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Marvel's What If...? #4
What If...Kitty Pryde Stole the Phoenix Force?: An X-Men and America Chavez Story
Kitty Pryde, Betsy Braddock, and America Chavez race against time itself to save Jean Grey and the X-Men in this epic Multiversal adventure reimagining Marvel origin stories.
So many worlds, so little time. Infinite possibilities, creating infinite realities. Long have I watched generations of mutants live in a world shaped by Jean Grey’s legacy. But what if… that legacy was cut tragically short, dooming the world to a future without the X-Men?
What if… a watcher must do more than watch?
The year is 1990: The X-Men all perished more than a decade ago, and Kitty Pryde is no hero. Emma Frost rescued Kitty from an obscure existence as a mere rebellious teen kicked out of boarding school, terrified of ever being discovered as a mutant. After growing up under the tutelage of the White Queen, Kitty is an apex predator of a superior species, yet she lives alone in a tiny, rundown apartment, preferring isolation to a knife in the back. What is her alternative? The world is what it is.
But sometimes Kitty isn’t so sure of that. Sometimes it feels like she phases right out of her own life. Breathe She’s suddenly surrounded by friends she’s never known, living out events that never happened. Breathe It’s all back to normal. Kitty always shoves these flashes down, until someone from that other life finds her. This familiar stranger, Betsy Braddock, is a rambling confirmation that something is wrong with their world.
Betsy has a wild theory and if it’s right, Kitty’s only shot at changing the present is to free-fall into the past. The girls follow a tenuous psychic trail back to the glory days of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, where they embed themselves with the X-Men. There they discover the inflection point that will unravel their future revolves around a certain omega-level mutant, destined to become the Phoenix. But little do Kitty and Betsy know, they’re not alone in their search.
The year is 1975: Jean Grey has weeks left to live. The Whisperer is coming. He has recruited an ally and accounted for every foreseeable variable. He will leave nothing to chance. He will lead this reality to its Doom.
So many worlds, so little time. Infinite possibilities, creating infinite realities. Long have I watched generations of mutants live in a world shaped by Jean Grey’s legacy. But what if… that legacy was cut tragically short, dooming the world to a future without the X-Men?
What if… a watcher must do more than watch?
The year is 1990: The X-Men all perished more than a decade ago, and Kitty Pryde is no hero. Emma Frost rescued Kitty from an obscure existence as a mere rebellious teen kicked out of boarding school, terrified of ever being discovered as a mutant. After growing up under the tutelage of the White Queen, Kitty is an apex predator of a superior species, yet she lives alone in a tiny, rundown apartment, preferring isolation to a knife in the back. What is her alternative? The world is what it is.
But sometimes Kitty isn’t so sure of that. Sometimes it feels like she phases right out of her own life. Breathe She’s suddenly surrounded by friends she’s never known, living out events that never happened. Breathe It’s all back to normal. Kitty always shoves these flashes down, until someone from that other life finds her. This familiar stranger, Betsy Braddock, is a rambling confirmation that something is wrong with their world.
Betsy has a wild theory and if it’s right, Kitty’s only shot at changing the present is to free-fall into the past. The girls follow a tenuous psychic trail back to the glory days of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, where they embed themselves with the X-Men. There they discover the inflection point that will unravel their future revolves around a certain omega-level mutant, destined to become the Phoenix. But little do Kitty and Betsy know, they’re not alone in their search.
The year is 1975: Jean Grey has weeks left to live. The Whisperer is coming. He has recruited an ally and accounted for every foreseeable variable. He will leave nothing to chance. He will lead this reality to its Doom.
- GenresMarvelSuperheroesFiction
Kindle Edition
Published October 14, 2025
2515 people want to read
About the author
Rebecca Podos
15 books377 followersRebecca Podos is the Lambda Literary Award-winning author of YA and Adult novels. What If…Kitty Pryde Stole the Phoenix Force? is her latest. Homeward for a Spell, the sequel to her adult fantasy debut Homegrown Magic, co-written with Jamie Pacton, comes out next. By day, Rebecca is a Senior Agent at Neighborhood Literary. She serves as a co-director of the Communications and Fundraising Committee for Literary Agents of Change, and on the Board of Directors for QT Library, a nonprofit, queer and trans lending library based in Boston.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 27, 2025
Okay, so I didn't know this was actually a series and you needed to start with book 1. I thought it was like the What If comics and just random stories. this is NOT accurate.
