YMMV / The Dark Phoenix Saga

• Alternate Character Interpretation: When Jean (already beginning to go Dark Phoenix) and Emma Frost fight, it ends with Emma destroying her base and apparently killing herself because she "preferred suicide to capture". Some fans have suggested, some jokingly and some seriously, that given we don't actually see Emma's side of this that Phoenix actually did try to kill Emma.
• Anvilicious: In case you somehow did not get the story's point, Uatu the Watcher pops up right at the end to explain it with typical Claremontian subtlety.
• Franchise Original Sin: While regularly cited as one of the greatest comic book stories of all time, it was also effectively "ground zero" for nearly everything that fans complain about in X-Men's later years. Most of its big moments started to lose their luster when later writers tried to replicate the magic of a classic story by copying its most superficial beats.
  • The death of Jean Grey was an emotional gut-punch at the time, but not so impressive when later writers got into the habit of killing and resurrecting major characters so often that it became cliche.
  • Turning the moral center of the X-Men into a genocidal supervillain was shocking and unexpected then, but you can only turn a superhero into a supervillain (or vice versa) so many times before it becomes predictable and trite.
  • Exploring the idea that a beloved superhero could actually be a horrifically terrifying entity was something that multiple creative teams had been teasing for years prior to this, and the payoff worked great here, but it never quite landed the same way afterward.
  • Wolverine taking on the entire Hellfire Club singlehandedly was an awesome action sequence at the time, but not so awesome when later writers turned the character into an unkillable death-machine who regularly hogged the spotlight from other beloved characters.
  • Putting the X-Men in the center of an epic Space Opera was a great climax at the time, but not so great when later stories tried to top it with increasingly bombastic set-pieces that prioritized cosmic spectacle over story and characterization.
• Fridge Brilliance: After Dark Phoenix's defeat by Professor Xavier and imprisonment deep within Jean's subconscious, the creature who obliterated an inhabited star system has now arguably been dealt with. The Shi'Ar's insistence that Jean now be punished for potential future abuse of her power is based entirely in their fear and their inability to understand her. The original aesop of the X-Men, that they are hated by baseline humans for being powerful and different, is now being played straight between Jean and the Shi'Ar.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The cover of #136 featuring a mourning Cyclops cradling Jean's lifeless body in his arms looks exactly like the pose Superman would have five years later while cradling Supergirl's body on the cover of Crisis on Infinite Earths #7.
• It Was His Sled:
  • Jean Grey's death in this is infamous, though even the creators themselves didn't know how it would turn out until they wrote it.
  • The mysterious Jason Wyngarde, who was slowly and carefully manipulating Jean in the hopes of bringing the Phoenix under his control, is dramatically revealed as none other than old-school enemy Mastermind. At the time, Mastermind had only been seen as a recurring Rogues Gallery member back before the end of the original 1960s run, and we never saw any hint of his outside life, let alone gotten a civilian name. In later years, he uses his real name so often that any new readers are bound to immediately trace the connection.
• Moment of Awesome: THIS is the story that transformed Wolverine from side character to the most popular member of the team. Mostly for the now classic moment before his attack on the Hellfire Club where we see him emerging from the sewers, battered but ready to fight.
  Wolverine: Okay, suckers...you've taken yer best shot...now it's my turn!
• Moral Event Horizon: To Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, Dark Phoenix destroying an inhabited star system counts as this. The Shi'ar in-universe also thought so.
• Narm: In the last panel of issue 133, Nightcrawler exclaims "Cyclops is dead!" after witnessing his friend collapse from his battle against Mastermind. This otherwise suspenseful moment becomes unintentionally hilarious if you are reading the collected edition, in which the very next panel depicts Cyclops rising and Nightcrawler shouting "Cyclops is alive!", thus making the first line look like an especially silly cop-out.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Jean's death in this (and resurrection in a later tale) made her the Trope Namer (it was originally called "Jean Grey Escalation") before people started proving the point (by completely missing it), confusing the trope with either Death Is Cheap or With Great Power Comes Great Insanity.
  • This story became the standard against which all X-Men arcs are judged, and has been retold and revisited in almost every media. Sometimes, it's the only reason a creative team will even put Jean Grey in an X-Men story to begin with. It's been a good decade since the last screen adaptation to not treat it like the only story she was ever in (and even then, they would have made a storyline about it had the show not been cancelled).
  • Making this worse is that the Phoenix has, since the mid 00s, been treated as a horrific destructive force that kills everything and is a threat to whoever is its host, overlooking the fact that A: The Phoenix became corrupted because of Mastermind and Emma Frost messing with her mind over a period of several months, prior to which Jean had been using the Phoenix powers with no problem, and B: Rachel Grey had a good several years using the Phoenix's powers with (relatively) no problem whatsoever. The ending of Phoenix Resurrection ameliorated this somewhat by indicating that the relationship between Jean and the Phoenix is bad for both of them - in essence, it made the Phoenix too human in some ways, and not human enough in others. The result was a somewhat mentally unbalanced entity with near unrivaled power and a fixation on Jean.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Having telepaths gradually gaslighting you into believing your whole life was just a dream is sort of scary.
  • In order to recharge, Dark Phoenix destroys an entire star, killing over five billion D'Bari. In an instant, she surpassed almost every other villain in the Marvel Universe (with the possible exception of Galactus) in terms of body count.
• Once Original, Now Common: This story had such a massive impact on the X-Men - and for that matter, comics in general - going forward that most audiences (and arguably, some writers) have forgotten, or don't understand, why it came across as so revolutionary. Prior to her becoming Phoenix, Jean Grey was pretty much the weakest of the X-Men and her role was basically limited to "the woman" of the team. Elevating the helpless damsel woman to the most powerful member of the team, if not the entire Marvel universe, and THEN having her turn evil had never been done before in a comic book and was absolutely jaw-dropping to witness at the time that it was fresh. Imagine if the Marvel Cinematic Universe had Pepper Potts get hold of the Infinity Gauntlet, then turn evil and perform the snap before Iron Man had to kill her. That's how unprecedented it was when first released. Nowadays, "becoming a supervillain and then dying" is pretty much all non-comic fans know about her character, and the dozens upon dozens of powerful female comic book characters or superheroes becoming super-villains have made her achievement seem much less significant.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Colossus' guilt over being forced to kill Proteus in the previous arc is brought up once in the opening pages of the first issue of the saga and never mentioned again. Even when it could have become plot relevant again later on during the final issue when Wolverine tells him to put down Phoenix during their reverse Fastball Special, it has Piotr inexplicably claim that killing is "something I have never done before."

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