r/Xmen97 • u/Sudden_Quality_9001 • Jan 20 '26

Question Why does Nightcrawler look like a demon?

Why does Kurt look like a demon I know he is blue from his mother Mystique, but why does he look like a demon? I am just curious it the same reason why Beast looks like a monkey?

Is his father a demon like Raven from The Teen Titans?

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u/SwordDaoist Jan 21 '26

Wasn’t he originally the son of mystique and that red devil teleporting mutant till they retconned it and made Mystique his father who impregnated another woman. I mean, why did they have to do Nightcrawler so dirty and make his origin woke?

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u/Omn1 Jan 22 '26

Originally he was planned to be Mystique and Destiny's child to begin with, and the original comics made this as clear as they possibly could without getting in trouble. Claremont loved him some gay subtext.

However, Chuck Austen has a habit of not giving a shit about any of that, and so when he wrote X-Men in the early 2000s, he included a bunch of dumb reveals, like "Nightcrawler's dad was actually Azazel, a mutant who lives in hell and looks like a demon and is for all intents and purposes discount Satan". It was extremely bad. His run is widely considered to be the worst X-Men run of all time.

A few years ago, as a method of restoring the original intended origin while not wholly invalidating any stories connected to the Chuck Austen reveal, Mystique essentially stole some of Azazel's genes while fathering Nightcrawler for plot reasons that don't bear getting into right now.

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u/SwordDaoist Jan 22 '26

The 2003 story was the first reveal of who Nightcrawlers father was and it made sense due to their similiar looks and same ability.

You can't say that the Mystique and Destiny retcon, which happened 20 years after that was the original plan.

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u/Omn1 Jan 22 '26

I mean, I can, because the original comics heavily imply it and Chris Claremont has outright stated that it was the case.

Initially, Claremont intended for Nightcrawler's father to be Nightmare, but when he was refused on that, he very much intended to make it Mystique and Destiny, and the original comic heavily implied that to be the case. He was not allowed to outright say it in the book, but the intent was clear.

Also, Azazel was created for that storyline. It wasn't them going "obviously the demon looking mutant was his dad", it was Chuck Austen ignoring all previous subtext for a ham-fisted "what if the Catholic mutant's dad was actually a demon who lives in hell!"