenal of mutant abilities of any X-villain and at truly Story-Breaker Power levels to boot, Exodus is a difficult character to write a story with, since the obvious question of "why doesn't he just curbstomp the X-Men before they can blink" is one not easily answered. What keeps him from falling into this trope fully is that, unlike true Generic Doomsday Villains, he has a fairly fleshed-out personality and his motives are not malevolent, being a Well-Intentioned Extremist in the vein of his mentor Magneto.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: At one point Emma Frost distracted him long enough for Dust to get inside him and shred all his internal organs. He was back on his feet and none the worse for wear a few pages later.
• Graceful Loser: In X-Men Legacy, after being defeated by the combined teams of Wolverine's mutant academy and Utopia's youth squad. It helps that reuniting the two groups was basically his end goal all along.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: In 2019's House of X, he has joined the X-Men in Krakoa and sits on their 'Quiet Council' that governs the fledgling mutant nation... though his particular group is comprised of him, Mystique and Sinister, so Exodus turns out to be the Token Good Teammate of that arrangement.
• Healing Factor: Seems to be able to use his Mind over Matter powers to accomplish this. See Good Thing You Can Heal above.
• Healing Hands: He has resurrected dead Acolytes on several occasions (or at least that's the official excuse for D-list Acolytes turning up in background shots after their deaths) and gave Professor X Psychic Surgery after the events of Messiah Complex.
• Hearing Voices: Hinted at a couple of times in his early appearances, with the implication that his unnaturally powerful Psychic Powers are to blame.
• Honor Before Reason: In X-Men: Messiah Complex, where he reluctantly teams up with Mr. Sinister despite knowing full well what he is, because Sinister's scientific brilliance makes him (seemingly) the best hope the mutant race has for a revival after M-Day.

I-N

• I Am Not Left-Handed: Despite his periodic worfings it has been stated in-story as recently as 2014 that he has never truly been pushed to his limits. In his most well-known showing, he took on Captain America, Cyclops, Gambit, Storm and several other Avengers and X-Men, taking everything they had to dish out and giving back more. Even in his second most recent (as of 2017) appearance as a villain it still took two whole teams of X-Men to subdue him — and he was holding back in that battle! In his most recent appearance, he effortlessly reduced Mystique to a drooling, gibbering wreck and went toe to toe with Magneto himself.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: With his ancestral friend Eobar Garrington in the climax of his origin story Black Knight: Exodus.
• Immune to Mind Control: Being one of the world's most powerful telepaths comes with its perks. When Maria Hill deploys a team of S.H.I.E.L.D. telepaths to subdue him during a 2007 annual, he just shrugs off their combined efforts and smacks them down as an afterthought.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Bennet can be harsh and uncompromising, and is not above manhandling his own teammates at times. But much like his mentor Magneto, his intentions are noble and he wants nothing more than to protect mutantkind.
• Kick the Dog: Prone to these every now and then, due to his fluctuating evil quotient, but the worst one was menacing little Luna Maximoff in Blood Ties.
• Kidnapped by the Call: Apocalypse abducts him after putting him through a life-or-death test and alters him off panel. When he appears again, he's sporting Red Eyes, Take Warning and appears to be just a hair away from being Brainwashed and Crazy.
• Klingon Promotion: Played with — he executes his predecessor Fabian Cortez, but he's already established himself as Magneto's new Dragon by that time.
• Knight Templar: An actual medieval knight, even! (And very possibly an actual Knight Templar, as the historical order was at the peak of its prominence in his day).
• Life Drinker: He tried this on Nate Grey back when he was going through his "psionic vampire" phase, presumably as an emergency alternative to the faith-power he normally instinctively draws upon. This was a bad idea.
• Light Is Not Good: A crusader knight whose only desire is see his people prosper... and one of the X-Men's most dangerous foes.
• Limited Wardrobe: One of the few X-villains who's never been seen in civvies. Being a time-displaced Knight Templar, one almost wonders what he'd consider to be casual wear. During the Krakoan era he donned some even more ridiculously elaborate formal wear for their 'Hellfire Gala' event (which was mostly an excuse for artists to draw all the mutants in fancy costumes).
• Loony Fan: To Hope, who he regards as a messiah. No amount of Hope telling him to shove off or tone it down works, as he just justifies it as more proof of her righteousness.
• Mass Hypnosis: At one point, for a period of months he hypnotized the entire population of Genosha (which was later numbered to be in the millions) into living in peace together. However, even his formidable powers weren't enough to pull this off naturally; he kidnapped X-Men super-inventor Forge and made him build a Super-Empowering machine to pull it off.