However as long as you have some basic X-Men/Marvel knowledge you should be fine. Podos is an engaging author and Im now going to go search out her other books.
Kitty Pryde and Jean Grey continue to be the greatest X-Men/Marvel characters ever created.
However as long as you have some basic X-Men/Marvel knowledge you should be fine. Podos is an engaging author and Im now going to go search out her other books.
Kitty Pryde and Jean Grey continue to be the greatest X-Men/Marvel characters ever created.
October 17, 2025
I wanted to like this book. I really, REALLY, did but honestly I found the majority of the book deeply unsatisfying. I will now go into detail why, spoilers be damned.
First, the portions of the book that I personally found the most compelling were literally moments from X-Men comic history that the author basically transcribed from the original comics and slapped into the narrative at ‘pivotal’ moments. Now, I have mad respect for some of the deep cuts that happened here. But for a book that’s supposed to focus on an alternate continuity, I don’t think it’s a great sign that the book’s strongest moments literally come from Marvel’s mainstream.
Second, of our three characters Miss America was the most effectively fleshed out. Which is probably because three other authors have spent three other novels drawing out the nuances of this iteration’s role as a Watcher and her growing frustration with how powerless she is. Meanwhile the titular Kitty Pryde doesn’t stand out very much and doesn’t have a ton of characterization beyond ‘long suffering queer Jewish woman’. She wasn’t the cold hearted ruthless mutant that you’d expect the Hellfire club to produce in a world without the X-Men and her willingness to embrace a different life felt WAY too easy. Finally we have Betsy Braddock, one of my personal favorite comic characters, who in most versions of the character is a badass mutant with an epic backstory, and here is merely reduced to a wreck of a woman seemingly because she never met her ‘one true love’ in the story’s altered timeline. Personally I don’t find that premise anywhere feminist, nor did I find her sudden heel turn at the end into someone vaguely competent to be terribly believable.
Finally, the entire book is more plot than character driven. Dr Doom kills Jean Grey. Kitty Pryde winds up with the phoenix force. We knew this was all going to happen, hell the characters all knew it was going to happen, and their best plan was to just wait around at the mansion and wait for him to show up? They didn’t even bother to call the fantastic four, the avengers, or the rest of the X-Men’s reserve members like Beast? How stupid do you expect us to believe Xavier and the rest of the team are? These are people who at this point in time allegedly clashed with numerous heavy hitters; Magneto, Apocalypse, and god knows who else. And the best they could come up with dealing a dimension hopping Dr. Doom with their heads up their asses?
I came to this book with such high hopes, I loved the Scarlet Witch and Spider-Man what-if, but in the end all I am is disappointed and a tad infuriated.
First, the portions of the book that I personally found the most compelling were literally moments from X-Men comic history that the author basically transcribed from the original comics and slapped into the narrative at ‘pivotal’ moments. Now, I have mad respect for some of the deep cuts that happened here. But for a book that’s supposed to focus on an alternate continuity, I don’t think it’s a great sign that the book’s strongest moments literally come from Marvel’s mainstream.
Second, of our three characters Miss America was the most effectively fleshed out. Which is probably because three other authors have spent three other novels drawing out the nuances of this iteration’s role as a Watcher and her growing frustration with how powerless she is. Meanwhile the titular Kitty Pryde doesn’t stand out very much and doesn’t have a ton of characterization beyond ‘long suffering queer Jewish woman’. She wasn’t the cold hearted ruthless mutant that you’d expect the Hellfire club to produce in a world without the X-Men and her willingness to embrace a different life felt WAY too easy. Finally we have Betsy Braddock, one of my personal favorite comic characters, who in most versions of the character is a badass mutant with an epic backstory, and here is merely reduced to a wreck of a woman seemingly because she never met her ‘one true love’ in the story’s altered timeline. Personally I don’t find that premise anywhere feminist, nor did I find her sudden heel turn at the end into someone vaguely competent to be terribly believable.
Finally, the entire book is more plot than character driven. Dr Doom kills Jean Grey. Kitty Pryde winds up with the phoenix force. We knew this was all going to happen, hell the characters all knew it was going to happen, and their best plan was to just wait around at the mansion and wait for him to show up? They didn’t even bother to call the fantastic four, the avengers, or the rest of the X-Men’s reserve members like Beast? How stupid do you expect us to believe Xavier and the rest of the team are? These are people who at this point in time allegedly clashed with numerous heavy hitters; Magneto, Apocalypse, and god knows who else. And the best they could come up with dealing a dimension hopping Dr. Doom with their heads up their asses?
