Spoilers: The villain Ty Haniver, aka The Taxonomist, forces Kwannon to inhale a hallucinogenic dust, triggering visions that torment her. Among them is a haunting illusion of Betsy, clad in her former Hand ninja attire, taunting Kwannon about stealing the Psylocke name and insisting that she will never truly be her.
“For so long, my life has been out of control. Chaos and serendipity, wrapped in insanity. I have suffered, I have lost. Not just my life, but my very soul, my self. But no more. Now I know who I am.” – Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Braddock, daughter of Otherworld, mutant, telepath, telekinetic, defender of the realm and, above all, X-Man.
17 comments:
That's...insane. Aptly so coming from a supervillain, but still. Insane. Anyway, how's the real Betsy today, folks? I hope she's alright. Also, I hope people will stop using her to torture Kannon.
Kwannon being
a). Alive
b). with powers
c). a member of the x-men
d). with Psylocke’s name
makes zero in-story sense. She’s a hallow character, defined by her association with Betsy (as exemplified here), with no compelling motivation and simply handed a title. She will always be a reminder how Marvel virtue signaled but in a desperate attempt to have its cake and eat it too, refused to let an iconic looking character go to waste, so it hallowed Psylocke out and repackaged her for sale.
exactly
Interesting. Excalibur showed how Betsy felt guilty about "taking" Kwannon's body (despite having had no agency in their body swap); it seems now that Kwannon also feels guilty about taking Betsy's codename (even though it seems Betsy herself gave her blessing to Kwannon taking the Psylocke mantle). Both women should really have some heart-to-heart talk and realize that the pain each of them has gone through wasn't caused by the other.
Anyway, it was nice seeing "Betsy" wearing the Hand bathing suit while being in her actual body. Seeing her with flowers on her hair, not so much.
Uhh this is...weird, to say the least. Not even as a hallucination it serves, because if Kwannon claims she does not want to be Betsy, why did she keep her codename, her psychic knife and the butterfly??? Sounds waay too forced....lazy writing....
Funny when it's Betsy revisiting the swap it's always "I stole her body" ,but Kwannon gets to say "trapper in her body"
I'm sorry but Kwannon is so fucking boring. People just love the aesthetic she is so shallow.
Well I can see one of two things here, either Kwannon will emerge with her own new codename, which seems far fetched since she starring in a Psylocke series. But it would be the right thing to do, not giving Kwannon her own identity, name, power set just prolongs the "confusion" of the two personalities, and in my opinion, neither one is whole. I think they could make Kwannon a good character but as long as she is trapped in the Psylocke persona there is only one way to go with her which is to continue a Psylocke journey. OR, they will make some grandstanding statement in this series as to why she deserves to be and is the real "Psylocke", which will just piss of a lot of Betsy fans and leave Kwannon forever a shadow of Betsy. Like some retcon of where the name orignally came from OR Kwannon comes through some trial, rises up into the air with giant butterlfy wings behind her and says, I AM PSYLOCKE! Hows that for lazy writing?
@Banquo, a la Jean but instead of Phoenix… “Now and forever… I AM PSYLOCKE!” 🤣 ☠️
I always wonder when discussing the body swap as nauseum, why none of these writers ever revisit Elizabeth or Kwannon’s feelings about Kwannon being trapped in Elizabeth’s body and believing she was Elizabeth and then contracting the legacy virus. That has to also be a real mind fuck for both women. Also, it feels a bit unresolved to me that we never learned how Kwannon got trapped in the same body with Elizabeth. Was it when she “died” in Elizabeth’s body and Matsu’o gave Elizabeth all the parts of herself back that were hers and supposedly took all the parts that were Kwannon? Was it an unexpected development that instead of dying Kwannon’s psyche was transferred into a subordinate passenger role within Elizabeth’s mind (where she was aware of everything, but powerless to take control)? And how does Elizabeth feel about seeing someone walk around in her own skin and watching that body die multiple times and having to kill that body herself after her good girlfriend, Alison stupidly maimed and disfigured it? How does Elizabeth feel that Kwannon was inside her mind all this time, including her most intimate and private moments? How does Kwannon feel about being aware of Elizabeth’s private and intimate moments in a body that was a replica of her own (as Jamie remade it)? Was Kwannon also aware of Elizabeth’s thoughts and feelings were trapped within her mind? So many unanswered questions. Is it even worth it to get into all of this or should the writers leave it all be and up to our reader interpretations?
I'd definitely want Kwannon and Besty have a good heart to heart meeting soon and to me, Kwannon is not boring. I love them both equality...and did Mojo the one WHO game Betsy the Psylocke name? I'm all for Betsy to retain her Psylocke name and let the Captain Britain name away or something different from it. Let Kwannon find her true origin and make a new codename and keep Kwannon as her real name and we still don't know her actual real name yet.
Since Betsy herself kinda made her peace with Spiral I wouldn't mind if she & Kwannon went after Mojo. He's as much a reason the body swap happened alongside the hand.
