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While many recognize Professor X as the caring figure who leads the oppressed X-Men, his character is also tainted by secrets, from obsession and control to horrifying acts of aggression.
10. Charles Xavier's Secret Desire For Jean Grey
Many know Professor X as a paternal figure for his mutant team. This perception is reinforced by the X-Men comics and films, which highlight the isolation of mutants from their biological families. The X-Men often turn to each other as a new family, with Professor X stepping into the role of a father figure.
Considering that context, it’s disturbing to revisit pages from The X-Men No. 4, originally published in 1964. In these panels, Professor X touches Jean’s elbow and holds her hand while cautioning her to be careful. Later, he reflects on her as “the one I love,” lamenting that his role as the team leader and his disability prevent him from revealing his feelings. What makes this even more unsettling is that Jean Grey is about 15 years old at the time, making Xavier’s behavior much more akin to that of Humbert Humbert than a revered mentor. Fortunately, this incident is never revisited, other than a reference in the Onslaught story line.
9. Deceiving Wolverine For Years
Wolverine’s popularity as a character extends beyond his role to become a significant symbol for the X-Men franchise. He represents the idea that anyone, no matter how damaged, can find redemption. If a violent, berserk warrior like Wolverine can be saved, it suggests that no one is truly beyond saving.
However, from a practical standpoint, this idea seems quite reckless. What responsible leader would let a man prone to violent rages live among his team? As dramatized in the first X-Men movie, Wolverine’s nightmares almost led him to stab and kill Rogue. The 29th issue of Wolverine Origins later provided an explanation. This retconning comic revealed that Wolverine was originally brainwashed to assassinate Xavier, and Xavier knew this, using his psychic abilities to erase the kill command.
After that, Xavier gained a powerful weapon to use at his discretion. While practical, this reality undermines the image of Xavier as someone who accepted Wolverine purely out of compassion. As Wolverine himself bluntly says, “Surprise, Charlie… you’re a bastard too. Welcome to the club.”
8. He Has Plans To Kill His Entire Team
While Xavier is seen as the caring father figure to his mutants, there’s a question about their living situation that might make audiences sympathize with the fearful humans from the X-Men films: Is it truly safe to have so many powerful mutants, capable of mass destruction, all living under one roof? What if they went rogue, were brainwashed, or simply lost control of their powers?
As it turns out, if disaster strikes, they might be in one of the best places to meet their end. Borrowing a page from Batman, but with a darker twist, Xavier has created the Xavier Protocols—detailed plans on how to neutralize every member of the X-Men, including himself. In some respects, it’s practical, especially considering that Wolverine, who is difficult to kill and prone to being brainwashed, is on the roster. Xavier speculates that decapitating Wolverine would stop his regenerative powers and finally end him. While it’s a pragmatic approach, it’s hard to picture the mutant version of Martin Luther King Jr. secretly drafting such lethal plans late at night.
7. He Won’t Stop Manipulating Minds
One of the scariest aspects of living with Xavier (pictured here before he was confined to his iconic wheelchair) is the lingering fear of just how much he might be influencing your thoughts. You're part of Xavier’s team, fighting and sacrificing for his ideals—how much of that is genuinely your own choice, and how much is shaped by his psychic influence? This concern is confirmed in the Ultimate X-Men comics, where Xavier is shown using his powers to release pleasure-inducing hormones into Cyclops’s mind, preventing him from expressing undesirable thoughts.
In both the Ultimate X-Men universe and the primary continuity, Xavier erases Magneto’s memories as a method of neutralizing the villain. In the X-Men: First Class movie, Xavier demonstrates his readiness to casually use his powers like a Jedi mind trick, influencing the mind of Moira’s CIA superior early in the story. Later, he wipes Moira’s memory of the location of the base. For someone with the world’s most powerful mind, these actions would seem to cross a significant moral line. Yet, Xavier passed that line long ago and now repeatedly crosses it with ease.
6. He Enslaved The Danger Room
Before Joss Whedon reshaped the superhero movie universe with The Avengers, he had an incredible run penning the Astonishing X-Men comic series. One of his story arcs presented a bizarre concept: What if the Danger Room—equipped with years of advanced alien technology—gained consciousness? This premise set the stage for epic confrontations. How does one defeat an entity designed to strategize the ultimate ways to overpower mutants?
It also prompted profound reflections on existence and revealed a shocking truth about Xavier: He knew exactly when the Danger Room became self-aware. He heard its confused thoughts telepathically but chose to ignore them, as the preparation of the X-Men and the safeguarding of all mutants justified the sacrifice. Thankfully, Wolverine voiced the outrage that many readers felt, accusing Xavier of spending too much time with Magneto, as his reasoning was beginning to sound suspiciously like Magneto's.
