WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Marauders #20 by Gerry Duggan, Stefano Caselli, Edgar Delgado, Chris Sotomayor, Tom Muller, and VC’s Cory Petit, on sale now.
The Hellfire Gala is just around the corner, and the event is quickly shaping up to be one of the most important nights in the lives of Marvel’s mutants. And even though the X-Men can bring back almost any mutant that ever died, some mutants passed long before their minds could be scanned and saved by Cerebro to be reincarnated by the Five.
As Marauders #20 reveals, one of these unfortunate souls is Lourdes Chantel, the long lost love of Sebastian Shaw. When the Black King laments going to a Hellfire Gala without his late love, Shaw suggests that there may be a way to do the unthinkable and bring dead mutants back without the need for Cerebro.
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As the Marauders sailed back to Krakoa to prepare for the Hellfire Gala, Emma Frost found Sebastian Shaw looking out over the water. He reminisces over his childhood fascination with pirate stories, and those dreams of high-flying adventures have come to fruition as the trading magnate that he has created should bring him peace. Unfortunately, Sebastian Shaw finds happiness a difficult thing to grasp onto without the love of his life there by his side. While so many of their mutant brothers and sisters have been reborn thanks to the Five, Lourdes Chantel never even got the chance because of the circumstances of her death.
First appearing in “Out with the Old” from the pages of 1987’s Classic X-Men #7 by Chris Claremont and John Bolton, Lourdes Chantel was the teleporting lover of the man who would become the Black King of the Hellfire Club. A capable teleporter in her own right, Lourdes’ attraction to Shaw was strained by his dedication to the Hellfire Club, something she worried would corrupt him as it had so many other of its members.
Her concerns fell short of anything Shaw wanted to hear, though, and it wasn’t until they were attacked by the Sentinels that the Hellfire Club’s leader, Ned Buckman, had financed that Shaw took Lourdes’ warnings seriously. During the assault, Lourdes threw herself into the fray to save Sebastian Shaw’s life, and in doing so lost her own. This fueled a burning rage deep inside of Shaw, and his ambition turned to bloodshed when he murdered Buckman and took control of the Hellfire Club for himself.
As deep as the impact of Lourdes’ death has been, there is no hope for her to be resurrected like most other mutants since she died long before Cerebro was capable of scanning and copying the brainwaves of other mutants. If it weren’t for this, returning Lourdes to her lover’s arms would be nothing more than a matter of time. It seems, however, that Sebastian Shaw has something up his sleeve that the rest of his crewmates do not, and he asks for Emma Frost’s vote of confidence with both of his upcoming proposals at the Gala ahead.
It’s unclear how Shaw intends to bring Lourdes back to life, or even if that is truly what he has planned for her return. While it wouldn’t be beyond Sebastian Shaw to make a demonic deal for Lourdes’ life, he is far too cunning to stoop so low, and that arrangement wouldn’t have any potential ramifications for the rest of mutantkind. If Shaw has indeed found a way to bring back mutants that died before Cerebro’s time, he very well may have singlehandedly changed the course of mutant history in the process.
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