Moira MacTaggert

Moira MacTaggert
Moira MacTaggert, as she appeared on the variant cover of House of X #1 (July 2019. Art by Mark Brooks.
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	Uncanny X-Men #96 (December 1975)
Created by	Chris Claremont (writer) Dave Cockrum (artist)
In-story information
Alter ego	Dr. Moira Kinross MacTaggert
Species	Human Mutant[1]
Team affiliations	Muir Island X-Men Excalibur X-Men
Abilities	Mutant with limited reality warping reincarnation powers, perfect memory and invisibility of her true nature to mutants and mutant detection devices and methods. Possesses great intelligence and experience in the field of genetics and mutation.

Dr. Moira MacTaggert (sometimes spelled MacTaggart, McTaggart, McTaggert) née Kinross, more recently known as Moira X, is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. She first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #96 (December 1975) and was created by writer Chris Claremont and artist Dave Cockrum.^[2] She works as a geneticist and is an expert in mutant affairs. She is most commonly in association with the X-Men and has been a member of the Muir Island X-Men team and Excalibur.

Olivia Williams played Dr. Moira MacTaggert in the 2006 feature film X-Men: The Last Stand. In the 2011 feature film X-Men: First Class, Rose Byrne played a younger Moira MacTaggert, but in this film, the character is a CIA officer rather than a geneticist. Byrne returned as MacTaggert in the 2016 feature film X-Men: Apocalypse.

Publication history[]

Moira MacTaggert was created by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum, and first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #96 (December 1975).^[3] Moira was one of the major supporting characters in Claremont's Uncanny X-Men run. She worked as a geneticist and was an expert in mutant affairs. She was romantically involved with Professor X. She would eventually found a foundation center on Muir Island centered on mutant research.^[4]

Moira MacTaggert received an entry in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Update '89 #4.

Originally, Grant Morrison wanted to use Moira on his run on New X-Men as the team scientist,^{[citation needed]} but she was killed prior to the start of the series. Instead, they used Beast (Henry "Hank" McCoy).

Moira was one of the feature characters in the 2011 two-issue limited series Chaos War: X-Men.^[5]

She is one of the main characters in House of X and Powers of X, written by Jonathan Hickman. House of X #2 retconned established continuity, revealing her to be a mutant with the ability to reincarnate within her own timeline; on her death, she is returned to the moment she is conceived with full knowledge of her previous lives. Her knowledge of potential futures, when divulged to Professor X and Magneto, leads to the formation of the nation-state of Krakoa and the new status quo for the X-Men books following House of X and Powers of X.^[1]

Fictional character biography[]

Early years[]

Born Moira Kinross to Scottish parents, Moira MacTaggert was one of the world's leading authorities on genetic mutation, earning her a Nobel Prize for her work. She was the longest running human associate of the X-Men and was Professor Charles Xavier's colleague, confidante, and also once his fiancée, having met and fallen in love with him while they were postgraduates at Oxford University.^[6] She ended their engagement for unknown reasons and returned to Scotland. She was married to her old flame, the late politician Joseph MacTaggert which caused delays with her former engagement to Xavier. Joe proved to be an abusive husband; Moira separated from him after he beat her into a week long coma and, as it is implied, raped her, leaving her pregnant. She kept her son's existence a secret, and when Joe refused her a divorce she allowed people to believe she was widowed.

She eventually created a Mutant Research Center on Muir Island, off the coast of Scotland. Moira was forced to contain and imprison her son Kevin, later called Proteus, when he developed reality warping abilities and severe psychosis. One of Moira's goals was to understand human/mutant genetics, in order to cure her son. However, it is suggested that she intentionally married Joseph and gave birth to Kevin in order to produce a mutant with reality-bending abilities.

First appearance from Uncanny X-Men #96.
Art by Dave Cockrum.

Moira's connection to the X-Men began long before the team formed. The silent partner in the founding of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters and co-creator of Cerebro, Moira assisted Xavier in helping the young Jean Grey recover after the traumatic triggering of her mutant abilities.

