Writer: Leah Williams
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Color Artist: Edgar Delgado
Cover Artists: Valerio Schiti & Rain Beredo
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Reviewer: StoryBabbler
Krakoa is in uproar as the Scarlet Witch is dead. Or is she? The Avengers and the X-Men were trying to keep things calm while X-Factor investigated her murder. Magneto was suspect #1 at first, but the story reveals there was more to it and he may not have been the one who did it. After the events of the last issue, X-Men: The Trial of Magneto #5 brings us answers to this whole catastrophe.
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Review:
It’s finally over. This review will have spoilers throughout it, so fair warning to those who don’t want to be spoiled about the events of this comic. So, let’s get to it. We finally learn who killed the Scarlet Witch: it was Toad! Wait, what? And that’s probably what most people will say after seeing and hearing that for the first time and re-reading the comic to make sure they read that right.
So, the Quiet Council judges Toad, who admits to everything: that he tried to kill Wanda, and X-Factor even comes in for a bit to show the evidence and murder weapon hidden in his home. The “trial” is quick and Toad is sentenced to exile, like Sabertooth, and dragged into the Pit screaming at the top of his lungs that he killed Wanda for breaking apart the Brotherhood. That he did it for Magneto. The thing is, I didn’t buy it and I’m sure none of the readers do, but for some reason the Quiet Council, the Avengers, and X-Factor totally buy it.
After the trial is over, we get some poor dialogue from the Avengers, Wanda saying how happy she is, and then the comic reveals the real culprits. It’s not Mystique or any other reasonable choice. No, it’s the Scarlet Witch and Magneto. The comic reveals that Wanda planned out her own “murder” with Magneto during the night he invited her during the events of Planet-sized X-Men #1 and S.W.O.R.D. #6 earlier this year. On that night, Magneto apparently told her about mutant resurrection and this sparked a convoluted plan in her head which she convinced her father to go along with. And she left the discovery of her body to Magneto, who essentially set up Toad as the fall guy.
So, what was the point of this story? What was the bigger goal of this whole fiasco that blew way out of proportion? Why did Wanda put her father and everyone else through all of this false tragedy? So that she could use chaos magic to create a pocket dimension – the Eldritch Orchard – that will serve as a waiting room for all mutants that were lost before Cerebro could back them up or even before their X-Gene activated. And to do this, she needed to go through the mutant resurrection protocol, and she even got Magneto to talk Hope into helping, apparently. Thus, allowing for approximately twenty million mutants to be backed up in Cerebro, including mutant John Proudstar, aka Thunderbird.
There are so many flaws with this idea, and the story itself, but the biggest is that Wanda is now “redeemed” or in the process of being redeemed in the eyes of the general mutants of Krakoa as “the Redeemer.” But she and this story didn’t earn it. Worse, this book really shouldn’t have been called “Trial of Magneto” but Trial of Scarlet Witch or something, because this series was all about Wanda and her convoluted plot. And on top of that, it just makes the Scarlet Witch look bad. Ultimately, there was probably a better way to tell this story, but this series just proves to be a confusing and bloated waste of time.
Final Thoughts:
X-Men: The Trial of Magneto #5 brings this chaotic mini-series to a close with unsatisfying results. The comic answers who killed Wanda, but the reveal is not as impactful as expected. On top of that, the comic adds a big revelation on top of the other that doesn’t make things clearer but more confusing and convoluted than this series already is.