Comic Book / X-Men: The Trial of Magneto

Spoilers for the end of the Hellfire Gala and the First-Episode Twist have been left unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Father and daughter, killer and victim?

Eventually, your grief becomes a background ache. Then, the wind knifes and bites through the nothingness you left standing in its path as it blows. Hurting, yet harmless. A lonely wind left howling its pain throughout all the blackened, empty spaces where a love once tended to used to live. Whistling through the haunted ruins of you.

— The Scarlet Witch

X-Men: The Trial of Magneto is a five-issue mini-series beginning in August 2021. Written by Leah Williams and drawn by Lukas Werneck, it is part of the Reign of X era and also the finale of Williams' X-Factor (2020).

The story that will shake Krakoa to its core!

As the Hellfire Gala came to a close, the dead body of Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, was discovered. She had obviously been murdered by someone powerful and someone close, her hands bound by a metallic substance. As X-Factor, X-Force, and the X-Men jointly investigate, it quickly becomes clear who the main suspect is: Magneto.

But Magneto won't go down easily. After the Quiet Council denies Wanda's resurrection, Magneto loses it and when the X-teams come to arrest him, he will not submit quietly.

But there's more. Why did Wanda not use her magic? She can warp reality, but somehow struggled with her assailant? Was this really Magneto?

Who really killed Wanda Maximoff?

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X-Men: The Trial of Magneto provides examples of:

• Ambiguous Situation: Issue #5 reveals that Toad takes the blame for Wanda's murder, but exactly why is left unclear.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: There are celebrations going on across Krakoa, its civilians happy that Wanda, "The Pretender", is dead.
• Arc Number: 3. Wanda has three co-conspirators: Magneto, Hope, and Toad. There are three Wandas: older her, younger her, present her. Three guilt-fueled monsters. Three prodigal children of Krakoa's founders to complete the Ritual of Three.
• Arc Words:
  • "Spin the wheel."
  • "They may reject the gift."
• Badass Boast:
  • When Magneto starts going berserk, Kate Pryde gives him one as she phases a hand into his body:
    Kate: Stand down or I'll peel the brain stem outta your spinal cord like a Twizzler.
  • Magneto gives the Council one when they keep chiding him for his reasonable concerns about the murder investigation:
    Magneto: I carved myself out of torture so I could stand tall upon the ruins of my subjugation.
  • Lorna, when Magneto mistakes her for Synch copying his powers:
    Magneto: If you're going to borrow my powers to use agains me, then come out and face me like a man!
    Polaris: Okay.
  • Logan when Magneto accuses him of never learning:
    Wolverine: Nah, I just never gave a %$#@ what you did to me.
• Bittersweet Ending: Further on then sweet ending but not without its consequences. That being that Toad takes the fall for Wanda’s “attempted murder” and is exiled. But Wanda’s plan works by going through the resurrection protocols to access a space that allows her to improve Cerebro’s ability store backups, allowing it to collect souls from before it went online. This means no mutant souls can be out of reach from resurrection, adding 20 million mutants to the protocols including Northstar's adopted daughter Johanna. The first of these mutants to be returned is John Proudstar, the long dead X-man Thunderbird. Scarlet Witch and Magneto are a family again regardless of blood and she is no longer referred to as "The Pretender", but instead "The Redeemer".
• Call-Back:
  • Magneto calls back to when Polaris asked him how he would describe her personality in X-Factor #4, and says that he only tried to spare her feelings when he didn't describe her as "unhinged" and "inconsistent".
  • Lorna hangs a lampshade on how Magneto's love interests have tended to die not long after winning his affection^note His wife Magda ran off and presumably died of exposure; Isabelle was murdered in front of him by Mossad; Suzanna Dane indirectly died because of him when her husband confronted her about her infidelity on a plane and it upset their Omega mutant three-year-old, bookended by the deaths of two of his daughters.
• Character Narrator: Towards the end of the first issue, some red narration boxes appear describing the process of healing from grief. At the very end of the issue, it's revealed who is narrating: the Scarlet Witch.
• Continuity Snarl: At the end of Darkhold, which is set before The Trial of Magneto, Wanda assimilates the dark god Chthon and warns that if she dies he will be unleashed. She dies in The Trial of Magneto, but nothing of the sort happens.
• Convenient Coma: Magneto falls into a coma just when the others need to question him. And though Jean can enter his mind, she can't tell if he killed Wanda because his mind is currently in the middle of a massive nightmare.
• Cooldown Hug: Northstar gives Quicksilver one after Quicksilver nearly beats Magneto to death.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The X-teams put up a good fight, but none of them are really a match for Magneto. Polaris puts up the strongest fight, but Magneto was still standing...and then he disappears, only his helmet left on the ground. It turns out that Quicksilver really does not like it when someone kills his sister. He nearly beats Magneto to death before Northstar stops him.
• Death Equals Redemption: Played with. Wanda was an anti-villain, as she meant well with everything, including what she did on M-day. She died to redeem herself upon resurrection.
• Decoy Protagonist: The title and the first issue make Magneto seem like the protagonist of the story, but starting at the end of the first issue, the focus of the story shifts to the Scarlet Witch.
• Distinction Without a Difference:
  • Polaris says she designed a sentient defensive structure for her doctoral thesis. Northstar guesses she got an A, i.e. that she was successful. Polaris replies that she didn't get an A, but she got a Ph.D., so it's fine.
  • Since the Boneyard is a sentient defensive structure, Magneto accusing Polaris of building it instead of focusing on her geophysics degree is this trope.
• Double-Meaning Title: Though it's the same as the title for the storyline where Magneto was put on trial for crimes against humanity, and a court process is alluded to since he's being accused of murder, this arc is about Magneto having to go through the trial of losing his daughter... and bringing her back.
• Driving Question: Who killed Wanda? Was it actually Magneto? And how did they kill manage to kill her? As Northstar puts it in the preview of the first issue:
  Northstar: None of this adds up. Why wasn't she using her magic? How does one get the jump on a sorcerer who controls all reality? What kind of monster would it take to bring her down at all, let alone like this?
• Drowning My Sorrows: Quicksilver goes to the Green Lagoon and together with the Blob, Toad, and Mastermind (the original Brotherhood of Evil Mutants alongside the Scarlet Witch), they drink to Wanda's memory.
• Everyone Has Standards: Jean, who has been known to do some pretty unethical things with her powers for the sake of gathering intel before, refuses to consider Magneto's nightmare about being at fault for the death of his daughter to be a confession of the same.
• Fall Guy: Toad.
• Fingore: Prodigy and Eye-boy conclude that the blood under Wanda's nails comes from her clawing so hard at the object strangling her that her nails ripped back and her nail beds began to bleed.
• Forensic Drama: Part of the first issue is dedicated to X-Factor investigating forensically the crime scene and autopsying the body.
