The following contains spoilers for Legion of X #3, now on sale from Marvel Comics.
Legion has always been an outsider among the X-Men, partially due to his strained relationship with his father, Professor Xavier. Even now, Xavier continues to keep him at arm’s length despite Legion carving out a niche for himself on the mutant nation of Krakoa working with Nightcrawler and his Krakoan community watch. Xavier fears that his son will succumb to past chaotic tendencies that caused calamities like the Age of Apocalypse.
While Legion might not be welcomed with open arms by his father, he is making connections with others living on the fringes of Krakoa. In addition to reuniting with his resurrected girlfriend Blindfold, Legion has also bonded with another black sheep in the Xavier family. During a conversation with his uncle Cain Marko, the reformed supervillain Juggernaut, Legion shared his outsider’s perspective on the rules his father has laid down for Krakoa.
In Si Spurrier, Jan Bazaldua, Federico Blee, and VC’s Clayton Cowles’ Legion of X #3, Juggernaut is in a dark place. Legion stumbles upon his dejected uncle on the Beach, a mental construct Legion created on the astral plane. The combination of learning that Professor Xavier didn’t want him to join Nightcrawler’s Legionnaires and being possessed by the body-possessing mutant known as Switch has left him feeling weak and possibly broken. The help Professor Xavier offered Juggernaut came with strings; he’d erase his traumatic memory of being possessed in exchange for Juggernaut quitting the team.
After showing Juggernaut the unconventional ways the legion deals with criminals on Krakoa, Legion lays out his perspective on the way Professor Xavier’s management philosophy. Legion sees the Professor inviting Juggernaut to live on Krakoa as a form of control. His status as a rare non-mutant on Krakoa wasn’t the honor Juggernaut saw it as. Instead, it’s a way for the Professor to keep him from running amok in the outside world, which would reflect poorly on him and Krakoa by association.
Xavier’s desire for control extends to Krakoa’s Three Laws. At first glance, the three laws seem elegant in their simplicity, laying down simple rules that put sensible limits on the freedoms of a mutant utopia. It’s hard to argue against laws against murder and for rebuilding mutantkind after they faced extinction. However, from Legion’s perspective, they’re just another way for his father to impose his will on others. Krakoa’s Three Laws being so simple reduces public scrutiny on how they’re enforced and any unintended consequences that arise from them.
The Three Laws allow the Professor and Krakoa’s ruling class to act with impunity when exiling anyone they deem undesirable from Krakoa, while also reserving the right to put them to work when it serves their purposes. It’s a one size fits all approach that is similar to how he offered to help Juggernaut by plucking the traumatic memory from his mind instead of helping him work through it.
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The Professor’s approach stands in stark contrast to the kind of rehabilitative justice the Legionnaires is attempting to serve. After so many years of leading mutants, it’s understandable that he might be set in his ways, but it doesn’t excuse him from not evolving. Xavier’s approach stands in stark contrast to the attempts at rehabilitative justice the Legionnaires are doling out to the island’s problem mutants.
Legion’s involvement with Nightcrawler’s new take on law enforcement is an example of how he differs from his father. In Legion of X’s first issue, Nightcrawler described the Professor’s mind, as brilliant and powerful as it is, as being as one track as Juggernaut’s powers are. If Legion’s part in providing redemption to every mutant is self-serving on some level, it also shows how he’s trying to break the cycle of toxic behavior that defines the way his father has lost his way over the years.