Moira was a kind woman who took to helping humans and mutants alike. She rescued a young Rahne Sinclair (Wolfsbane) from an angry mob, and adopted the girl. She even attempted to treat Xavier's son, a mutant known as Legion who suffered from multiple personality disorder. When a confused, traumatized Cable first arrived from the future, he washed up in Scotland unable to speak English, and it was Moira who stood up for him against an angry mob. Taking him back to Muir Island, he scanned her mind and learned English in the process, as well as the truth about her son, and promised to keep her secrets. She taught him literature and the customs of the time and introduced him to Xavier. They became close friends ever since, being the first kind person Cable met in the present timeline, her later death devastating him enough to leave the X-Men. When Magneto was reduced to infancy, he was entrusted to Moira's care on Muir Island, where she altered his genetic code in an attempt to keep him from reverting to villainy.

Involvement with the X-Men[]

Moira appeared at Xavier's call to act as "housekeeper" for the team while they were on missions (a position that required her to demonstrate her proficiency with an M16 rifle against a demon within hours of her arrival). Though each of the X-Men formed some sort of relationship with the "Widow" MacTaggert, Moira and Sean Cassidy (Banshee) hit it off immediately, forming an on-and-off relationship that would last for the remainder of her life. Proteus' escape and eventual destruction at the hands of Colossus and the X-Men left Moira in a position of ethical compromise again: though Banshee stopped her from cloning her son, she saved his genetic structure on disk to allow herself the future option of bringing him back.^[7][8]

After finding out that her foster daughter, Rahne, was a mutant, Moira was the catalyst for change. She talked a discouraged Xavier into opening his school to the next generation of New Mutants, with Rahne becoming an initial member. She was also an integral part of the support for the X-Men and the New Mutants, providing medical aid including cloning Xavier after the Brood attacks, transferring his mind into a new body and restoring his ability to walk after a Brood embryo nearly killed him.

Muir Islanders (Muir Island X-Men) on the cover of Uncanny X-Men #254. Art by Marc Silvestri.

With the apparent death of the X-Men, Moira and Banshee formed an alternate team based from Muir, and carried on as the leader of the team without him when his duties with the X-Men called him away.^[9] Her behavior became unpredictable, her temper impressive, and her decisions harsh and unforgiving as she displayed behavior that made all who knew her suspicious. On Muir, she began to pit her charges against each other in an arena in merciless battles, supposedly allowing her the opportunity to study mutants in action.

Moira and her islanders were involved in the return of Proteus due to the influence of Advanced Idea Mechanics. This was a four-part story in 1991, that ran through that year's annuals for the New Warriors, X-Force, New Mutants and X-Factor. The Shadow King, the corrupting entity behind the island, allowed the Islanders to act heroically in defense of innocent lives.

Eventually, the entire population of Muir Island was identified as being possessed by and mentally corrupted by Shadow King, pitting the Islanders against the combined forces of the X-Men and X-Factor before Xavier freed them from his control.^[10]

Moira confronted by Magneto in X-Men #2. Art by Jim Lee.

Moira's alteration of Magneto did not go unnoticed indefinitely. Enraged when he discovered Moira had tampered with his free will, Magneto took Moira captive and forced her to perform the procedure on half of the X-Men, turning them against their teammates.^[11] While Moira's alterations worked, it was revealed that, due to mutants' powers requiring their body chemistry to operate in a specific manner, use of a mutant's powers would cause them to automatically resist the 'programming' and reverse the effects of the procedure, so anything Magneto had done was of his own free will. While hostage on Asteroid M, Moira witnessed Fabian Cortez draining Magneto of his powers and manipulating him into placing him as his right hand. Though Cortez fled, it was an observation that would eventually put Moira back in the hands of the Acolytes. Back on Earth, Moira was unable to accept her betrayal of her surrogate family and her own infallibility, and fled the X-Mansion, with Banshee in pursuit.^[12]

Excalibur and the Legacy Virus[]

When a mysterious virus began attacking the genetically engineered mutate population of Genosha, Moira volunteered her services as a geneticist and was forced to watch as the former slaves were decimated by disease. Returning to the X-Mansion, Moira found Illyana Rasputin suffering from the same illness, later identified as the Legacy Virus. Moving back to Muir Island after the girl's death, Moira became the key figure in working for a cure to the disease (during this time, she also worked on curing Wolfsbane's artificial bond with Havok).