• Frame-Up: As far as Wiccan is concerned, the reason the evidence all points to Magneto could be that it was done by magic mimicking the way his powers would do it.
• Fully Absorbed Finale: Serves as this to Williams X-Factor, and was originally planned as an arc in that series before being spun-off into a separate mini-series.
• Hated by All: Downplayed. The Avengers are not popular among Krakoans and their prescience on Krakoa does not sit with them well. Especially in the case of Wanda.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: In issue #3 Eye-Boy is able to use his powers to see where Jean should hit the Kaiju and also gives him quick reflexes to switch between targets quickly.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Starting in issue 3, some additional pages were drawn for the series by David Messina, who draws Wanda's face to look exactly like Elizabeth Olsen.
• Jurisdiction Friction: Both X-Factor and X-Force investigated the circumstances of Wanda's death, to the chagrin of both. The latter justifies themselves by being security for the Hellfire Gala, while Northstar mocks them for their clear failure in Wanda being murdered on their watch.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: It's hard to describe anything about the book without stating who the murder victim was, which spoils the very end of the Hellfire Gala.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: As Wanda says to either us or to the white-caped person who just plunged a dagger into her heart:
  Wanda: Ha... see you... next round...
• Logical Weakness: Sure, Logan and Laura have metal claws, so they can't really harm Magneto. But Daken's claws aren't metal. He gets in a few good stabs before Magneto swats him away.
• Manly Tears: Magneto needs to be alone before he'll cry them.
• Meaningful Rename: Wanda is no longer the Pretender, but the Redeemer.
• Multitasked Conversation: Toad's words to the Council double as a secret message to Magneto, because he is the fall guy in Wanda's alleged murder, but to anyone not in the know he just sounds like a religious follower of Magneto's old agenda.
  Toad: I did this for you, Magneto!
• My Greatest Second Chance:
  • Wanda creating the "Waiting Room", allowing 20 million mutants that were unable to be reborn due to Cerebro not being used at that time or their X-Gene not activated when they died, has redeemed her to the Krakoans, giving her the title "Redeemer".
  • Northstar gets another chance to raise his adopted daughter Joanne.
• Never Trust a Title: There is no trial, with Magneto merely suspected of the murder, and Magneto isn't the protagonist of the story.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: During a pitched battle between Krakoan forces and Magneto, he suddenly vanishes leaving his helmet behind. Cut to Quicksilver beating him savagely at super speed, narrowly being stopped by everyone before Pietro kills him but not before Magneto is beaten into a coma.
• Older Than Dirt: Invoked. Magneto refers to things like "blame" and "punishment" as antediluvian^note before the Flood human concepts.
• Once More, with Clarity: Issue #5 shows us what happened between Wanda and Magneto at the Hellfire Gala.
• Pietà Plagiarism: The Mark Brooks variant cover for the first issue features Magneto and Wanda in this pose.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In the first issue, Magneto gives one to Polaris, calling her unhinged and inconsistent at best. Then Polaris gives one to Magneto:
  Polaris: How many women is it now you once claimed to love who all perished during your brief window of affection and attention? You leave a trail of dead wives and dead daughters behind in your wake...
• The Reveal: Wanda killed Wanda, framing Magneto with his knowledge, but only so she could pull off a ritual to help bring back mutants lost long before Cerebro could catalog them or prior to their X-Gene becoming active.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: The second issue opens with Magneto reading at home and noticing the presence of Charles's telepathic probing. He asks out loud if Charles thought he wouldn't notice. Turns out, Magneto is lying unconscious on an operating table while Charles and Hope telepathically probe his mind by providing comfortable settings.
• Shout-Out: The first issue is titled "Dial M for Wanda."
• Skyward Scream: Magneto's nightmare consists of him doing this, from a vortex of blood and skulls.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: A distraught Speed is unable to contact his twin Wiccan to let him know about Wanda and possibly even help with the investigation. This is because he's caught up in The Last Annihilation and magic is all screwy at the moment.
• Thanatos Gambit: The entire event was a big plan by Wanda to attempt to rescue the souls of mutants thought lost to Krakoa, such as Thunderbird.
• The Tragic Rose: Moving to the afterlife, Wanda is holding a red rose.
• Wham Line: The narration boxes at the very end of the first issue give a few big ones:
  My wind howls in the millions. I am the Scarlet Witch. And I am intimately acquainted with grief. Every single person I have ever harmed—I grieved for them all. I ache for what has been lost. What I have caused. A tempest of anguish. And now I grieve for myself. Because I was killed. I died and yet... I know that I am not dead.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Quicksilver has an important part in the first issue, then is never seen or mentioned again for the rest of the story.
  • The early issues make a point of mentioning that Billy is unaware of Wanda's death and can't be reached, but in issue 3, he's on the island with no mention of how he found out or when he arrived.
• When I Was Your Age...: Invoked by Wolverine when his oldest kid, Daken, who is almost Magneto's age, gets one over on him because unlike Logan and Laura, he doesn't have metal bones.
  Wolverine: Kids these days, eh?
• You Already Changed the Past: When Wanda merges with her crone self from the future, she gains her memories, and creates access to the Eldritch orchard based on her memories of already having created access to the Eldritch orchard.

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