• Meaningful Name: Apocalypse originally named him Exodus due to intending him to be 'the bridge between the distant past and the inevitable future'. In Immortal X-Men, he lives up to this name by leading mutantkind out into the depths of space to the point of them becoming a trillions-strong theocracy.
• Mind Manipulation: Not at first, this being one of the powers he had to grow into, but by the time of X-Men: Messiah Complex he was one of the only telepaths on Earth who could rival Professor X. Naturally, he's got all the variations on this — Mind Control, mind probes and so on.
• Mind over Matter: One of the most powerful telekinetics in the Marvel U. His long laundry list of powers all seem to originate from this, such as being able to conduct Psychic Surgery and affect a Healing Factor by telekinetically reconstructing flesh atom by atom. In House and Powers of X he is the sole mutant identified as an Omega-Level Telekinetic, meaning his telekinesis surpasses even that of other mutant Mind Over Matter champs like Jean Grey and Rachel Summers.
• Misanthrope Supreme: Magneto indoctrinated the philosophy of Humans Are the Real Monsters into him. His conviction in it was rock-solid in his first big appearances, but wavering by the time he secretly took control of Genosha. He intended Genosha to he his penance for his past anti-human actions, but when it all fell down around him, his takeaway from the experience just reinforced this belief. Never mind that the mutants were also killing willy-nilly.
• Moses Archetype: After the disastrous 2023 Hellfire Club forces all of Krakoa's citizens off the island, Exodus ends up in a desert with Hope Summers, Destiny and 250,000 Krakoan mutants. He gives them a hopeful speech and promises to lead them someplace better.
• Motive Decay: Despite Professor X convincing him to disband the Acolytes for the good of mutantkind in X-Men Legacy, House of X saw him randomly reform the group offscreen for reasons even omega level mutants could only speculate to. Not that it mattered, since the group quickly signed up for and was subsumed into the fledgling mutant nation of Krakoa.
• Mouth of Sauron: During the period where Magneto was out of commission he was often described as the 'Voice of Magneto'.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: Felt this way about Magneto originally, even referred to the man as 'Lord Magneto'. Grew out of this after confronting Magneto in 2016, and by the time of the Krakoan era he saw Magneto as a peer rather than a master.
• Mysterious Watcher: In his very first appearance.
• Neck Snap: Gloriously inflicted on Selene in 2022's Immortal X-Men.
• The Needs of the Many: Related to the second Cruel Mercy example above, Exodus offers to kill Cypher so that he can take the boy's place in the Contest of Swords, as he is stronger than Doug could ever hope to be and since the island would eventually resurrect him. Not surprisingly, Cypher isn't too keen on this.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: His Healing Hands power above was actually confirmed as being this by the writers of Heroes for Hire, who eventually revealed that Marvel forbade them from creating any new Acolytes for that miniseries. Seeing as how half of the Acolytes were dead by this point, it kind of put said writers in a bind.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: More of a Lesser of Two Evils instance, but tearing his own space station base apart trying to defend it from Holocaust? Nice, Paris. Real nice.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: At one point he tanked Cyclops's optic blasts, Storm's lightning bolts and Siryn's sonic scream — all at once.
• No Place for Me There: In X-Men: Legacy he declares that he will "lead (his people) to the promised land but not enter it with them" after using Mind Control to enthrall an entire squad of X-Men into helping him kill Cyclops (the Utopia youth squad shows up and breaks his hold before he can go through with it).
• No Such Thing as Wizard Jesus: Played with in Immortal X-Men, where he refers to JC in passing as "the Nazarene mutant". No evidence is given that this is any more than wishful thinking on his part, but then it's not as if stranger things haven't happened in the Marvel Universe.
• Noble Bigot: He's more or less the Super Supremacist version of this, as like Magneto and Apocalypse he believes that mutants are the Master Race compared to humanity, but unlike them he doesn't believe in killing humans wantonly (Depending on the Writer; he's gone from being described as "having a fundamental disregard for the lives of ordinary humans" in earlier appearances to making it a point to spare a human Sentinel pilot's life while disabling the Sentinel itself◊.
• Noble Top Enforcer: He is the biggest gun Magneto ever had at his disposal and follows an actual knightly code of honor, being an actual knight from hundreds of years ago.
• Not Quite Flight: Uses his telekinesis to achieve Flight, and has been clocked moving at Mach-2 speeds.
• Not So Above It All: When his plan to unite Genosha is ruined by the X-Men and he witnesses a Romeo and Juliet-inspired doomed couple get killed in front of him. You can just see the exact moment Bennet hits the Despair Event Horizon as he drops to his hands and knees in the dirt and weeps. Sadly, Status Quo Is God turned this into an Ignored Epiphany.
