MADELYNE PRYOR

By 2014 Madelyne Pryor had been a disembodied consciousness for years, and the newest Sisterhood of Mutants was assembled with her return as one of its errands. This Sisterhood grew around Lady Deathstrike and the sentient bacteria Arkea, who wanted heavy hitters on the roster and marked both Madelyne and Selene for revival. The resurrection is carried out across the "Muertas" arc of X-Men Vol. 4 (2014).

The vessel problem solved itself in the darkest available way. Deathstrike's own host, a young woman named Ana Cortes, turned on the Sisterhood, warned the X-Men, and died trying to stop Arkea's plan. Arkea simply reassigned the corpse: Cortes's body was genetically spliced with Jean Grey's DNA until it registered as a compatible host — a custom-built compromise between the woman Madelyne was cloned from and the stranger who had tried to save everyone from her.

Then the Enchantress performed the move-in, retrieving Madelyne's wandering consciousness with Asgardian magic and seating it in the prepared body, which reshaped itself into Madelyne's own red-haired form as she woke. It was her first flesh since her own death years earlier, and she spent it briskly: in the ensuing fight she telepathically outmatched the far more experienced Rachel Grey, and when Storm offered terms, Madelyne simply left — alive, embodied, and nobody's rescue project.