SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for X-Men Red #11 by Tom Taylor, Roge Antonio, Rain Beredo and Cory Petit, on sale now.

Jean Grey’s team of X-Men in the pages of X-Men Red might not have had the longest run of any X-Men team in comics, but they’ve certainly made their mark in the year that they were here. Over the course of eleven issues, Tom Taylor and his collaborators have introduced a brand new mutant in Trinary, reinvigorated one of the most overlooked mutants in Gentle, and proven why Jean Grey is the right person to the lead the X-Men as we head into a new decade.

Jean’s team have been waging a war with the dark mirror of Charles Xavier known as Cassandra Nova, who has been using nanomachine Sentinels to spread her campaign of hate against the mutant race. But heading into this final issue, Jean has not just rallied the X-Men but the entire superhuman community of the Marvel Universe to take the fight to Professor X's evil twin sister. The question remains: how do you stop a being made entirely of hate? The answer is, of course, with the most powerful force not just in the Marvel Universe, but in our own universe.

Mummudrai

To understand Cassandra Nova, you need to fully understand not just who she is but what she is. The quick and easy explanation is that she’s Charles Xavier’s twin sister; the complicated explanation takes a little longer. Cassandra Nova isn’t human and she’s not even a mutant, she’s a mummudrai.

According to the alien race known as the Shi’Ar, all living beings are conceived with a shadow-self which they must defeat in the womb in order to be born. Charles Xavier’s mummudrai copied his DNA and in doing so gained his powers. And while most mummudrai are defeated, the being that would become Cassandra Nova was able to survive, and spent decades constituting a body for itself in order to get revenge on Xavier.

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Of course, the best way to hurt Charles Xavier is to target his dream of a peaceful world for mutants and humans, and to that end she set about razing Genosha to the ground. With the power of the Wild Sentinels, Cassandra Nova murdered sixteen billion mutants in a matter of minutes. She then set her sights on the X-Men, hijacking Xavier’s body and taking it to the Shi’Ar where she caused even more damage. Eventually, the X-Men were able to move Nova’s consciousness into the body of Stuff, a member of the Imperial Guard, and imprisoned it in the basement of the mansion.

Cassandra Nova has gotten out a few times to trouble the X-Men in the past, and even tried to lead a mummudrai invasion of Los Angeles against Storm’s X-Force team a few years back. But her return in X-Men Red has been the biggest offensive she’s launched against mutants since her genocide in Genosha at the start of Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men.

NEXT PAGE: Cassandra Nova 's Defeat Marks the End of an Era - and of X-Men Red

The Hate Machine

Cassandra Nova is a being of pure hate; hate for Charles Xavier, hate for mutants, hate for humans, hate for the truth, hate for anything that isn’t Cassandra Nova, and as we can see in the real world, that kind of unbridled hate is hard to reason with or defeat. As the heroes of the Marvel Universe, led by Jean Grey, descend on Nova and her forces, the real plan involves the newest and cutest member of the X-Men: Honey Badger. Jean’s overt plan involves everyone wearing Magneto helmets so that Cassandra can’t control them and make them fight and kill each other, but the real plan involves teleporting Gabby Kinney’s hand straight inside Cassandra Nova’s head and leaving a little present for her in there; one of her own Sentinites. Cassandra created the Sentinites to spread hate, but it stands to reason that’s not all they can do. Thanks to the technopathy of Trinary, Jean Grey had it reprogrammed to give Cassandra Nova the one thing she was always lacking in — the most powerful force in any universe — empathy.

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After she was first defeated by Charles Xavier, Cassandra was forced to put herself back together from next to nothing. According to Jean Grey, she put herself back together wrong, and the missing piece led her down a path of hatred that she was an unwitting victim to.

It’s a moment extremely reminiscent of — and likely inspired by — the ending of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman, which saw Lex Luthor gain Superman’s powers. In doing so, he also gained Superman’s perspective on the world. Cassandra is able to see the pain she’s caused for the first time and gains a new outlook on life that doesn’t just include her wants and her needs. Jean Grey managed to defeat one of the greatest threats the X-Men have ever known, and she did it via compassion, understanding and peace.

End of an Era

The final pages of X-Men Red don’t just mark the end of this series, but the end of an era for the X-Men in many ways. The final scene features the X-Men gathered at the UN, just how this series started, but notable among their number are the Avengers, the time-displaced mutants and Old Man Logan. You can draw a direct line between the very first Marvel Now initiative and books like All-New X-Men and Uncanny Avengers, through to this last page of X-Men Red. On the last page, Laura Kinney is still Wolverine, Namor is still a good guy and the future of the X-Men looks hopeful.

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Just because a new era is coming doesn’t mean the one passing wasn’t great while it was around, and X-Men Red serves as a fitting finale to over five years of X-Men stories by showing us the truth of Charles Xavier’s dream, which involves extending a hand to your enemy more than you extend your fist. As Jean Grey states on the final page, “No humans and mutants. No us and them. Just us.”