The European superhero team Excalibur took up residence on Muir Island after assisting Moira.^[13] She had been attacked by agents of Mister Sinister who was seeking the genetic information on her son. Moira became an official member of the group, acting as their medic, team mother, and morale officer. An information leak revealed her to be the only human infected by the Legacy Virus—a bizarre turn of events possibly caused by her long exposure to the infected on Genosha, her autopsy of Illyana, or some susceptibility because she gave birth to a mutant.^[14] Despite these events, she maintained a strong outlook on life, helping to maintain discipline, reduce tension, and increase the team's effectiveness throughout Europe. She convinced the team to stay behind when Onslaught emerged, telling them they might be needed if other heroes fell.^[15]

Conferring with the X-Men's Beast did not result in appreciable progress. Locking herself in quarantine in a final attempt to cure the virus without endangering any of her teammates, Moira found her attempts foiled by her foster daughter, Wolfsbane, and Douglock. Wolfsbane originally leapt through the closing doors of the laboratory as the quarantine took effect. She soon found herself a willing assistant to her foster mother's work. Douglock later caused much unintentional damage, his judgement clouded by personal feelings for Wolfsbane.^[13][16][17] Moira takes time off from her research to attend the bachelorette party and the wedding for her friends Meggan and Brian Braddock.^[18]

Final moments in X-Men (vol. 2) #108.
Art by Leinil Francis Yu

Moira did eventually find a cure for the disease, when the terrorist Mystique manipulated her research to force the virus to target only humans. Mystique, partly assisted by Sabretooth, then destroyed Muir Island, de-powered Wolfsbane with the power nullifier once developed by Forge, and brutally injured Moira.^[19][20] Bishop, Wolverine, and Rogue attempted to save Moira's life. Despite Rogue's powers temporarily granting her medical knowledge, she was unable to do so. Moira clung to lifelong enough to mentally transfer the information to Xavier in one final embrace between the former lovers. Xavier nearly went with her into death, but Jean Grey and Cable intervened on the astral plane, talking him down. She appeared to died in the X-Men's jet, far above the Atlantic Ocean, and was later buried in Scotland.^[21] A psychic representation of Moira was seen as an active portion of Xavier's consciousness as he worked on rebuilding Genosha though "she" claimed she was just a manifestation of his imaginations.^[22]

Moira is next seen in the afterlife, in which she, Mockingbird, Gwen Stacy, and Dead Girl assist Doctor Strange in battling a being known as the Pitiful One. Moira finds herself more interested in the book club she formed with Mockingbird and Gwen Stacy then in battling evil.^[23]

X-Men: Deadly Genesis[]

After the events of M-Day and upon the reawakening of Vulcan, significant portions of Moira's history with Xavier and the original X-Men are called into light. While in the rubble of Muir Island research center, Banshee freaks out when he notices Moira standing outside in the pouring rain, but when he rushes outside she has already disappeared. When she appears to him again, and believing he's really seeing Moira’s spirit, Sean decides to follows her to a house where she leads him to an old stockroom. Moira’s image then fades away as Sean finds important notes from Xavier which reveals that during the early years of Xavier's Academy, Moira founded and ran a secondary facility not far from the Xavier School, in which she had her own students—youths whom she took out of bad situations and adopted as her wards, training them in their abilities without the highly militant regimen of Charles' X-Men.

When Krakoa captured the original X-Men, it was Moira's students whom Charles went to first—not the second team of Wolverine, Storm, Banshee, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Thunderbird and Sunfire as it was originally believed—putting them through the psionic equivalent of boot camp and allowing them to believe they were being trained over months as X-Men. Charles took them from Moira's care immediately.

Moira's students—Vulcan (Gabriel Summers, the lost brother of X-Men Cyclops and Havok), Petra, Darwin, and Sway—were apparently all killed, and Xavier suppressed even the memory of them from his own students to keep them from going back to save them. Only Moira's project tapes—one made directly after the event before Xavier could suppress the memories—and an abandoned research center remain as clues.^[24]

Chaos War[]

During the "Chaos War" storyline, Moira MacTaggert is brought back from the afterlife, alongside the fallen X-Men members John Proudstar, Banshee, three Madrox dupes, and Sophie and Esme Cuckoo, after what happened to the death realms.^[25] After escaping from the Apache god Carrion Crow, the group discovers that Moira has been possessed by Destiny's ghost.^[26] She returns to the afterlife after stopping the Carrion Crow from destroying the elemental spirits of life.^[27]

House of X[]

In 2019's House of X, it is revealed that the reason of why Moira was infected by the Legacy Virus was because she is actually a mutant with the power of reincarnation, starting her life again in the womb after her death, possessing full memories of her prior lives. She is also revealed to be actually alive, having replaced herself with a Shi'ar golem which took her place and died at the hands of the Brotherhood. Since its not revealed when the change occurred, it can be assumed that it was Moira's replica that contracted the Legacy virus, and was seen in the afterlife following her death and brought back to life during the Chaos War. Its also revealed that Moira had currently lived 10 lives.

