Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Characters / Marvel Comics: Mystique

Go To

Raven Darkholme / Mystique

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/x_men_black___mystique_vol_1_1_textless_1.jpg

Notable Aliases: B. Byron Biggs, Leni Zauber, Mallory Brickman, Ronnie Lake, numerous other aliases

Species: Human mutant

First Appearance: Ms. Marvel #16 (May, 1978)

"I am everywhere. I am nowhere. I am a shadow, unchained and unleashed. The world made me this way, so let the world suffer. Whoever its masters may be."

Raven Darkholme, better known as Mystique, is a Marvel Comics mutant supervillainess who mostly appears as an enemy of X-Men and other associated comic books. She was created by Dave Cockrum and Chris Claremont.

Mystique is a Long-Lived shapeshifting mutant. Originally, she could take on the appearance of any humanoid being by having complete control over the cells of her body, in addition to being able to morph the material in her clothes to suit any situation. She later got a superpower upgrade allowing her to produce weapons by morphing her organs and such into wings and talons. For years she was involved in espionage, with her long-time romantic partner Destiny - a blind mutant precognitive. For a time, Destiny and Mystique separated for personal reasons, and Mystique became romantically involved with Sabretooth and a German Baron, resulting in the birth of her two sons - Graydon Creed and Kurt Wagner. The latter, later on, turned out to be the biological child of Mystique and Destiny. Destiny and Mystique reunited, and adopted Rogue. After this, Destiny and Mystique revived the Brotherhood of Mutants to assassinate anti-mutant politicians and began their conflict with the X-Men. Mystique usually has her own personal goals she's fighting for and is usually constantly involved in multiple webs of deception.

With the rise of the mutant nation of Krakoa, Mystique joined the Quiet Council and worked with Charles Xavier and Magneto to prevent the creation of Nimrod by Orchis in exchange for the resurrection of her wife Destiny. Secretly, Destiny had long ago predicted this predicament and had Mystique vow to burn the island to the ground if her revival was refused.

Although she is never paired with Magneto in the comics (they led two completely different incarnations of the Brotherhood), adaptations like to make her into his Dragon.

Mystique has appeared in:

Comic Books

Anime

Film

Video Games

Western Animation

    open/close all folders 

Mystique provides examples of:

    #-H 
  • Aborted Arc:
    • Mystique was originally hinted to be an alien scout, and possibly a Dire Wrath, but that Early-Installment Weirdness was dropped and she was established as a human mutant.
    • The plotline of Mystique's child with Charles Xavier got abandoned and their kid isn’t brought up once in X-Men (2019).
  • Abusive Parents: She has very little memory of her actual past, possibly as a result of assuming so many identities over the years, but one thing she does recall is that her father was... not very nice to her. "Don't let Papa get you" is her Survival Mantra at one point. She is also an abusive parent to her own children, Nightcrawler, Rogue, and Graydon Creed, considering she's either abandoned, manipulated, attacked, or killed all of them at some point with little to no remorse. In X-Men Blue: Origins, she outright describes the other children she created before or after Nightcrawler as "accidents, inconveniences, tragedies upon arrival".
  • All Girls Want Bad Boys: Her male love interests include the likes of Sabretooth and Azazel, literally a Big Red Devil. Out of the dudes she’s boinked only Forge, Iceman and Wolverine are good guys though Wolverine is a violent Anti-Hero. Averted to some extent with Destiny, her One True Love, who is a calm, non-violent person though still ultimately a villain.
  • All of the Other Reindeer: Explored, as she believes herself to be a case of this, expressing resentment that both humans and mutants distrust her for being a shapeshifter when in truth the distrust has nothing to do with her being a shapeshifter (proven by the multiple heroic shapeshifter mutants the X-Men have welcomed into their ranks such as Morph) and everything to do with her manipulative and sadistic personality.
  • Always Save the Girl: Played unsympathetically in Wolverines. The entire plot turns out to have been an elaborate ploy, including the intentional betrayal of her entire team, to resurrect her dead lover, Destiny. When she learns at the last moment that this plan was actually a deception by Destiny to make Mystique resurrect Wolverine, with the fate of the world depending on Wolverine's return to life, she smashes the MacGuffin she needs to do so and leaves the dimensional nexus, cursing to herself that she'd rather let the world be destroyed than bring Wolverine back in Destiny's place. She tries it again in Inferno (2021) - and this time she succeeds.
  • Amazing Technicolor Population: Her blue skin is a cornerstone of her character design. In the movies it's expanded upon, showing that her skin is not just blue but rough and scaly like a reptile.
  • Arch-Enemy: Originally she was this to Carol Danvers aka Ms. Marvel. Since the Heel–Face Turn of Rogue, she's become one of these to her instead.
  • Archnemesis Mom:
    • Despite having reared Rogue and loved her like a stepdaughter, she turned on her daughter when Rogue ran to seek the aid of Charles Xavier for help dealing with the psychic ghost of Carol Danvers haunting her. Whilst she has sometimes expressed a desire to manipulate Rogue into abandoning the X-Men and returning to her side, she usually expresses no hesitance in manipulating Rogue, physically assaulting her, or trying to ruin her life out of jealousy, such as by attempting to seduce Rogue's lover Gambit.
    • She may, ironically, be even worse to her biological son; Nightcrawler. She abandoned him at birth by throwing the baby into a river so she could escape a mob that had come after her for giving birth to him. She ignored him for years until chance brought them back together, and she varies between ignoring his very existence and trying to manipulate or assault him if he gets in the way of her schemes.
    • Still as badly as she treats Rogue and Nightcrawler, most comic fans will agree by far her worst treatment was to her human son Graydon, whom she assassinated without hesitation. In comparison, Sabertooth genuinely loved Graydon in his own twisted way, and even tried to rescue Graydon's soul from hell — with Mystique refusing to help him when he asked.
  • Armor-Piercing Question: Destiny asking in Inferno what Mystique has been through and done since her death instantly breaks Mystique and she subsequently confesses to her wife all the horrific things she has done in those years. After a week of healing and talking through all this, Mystique and Destiny reiterate their vows to each other and to serve all mutantkind.
  • Ax-Crazy: Her behavior sometimes slips into this, what with her penchant for sadism causing her to lapse into occasional displays of outright psychotic violence just because she feels like hurting somebody.
  • Berserk Button: Raven has very few standards as is, but threaten her wife and she will show you no mercy. When Charles Xavier and Magneto refused to resurrect Destiny on Krakoa, she began her new mission to burn the island to the ground. She ended up succeeding, too, if in a more metaphorical sense than a literal one.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She loves to act loving and caring just so she can twist the knife in and betray every single person who was foolish enough to trust her. Worse still, Mystique has no qualms about using her own children (Rogue and Nightcrawler)’s love to her own advantage, she’s even betrayed Sabretooth after sleeping with him. Cable (a time-traveler from the future) even mentioned that in his time, "Mystique" was used in much the same way that "Judas" is used now.
  • Boxed Crook: When she decided things were getting too dangerous, she took her Brotherhood of Evil Mutants- herself, Destiny, Pyro, Avalanche, and the Blob- and offered their services to the US Government as "Freedom Force". The arrangement lasted a surprisingly long time.
  • Bright Is Not Good: She is a villainous and treacherous shapeshifter, and her true form has blue skin, red hair, yellow eyes, and wears white.
  • Calling the Old Man Out: Whenever she shows up in her kids' Rogue and Nightcrawler lives, you can bet that there's a likelihood that they'll rip into her for being a less-than-stellar mother to both of them. However, Kurt's scolding of her generally tends to be far less vicious and violent and more merciful than Rogue's (despite the fact that she least bothered to parent Rogue; Kurt she tossed away as a baby). Depending on the Writer, her responses to her kids calling her out range from indifference to pleading with them for forgiveness to outright attacking them for their insolence.
  • Child of Forbidden Love:How Mystique and Destiny see Nightcrawler. While both Mystique and Destiny had many lovers and Mystique had other children, she only sees Nightcrawler as a product of love.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Her most infamous trait that she is commonly known for by friend and foe. In one issue, Cable (time-traveler from the future) even mentioned that in his time, "Mystique" was used in much the same way that "Judas" is used now.
  • Chronic Villainy: Despite multiple efforts to reform herself over the years, or at the very least put her talents to use for a higher cause than herself, inevitably Mystique always slides back into villainy. She believes it's because she is misunderstood and feared for being a shapeshifter when in truth it's her love for Manipulative Bastard-style mind games and penchant for Sadism.