@Rahsaan I think the story was left vague and kinda dropped due to backlash from fans who actually read the original story which i gues tptb didn't anticipate lol.
All we really have is Kwannon's word on if that happened and this is the same person who swore up and down that she was Betsy Braddock.
Her word isn't exactly known to be accurate when it comes to Betsy.
I don't think Betsy ever confirmed Kwannon's vague claims of being stuck inside. We only saw Betsy have imo irrational survivors guilt.
Esp as like you said @Rahsaan, Kwannon in Betsy’s body caught the Legacy virus. So Betsy probably did feel like that should have been herself.
(but of course even that is kinda nonsense considering Kwannon was essentially so braindead at the start of this it took magic, technology, and Betsy's telepathy to bring her back to life.
Thats why I always thought it was insane they were trying to give the impression Betsy "stole" her life, when Betsy in actuality was severely violated and used as a tool to bring her back to life).
I'm actually shocked and pleasantly surprised that Kwannon acknowledged being in Betsy's body too. I feel like that may be the first time she's done so since being revived. It was a swap, not a one sided deal.
And then there's the Jamie's thing.
Betsy was dead herself for like years after Vargas killed her, so they were still tethered in the afterlife?
That is kinda hard to believe, and Jamie created a new body from scratch that only looked like Kwannon (prob so he could entice Betsy with the original body at a later date like he did), but was not really Kwannon's body either, so not sure how she'd be stuck.
If anything her being stuck in a void sounds more like when she was braindead.
Also when Kwannon came back at first she seemed extremely confused like she didn't know anyone and called herself "knothing".
So how did she suddenly become so clear headed about this story anyway? (which again was extremely vague) and only told by her?
This wouldn't be the first time Kwannon had a story regarding Betsy where at the end she ended up being completely wrong, I wouldn't be shocked if that happened again because a lot of things never added up.
But like I said, I think the Fallen Angels writer's story was so badly received, that they kinda just dropped it lol.
(Esp since in the original story both ladies had already come to respect each other and Kwannon had tried to give Betsy peace by removing her traits from Betsy and returning Betsy's full telepathy).
Between that writer & TH, both characters were imo badly written, but I'm glad its looking better now overall :)
@Some dude, maybe I’m more deluded than admirable to keep hoping someone in editorial or in scripting will do their due diligence. Thorne seems to not only know character history and continuity, but also seems to care about it. Maybe if he feels like rehashing this convoluted mess and putting it bed to good, he’ll write something explainig it all. Oh, wait — I just remembered that he thinks Kwannon is an ill-conceived character and isn’t a fan, and said he has no plans to include her in his X-Force storytelling.
@X-Man, you make some salient points. Especially, the part about Kwannon becoming so “clear” after her “Nothing” phase. Also, when since her return did she talk about being trapped in Elizabeth’s body? I don’t recall that
@Rahsaan its actually in the Psylocke issue posted here. That scan isn't included above though.
She talks about being Revanche, the name she had when she was trapped in Betsy's body.
Those are her actual words, not me describing to you the name she had in Betsy's body lol.
@Rahsaan I just looked at panel again and she first has a hallucination or whatever is happening here
of her standing as Revanche in Betsy's body and saying how she was trapped in Betsy's body and deceived into thinking that she was Betsy until she was painfully awoken to her true identity & died a horrible death.
I was glad to see a writer finally put that context back in.
She had Betsy's body too.
Speaking of Betsy and Kwannon, here's a hypothetical question: if Marvel ever decides to split their psychic powers (that is, with one of them having only telepathy and the other having only telekinesis), which power do you guys think would better suit each of them (or which power would you prefer each of them to have)?
In this hypothetical scenario, Betsy would still have the psychic butterfly signature regardless of which power she got (Kwannon would probably have it as well), by the way.
For me if I would have to choose between the two, I would say that Betsy should go back to just being a telepath, it seems more true to her nature and core to her original power set.
I agree with a lot that was said here, but the problem is that the Psylocke brand is now owned by (gulps), Disney. So it's a commodity that is being used in multiple games and merchandising, I imagine it would be difficult for the editors at Marvel to have final say in anything that involves a charachter portfolio that is worth billions in revenue. I mean imagine if writers wanted to rename Snow White, that would probably cause a meltdown in Disneys consumer products division alone. Who knows what the real issues are but if I could put myself in their shoes and the proposal was to do the right thing and give Kwannon her own identity and codename because it is actually more respectful, i bet there would be many emails from whatever division saying that they have agreements for the Psylocke brand across their merchandising partners and that it would be a disaster for revenue. Its not Stan Lees Marvel anymore, so I be that their editors are under a lot of restrictions as to what they can do now. So I bet that Disney would be ok with creating something new out of Betsy, a Captain Britain persona that just adds to their roster, they just made a massive mistake and gave that task to a hack like T Howard and crew to define the new version of Betsy Braddock which it seems the new writers have to back their way out of, but I bet Disney would not want anyone to mess with the Asian Psylocke brand. Having said that, the new writer and editing team could surprise us, they have been doing a good job at being more thoughtful about Betsy so far.
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