The Lives of Moira MacTaggert[]

Life 1 Moira Kinross was born to powerful Scots nobleman Lord Kinross and when she turned 13, her mutant ability manifested, but due to her passive power, there were no signs indicating that she had become a mutant other than a strong, temporary fever. Living a simple life, Moira meets Charles Xavier, but he passes through without them forming a bond. She later marries a man named Kenneth Cowan and has three children: twin boys Callum and Dean, and a girl named Abigail. Kenneth dies when Moira is 68 years old, and she passes away from congestive heart failure at age 74.

Life 2 Her second life begins in utero, having already become fully sentient and possessing a perfect recollection of her prior life when she turned 13, which is when her powers first manifest. This allowed Moira to appear intellectually gifted, and she was pushed in the direction of academia. She didn't fight her parents' intentions, since she intended to understand her true nature. After she verified that she wasn't suffering from psychosis or a disorder, and having lived through one life with Kenneth and learning all his faults, she makes a point not to fall in love with him when they met. She enrolls at Oxford at age 16, becomes a biology professor at 20, founds the Muir Research Institute at 31, and at 44 she finally deduced she was a mutant after seeing Charles Xavier coming out as one on television. She boards a plane to the United States of America in order to meet him; however, the plane crashes before reaching its destination, killing Moira.

Life 3 Moira made a point of finding Xavier earlier in her third life. She meets Charles Xavier when they were both at Oxford University; however, she becomes turned off by his arrogance and a thinly veiled god complex. She instead devotes her life to finding a cure for mutation, which she compared to cancer. Moira founds again the Muir Research Institute, and at 36 she identifies the X-gene. Just when it appears Moira had rid herself of her reincarnation powers, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants attack the Muir Research Institute. Able to see the future, Destiny alone is able to sense Moira's mutant status and see the effects her reincarnations are having on the timeline. Destiny orders Moira to stop wasting her gift by working against her own kind, and instead help prevent a seemingly inevitable future where mankind's machines wipe out the mutant race. Destiny also tells Moira of her future, revealing that Moira will ultimately live either 10 or 11 lives, depending on the choices she makes in the 10th cycle. Destiny also reveals that if Moira dies before her powers manifest at 13, she won't reincarnate. With that, Destiny warns Moira that she'll continue to hunt her in each new life if she doesn't work for the betterment of mutantkind. By Destiny's request, Moira is then killed by being slowly burned alive by Pyro so she would always remember what this slow and painful death feels like.

Life 4 In her fourth life, reconsidering the positive nature of mutants and Xavier himself, Moira throws herself into studying the human-mutant dilemma. She meets Xavier and goes on to fall in love with and marry him, with the couple establishing the Xavier School for Gifted Children. She, Xavier, and the X-Men fight for the mutant cause for years, but at age 55, Moira is killed by Sentinels. That ultimately means Destiny's vision was right as she warned Moira that humans would always try to exterminate mutants.

Life 5 Now choosing aggression as a response to the violent tendencies of humanity, Moira runs away from home at 13, to encounter Xavier a full decade earlier than when they're supposed to meet. Not wasting any time, Moira opens her mind to Xavier so he can see how his dream fails in her past lives. The mind-reading radicalizes him, forcing the duo to form the mutant nation of Faraway instead of a school. It seemed mutants were finally safe from humanity. Yet, Boliver Trask's adaptive-learning Sentinels still make their way there, and Moira is initially injured in an attack when she was 43 and dies a year later during a genocide.

Life 6 In her sixth life Moira discovers the true threat to mutants are neither the Sentinels or humanity but, ironically, time itself. It turns out that while mutants are the natural evolutionary response to humans, they will not be the next evolutionary step for humanity and they never will be, because humanity will render evolution obsolete by using technology to adapt the environment to humanity rather than humanity adapting to its environment. Humans will then use technology to extend their lifespans until they reach an evolutionary stagnation; at that point they will merge with their technology and become a genetically engineered new species. These new Post-Humans (Homo novissima) are blue-hued human-machine hybrids that will depose both Homo sapiens and Homo superior as the dominant species on Earth. 1000 years in the future, the last surviving mutants are kept captive in preserve areas as a diversionary tactic to keep them from interfering with the process of breeding something far beyond human or mutant. Moira and Wolverine are among them because they were able to survive on each other's blood. One of the Post-Humans, the Librarian, comes to them and reveal how they'll achieve godhood: The Post-Human techno-organic nature allows humanity to be more readily physically-absorbed by the Phalanx in a process known as Ascension that will allow them to join the hive mind of the Dominion system to artificially force their evolution into higher beings once again, gaining control over time and space in the process. Aware about Moira's powers, the Librarian intends to send Moira and Wolverine to another planet to prevent Moira from dying and using her knowledge against Homo novissima in her resurrection. However, Wolverine manages to kill him and, with Moira's consent, her too.

