SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for X-Men Gold #30 by Marc Guggenheim, David Marquez, Matthew Wilson and Cory Petit, on sale now.
The wedding fans expected to happen may not have gone according to plan, but there was still cause for celebration as Rogue and Gambit spontaneously tied the knot in X-Men Gold #30. And if another X-Man has their way, they’ll be another wedding on the horizon sooner rather than later as another member of the Gold team plans on popping the question to their significant other.
However, this being the X-Men, there’s time-traveling anti-mutant drama to overcome for that proposal to go off without a hitch. And with X-Men Gold counting down towards its final few issues, it seems unlikely that we’ll actually get another X-Wedding in 2018.
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Over the course of its thirty issues, X-Men Gold hasn’t just focused on the romance between Kitty Pryde and Colossus, but also on the burgeoning relationship between Nightcrawler and Rachel Grey. The pair have a long history together which stretches back to Excalibur and beyond, but it wasn’t until recently that they finally made a proper go of being together.
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When forced to push her psychic powers further than they’ve ever been pushed before, Rachel was exposed to the thoughts, wishes and desires of everyone in New York City, including those of Kurt Wagner; learning that Nightcrawler harbored feelings for her, the couple began testing the waters of seeing what dating between two old friends would be like, and so far it’s been going rather well.
That’s why it’s not particularly surprising that Nightcrawler tells Colossus prior to the wedding that he intends to propose to Rachel once they’ve seen Piotr and Kitty off into wedded bliss. With the wedding between Colossus and Shadowcat not going exactly as planned, it’s unclear just how literal Kurt was, and if he intends to continue with his plans to propose to Rachel. There’s a chance that he may have seen the decision made by Kitty and Piotr and realized that the same applied to himself and Rachel, although with this being X-Men and Rachel being a Grey, that’s likely to not be the biggest obstacle facing the couple.
The Hound
Another one of the side-effects of Rachel’s recent increase in power has been the return of her “Hound” marks and a change in demeanor to an increasingly violent and volatile temperament. It’s easy to forget, but Rachel was raised in the timeline of “Days of Future Past” and suffered horribly through that regime.
When she was a child, she was ripped away from her home and reconditioned to serve as a Hound; her face was tattooed, she was forced to wear a leash and was compelled to use her psychic powers to hunt, capture and occasionally kill other mutants. She eventually broke through the conditioning during one particularly brutal torture session, but she’s carried the guilt and the shame of her time as a Hound ever since then.
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If she is slipping back into her Hound personality, consciously or not, that could spell major trouble for her relationship with Nightcrawler and we may not get to see them tie the knot any time soon. That’s not to mention that the upcoming X-Men event Extermination is seemingly set in the “Days of Future Past” timeline, and Rachel may very move from the events of X-Men Gold to the story of the time-displaced young mutants.
The solicitations for X-Men Gold #32 promises the return of The Hound with the title “The Dark Rachel Saga,” so it seems that things aren’t going too well for Rachel in the near future, and shippers of GreyNight may end up as disappointed as those excited to see the wedding of Kitty and Colossus.
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