• Not So Stoic: Most notably in the penultimate issue of Quicksilver, when he learns the present-day Black Knight was actually the same one he fought beside in the 12th century. See Stable Time Loop below.

O-Z

• One-Man Army: His power is such that he can effortlessly take down entire teams of mutants. At the apex of his power, Exodus was able to handle the Avengers and X-Men simultaneously while also holding Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Jean Grey and Crystal captive in his force fields (he couldn't keep it up for long though). The only individuals who've ever really matched him are teambusters like Magneto himself, Apocalypse, and Nate Grey (who would eventually No-Sell almost all of the X-Men at once while having a philosophical discussion with Jean Grey inside his head).
• Orcus on His Throne: After the Blood Ties crossover, he proceeded to spend the next two years on Avalon doing.. not a whole lot. Even the supplemental merchandise makers caught on to it, with his trading cards describing him as 'brooding on Avalon'. Possibly justified if he was spending all that time trying to heal Magneto.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Exodus briefly became a "psychic vampire" after being badly injured in a brutal fight with Holocaust. Shortly afterwards, he detected the extremely powerful mutant psychic Nate Grey nearby - and attempted to feed on him. Nate managed to overload his foe and left the defeated Exodus buried in an alpine crevasse - on the plus side, this seemed to revert him to his previous powers, removing the vampiric element again.
• Outdated Hero vs. Improved Society: Exodus, an ancient mutant who was a knight during The Crusades and faithful ally of the Black Knight before his dormant powers were awakened by Apocalypse who intended to use him as a herald. While Exodus was able to come back to his senses and stop himself from killing the Black Knight, he was entombed for centuries before being awoken by Magneto above, who indoctrinated him into the modern-day crusade of mutant supremacy. Just like Black Adam, Exodus's methods proved incompatible with the modern-day and only served to get him into conflicts with superheroes. Perhaps because he is a younger immortal, Exodus has been growing out of this with time, once being recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D. to lead their psi division and currently being entrusted with the critically important duty of educating mutant children in X-Men (2019). He's not out of the woods yet (he still idolizes Magneto beyond reason and parrots mutant propaganda about the Scarlet Witch), but all in all he has a better chance of outgrowing this trope than most of the other characters on this list. At the conclusion of the 2021 X-Men: The Trial of Magneto story, he gladly admits he was wrong about Wanda and tells the children new stories about how 'the Pretender became the Redeemer'.
• Outdated Outfit: His original costume, which is about as 90s as it gets and hence vanished for a long stretch, during which new outfits were used for him, some better◊ than others◊. As of his 2016 appearance in Uncanny X-Men (v4), he seems to have gone back to his old duds.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: A firm believer in this, exemplified by his cruel treatment of Asshole Victim extraordinaire Fabian Cortez before executing him and blanket nuking of a mob of Genoshans (who were probably mostly slavers, but almost certainly not all slavers) upon arriving there in Blood Ties.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Here's a hint — when he describes himself as "Magneto's heir in spirit and power", he's not kidding.
• Pet the Dog: He's very much A Father to His Men, in contrast to Cortez's Bad Boss tendencies. Healing Professor X in X-Men: Legacy might also count as this, and the warmth he shows to the mutant children he instructs in Krakoan era stories definitely does.
• Popularity Power: An in-universe example, owing to his Psychoactive Powers. Like Heroes villain Samuel Sullivan, Exodus draws strength from the Mutants around him, with those mutants that trust and believe in him giving him the strongest power boosts.
• Power Floats: Clearly a habit he picked up from Magneto.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: Once when severely weakened he manifested a Life Drinker ability that was almost certainly a 'gift' from Apocalypse.
• Powers Do the Fighting: Despite being a crusader knight trained in the use of martial weaponry, it is very rare for Exodus to fight with anything other than his overwhelming mutant powers.
• Prophet Eyes: Artwork is inconsistent as to whether he's only got these when using his powers or if they're a permanent fixture.
• Psychic Block Defense: Exodus has this ability, being a high-order telepath on the level of Charles and Emma. When a trio of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top telepaths attempted to neutralize him (with suicide compulsions, pain/pleasure loops and attempting to isolate his right cerebral hemisphere all at once), his only reaction was to contemptuously note that "Even dogs can be trained to walk" before effortlessly knocking all of them unconscious.
• Psychic Static: Has has a unique variant of this: being Unskilled, but Strong, he constantly generates wide-band telepathic 'interference' strong enough to hinder the likes of Jean Grey and Emma Frost.