Life 7 With the knowledge that the Trask family is responsible for creating the Sentinels and learning how that technology will be used to overtake mutantkind, Moira spends her seventh life eradicating the Trask bloodline. Bolivar, Donald, Gwyneth, and Simon Trask are systematically murdered over the span of a decade, with Moira even taking out their children for good measure. But when she thought she had successfully eliminated the potential for Sentinel creation, Moira lost all hope when she sadly discovered Sentinels were still being built. She finally understood that mutantkind’s fall is the "Inevitable Truth:" Artificial Intelligence will always seek to eradicate mutants and its creation cannot be stopped because AI is self-emergent -- discovered, not created, by humanity. This realization radicalized her as Sentinels killed her again.

Life 8 Abandoning Xavier's peaceful dream to foster a safe future for mutants Moira seeks out Magneto instead. Presenting Magneto with tales of her past lives and his future failures, Moira convinced him to join her. Together they conquered America, establishing the House of M and initiated the War of M. However, during the war, Moira witnesses Magneto being defeated and killed by the combined might of Earth's humans and mutants -- heroes like the Fantastic Four, Avengers, and X-Men. Moira is imprisoned and later killed in a failed prison escape.

Life 9 Though eventually a failure, the life-defining decision Moira made to turn to Magneto did validate her radical approach to beat humanity through force -- Magneto was simply not enough. To that end, in her ninth life, Moira woke Apocalypse from his slumber early. Forming a powerful union they destroy their two strongest opponents, Xavier and Magneto, rescue the first Horsemen, and launch the Apocalypse War, slaughtering almost all of Earth's heroes before eventually forming their own X-Men. The war provokes a reaction from humanity in the form of the Man-Machine Supremacy, an alliance between humans and machines which culminates in Nimrod coming online for the first time. One hundred years later the war still rages on while most mutants have been driven out of the solar system. Apocalypse's forces split into two teams; as one group attacks the Temple of Concordance the other group heads into Nimrod's vast archives to extract vital information about its origins. Once the info is gathered, Apocalypse sends Wolverine away and stays behind to fight Nimrod and guarantee Wolverine's escape. Wolverine's destination is revealed to be a container that has held Moira MacTaggert in stasis for over 16 years. With the data embedded into Moira through a techno-organic interface designed by Apocalypse himself, she now knows how and when Nimrod was first brought online. Logan kills her so that she may take that information into her next life.