  • Combo Platter Powers: Her mutation has steadily become an example of this over time. Originally a bog-standard Shapeshifter, after she became a Rogues' Gallery Transplant her powerset increased to include reduced aging, psychic resistance, accelerating healing and resistance to toxins & diseases.
  • Cynicism Catalyst: There are two.
    • The death of Charles Xavier causes her to completely give up on helping mutants, whether they be good or bad. She decides to "screw them all" and steal enough to retire to an island somewhere.
    • X-men Blue Origins shows the other, which happened far before that. Losing Kurt. She never abandoned him. Rather she hid him under a tree and then went back to save Destiny (Kurt's mother) from an angry mob. Destiny was nowhere to be found and when she raced back to the tree, Kurt was gone. The loss was so devastating that not even finding joy in raising Rogue took the pain away. As a result she eventually went to Charles Xavier, with Destiny, so he could wipe both their memories.
  • Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: She abandoned Kurt as a baby to get away from an angry mob. This story turns out to be a lie. She didn't abandon Kurt, she hid him under a tree because she had to go back to save Irene from the angry mob. Raven was too late and when she went back for Kurt he was already gone, as predicted by Destiny. Raven never got over it and it almost caused her to murder Destiny for it.
  • Dark Action Girl: Though her powers don't offer any real advantage in a fight, she's a skilled martial artist who supplements her physical prowess with an arsenal of firearms.
  • Dating Catwoman: Her relationship with Forge.
  • Depending on the Writer: She’s a massive example of this.
    • The exact specifics and limitations of her shapeshifting are entirely up to whoever is penning her character that week, usually she can only seem to transform into other people as she still needs organs but in a few instances, she can turn into a piece of paper or a chair. To some writers, she’s like the T-1000 and explicitly can’t make complicated objects out of her body only melee weapons, whilst in other comics she’s able to create assault rifles and other guns out of her body.
    • Her exact age has been contradicted by several writers multiple times. At one point when joining the X-Men she explicitly claims she’s 80, but given she was hanging out with Destiny in Victorian England as well as met Wolverine in 1920s Mexico, she’s obviously far older than that, being closer in age to around 150-200 years old. This can be Hand Waved to some extent given her extreme vanity, she doesn’t like others knowing how ancient she really is. Even snapping at her son Kurt when he reminded her of her age.
    • Her past, in general, has been subject to multiple changes from writers and often left deliberately murky to perverse her “mystique”. All we know about her prior to meeting Destiny and Wolverine is that she developed her powers when she was a girl and likely had an abusive father, given her Survival Mantra of “Don’t let daddy find you”.
    • Her loyalty to her own race is often left up to who’s writing her. Initially, under Chris Claremont’s pen, she was The Leader of her own brotherhood of evil mutants out to take down humanity similar to Magneto. Yet in later comics she seems to give no crap about mutantkind with retcons revealing she worked for SHIELD in the past disguised as a human and only does what benefits her. In more recent comics she willingly aids Krakoa, though her reasons to do so are self-serving since she turns on Xavier, Magneto, and Moria to bring Destiny back.
    • Exactly how evil she is from comic to comic is by far the most conflicted and contradictory thing about her. Her creator Chris Claremont envisioned her as more an Anti-Villain with equal amounts of sympathetic and cruel traits, with her love for Destiny and Rogue being genuine as well as for Nightcrawler to the extent of hesitating while attacking him. After Claremont though numerous writers were happy in making her so disgustingly sadistic that she gives the likes of Carnage and Sabretooth a run for their money. Other writers try to soften her up again, playing up her nicer moments with her children but it never really sticks with her depraved cruelty coming up again and again.
    • Related to this is whether she actually loves her kids Nightcrawler and Rogue or not. Sometimes she’s willing to give her life for them and claims she loves them like any other mother would. Yet at other times she treats Kurt and Rogue like nuisances who should shut up and obey her, and has no qualms viciously hurting them especially Rogue whom she’s had a long history of abuse with, both emotionally and physically — yet a few flashbacks from other writers have her be a affectionate adoptive mother to her daughter. Her attitude towards Nightcrawler and her abandonment of him is also conflicted, when first revealing she was his mother she claimed she didn’t regret throwing him off a cliff, yet in other comics, she clearly does love Kurt and wants his forgiveness. An updated version of Kurt’s past has her tie him to a log and send him down a stream instead suggesting she did care for him and her previous account was a lie. One justification for her mood swings, revealed in Uncanny X-Men Vol 4 #15, is that her constant shapeshifting has fractured her psyche. In a later comic Pylocke fixes her brain to make her more sane. Though this seems to be contradicted later when she continues to act in her usual ways.
  • Depraved Bisexual:
    • Zigzagged. Her relationships with Destiny and others are often used to humanize her, but they can also be used to highlight how amoral and manipulative she is.
    • In issue 7 of Wolverines Mystique actually uses this as a threat against X-23.
      [Mystique transforms into Teen Warren.]
      Laura: Warren...
      Mystique: Oh yes, Laura. Warren. Think of this moment the next time he wraps you in the warmth of his wings. Think...and wonder whose hands are actually touching you. Or perhaps I'll make love to him as you...do the things he wants but is afraid to ask for, because of your...past.
  • Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: A well-established behavioral trait of hers, and a big part of the reason why her name is shorthand for "self-defeating sadistic cruelty" in the Marvel Universe. No matter how far ahead she is, no matter how likely she was to get what she wanted and avoid consequences, she will always go out of her way to fuck someone over, kill someone, ruin someone's life, or act on some sort of grudge, no matter how likely it is to ruin her plans or blow up in her face.
  • Dirty Old Woman: A definitely not-Played for Laughs case as she frequently shows depraved sexual interest in characters far, far younger than herself such as X-23. In Worst X-Man Ever she forcefully kisses the protagonist Bailey who’s underage, making it a case of sexual assault upon a minor.
