YMMV / Exiles

• Complete Monster:
  • First two issues (August & September 2001): Charles Xavier from Earth-1815, in stark contrast to his heroic Earth-616 counterpart, is a genocidal misanthrope hell-bent on the complete eradication of humankind. After being freed from prison by the Exiles, Xavier attacked them and went on a rampage in the middle of a city, releasing a mind wipe upon the minds of millions of people, which killed everyone in a five-mile radius. Xavier would later free his version of the X-Men to attack the New York Stock Exchange in order to destroy the human monetary system, while planning to tear the building full of innocent people apart. Xavier later attempts to mind-wipe Mimic—a fellow mutant—in a last-ditch effort to kill him in order to continue his genocidal mission, despite claiming to be a "necessary evil" for mutantkind.
  • Earth-4023 originally, then Earth-616: King Hyperion, aka Mark Milton, is a vicious superhuman from a world that he tried to conquer, resulting in a massive nuclear suicide that left him the only being alive. Later attempting to conquer a new world, he instead allows it to die thanks to that world's Magneto's actions, betraying heroes and slipping through new worlds where he kills countless beings to conquer their lands. Arriving in a parallel New York, he tries to kill one hundred hostages after murdering all the heroes therein, betraying and slaughtering his own if it suits him. Returning at the Timebreakers' headquarters, Hyperion plans to conquer the multiverse, no matter how many he has to kill along the way.
• First Installment Wins: What? They brought the series back in 2018? Huh. You wouldn't know it given how little attention it's had.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Blink from Age of Apocalypse was finally brought back in this comic, due to fan demand. Even further back, she was originally a character in the Phalanx Covenant crossover event that lead up to Generation X. Her main role there was to die before being brought back in Age of Apocalypse.
  • Morph has all but completely displaced the original 616 version of the character. It's no real shock that Morph and Blink are the only permanent members of the Exiles team.
  • The Mary Jane Watson version of Spider-Woman from the Legacy Virus world is lowkey popular among queer readers as a version of MJ who isn't defined by her relationship with Peter Parker (which doesn't exist in her world) and for being in a genuinely sweet and tragic relationship with Sunfire. To say that fans were pissed when she got killed off by Dan Slott in the first Spiderverse storyline would be an understatement.
• Fridge Logic: Blink's nightmare about Sinister attacking her and her loved ones doesn't contain a single X-Man from her home universe. What does that say for how Clarice felt with them?
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In an early issue, Morph proclaims Doctor Doom has, or is definitely thinking about, stealing Thor's hammer. In 2006, Doom did in fact try to lift Thor's hammer.
  • In Nocturne's home reality, Wolverine leads the X-Men, Professor X is dead and Cyclops is treated like a villain.
• Iron Woobie: Blink comes from one of the worst possible realities out there, her family were killed in front of her, and she spent her childhood being experimented on. She spent most of her adolescence fighting a war, and she still has nightmares about Sinister returning to kill her friends. And then there's her relationship with Mimic.
• Nightmare Fuel: The Vi-Lock storyline is packed with this. But key points going to Forge infecting Blink via Orifice Invasion.
• Seasonal Rot: A fair number of fans disliked Chris Claremont's run, especially how Psylocke was shoe-horned into the team, taking the leadership role away from Blink almost immediately.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Despite the interesting possibilities it raised, Nocturne being the Scarlet Witch's daughter doesn't get any focus, ever, aside the occasional lip service.
  • Several of the original team had ties to a version of Apocalypse in their backstories. And yet, aside from briefly working with Holocaust, they never end up fighting an alternate universe Apocalypse.
  • Nocturne becoming pregnant is devastating to the team, as their reality-hopping, violent lifestyle is not at all suited for becoming a mother, and becomes all the more tragic when Thunderbird (the baby's father) goes into a coma and is left behind. This could have introduced a lot of interesting plots, such as dealing with her own issues of being separated from her father, trying to find a way to get out of the Exiles to raise a baby, and having Thunderbird's legacy be Someone to Remember Him By. But the very next issue, a single panel has TJ reveal that she lost the baby, and aside from a flashback a few issues later, the baby is never brought up again.

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