Warning: SPOILERS for Marauders #1
Buckle up Marvel fans, because Kitty Pryde--one of the most famous members of the X-Men (and sometimes one of their leaders)--may not be a mutant at all. The X-Men comic relaunch is absolutely jam-packed with secrets and unanswered questions. Why doesn't Xavier ever take his Cerebro helmet off? Why has Jean Grey returned to her Marvel Girl costume? And just what happened in the missing six months between the end of the previous series and Xavier establishing the mutant nation of Krakoa?
The arrival of Marauders #1 adds another mystery to the list: what's going on with Kitty Pryde? Krakoa is founded as a mutant homeland, explicitly restricting access through its gateways to mutants alone. But for some bizarre reason... Kitty Pryde is unable to use them. Leaving one obvious conclusion.
The mutant who's used to walking through walls finds a Krakoan portal to be an impenetrable barrier, and even breaks her nose when she tries to get through it. Readers may see it as partly a convenient plot device, explaining why Marauders finds Kate is traveling the globe as a sort of "pirate captain," but it's clearly been done for a purpose.
An important clue may have been offered in last year's Hunt for Wolverine: Adamantium Agenda. Written by Tom Taylor, the comic featured a story in which Tony Stark led a team of Avengers to investigate Mr. Sinister's cloning technology. They discovered that Sinister had cataloged the DNA of every mutant on Earth (for reasons now understood to be connected to cloning dead mutants). Although Tony Stark destroyed the database... he couldn't resist taking a quick look first.
To his surprise, he discovered that one of the X-Men isn't a mutant at all. According to Stark, one of the X-Men has been genetically altered to appear to be a mutant. He concluded that the X-Men have a sleeper agent. Could this double-agent be Kitty Pryde? The "mutant sleeper" plot may have been seeded a year ago, but it's gone entirely undeveloped ever since, with the X-Men largely unconcerned with the news. To be fair, they've been concerned with everything from Omega Level mutant threats to new "cures," so they've been otherwise occupied.
But now, most inconveniently, just one of the X-Men is unable to use the Krakoan gates. The most likely explanation is that Krakoa can sense that Kitty isn't a mutant at all, and denies her access.
If this theory is true, then someone genetically modified a teenage girl in order to catch Charles Xavier's attention. It's safe to assume that Kitty Pryde doesn't know she's not a mutant, and when the truth is revealed both she and the X-Men will be devastated. Disturbingly, Hickman's X-Men appear to believe increasingly in the concept of mutant supremacy, and House of X contained references to Scarlet Witch as "the Pretender," as though the mistaken belief that she was mutant was almost as notable as her decimating the mutant race. This new version of the X-Men would no doubt reject Kitty outright if she was found to not be a mutant.
No doubt the fans would be just as shaken. Kitty Pryde is one of the most popular X-Men, created by Chris Claremont and John Byrne in 1980. Readers have literally grown up with the character; she was introduced as a teenage girl who'd only just learned she was a mutant, and now she's matured into a strong and confident young woman. In Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men run, Kitty Pryde literally saved the entire world. The very idea that Kitty isn't a mutant at all would send shockwaves throughout fandom - and, on the face of it, it feels like the most logical explanation for her inability to use Krakoa's gateways.
Marauders #1 is on sale now from Marvel Comics.