5. He Had A Twin Sister And Attempted To Kill Her While She Was In The Womb
Another comic legend who had an equally remarkable run was Grant Morrisson, the writer behind All-New X-Men. Among the unforgettable villains he created was Cassandra Nova, whose origin story was as bizarre as any in the comic world. She was a Mummudrai—parasites capable of mimicking the DNA of an individual, revealing to them at birth a glimpse of their ultimate opposite, akin to a Jungian shadow archetype.
Before his birth, Xavier was aware of his ‘twin sister’ in the womb. He could sense the threat she posed and, using his psychic powers—evidently functional even before he took his first breath—he attempted to end her life. Her body was stillborn, but the parasite later returned, bent on killing her brother and conquering the world. Though the X-Men ultimately thwarted her, the image of Xavier—the symbol of peace and unity—attempting to murder his sibling while still in the womb certainly changes the reader’s perception of him.
4. He Tried To Annihilate All Of Humanity
Xavier has always embodied a paradox: his goal is a peaceful mutant utopia, yet he also trains his people to fight super-powered battles. This contradiction came to a head after Xavier wiped Magneto’s mind and absorbed Magneto’s negative emotions. With the escalating panic around mutants and the devastation of the Legacy Virus, Xavier snapped. He succumbed to the dark emotions he had taken on and became an almost invincible, armor-clad behemoth known as Onslaught.
Initially, Onslaught’s Plan A was to merge all of humanity’s minds into a single collective. However, the interference of Earth’s heroes forced him to adopt Plan B. This new plan involved constructing his own Citadel in Manhattan, building a Sentinel Army, and creating a second sun to obliterate humanity. While Earth’s heroes ultimately triumphed, the sheer destructive force unleashed by Xavier left both Marvel’s universe and its readers in awe.
3. He Can’t Stop Breaking His Legs
Xavier wasn’t always confined to a wheelchair. In his youth, he was quite athletic, even resorting to cheating in sports and serving in the military. It wasn’t until he battled the alien Lucifer and had a massive rock dropped on him that Xavier’s legs were permanently crippled. However, after the destruction of his original body, he transferred his mind into a new clone, which gave him the ability to walk once more.
After a later encounter with the Shadow King, Xavier’s spine was damaged again, forcing him back into a wheelchair. He was eventually healed by the mutant Xorn, who, depending on the retcon you follow, was actually Magneto in disguise. This might explain why Xorn later paralyzed Xavier once more. When Magneto’s daughter, Scarlet Witch, rewrote reality, Xavier revealed that he could walk, albeit without his mutant powers. With the aid of a mystical crystal, Xavier regained his abilities and walked again until the day he was killed by a Phoenix-possessed Cyclops.
2. He Had An Alien Girlfriend
Out of all the romantic relationships in Charles Xavier’s life, his bond with Shi’ar Empress Lilandra Neramani stands out as truly otherworldly. Their first encounter was a cosmic one—Lilandra sensed Xavier as he rallied humanity to fend off an alien invasion. Their connection deepened, and when Xavier believed his X-Men were lost, he agreed to become her consort while she reigned over an entire empire in space.
Things took a turn when the X-Men were revealed to be alive, and Jean Grey was accused of destroying an entire planet as The Phoenix. Xavier and Lilandra reconciled when she used advanced alien technology to heal his mind and legs, and the two embarked on adventurous escapades through space. However, their relationship ended when Cassandra Nova mind-controlled Lilandra, causing her to nearly ruin her empire. Even after Nova was stopped, Lilandra believed Nova was still inside Xavier and tried to kill him, leading to their final breakup.
1. He Had A Different Group Of X-Men Killed
The recruitment of iconic X-Men such as Colossus, Wolverine, and Storm marked a memorable chapter as they were chosen to rescue the original team from captivity on the living mutant island of Krakoa. However, X-Men: Deadly Genesis reveals that this was actually the third team to attempt the rescue. The second team, made up of mutants under Moira McTaggert’s care, was the first to head there.
Though unprepared for combat, Xavier used his psychic abilities to give them a crash course in battle, Matrix-style. The mission ended in disaster, with the entire new team slaughtered. Their only success was freeing Cyclops, who was so traumatized by the experience that Xavier felt compelled to erase his memories.
With a wiped memory and Xavier’s mental suggestion that the island was a living mutant, Cyclops recruited the more familiar X-Men, who went on to rescue the rest of the original team. This outcome was fortunate, given Xavier’s persistent manipulation of other mutants and his reckless disregard for their lives until his team was saved.