• Psychic Surgery: Reconstructed Professor X's brain after a headshot from Bishop turned it to mush at the end of X-Men: Messiah Complex.
• Psychic Teleportation: A psychic teleporter of great range, to the point and being able to transport himself and others between Earth and the space station Avalon with ease.
• Psychoactive Powers: Ostensibly the reason behind his constantly-fluctuating power levels — like fellow X-villain Gladiator, Exodus has power levels that are based in large part on his confidence, along with his certainty in the righteousness of his cause at any given time. In the Krakoan Age, Hope Summers explains that he also draws from Popularity Power, namely, how many people believe in him. This is why his power levels fluctuate so wildly, swinging from being able to thrash an entire team of X-Men plus an entire team of Avengers during the Blood Ties story to suffering more than one embarrassing defeat during Messiah Complex (which saw him forge a very reluctant alliance with noted Stalker with a Test Tube Mr. Sinister). He'd probably surpass his mentor Magneto if he ever overcame this limitation.
• Purple Is Powerful: Also something he picked up from his time with Magneto.
• Put on a Bus: Many times, as his extremely high power level combined with his lack of a clear role in the overarching narrative translate to writers frequently having little idea of what to do with him. Said bus has taken the shape of a mountain crypt, a fissure in the Earth, the X-brig on Utopia, and even a black hole.
• Random Power Ranking: As of 2019's House of X, Exodus is a confirmed Omega level mutant.
• Real Men Love Jesus: In Black Knight: Exodus he was shown to be as devout as you would expect a Crusader knight to be. Whether he still loves Jesus in the present day, has transferred his Jesus love to Magneto, or loves both equally, is never made clear.
  • Immortal X-Men finally explains this: he's kit-bashed his original Christian faith and Magneto-indoctrinated faith of mutant sanctity into an ideology all his own. He now believes that Jesus Himself was a mutant, and that Hope Summers makes a much better messiah because she's willing to shoot people. Everyone else thinks he's nuts.
• Really 700 Years Old: Exodus was born in 12th century France and was at one point a Crusader, making him one of the oldest living mutants — although still a baby compared to Apocalypse and Selene.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In Black Knight: Exodus, after being temporarily brainwashed by Apocalypse.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The stoic, direct and fanatically loyal disciple of Magneto stands in contrast to the flamboyant, scheming and treacherous Fabian Cortez.
• Religious Bruiser: A crusader knight who has sworn his sword to Christ and then Magneto. Immortal X-Men reveals that he's managed to syncretise the two, referring to Jesus as "the Nazarene mutant" (in the context of how he far prefers Hope as his Messiah, because she shoots people). Everyone else, Hope included, thinks he's nuts.
• Sanity Slippage: In Blood Ties, where he goes in the span of a few issues from intending to rescue his adopted liege lord's granddaughter from Fabian Cortez to threatening to kill said granddaughter for the 'crime' of being born human. Implied to be a result of his fairly unstable powerset; see Unskilled, but Strong below.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In one what-if tale where Avalon isn't destroyed Exodus comes to lead one of the two main factions on Avalon, the 'Isolationists' who advocate bailing on Earth completely and taking Avalon into deep space.
• Sealed Badass in a Can: This or Sealed Evil in a Can depending on how he's being written and at what point he was sealed. His initial sealing, the one that lasted for some 800 years, falls more under the first category as he'd just rebelled against Apocalypse. Later sealings tend to fall under the latter category. None of them ever stick, which is pointedly lampshaded by Exodus himself at one point.
  Exodus: A thousand prisons throughout the centuries could not contain me... and neither shall you!
• Social Darwinist: Sometimes.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: The version of him from the far-distant eXpanse timeline has discarded his sleeves as part of his ascendance into a Cosmic Entity.
• Smug Snake: He's constantly smirking and kicking dogs in Quicksilver, which is really weird considering how he's portrayed most of the time.
• Stable Time Loop: Dane Whitman, the Black Knight of the present day, was transported by Eternal magic into the body of his ancestor Eobar Garrington, who was Bennet's best friend and fellow Crusader Knight during the Third Crusade. It was Dane, in Eobar's body, who drove Bennet into continuing their previously-shared quest alone, setting into motion a chain of events that led to his becoming Exodus.
• The Stoic: As a 12th century knight, it's unsurprising that he would affect this demeanor.
• Story-Breaker Power: The main reason why he isn't used very often. Let's face it, if he and Magneto had ever gotten the opportunity to fight the X-Men together, they would have beaten them all, leveled the X-Mansion and curbstomped the human militaries of the world as an afterthought.