  • The Dragon: Some adaptations have her as this to Magneto. She was also introduced as Apocalypse's Dragon in the X-Men: The Animated Series.
  • Dragon with an Agenda: Her betraying the boss in charge is almost expected at this point, such as when she killed Mr. Sinister in a Batman Gambit to save Rogue's life.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: Originally, she was an enemy to Ms. Marvel, not the X-Men. In her first appearances, she was hinted to be an advance agent of some alien invasion, rather than a mutant, and possibly linked to the Dire Wraiths.
  • Easily Forgiven: No matter how many betrayals or sadistic actions she pulls, odds are she’ll always be forgiven by the heroes especially by Rogue and Nightcrawler, despite them getting the brunt of her cruelty. While it’s perhaps justified in Kurt’s case given he’s a pious Catholic, Rogue who isn’t devout has much less an excuse for forgiving her adoptive mother for her abuse. In ''Mr. and Mrs. X', Rogue lovingly hugs her mother at her wedding to Gambit, with Mystique's attempts to destroy their relationship forgiven or forgotten.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Destiny is one of the very few people whom she genuinely loves. Sometimes, Rogue and Nightcrawler, too, when she's not becoming a horrible Evil Matriarch to them.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Zigzagged usually she really can’t fathom why the X-Men help out humanity and she especially couldn’t understand why Rogue left her and Destiny for Xavier nor why her daughter loves Gambit. She also doesn’t often appreciate or acknowledge why exactly Nightcrawler (whom she abandoned) would be angry with her. At other times she can understand compassion and love, especially in relation to Destiny whom she genuinely loves and does she somewhat respect her son Kurt’s devout faith, to the point of asking her son to share God’s wisdom in a Quiet Council meeting (albeit in backhanded fashion).
  • Evil All Along: Every time Mystique seems like she is going through a Heel–Face Turn, it will end like this. In one alternate future, her name becomes the equivalent of Judas. Somehow she's just "that" good at faking it that people who know her full history still get taken in when she pretends to be reformed.
  • Evil Redhead: Her default body is a combination of blue skin and red hair. When she was once depowered, her human form was a redheaded woman.
  • Extra Parent Conception: Implied in X-Men Blue: Origins. As she reveals to Nightcrawler that she actually fathered him on Destiny, but faked being pregnant by Azazel in order to manipulate him by passing off Nightcrawler as her and Azazel's son, she talks about her ability to mimic gametes, implying Nightcrawler may genetically be a fusion of Mystique, Destiny and Azazel.
    Mystique:' Normally I wouldn't dirty my hands with gametes — borrowing traits from the flesh I'd touched, the people I've known —— Christian, Azazel, and countless others—they were but the shades on my palette—and yet... Hhhh. Irene's always had the knack for persuading me. Still. I was hoping for a daughter.
  • Fantastic Racism: After she formally became an X-Men foe, she adopted a distinct disdain for humans, complete with the usage of the mutant-created anti-human slur "Flatscan". This is why Common Knowledge portrays her as working alongside Magneto's Brotherhood of Mutants. That said, Depending on the Writer, she sometimes evidences an equal disdain for her fellow mutants since mutants are just as disturbed by her shapeshifting powers as humans are.
  • Fatal Flaw: Simply being unscrupulous and underhanded isn't enough to disqualify Mystique as a hero; if her personality was wired just a little differently she could be a hell of a Guile Hero, but unfortunately she's also a Sadist through and through. Even when her motives are geared towards helping mutants she still defaults to manipulation and violence as her go-to tactics, clearly enjoys them, and can't seem to help herself from indulging in petty acts of cruelty committed against everyone from her teammates to innocent passersby who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
  • Femme Fatale: She might as well be the ultimate comic example, a beautiful and curvaceous blue shape changing mutant woman who has tricked, seduced, and manipulated hundreds of people before cruelly betraying them all like clockwork. It’s not just gullible men or women who are enamored with her either, Mystique will even manipulate her own children into trusting her before inevitably stabbing them in the back. Granted, it is largely Depending on the Writer when it comes to how treacherous and cruel she is.
  • Femme Fatale Spy: She is not above playing this role from time to time. Being a shapeshifter helps.
  • For the Evulz: Depending on the Writer, but in some stories, such as X-Men: Black, she's been shown using her powers to inconvenience and hurt people just because it amuses her to make them suffer.
  • Freudian Excuse: Like Magneto before her, writers have attempted to excuse Mystique's villainy by way of With Great Power Comes Great Insanity. Read the trope entry on that further below for specifics.
  • Full-Frontal Assault: In the Wolverine arc, "Get Mystique", she switches off her powers before loading up with heavy weaponry and going into the final battle wearing an ammo belt and a Slasher Smile. Since her clothes are a product of her powers, she's naked for the whole fight.
  • Gender Bender: While she's normally a woman, she can shapeshift into a man at will. In fact, her creator almost made her Kurt's father with Destiny as the mother. Then X-men Blue Origins of 2023 made it canon.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: When she is in someone else's form, her eyes glow yellow when she is about to resume her "default" form, or whenever she is angry, tired, stressed, excited, or whatever...
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: Her encounter with the high-order telepath Exodus ended so badly for her that she was briefly driven into schizophrenia until Psylocke stabilized her mind.
  • Groin Attack: She seems to be a big fan of this. She's even done it to her own son Nightcrawler in the Age of X-Man.
  • Heel–Face Revolving Door: Though she and her Brotherhood briefly flirted with this in their Freedom Force phase, it wasn't until recent years when she really started riding the revolving door, particularly after the X-Men movie reboot starting with X-Men: First Class which depicted Mystique in a near-unambiguously heroic role.
  • Homosexual Reproduction: Claremont's original concept for the characters of Mystique, Destiny and Nightcrawler had it that Mystique impregnated Destiny by turning into a man, though the censors shot this down. In 2023, the comic X-Men Blue: Origins reveals that she really did impregnate Mystique with Nightcrawler, raising the implication that some of the other children she hints at may have been sired by Mystique on other women.
  • Hot in Human Form: Mystique often takes the form of a beautiful human woman to allure men as her true blue-skinned form is often met with fear or disgust by them.

