WARNING: The following article contains minor spoilers for Marauders #5, by Gerry Duggan, Matteo Lolli, Lucas Werneck, Federico Blee, VC’s Cory Petit, and X-Men #4, by Jonathan Hickman, Leinil Francis Yu, Gerry Alanguilan, Sunny Gho and VC’s Clayton Cowles and Tom Muller. Both are on sale now.
The Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club might be one of the most exclusive groups in the Marvel Universe, but even it has trouble bringing in new members sometimes. Where Hellfire has usually been a cabal of mutant elites, it’s taken on a relatively more altruistic role since Emma Frost reformed it as the Hellfire Trading Company, the exclusive exporter of the mutant homeland Krakoa.
While Emma took on her traditional role as Hellfire’s White Queen, she recruited Sebastian Shaw and Kate “Kitty” Pryde to be the organization’s equally powerful Black King and Red Queen.
Over the course of Marauders, Frost, Shaw and Pryde have all started recruiting mutants to serve as their respective lieutenants. Sebastian brought in his recently-resurrected son Shinobi as the Black Bishop, and Frost turned eventually convinced her little-seen brother Christian to join Hellfire as the White Bishop.
While Pryde has been having a little bit more trouble appointing her Red Bishop, it looks like her luck may have changed in Marauders #5, which hints that the X-Men’s time-tossed Bishop may have accepted a role as the Hellfire Trading Company’s Red Bishop.
Near the beginning of the issue, Bishop can be seen sitting with his arms folded at a meeting of the Hellfire Trading Company’s leadership, sitting next to Kitty. Considering Hellfire’s famous exclusivity, it’s incredibly unlikely that Bishop would be allowed at that meeting if he had not accepted the role of Red Bishop. Outside of Bishop, everyone else who’s present at the meeting has a confirmed title and role within Hellfire, and no one outside of the Inner Circle is in attendance.
While this issue doesn’t draw attention to Bishop’s presence or comment on it further, X-Men #4 explicitly lists as a Great Captain of Krakoa who has jurisdiction over the Hellfire Trading Company, primarily during times of conflict. This issue also stops short of identifying Bishop as the Red Bishop, but the last few issues of Marauders have teased the idea extensively.
As a text exchange in Marauders #3 revealed, Lucas Bishop turned down Kate’s first invitation to join, even after she made the obvious joke about making Bishop “a real Bishop” and told him that he’ll be able to keep close tabs on Hellfire’s potential troublemakers.
In Marauders #4, Kate pushed the subject with Bishop even further, despite his protests. During a mission with Bishop, she reiterated her invitation multiple times and even began calling him Red Bishop in the field.
Although he declined her once again, the issue ended with a text between Bishop and Beast. In that exchange, Beast encouraged Bishop to reconsider her offer, noting that Bishop would have access to a “treasure trove” of intelligence and that he would give Kitty a dependable ally in her mission to rescue mutants around the world.
If Marauders #5 is any indication, it looks like Bishop was eventually convinced by Beast and Kitty’s appeals. And with the red bandana that Bishop has frequently worn since he debuted in Whilce Portacio and John Byrne’s Uncanny X-Men #282, he already looks the part of the Red Bishop too.
As much as he’s an X-Man, Bishop has never fully stopped being the mutant lawman he was in one of Marvel’s many dark futures. In the modern age, Bishop has thrived as an investigator who’s had the opportunity to put his operational expertise to good use.
Marauders has already shown Bishop investigating incidents outside of Krakoa, and his potential status as the Red Bishop would only give him more access to more information that could better inform his investigations.
Since Bishop already has oversight of the Hellfire Trading Company in times of crisis as one of Krakoa’s Great Captains, his role as the Red Bishop seems like an even safer assumption. Even though Bishop has noted that he’s not the kind of power-hungry influencer who usually joins Hellfire, it was only a matter of time before Bishop decided to live up to his name.