Life 10 Moira's 10th life occurs in the current iteration of the Marvel Universe. Its revealed that when she first meets Xavier in her 10th life, she allows him to read her mind to learn everything her lives had entailed. Since then, she's been using the information from her previous lives to work with Xavier and Magneto to save mutants from humans and machines. As the years passed, it is revealed through her journals that Moira deliberately used her genetic expertise to find mates for herself and Professor X that, in combination with their own mutant genes, would potentially spawn mutants with reality-warping powers (Proteus and Legion), because she knew someone with that power would be needed in the future to enable the mutant resurrection protocol. She notes how her influence indirectly imprinted the idea for a mutant stronghold in Magneto's mind after Xavier used his powers to show Magneto the lives of Moira. This is why he created so many of his own, from Asteroid M to Avalon and Genosha. She also noted her worries for Charles Xavier, as while he kept being unacceptably hopeful and idealistic, he was becoming too dependent on her interpretation of past-life events, and she fears that she might have fractured Xavier's psyche by allowing him to read her mind, which eventually leads to the creation of Onslaught when Charles uses his telepathic powers to shut down Erik's mind completely. She reveals that she reluctantly allowed Xavier to read her mind over and over again, and laments, given her knowledge of Sinister's treachery in her previous lives, that without her knowledge or consent, Xavier and Magneto tried to recruit him nevertheless, realizing in the process that Sinister has turned himself into a chimera mutant decades ahead of schedule compared to the other timelines, that chimera being the mutant clone of himself infused with Thunderbird's DNA. Eventually, Moira had realized she had spent too much time in the spotlight working overtly with Xavier and needed to return to the shadows; in order to do so, she and Xavier used the advanced technology from the Shi'ar to do some preliminary testing for their theory that a mutant could be restored from back-up, creating in the process a Shi'ar golem, a living husk whose empty body was then imprinted with Moira's mental scan, recorded and re-uploaded by Charles Xavier but apparently without all the knowledge lying inside of her.^[28] Moira then replaced herself with the decoy at some point, allowing her to continue working from the shadows with Xavier. The decoy would be killed at the age of 49, during the attack of the Brotherhood. Moira also notes that though Xavier kept fighting her influence, using the Cerebro unit on two different occasions to remove from his mind the knowledge of their plan, he apparently had become a man with a very different purpose following his demise at Cyclops' hands and his eventual return to the living. Instead of his peaceful dream of coexistence between man and mutant which he believed at one point, Xavier now envisions a world where a mutant nation must be created as a seat from which mutants will rise as the dominant species on the planet. Moira has since taken residence in "No-Place", a blackout zone within the newly sovereign, living island nation of Krakoa with Xavier and Magneto, the only people aware of her being alive and her actual role in this grand plan. She has become apparently very paranoid in her isolation, as she is deeply afraid of the notion of Destiny being revived to placate Mystique, or of any precognitive mutant in general because she fears what would happen if the other mutants discovered that they really are doomed.^[29]

Powers and abilities[]

For decades, Dr. Moira MacTaggert was depicted as a baseline human with the normal human strength of a woman of her age, height, and build who engages in moderate regular exercise. However, in the 2019 storyline, "House of X", Moira was revealed to actually be a mutant with the ability to reincarnate herself upon death, reverting to the moment of her initial conception with all the memories she experienced in her previous lifetimes from as early as in utero.^[30] This allows her to manipulate the course of history by changing her own actions and thereby affecting people and circumstances that result from her presence. Her lifetimes have armed her with significant experience, including expertise in the fields of anthropology and genetics, firearms mastery, and leading various mutant survival movements until their eventual downfall.^[30]

According to Destiny, Moira's reincarnation cycle is finite. When she encountered Destiny during her third life, she was informed that she had "10, maybe 11" lives in total, noting that if Moira were to die before her mutant power manifested at the age of 13, the reincarnation cycle would end.^[30]

Her x-gene is also undetectable during her life, providing the ultimate camouflage to mutant sensors and detectors which will see her as a baseline human. Telepathic intrusions on her mind will only see the memories of her current lifetime, however, telepaths can see all her lives' memories as long as she allows it.^[30]

Other versions[]

Age of Apocalypse[]

In the 1995-1996 "Age of Apocalypse" storyline, Moira is married to Bolivar Trask and head of the London-based Human High Council. As resistance to Apocalypse's reign, Moira and her husband designed the Sentinels and armed the human resistance with an impressive weapons array. Their main focus was a plan to destroy Apocalypse's forces in their North American positions, even though this would mean the deaths of many innocent civilians that had not yet escaped the country. The tyrant however, backfires by activating his Sea Walls, slaughtering the Council and those within the Sea Walls’ reach.

Age of X[]

In the Age of X reality, Moira is the step-mother of Legion (stating that his father had been killed in a bombing in Israel) and therefore one of the few humans allowed to live on Fortress X. She also posed as the AI X, so she could use communication worms and sensors to communicate with and monitor the residents of Fortress X. It was later discovered that she was actually one of the multiple personalities of Legion, created as a "Psychic Anti-body" in order to protect Legion from Doctor Nemesis' actions on David's mind, as he and the X-Club were processing the deletion of the personas in order to stabilize David's psyche. Her power is so immense that when she was discovered by Xavier, she was able to defeat him and established the Age of X reality, where mutants were besieged into the Fortress X, everyday attacked by the waves of soldiers of the Human Coalition and used the personalities inside David's mind along with the mutants of Utopia to fill this new world where David would be happy and seen as a hero, as part of the Force Warriors, the protectors of the Fortress, who erected force walls around the citadel every day. Even memories were rewritten, and a background was created. The telepaths and a few others mutants who were able to retain knowledge about the true universe were kept in the X-Brig, considered as mutants too dangerous for the community, but their imprisonment was because they might use their powers to reveal the truth. When her victims slowly understood that this reality wasn't their one, she manipulated both Danielle Moonstar and her Moonstar Cadre in order to make them to stop any further discovery. Eventually her depiction was revealed and Legion absorb her. Later she offers to make a better world for David, but he declines her offer. During the Lost Legion story Moira's powers were the main target of another personality of Legion and at the end she was seen inside David's mind cursing Xavier.

