Scottish mutant Rahne Sinclair has seen it all. Over the years, she's died, been reborn,
romanced princes from other worlds, and given birth to a child only to watch him come to
a terrible end. And that's only half the story. This is the untold truth of Wolfsbane.
Not only was Wolfsbane one of the founding members of the New Mutants, but she's actually
the first one to show up in the 1982 graphic novel that introduced the team to the world.
The story opens with a wolf scaring Moira MacTaggert as it leaps over her; that wolf
soon transforms back into a wounded Rahne Sinclair.
Shortly after the unconscious Rahne shifts to human form, her attackers appear an angry
mob of men carrying torches and shotguns led by Reverend Craig, who claims to want only
to save the girl's soul. Moira kicks them off her land and brings her to someone who
can actually help her: Charles Xavier.
Xavier then introduces Rahne to his team of New Mutants but things get off to a rocky
start. When fellow New Mutant Karma demonstrates her psychic abilities by taking over Moira
MacTaggert's mind, Rahne panics, immediately shifts into her transitional half-wolf form,
and threatens Karma. And this is just the first of many instances in which Rahne loses
control of her emotions.
Wolfsbane never had the chance to meet her birth mother, who died during childbirth.
Instead, she was raised by the fiery zealot Reverend Craig right up until the moment Craig
and his angry mob chased her into the arms of Moira MacTaggert. Reverend Craig indoctrinated
Rahne with his religious fanaticism, to the point where she even thinks of her own powers
as gifts of Satan. The shame he forces upon her leaves deep marks in her psyche, and in
most of his subsequent appearances he vocalizes his hatred for mutants and his disgust at
Rahne herself.
It isn't until Rahne learns to combat her emotional trauma, in 1996's Excalibur #93,
that she reveals what she knows about Craig. The reverend isn't just the man who raised
her he is, in fact, her biological father. While confronting Craig about another mutant
girl the reverend is abusing, Rahne tells Craig that she's been researching his past
ever since she escaped him.
Before he lived in Kinross, Craig had a ministry in Ullapool where he met Rahne's mother who
was a local sex worker and his so-called "special project." When this is revealed, Craig collapses
in tears, driven to despair at his own hypocrisy. Sadly, however, this isn't the last we see
of this particular villain.
Rahne has carried a few torches over the years and that's putting it lightly. In fact, she
crushes often and crushes hard. And, most likely due to the emotional trauma she suffered
at Reverend Craig's hands, she doesn't deal with those crushes in the healthiest of ways.
Rahne harbored a crush for her fellow New Mutant Cypher, until the latter was shot and
killed by a bullet meant for Rahne. Later, she felt for Cannonball so intensely that,
when she mistakenly thought Mirage had teased her about it, she went wild and attacked her.
When she first joined the new version of X-Factor, Rahne had an intense attraction toward team
leader Havok and nothing but sheer hatred for his romantic partner Polaris.
But things get much darker when Rahne lies to her ex-boyfriend Rictor about a pregnancy
in 2010's X-Factor #208. After Rictor comes out as gay and Rahne discovers him and Shatterstar
being intimate, she goes wild and attacks Shatterstar. During a lull in the fight she
claims Rictor is the father of her baby, in an attempt to keep him away from Shatterstar.
In X-Factor #213, however, Rictor discovers the truth that Rahne was impregnated by the
wolf prince Hrimhari.
As part of the classic two-part tale The Asgardian Wars, the New Mutants are caught up in Loki's
plans to destroy the X-Men.
“Surprise.”
Consequently, in 1985's New Mutants Special Edition #1 and Uncanny X-Men Annual #9, the
team is transported away from Earth to the other of the Nine Realms.
Wolfsbane finds herself in Jotunheim, where she has a brief and passionate affair with
Hrimhari, the Wolf Prince of Asgard. When the heroes finally prevail over Loki, Hrimhari
clearly wants Rahne to stay with him but she returns with her friends, seemingly ashamed
of having indulged in her passions.
It takes a couple of decades, but eventually Hrimhari returns to Rahne, and their union
brings fateful consequences. As part of the 2004 line-wide event Avengers Disassembled,
Ragnarok arrives and Asgard is destroyed. During those events, Hrimhari is snuffed out
along with the rest of the Asgardian gods. Like the gods, however, Hrimhari is reborn
on Earth though unlike them, he retains his memory of his life before Ragnarok. In 2008's
X-Force #10, Hrimhari finds Wolfsbane and they resume their affair. Rahne conceives
a child as a result of their union, and in 2010's X-Force #23, Hrimhari is forced to
sacrifice himself to save Rahne and their unborn child.
Marvel's X-Factor is one of the rare gems that proves that a reinvention can sometimes
be more successful than the original. When the comic premiered in 1986, it revolved around
the original X-Men hatching a very strange plan indeed: the team disguises themselves
as a mutant-hunting business. Their goal is, rather than hunting mutants, to use the calls
they receive to find mutants who need help. Ultimately, the concept is discarded and the
team members eventually rejoin the X-Men, but the name isn't lost forever.
Years later, a new government-sponsored version of X-Factor is formed to help foster trust
between mutants and humans. In 1991's X-Factor #71, Wolfsbane joins Havok, Polaris, Madrox
the Multiple Man, Quicksilver, and Strong Guy for this new version of the team.