    I-N 
  • Joker Immunity: Mystique has been suffering from this for several decades. No matter how many times she screws with them and how much Darker and Edgier and willing to kill the X-Men get, they always let Mystique escape.
  • Karma Houdini: Despite her long, long body count (which includes Ms. Marvel's psychiatrist Michael Barnett, her own son Graydon Creed and even Moira MacTaggert) and her general lack of anything resembling morals, she largely avoids any consequences for her crimes, with the worst thing she has endured in recent years being a Mind Rape attack courtesy of Exodus.
  • Kick Chick: In nearly every incarnation, Mystique has an abundance of martial arts skills, but great emphasis is put on the many ways she can contort herself just to plant a foot in an enemy's face. It helps that her costume (or lack thereof) is custom-made to show a lot of leg.
  • Kick the Dog: Many times, but the ultimate example is where she first impersonates the first Miss Marvel with her boyfriend, and then savagely beats him to death in a mess of Bloody Horror. And then smiles disturbingly, specifically pleased with the idea that he died thinking it was Carol who killed him.
    • Her relationship with her son Graydon Creed is also a noteworthy example, as she abused him so badly that he became a fanatical Boomerang Bigot as an adult.
    • In her focus issue in X-Men: Black, she "saves" a scared mutant girl who has been imprisoned by Trask Industries... only so she can frame that same girl for Mystique's own murder of the human employees in the office where she was being held.
    • Launcher of a Thousand Ships: As she's a bisexual shapeshifter who's taken on both male and female forms, she's naturally this. She's usually a villain, but has spent time as a hero, so she can be paired with anyone of any Character Alignment, gender, or sexual orientation.
  • Like Parent, Unlike Child: While Raven is duplicitous, petty, and cruel, her children Kurt and Rogue are two of the kindest, cheeriest, and most outgoing members of the X-men. It turns out that before she had her mind wiped by Xavier she was more similar to her kids. Charming, outgoing, loving, but with a manipulative streak.
  • The Lost Lenore: Never got over the loss of her first and truest love, Destiny. As of Inferno Irene has been resurrected and they're back together.
  • Love-Obstructing Parents: She has done her utmost to come between her daughter Rogue and her boyfriend-now husband Gambit, she utterly hates their romance and doesn't think he's worthy of her daughter at all. She's even tried to pull the Shapeshifting Seducer trick to prove Gambit doesn't deserve Rogue, even turning into her daughter to do so, which is all kinds of squick. Unfortunately for Gambit and Rogue as of the X-Men: The Krakoan Age Destiny (Rogue's other mother) has gotten in on the action, voicing her petty distain for their marriage whenever she can.
  • Magic Pants: Inversion. She shapeshifts fully clothed, and it's eventually revealed that she doesn't wear actual clothes but shapeshifts them.
  • Mama Bear: She genuinely cares for her adoptive daughter Rogue and her biological son Nightcrawler. Messing with them can, Depending on the Writer, elicit fierce protective wrath, as Sinister found out the hard way (he got better). Averted hard with her other son Graydon though.
    • In X-Men Unlimited #4 she sacrifices herself while dangling off a waterfall by letting go of the rope to save Kurt, who’s shocked that she actually cares for him (given she did toss him away as a baby note )
    • During AXIS where all the heroes go temporarily bad and all the villains go good, Mystique spends all of Amazing X-Men 14# preventing her now villainous son Nightcrawler from causing harm, including grabbing onto him while he Teleport Spams and actually stops him by saying she truly loves him and won’t let go of him this time.
    • Played with in New X-Men #46 when Rogue falls into a coma infected with Strain 88 Virus which dials her Power Parasite ability to Touch of Death levels, Mystique swears that she’ll cure her daughter... by using the then infant Hope Summers to cure her making Papa Wolf Gambit flip out and try and stop her. Mystique’s plan works and both Rogue and Hope are unharmed, but Rogue after waking delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to Mystique when she learns the latter used a baby as a Guinea pig.
  • Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Via retcon, she and Nightcrawler became this when it was declared that Nightcrawler wasn't the son of a human baron that Mystique seduced, but instead the product of an affair she had with the demonic mutant Azazel whilst married to the baron. Then retconned again in 2023's X-Men Blue: Origin, where Nightcrawler was instead Mystique's son by Destiny, but Mystique used her powers to fake being pregnant by Azazel as part of a plan to keep him from pursuing a plan of his own that would have resulted in the deaths of many mutants — especially Mystique and Destiny. There are implications that she may have deliberately "mimicked" some of Azazel's genetic code to further the deception.
  • Manipulative Bitch: She frequently makes fake Heel Face Turns that turn out to be Batman Gambits to screw the X-Men over, and when she betrays them, she naturally shoots or beats the shit out of whichever X-Man she'd gotten especially close to while she was "good" (See Iceman. And Forge, twice.). Somehow they always fall for it, because she's just that good at deceiving and manipulating people.
  • Master of Disguise: Naturally, given her mutation. She's used it to become a master of spycraft.
  • Master of Your Domain: X-Men Blue Origins reveal that this is her real power. She's not a shapeshifter, but rather a gene-shaper. She can change herself to the genetic level.
  • Mayfly–December Romance: Mystique doesn't naturally age since her shapeshifting cells are constantly renewing themselves, and the most difficult part of her relationship with Destiny was helplessly watching Irene grow old through the years. During the late 2000s, she had a distinctly more pronounced one of these with Iceman of all people (though it was eventually revealed that she was just manipulating him).
  • Most Common Superpower: She has a very pronounced bust.
  • My Beloved Smother: To Rogue in their earliest mother-daughter relationship. When Rogue left her to join X-Men because Rogue believed Xavier was the only person in the world who could help her control her powers where Mystique cannot, Mystique was not happy. Even after she reluctantly agreed to let Rogue stay with X-Men, she still continued to check in on Rogue from time to time. Then over the years, Mystique began to resent Xavier and the X-Men, believing that they had stolen one of the few special people in her life.
  • Multi-Armed and Dangerous: She can use her shapeshifting abilities to grow a pair of extra arms to use in combat. It's noted that she could not maintain this state for long, as the transformation apparently put her under heavy strain.
  • Muscles Are Meaningless: She has gone up against the muscly Wolverine and countless other powerhouses despite being quite willowy. Though it’s strongly implied her Voluntary Shapeshifting can make her stronger.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: As she regains her memories of conceiving Nightcrawler with Destiny, and the later mind wipe they had Professor X give them of the event, Mystique is legitimately distraught as she realizes the mind wipe left her thinking she deliberately abandoned her child to save her own skin and from there led to the years of bitterness she felt towards him.
  • Never My Fault: She often exhibits this, as she can’t seem to admit she’s a horrible person with inherent personality flaws but instead blames humanity and other mutants for her own cruelty. With her abandonment of Nightcrawler, she blames his father Azazel for driving her to it by betraying her and getting her pregnant which made her revert to blue during labor and get chased out of the village, while often treating the selfish action of throwing her own baby away as a minor thing/necessity. Concerning Rogue leaving her and Destiny, she blames Xavier and Rogue herself for being a “traitorous child” rather than acknowledging she’s just a bad mom for raising a child as a weapon. Averted in Inferno (2021) where she finally admits to Destiny the horrible things she did after her death.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Whilst she's not a hero, it's a recurring issue for Mystique that her efforts to do good often go horribly wrong, due to her impulsive tendency to use manipulation and violence as her go-to methods. Most prominently, Mystique created the Days of Future Past Bad Future, when she tried to protect mutants by assassinating an outspoken anti-mutant presidential candidate.