Cross-Time Caper[]

Reichminister of Genetics Moira MacTaggert, who hails from a reality in which Earth is dominated by Nazis,^[31] is featured in Excalibur #10 and 11 when she is brought into Earth-616 by the actions of a confused Widget. Making the trip with her is her personal bodyguard, a Nazi Callisto and Moira's personal train, powered by an alternate Lockheed. It was also hinted that this Moira was behind the Super Team Lightning Force (a Nazi version of Excalibur). Moira's violent actions ultimately result in Excalibur team being sent on a long and arduous cross-dimensional trip.

House of M[]

In the House of M reality, Moira MacTaggert was declared a criminal for attempting to cure her son Kevin of the mutant gene and his psychosis. King Magneto's mutant supremacy saw this as an act against mutantkind, and Sentinels were dispatched to destroy Muir Island and capture Moira. Though Moira escaped, Kevin was also freed, sending him on a gruesome killing spree that was attributed to Moira as failed experiments, as she chases him across the globe. When the reality-hopping Exiles caught Proteus's attention, Moira emerged from hiding to warn them about her son, who was intrigued by their presence and desired to ruin the realities they attempted to fix. When he attacks the team, Moira shot him, exposing him to the metal that was his deadly allergy and only weakness, forcing him to find a new body. Unsurprisingly, he chose to possess his mother, and rather than allow her son to possess her and use her against them, Moira commits suicide.^[32]

New Exiles[]

On the world of the Sons of Iron and Daughters of the Dragon, the New Exiles face a squad of alternate 'core X-Men' who are loyal to Lilandra. These X-Men include an alternate version of Moira MacTaggert who is not married on this world or is going by her maiden name, Kinross. Moira's codename is Hypernova and her powers are energy blasts. It is not known whether she is a mutant on this world or has gained powers through another method.^[33]

Ultimate Marvel[]

In the Ultimate Marvel continuity, Moira MacTaggert is the ex-wife of Charles Xavier, and their son David MacTaggert is Proteus. This version of Moira needs two crutches in order to move around. Moira runs a school/hospital for sick mutants, and assists in the Xavier Institute from behind the scenes. She does this even though Charles left her to join Magneto's dream of a mutant society, abandoning her to raise their mentally ill child on her own. When Proteus escapes and begins body hopping, Moira calls in the X-Men for assistance. After murdering hundreds, Proteus is seemingly crushed to death under a car.^[34]

Later, the X-Men learn that Moira has been funding her hospital by producing and selling "Banshee", a lethal and addictive Mutant Growth Hormone^[35] which amplifies mutant powers, made from the genetic material of Wolverine. When Wolverine attempts to destroy her Banshee supply, Moira attacks him with the previously unknown mutant ability to emit a deafening sonic cry. Wolverine quickly defeats Moira and leaves her to die in the exploding hospital, but she is later shown to have somehow survived when Quicksilver finds her emerging from the smoldering ruins. Her ensuing conversation with him implies that she is now in league with Quicksilver.

In other media[]

Television[]

• Moira appears in episodes of X-Men, voiced by Lally Cadeau.^[4] She first appeared in the episode "The Cure", where supposedly knew a doctor with a cure for mutants. The next episodes were "The Phoenix Saga", where she was worried about Professor Xavier's control over his mind. In the "Dark Phoenix Saga" she was working to help Jean Grey be freed from the Phoenix. Then, the next appearance was in "Proteus", in which she revealed to Xavier that Proteus was her son. Here she seems to fill the function of Gabrielle Haller, an old lover of Charles and mother of his son, the powerful but disturbed psychic boy David. Her next appearance was "The Phalanx Covenant, Part 2", when she was infected by Phalanx. Her last appearance was in "Graduation Day", when she and Beast debated on how to contact Lilandra Neramani to help Professor X.
• In Marvel Anime: X-Men, the character Yui Sasaki (voiced by Yoshiko Sakakibara in the Japanese version and by Gwendoline Yeo in the English) is introduced as that version's Moira, as she slightly bears resemblance to her. Like Moira, Yui is a geneticist and has a relationship with Professor X when she still owns the Sasaki Institute in Japan. But unknown to Charles, she is the mother his son with her name Takeo Sasaki. Under the misguided idea of trying to help suppress mutant powers, she entered a partnership with the U-men; they would harvest mutants DNA for a cure for mutancy. In exchange, she gave them a mutant detection device uninhibited by her own Cerebro-jammer. Yui's plans start falling apart, when her serum starts accelerating mutations instead of suppressing them. This leads both the X-Men and the Inner Circle to Japan. Unknown to her, Mastermind was posing as her lab assistant, and was working on trying to brainwash Takeo. Thanks to Armor and Professor X's help, they let Takeo pass away in peace.

