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This article contains spoilers from the X-Men comics.
“Next Issue: The Truth About Lorna Dane!” So goes the promise at the end of 1968’s X-Men #49, which introduced a new character called Lorna Dane. Lorna would become a constant in the world of mutants, eventually taking the code-name Polaris and serving as a member of both the X-Men and X-Factor.
Lorna showed up in a couple of scenes in X-Men: The Animated Series and in X-Men ’97, and Marvel announced at Disney’s D23 convention that she’s slated to become a key player in the revival series’ second season. With her comes a lot of secrets, reveals, and reversals, making her a complicated character, even by X-Men standards.
Lorna begins her story as a brunette who travels 1200 miles to San Fransisco while in a trance. Later she reveals that she uses dye to hide her true green-colored hair, and the villain Mesmero uses his mind-control powers to release her latent magnetism abilities, dubbing her “The Queen of the Mutants.” By the end of the story, Magneto arrives and claims that he is Lorna’s long-lost father, and she goes off to live with him… at least, until she discovers that the Magneto who claimed to be her father is in fact an android masquerading as the Master of Magnetism.
All of those plot points happen in the first four issues of Lorna’s existence, and set the stage for her complicated superheroic life. Lorna would first take the superhero name Magnetrix and later Polaris, and she would be among the X-Men trapped on Krakoa in the landmark reboot issue Giant-Size X-Men #1. In addition to Mesmero, numerous other figures would exert mind control over Lorna, including the Shi’ar, the Savage Land conquerer Zadeline, Apocalypse, and especially Malice, a non-corporeal mutant who turned turned Polaris into one of the X-Men’s more brutal antagonists.
For most of her history, Polaris has been romantically linked with Havok, the doofy younger brother of Havok. The two served together in X-Factor, the X-Men, and the Starjammers, breaking up and getting together again on a nearly constant rotation. Along the way, the true, not robot Magneto showed up and claimed her as his actual daughter, which caused her to sometimes work against the X-Men.
Through it all, Lorna has won over fans for her no-nonsense attitude and remarkable self-assurance, despite all the suffering she’s experienced. For many, Lorna embodies the central appeal of the X-Men concept, the hope that people can thrive despite all the attempts to steal her identity.
Looking at even this very streamlined explanation of her backstory, some might think Polaris too complicated for a show like X-Men ’97. After all, the main complaint of the first season was that it went through storylines way too quickly, and Polaris will either get diminished to the point that she doesn’t matter or will bog down the show with too many complications.
But the truth about the X-Men, both in its comic book and animated incarnations, is that it’s a twisty soap opera with lots of character changes. Lorna Dane is a perfect encapsulation of the franchise’s soapy potential.
X-Men ’97 season 2 comes to Disney+ in 2025.
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