    O-Z 
  • Obnoxious In-Laws: She despises Gambit her new son-in-law, deeming him unworthy of her daughter Rogue and moreover hating him for taking away so much of Rogue’s love and attention as well as conflicting Rogue’s loyalties to her. In fact, she disliked Gambit long before he married Rogue, going as far as to try and sleep with him by turning into Rogue to “prove” her daughter that Gambit was a poor match for her. Sadly, her views on her daughter’s marriage are supported and repeated by Destiny (Rogue’s other mother) who likewise can’t stand Gambit and says so upon her resurrection.
  • Offing the Offspring: She killed her son Graydon Creed for his part in murdering Destiny's grandson.
  • Older Than They Look: She is self-admittedly at least 80 years old, but her Shapeshifting powers greatly mask this fact. It is later revealed that she is older than even that, having been alive since "the dawn of the 20th century", and with the reveal that her longtime lover Destiny was in fact the historical Irene Adler, it is possible she could be up to 200 years old.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: She is rarely ever called by her name Raven in the comics, except by Destiny (her wife), Wolverine, Sabertooth, and Nightcrawler (when he isn’t able to bring himself to call her mother as Rogue does). It’s more than likely “Raven Darkhölme” isn’t Mystique’s actual name either, especially since her past is shrouded in mystery. Mystique, in turn, is one of the few people who call Destiny by her real name; Irene.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Before X-men Blue Origins in 2023, Raven had never been seen hurting Destiny. As it turns out, losing Kurt because of Destiny's machinations angered Raven so much that she almost put a bullet in Destiny's head and later on almost strangled her to death.
  • Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous: Due to her powers enabling her to freely morph between male and female or even blend physical traits from both as she likes, Mystique often describes herself as having no preference for gender in any form, whether for herself or for her lovers.
  • Painful Transformation: She explains at one point that shapeshifting hurts, as she is rearranging her own body after all. As if that didn't parallel Wolverine enough, she says shapeshifting into him hurts the most as she emulates his claws.
  • Parental Favouritism: Played With. On the surface it seems she cares for her adoptive daughter Rogue more than her biological son Nightcrawler, often going to great lengths to get Rogue back on her side when she defects from the Brotherhood to the X-Men and later on willing to kill a baby (Hope Summers) so long as it revives Rogue. However, at other times Mystique treats Rogue the worst out of her children, having slapped, stabbed, and shot her adoptive daughter on multiple occasions. While neglecting Nightcrawler, having abandoned him to be raised by other people, and apart from dropping him as a baby, she rarely physically hurts Nightcrawler, especially in modern comics, and was happy to see him alive after his resurrection. In AXIS where Mystique, thanks to Red Skull and Professor X, is completely good, she does everything in her power to protect Nightcrawler, which is interesting considering she does the exact opposite normally. Overall she tries harder to be affectionate to Rogue but appears to respect Kurt as an individual more while treating Rogue in comparison like personal property alongside her other mother Destiny. It is it’s safe to say she prefers both her mutant children over her other human son, Graydon Creed, who was born a normal human and whom she ruthlessly killed without regret when he became an Anti-Mutant activist. Even Sabretooth was appalled at Mystique's treatment of their son.
  • Personality Powers: A woman who could be pictured in the dictionary under 'manipulative' manifested the mutant ability to take on the form of any person she chooses. Amazingly, this became even more pronounced later down the line (in the mid to late 2000s), where after becoming more unstable and erratic she manifested the ability to form Shapeshifter Weapons out of her limbs at will. And as mentioned elsewhere, enduring a psychic attack made her succumb to Power Incontinence and shapeshift uncontrollably, the strongest sign yet that Mystique is a woman whose powers are irrevocably tied (for better or worse) to her personality.
  • Pet the Dog: Towards Rogue, and occasionally Nightcrawler, which, for some, softens her more "evil" moments.
    • She also lets a trans woman leave with enough gold to fund her transition surgery, as she sympathizes with her dysmorphia.
    • Destiny is a major one as well. As cruel and petty as Raven can be, she genuinely loves her wife and will do anything to protect her (something Moira McTaggert found out the hard way.)
  • Psychic Block Defense: A downplayed example, as her mutation gives her a natural resistance to telepathy, but it's not strong enough to keep high-order telepaths like Exodus out of her head.
  • Public Domain Canon Welding: Back in the late 19th century, she was none other than Sherlock Holmes.
  • Really Gets Around: She has a long list of ex-husbands and an even longer list of people she has slept with. By her own admission, she often uses sex as a weapon to manipulate people. Her official stats page lists two sons (Kurt and Graydon) and two ex-husbands. Neither husband was the father of either child. And the one who could be considered as her true love without being manipulated by her is another bisexual woman, of all people, named Irene Adler, later known as Destiny. The reading of Xavier's will revealed that she was his wife at the time of the will's writing.
  • Reptiles Are Abhorrent: In the movies, where her skin is not just blue but is rough and scaly like a reptile's skin. The comics briefly adapted this aspect of her, but it was just as quickly forgotten and in the comics, she is usually just blue, not scaly.
