Cyclops (comics) - Relationships

Relationships

Cyclops has had multiple serious relationships and is rarely written without a romantic female relationship. Cyclops's relationships are particularly complicated because of the many retcons involved in the publication history of the Jean Grey and Madelyne Pryor characters.

In terms of publication time, Cyclops's longest and deepest romantic relationship would be with Jean Grey, whom he would eventually marry but not before she would appear to tragically die protecting the X-Men. Grieving from this loss, Scott leaves to the Summers family reunion where he meets and starts to pursue Madelyne Pryor. Scott would become obsessed with Madelyne's similarity to Jean. Madelyne would turn out to be a clone of Jean and would be made into a supervillain but not before Scott marries Madelyne and has a child with her. A romantic love triangle would later be created when Jean is reawakened from a coma and brought back to life by the Fantastic Four. These relationships would be resolved over the duration of Cyclops's appearance in the X-Factor series. His son would grow up to be the character Cable. Jean Grey and Scott would finally marry in X-Men #30.

When Cyclops married Jean Grey, he seemed to have reached a happy ending. Subsequently, Scott would become possessed by Apocalypse and the lingering effects from this would taint his relationship with Jean. This combined with Jean's returning Phoenix powers creates stress in their romantic relationship. Confused, Scott turns to Emma Frost, who takes advantage of Scott's emotional problems, which leads to a telepathic extramarital affair. When confronted by Jean, Scott claims that they shared "only thoughts" and that he had done nothing wrong; Jean, however, disagrees and demands that Emma explain herself, but Emma only jeers and insults her. Enraged, Jean unleashes the immeasurable Phoenix ability on Emma, rifling through her memories and forcing her to confront the truth about herself.

In the aftermath, Scott then leaves the X-Men for a time to understand his own conflicting feelings. He returned to tell Emma that he had made a decision between her and Jean, but Jean was killed in battle before it was revealed which woman he had picked. After Jean's death, Scott feels disillusioned with Xavier's dream, leaves the X-Men, and refuses Emma's offer to reopen the school. Had the school remained closed, this outcome would have led to an apocalyptic future. To avoid it, Jean, who was resurrected in this apocalyptic future, used her Phoenix abilities to absorb this future timeline into the White Hot Room. She then mentally pushed Scott past the guilt he felt over her death and made him accept Emma's offer of reopening the school with her.

The two have since been together, although not without problems, particularly in light of the "House of M" storyline in which Emma has alienated herself from many people by completely reformatting the school's workings and the events involving the Hellfire Club's return. As of the Divided We Stand stories, their relationship seems to be back on track. The relationship begins to deteriorate again with Cyclops keeping secrets about the actions of X-Force, and Emma not telling him of her agreement to join Norman Osborn's secret alliance known as the Cabal. However, both had their secrets revealed to each other and their romantic relationship seems to be back on track once again, apparently stronger and closer than ever. Unfortunately, almost immediately after, their relationship hit a new road-bump. During a battle with Osborn's Dark Avengers, Emma absorbed a piece of the Void (a dark evil power) from the mind of Sentry. In order to keep the bit of evil contained, Emma has transformed permanently into her diamond form. While this keeps the evil power from accessing her enormous psionic capabilities, it shuts off Emma's emotions and empathy, causing her to become cold, rude, and snide towards all, even her boyfriend. Cyclops, Xavier, and Psyocke eventually go into Emma's head to remove the Void piece, only for it to become stuck in Cyclops' head instead. However, Cyclops is able to trap the Void piece inside a psychic prison, rendering it harmless, and leaving his romantic relationship with Emma strong and close once more.

One striking feature about Cyclops's romantic relationship is the fact that he seems attracted to women with telepathic abilities and vice versa. He was married to both Jean Grey and her clone Madelyne Pryor, who both proved to have very strong telepathy. His latest girlfriend, Emma Frost, is a high-order telepath. Psylocke, another powerful psionic talent, once blatantly tried to seduce him,. Scott has been known, however, to date non-mutant women, in particular during the period in which he thought Jean Grey to be dead. He was known to date Colleen Wing, Lee Forrester, and finally Madelyne Pryor, who at the time was thought to be a powerless baseline human.

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