• Super Prototype: Not stated as such, but there's a real good chance he was this for Apocalypse. Despite predating Mr. Sinister and the Four Horsemen, Exodus is easily leagues more powerful than them. This is probably why Apocalypse sealed him away.
• Superman Substitute: He's a Flying Brick who shares many of the trope namer's powers, who is one and the older and more experienced mutants, regarded as among the most powerful of them, is The Leader to whatever team he's on, and is in a way the Last of His Kind (being one of the only crusader knights who survived into the present day).
• Telepathy: In Messiah Complex he was revealed to be among the top five mutant telepaths in the whole world, along with Professor X, Jean Grey, Emma Frost and Mr. Sinister (who wasn't a mutant at the time).
• Teleport Spam: Inflicted to the X-Men on panel in X-Men Legacy and on gamers in X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Primarily in earlier stories. Though not by any means unskilled, Bennet just has so many powers that he frequently seems to struggle under the weight of them all. His presence is always announced by wide-band Psychic Static, his early appearances showed him having visible difficulty using his more complex powers, and a few appearances imply that he suffers from a psychic variant of schizophrenia on account of not being able to block out all the voices around him.
  Exodus: [to Rogue] Foolish child. My powers are far too vast for you to steal. ^note  Turns out all she needed to steal was one of them.
  • Ironically enough, considering the above, when weakened and reduced to a form of energy vampirism, he ran into someone far stronger than he was in the form of Nate Grey, who promptly overloaded him and wiped the floor with him.
  • Immortal X-Men reveals that he never even knew about his powers being psychoactive. When Hope Summers tells him, he likens it to a religious revelation.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: In his origin story, Black Knight: Exodus, we see his first (and so far only) pre-Exodus appearance, and he turns out to have been pretty cheerful and easygoing for a medieval crusader.
• Vertical Kidnapping: This is his most damaging move in X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse - he grabs your character, flies a few hundred feet up, then throws them back to the ground.
• Villainous Rescue: While his status as a villain is debatable at this point, he and Elixir come to Magneto's rescue once again in X-Men: Blue, allowing him to teleport to their secret base to escape a mutant mob and later teleporting him around the world in order to stop the Mothervine threat once and for all.
• Voice of the Legion: During the 90s Exodus's speech bubbles were unique, somewhat like Deadpool's, except instead of being yellow they were purple-bordered. The effect they're going for was implied to be that he's always speaking verbally and telepathically simultaneously (see Unskilled, but Strong above). Like many interesting 90s character tics, this was quietly dropped/forgotten about, as his post-90s speech balloons have been of ordinary color and border. Although in this case, he might have simply developed greater control over his powers offscreen. In Immortal X-Men, the Cosmic Entity version of him from the distant future as shown as speaking with this effect again.
• Vow of Celibacy: X-Men: Legacy revealed that he swore one back during his days as a crusader knight.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Exodus wants what's best for his people. He really, really does. It's just that between being a fish out of temporal water and the general instability his powers seem to inflict on him, that he has funny ways of going about it sometimes.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Subverted during the story arc where Holocaust attacks Avalon. Exodus goes berserk when he witnesses Holocaust murder one of his Acolytes in front of him. Played straight when it comes to humans, though, as Exodus has absolutely no problem at all with massacring human Mooks wholesale in the defense of his people.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Immortal X-Men reveals that for all his power he is still utterly terrified of Apocalypse, and convinced he cannot beat him in a fight.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: A super-rare villainous example, justified by him having the black and white outlook of a Knight Templar.
• The Worf Effect: On the receiving end from Nate Grey in the 90s - Exodus was a psychic vampire following his brawl with Holocaust, and Nate was leaking psychic power all over the place. Exodus tried to feed on him, had the best of it, then Nate sensed that he'd been enhanced by Apocalypse and went mad with rage. Exodus wound up overloaded and at the bottom of a sealed-up crevasse very shortly afterwards. (Though on the upside, it did seem to cure the vampirism problem.)
  • In Brian Michael Bendis's Uncanny run, he casually got his neck snapped by new villain Matthew Malloy. Though not a hugely popular character, fan outcry over it (and more specifically over Bendis's 'only ten people will care' remark) led to a very quick Retcon.
• Worthy Opponent:
  • Regards Professor X as one.
  Exodus: You honor me with your words, Charles Xavier. It is a good thing, is it not, that enemies can respect one another? Magnus respected you to the bitter end.
  • Describes Hope, who's fighting him at the time, as utterly magnificent.
• You Cannot Kill An Idea: His response to being threatened by Maria Hill.

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