  • Required Secondary Powers: She can copy the appearance of other people down to fingerprints, voice, and retina patterns closely enough to pass biometric scanners. In addition to the Photographic Memory required to remember all this perfectly, she must have some kind of ESP to detect such things in the first place just from a brief encounter. She's certainly never shown scanning and studying the retinas of people she is going to copy. It was shown in her solo series that she requires a minimum of eight words to adequately mimic someone's voice. How this allows her to pick up speech idiosyncrasies is anyone's guess. X-Men Blue Origins explains why: Raven is not a shapeshifter, but a gene-shaper, she can manipulate her genetics to the smallest detail.
  • The Right of a Superior Species: During her Super Supremacist turns as a leader or member of the Brotherhood she has usually justified her acts of terrorism with this rhetoric, arguing that mutants are mankind's future and are therefore justified in any actions they take to seize power over the rest of humanity.
  • Rogues' Gallery Transplant: She first appeared in Ms. Marvel and was originally slated to be her Arch-Enemy. She's pretty much entirely an X-Villain nowadays, and her history with Ms. Marvel (such as killing her boyfriend) has been all but forgotten. She did return to torment Ms. Marvel in Carol's later series.
    • As far as individual X-Men, She tends to have the most conflict with Rogue (her adopted daughter), Nightcrawler (her biological son), and Wolverine (her former lover).
  • Sadist: Her Fatal Flaw is her penchant for sadism, both of the physical and Manipulative Bastard varieties. This was most prevalent during her early years as a Ms. Marvel (1977) villain, in which she gleefully kidnaps and tortures Carol's friends and loved ones. This side of her took a backseat for a time after she became a Rogues' Gallery Transplant into the X-Men baddie catalogue, though as the years have gone on, her fervor for mutant rights has waned while her original passion has returned. She's developed a particular love over the years for playing the Love-Interest Traitor to various X-Men, including Forge, Iceman, and even Professor X himself.
  • Samus Is a Girl: Or in this case, Sherlock Holmes was really a blue-skinned, shapeshifting woman, with Destiny having been the Irene Adler.
  • Shapeshifter Baggage: Defied, as it is explicitly stated that her mass remains the same regardless of the form she has taken, and the longer she maintains a form physically larger than her own the greater strains she feels. In recent years this has largely gone the way of an informed limitation, with fewer and fewer writers seeming to get the memo that she can't draw mass out of nowhere.
  • Shapeshifter Guilt Trip:
    • She's not above pulling this card out in battle if she thinks it'll give her an edge. Wolverine even lampshades it in one of their fights, dryly asking Mystique if this is the part where she changes into all his old girlfriends to try and throw him off.
    • More generally, during Dark X-Men she took Jean Grey's form to spite the X-Men, noting that Jean's death had never been confirmed (Jean was at that point in the White Hot Room, reassembling the Phoenix). None other than Norman Osborn did a double-take and was actually impressed at the sheer gall of this. Then her team's first mission happened to involve Nate Grey; one of the most powerful mutants of all time, a massive Momma's Boy, newly returned from the dead, and very much unhappy with the state of affairs. All told Mystique was lucky that he was targeting Norman instead.
    • She also once turned into her son Graydon to torment Sabretooth (who genuinely loves his human son) and given how pissed off he got at her, it worked.
  • Shapeshifter Longevity: One of the most prominent shapeshifters in the X-Men cast, having the power to mimic just about any humanoid character, enhance her strength, and even sculpt her body into weaponry. She's also over a hundred years old, with her shapeshifting and regenerative powers allowing her to resist the aging process.
  • Shapeshifter Weapon: She can do this with some effort, but usually doesn't because she still has organs and needs to remember where they are. Instead, for example, she'll shift most of the muscles of her upper body into her right arm just as she delivers a punch, thereby increasing its power. She's also been known to hide guns inside herself. At one point she even gave herself two heads and four arms to fight on two fronts at once.
  • Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Mystique's does, which is why she just forms clothing out of her own body.
  • Shapeshifting Seducer: She has been known to use her shapeshifting for this purpose on occasion.
    • The "Bizarre Love Triangle" arc involves her efforts to seduce Gambit by such a method - first by inventing the false identity of "Foxx" and, when that fails, taking Rogue's form instead - specifically in order to get him to cheat on Rogue and thus prove to Rogue that he isn't good enough for her.
    • She transformed into various attractive women for Wolverine years earlier. The first time when she needed protection against Spiral and the second when she needed protection against Sabretooth. In a recent story arc, it was revealed that she had in fact started using this tactic against Wolverine nearly a century ago.
  • Shapeshifting Squick: She often uses her ability to invoke rape by deception, in one case turning into a gorgeous young blonde that Wolverine considered so hot that he accepted her advances despite that he knew who she was. Later in the bedroom, she turned into a copy of Jean Grey. One story in 2005 (Bizarre Love Triangle) has her try and do this to break up Rogue and Gambit, because she thinks he's not good enough for her daughter. She even turns into Rogue to try and succeed!
  • Sadist: This is ultimately the main reason why she often goes out of her way to be as malicious, petty, and downright inhumanly cruel as possible in what she does. Mystique has to find a way to destroy lives in the cruelest manner she can think of. She’s so bad at this that she both lapses into Ax-Crazy behavior and murders people from time to time just for jollies, as well as making fundamentally stupid decisions on occasion just because she feels like screwing someone over or killing someone.
  • Shapeshifting Heals Wounds: She is sometimes stated to have a limited healing ability as a secondary effect of her body control. If counts enough for a healing factor draining vampire in Wolverines to target her.
  • Skeletons in the Coat Closet: In her natural form she wears a belt of skulls.