The team's first volume ended with 1998's X-Factor #149, but it's enjoyed a number of
revivals over the years, most recently in a run that concluded in 2013.
Decades after he first appeared, Rahne's hateful father Reverend Craig reappears and decides
to become more than just a dark chapter in Wolfsbane's past. He involves himself with
an anti-mutant group calling themselves the Purifiers, a decision that eventually leads
to his violent death at Wolfsbane's hands. But even though Rahne has a reputation for
losing control, it's not actually her choice to kill Craig.
In 2008's X-Force #1, Wolfsbane is captured by the Purifiers. While she's their hostage,
she's brainwashed as part of a plot to kill the mutant known as Angel. The team doesn't
know this when they rescue her, though and when she wakes up and sees Angel a few issues
later, she goes wild and attacks him, ripping off his wings during the assault.
In X-Force #6, Craig attempts to kill Wolfsbane in the same room where Angel's severed wings
hang from the ceiling. As he advances on his unwanted daughter, meaning to kill her once
and for all, he briefly stands in front of the severed wings, giving him the image of
an angel. Rahne's brainwashing kicks in, she transforms into her half-wolf form, and Reverend
Craig goes to meet his maker.
Things go badly for Wolfsbane's son Tier from the very beginning and the end of his short
life is even more dramatic and tragic than its beginning.
Tier is the son of Rahne and the Wolf Prince of Asgard Hrimhari. Although Hrimhari is forced
to sacrifice himself to save Wolfsbane and their unborn child, he leaves his mark on
Tier before his passing. When Tier is born in 2011's X-Factor #224, the mystical nature
of the child causes him to exit Wolfsbane's body from her mouth.
Immediately upon his birth, Tier's instincts kick in and he kills the mystical Agamemnon,
who had helped Rahne during her delivery. The death scares Rahne enough that she abandons
her newborn. He's eventually taken in and raised by Jack Russell, better known as Werewolf-By-Night.
Rahne is eventually reunited with her son, who ages more quickly than a human child.
Tier is later revealed to be a central prophesied figure in the Hell on Earth War a conflict
between the different Hell Lords, such as Pluto, Satannish, and Mephisto. Whoever kills
Tier is said to win the throne of Hell, and in 2013's X-Factor #256, Tier even fights
and almost defeats the devilish Mephisto. Before Tier can finish him off, however, the
mutant Strong Guy runs Tier through from behind with a trident, killing him and winning the
throne of Hell for himself.
In the 2017 line-wide event Secret Empire, Hydra takes over the United States, led by
an evil version of Captain America.
"Hail Hydra."
As this happens, the organization deals with the mutant problem by granting them a homeland
called New Tian in the western part of America. In the tie-in issue X-Men: Blue #7, a team
of X-Men confronts agents from New Tian, including Wolfsbane. During the melee, Rahne demonstrates
an incredible new power.
As the X-Men and New Tian agents face off, Wolfsbane locks horns with Hank McCoy. It
seems that Beast has Wolfsbane restrained, until she suddenly dissipates into what appears
to be vapor and reforms as a pack of five wolves who surround McCoy. Beast theorizes
this is a secondary mutation an ability that manifested itself later in Rahne's development.
The volume of Uncanny X-Men that ran from 2018 to 2019 had a fairly high body count.
But among all the deaths depicted in the series, none caused as much of a stir or upset fans
quite as much as Rahne Sinclair's which takes place in Uncanny X-Men #17. Her funeral is
actually shown before her death, which is told in flashback as Wolverine and Kwannon
hunt down her killers. As they do this, Kwannon uses her psychic abilities to show Logan what
really happened to Rahne.
In the flashback, a group of young men approaches Rahne on a park bench and begin to flirt with
her. When she rebuffs their advances, the men get physical, and Rahne briefly loses
control and transforms into her half-wolf form. Once the men realize she's a mutant,
their attitude towards her changes and they feel Rahne has somehow tricked them into being
attracted to her. After this, they beat her to death.
Readers picked up on the scene meaning to reflect transmisogyny violence, and many weren't
happy about it. For example, trans writer Nola Pfau, of Women Write About Comics, felt
Uncanny X-Men writer Matthew Rosenberg meant well in telling this story. But she also emphasized
that:
"[When writers] depict violence that occurs against us without bothering to depict us,
we are not helped. We are not aided by this choice; the violence against us becomes normalized,
but our presence does not."
Rosenberg publicly apologized for the hurt caused by the storyline, and urged his followers
to consider donating to TransLifeLine.
Despite being brutally killed in 2019's Uncanny X-Men #17, the doors to Wolfsbane's return
had been opened by the end of the year with the game-changing event Dawn of X.
The event sees almost all of Marvel's mutants forming a sovereign nation on the sentient,
mutant island Krakoa. Among other advances made possible by the mutants' abilities, a
group is formed called the Five, capable of bringing just about any mutant back to life
as long as they have access to the fallen mutant's DNA.
In late 2019, New Mutants was revived, and the first two pages of New Mutants #1 depict
the resurrection of Wolfsbane. She is brought back by the efforts of the Five and greeted
by Professor X and Storm. Rahne is then reunited with her old teammates, including mutants
such as Sunspot and Chamber, who had also been killed in earlier comics. Considering
the lifetime of darkness and violence Rahne has endured, it can only be hoped that there
are brighter days ahead for this young mutant.
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