Films[]

• Moira is played by Olivia Williams in brief appearances in the feature film X-Men: The Last Stand.^[36] She appears on a video talking about the ethics of using mutant powers, such as transferring the mind of a dying man into the body of a patient with no higher brain function. She is later seen seated next to Beast at the memorial service for Xavier. After the film's ending credits, she appears again attending to the brain-dead patient, who suddenly speaks to her in Xavier's voice.
• Rose Byrne portrays a young Moira in X-Men: First Class.^[36][37] She is a CIA agent working to uncover the mysterious Hellfire Club. This version is depicted as an American instead of being Scottish. During her investigation at Las Vegas, Nevada, she manages to stumble across one of the Club's meetings by stripping down to her underwear to blend in with the strippers in which she discovers the club members are mutants as they intimidate a military officer. After the incident, she seeks help from recently graduated professor Charles Xavier, due to his affinity for research in the subject of genetic mutation. Moira eventually learns that Charles and his foster sister Raven are mutants themselves with Xavier demonstrating his mind-reading while Raven reveals her shape-shifting. She later becomes the liaison to the team and assists the newly formed X-Men in preventing the Club's head Sebastian Shaw from starting a nuclear holocaust between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis. At the climax, she is indirectly responsible for Xavier's paralysis as she fires the bullet which Magneto accidentally deflects into Xavier's spine. In his rage, Magneto almost kills Moira by strangling her with her dog tags until Xavier makes him realize he caused his friend's injury. At the film's end, Xavier erases her memory of the events with Shaw and Magneto while kissing her. This was in order to keep the school for mutants that he has opened during the crisis a secret.
• Byrne reprises her role in the film X-Men: Apocalypse.^[37] Still having a large interest in mutant activity, she investigates a cult in Egypt that was formed upon the existence of mutants being revealed to the public, and ends up inadvertently and unknowingly causing Apocalypse to awaken from his sleep. Charles decides to visit her and take her to the X-Mansion to find out more information and because he misses her. It is here where she tells Charles she has a son, although she is divorced from the boy's father. While at the X-Mansion, the team are attacked by Apocalypse and his new Horsemen, and Moira becomes drawn into the conflict, acting as the pilot to the team's aircraft when they go to confront Apocalypse. At the end of the story, Charles restores Moira's memories back to her and restarts his relationship with her. In a deleted scene, MacTaggert arrests General Stryker and his men for their earlier attack on her and the other Mutants. He protests against his arrest by claiming the mutants are a danger, but she refuses to believe him. She knows that is not true and that not all mutants are a danger to humanity.

Video games[]

• Moira MacTaggert appears in X-Men Legends, voiced by Michelle Arthur.^[38] She is shown on Muir Island when the X-Men are fighting Juggernaut to keep him from getting to Forge.
• Moira MacTaggert appears in X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, voiced by Jane Carr.^[38]
• Moira MacTaggert is mentioned in the game Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. She is referenced to be keeping the Ultimate Nullifier on Muir Island for safekeeping.
• Moira MacTaggert appears in Marvel Heroes, voiced by Tara Strong.^[38]

Novels and adaptations[]

• An alternate final scene with Moira is featured in the novelized version of the X-Men: The Last Stand movie, where she appears to Magneto in the park as he plays chess (presumably offering to reverse the "cure").
• Earth-616 Moira is featured in The Legacy Quest Trilogy, a series of novels written by Steve Lyons. She is guilted into working under Sebastian Shaw, alongside her former assist Rory Campbell. Their purpose is to finally cure the Legacy Virus once and for all.
• Moira is a prominent character in X-Men: Search and Rescue, by Greg Cox. Muir Isle is attacked for its scientific resources.^[39]

References[]

External links[]

• Marvel.com Biography of Moira MacTaggert