  • Spot the Imposter: While she can copy someone's appearance, she can't replicate powers. Thus, all it takes is seeing, say, Cyclops not firing eye beams or Kitty Pryde not phasing to realize who this is.
  • Strong Family Resemblance: While they couldn’t be more different personality-wise, she and her son Nightcrawler look very much alike with Kurt inheriting his yellow eyes and blue coloring from her (while getting the rest of his traits from his father Azazel). Raze, her son she had with Wolverine from a possible future is also blue and has yellow eyes like her.
  • Stupid Evil: At her worst, she's this. Mystique is legendary for her self-sabotaging cruelty and treachery and impulsive vindictive and vengeful acts - no matter how well her plan was succeeding or how likely she was to get what she wanted and evade consequences, she will never pass up an opportunity to betray someone for short-term gain, kill someone, destroy someone's life, or get revenge on whoever she blames for a past setback, no matter how few actual benefits there are or how likely it is to blow up in her face. This also leads to the same vicious cycle that always sinks her: Mystique has a good thing going, she indulges in some pointless sadistic act that anyone with a brain could tell would go poorly and fucks it all up and destroys everything she worked for, she finds someone to blame and harbors yet another grudge, and then she shoots herself in the foot down the line when she takes a detour to exact revenge and ruins everything she worked for yet again, and then she finds another person to blame and the cycle starts over again.
  • Super Supremacist: She developed into one of these after her Rogues' Gallery Transplant into an X-Men villain, and while she's since reverted to her more usual cynical and out-for-herself motivation after years of fruitless efforts to change the mutant status quo, this is usually a constant in adaptations featuring her, to the point where even the heroic Mystique of the later X-Men movies is at best a Good is Not Nice mutant supremacist.
  • Supernaturally Young Parent: She doesn't look any older than her adoptive daughter Rogue or her biological son Nightcrawler, as her powers allow her to maintain a youthful look.
  • Technically Naked Shapeshifter: She usually forms clothing, including her trademark white dress with yellow skull-motif belt, out of herself when she changes form.
  • Token Evil Teammate: In her X-Factor days in the late 90s and in X-Men in mid-2000s, she was still presented as the most ruthless, manipulative and self-absorbed member of the team despite ostensibly being on the side of good.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: Believe it or not. While still a villain under her creator Chris Claremont’s pen Raven was consistently a Noble Demon who showed a fair number of standards (she didn’t kill Charles when he was at her mercy) and sympathetic qualities (she genuinely cherished Rogue and stayed her hand when about to stab Nightcrawler, her son). After Claremont left, it became de rigueur for writers to make Mystique as the biggest blue bitch on the planet with her disgustingly abusing and hurting Rogue on the regular and her cruelty went from moderate to Kick the Dog obscene. For example, she killed her son Graydon whom she abandoned and spurned with zero hesitation or so much as a single twinge of regret. She doesn’t get any better in X-Men (2019) with Raven eventually betraying everyone again to bring Destiny back though granted Moira was keeping Destiny dead so she wouldn’t spill beans about The Plan to end mutantkind, so Mystique was the Lesser of Two Evils there.
  • Victoria's Secret Compartment: She can actually hide weapons inside herself. In "Get Mystique" she pulls a 9mm Glock out of a pouch at the base of her spine and shoots Wolverine in the middle of the face; she is stark naked at the time.
  • Villainesses Want Heroes: She has had a thing for Forge, Iceman, and Wolverine at various points in time.
  • Villain Protagonist: Like Sabretooth, she briefly had her own series.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: Mystique's morphing ability allows her to morph into anyone/anything (including a wooden chair and a giant dragon on separate occasions), but she retains her "default mode" mass (her larger transformations would, well, tear like a hot-air balloon filled with blood if damaged... which is what happened to her as Bishop in Uncanny X-Men #301).
  • Wanted a Son Instead: Inverted and subverted. Mystique tells Nightcrawler in X-Men Blue: Origins that she had hoped for a daughter, but she fell in love with him all the same.
  • What Could Have Been: Originally Chris Claremont intended Nightcrawler's parents to be Mystique and Destiny, meaning that the former would technically be Nightcrawler's father. As this plot was conceived in the 80's it was aborted before it could even be fully introduced. In 2023's "X-Men Blue: Origins" #1, it would finally be confirmed.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Overlaps with Retcon, as it has been suggested in recent years that Mystique's volatile personality and psychotic behavior are caused by her brain's constantly shifting structure. After enduring a psychic attack by Exodus, this supposed instability caused her to degenerate into outright schizophrenia. Psylocke used her psychic blade to stabilize her but it's unclear how long it'll last.
  • Would Hurt a Child: Originally one of these, to the point that she threw her own infant son to his death to save her own skin and was later willing to risk baby Hope's life during Messiah Complex.
  • Wouldn't Hurt a Child: When written by sympathetic writers, this becomes one of her redeeming qualities However, she also participated in several attempts at genocide (some successful) and laughed a lot about it.
  • Yandere: In her more insane moments, she becomes one of these when it comes to relationships, romantic or platonic. In the X-Men story "Kill or Cure," Mystique becomes an obsessive bunny-boiler and pursues Iceman relentlessly; when he refuses to join her in a suicide pact, she jumps off the San Francisco Bay Bridge (she survives). She also tried to seduce Gambit out of possessive love for Rogue, her own adopted daughter, and to prove he wasn’t worthy of her.

Alternative Title(s): Mystique

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top