I came to this book with such high hopes, I loved the Scarlet Witch and Spider-Man what-if, but in the end all I am is disappointed and a tad infuriated.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 15, 2025
I have been very excited about this book since its announcement. A prose novel featuring a time-travel team-up between three of my favourite Marvel heroes - hell, three of my favourite fictional characters overall - going through one of my favourite eras of comics? I knew I needed to read this.
It was genuinely everything I wanted and more.
The basic premise here is simple: In another world, Kitty Pryde is the depressed, cynical White Knight of the Hellfire Club, working under Emma Frost as the White Queen. Occasionally, she phases out of that world and into another one that more closely resembles Earth-616, full of friendship and love with the X-Men. When Betsy Braddock turns up with a theory about their world being broken and a plan to fix it, Kitty gets pulled into a time-travel adventure about found family, cosmic love, and preventing utter Doom.
Podos makes brilliant use of Marvel continuity to tell an original story, picking and choosing what aspects of canon to highlight and what to discard wonderfully - the complete omission of Betsy's body-swap era is especially appreciated. The references range from the expected to the obscure, with some of the continuity pulls blowing my mind - It even capitalized on things that I think the comics themselves have struggled to do, especially in its use of
The book had a good balance of metaphorical and non-metaphorical content in its discussion of marginalization, with Kitty talking about her experiences both as a queer Jewish woman and as a mutant. America's overlapping identities was also given nice focus and there was even a moment that highlighted Doom's underdiscussed Romani heritage, which was nice to see.
This book probably isn't for everyone, but for me? This is immediately one of my favourite Marvel stories of the 2020s. I read it in one sitting and spent so much of it crying in all the right ways. I'm honestly just so happy this book exists - especially in this political climate.
It was genuinely everything I wanted and more.
The basic premise here is simple: In another world, Kitty Pryde is the depressed, cynical White Knight of the Hellfire Club, working under Emma Frost as the White Queen. Occasionally, she phases out of that world and into another one that more closely resembles Earth-616, full of friendship and love with the X-Men. When Betsy Braddock turns up with a theory about their world being broken and a plan to fix it, Kitty gets pulled into a time-travel adventure about found family, cosmic love, and preventing utter Doom.
Podos makes brilliant use of Marvel continuity to tell an original story, picking and choosing what aspects of canon to highlight and what to discard wonderfully - the complete omission of Betsy's body-swap era is especially appreciated. The references range from the expected to the obscure, with some of the continuity pulls blowing my mind - It even capitalized on things that I think the comics themselves have struggled to do, especially in its use of
The book had a good balance of metaphorical and non-metaphorical content in its discussion of marginalization, with Kitty talking about her experiences both as a queer Jewish woman and as a mutant. America's overlapping identities was also given nice focus and there was even a moment that highlighted Doom's underdiscussed Romani heritage, which was nice to see.
This book probably isn't for everyone, but for me? This is immediately one of my favourite Marvel stories of the 2020s. I read it in one sitting and spent so much of it crying in all the right ways. I'm honestly just so happy this book exists - especially in this political climate.
October 28, 2025
This actually turned out better than I anticipated. The title is a bit misleading, but the story really makes up for it. Though the main focus is on Kitty Pryde, Betsy Braddock/Psylocke and America Chavez, both have plenty of supporting storylines in this compelling mystery, interwoven with splintering timelines and jumbled memories. Like the Marvel Animation tv show of the same name, this book is the latest "episode" in the series. While standalone, this one leans into the larger interconnection than the previous ones, no doubt leading to a gathering of previously introduced characters coming together in a climatic battle against Doom in whatever the final book will be. I also particularly enjoyed how they portrayed Doom and perhaps an indication of the direction the MCU will go in the upcoming Avengers movies.
October 18, 2025
And because, of all the infinite Betsy Braddocks in the Multiverse, there is only one Rachel Summers. How impossibly wondrous is it that she is the Betsy who gets to love her?
God damn I love how this book treats Rachel and Betsy’s relationship. I’d love to read a proper full length R/B romance action book by the author.
God damn I love how this book treats Rachel and Betsy’s relationship. I’d love to read a proper full length R/B romance action book by the author.
October 19, 2025
Love this series! Can’t wait for the next one.
November 8, 2025
I don't want to give this 2 stars, but its maybe barely a 3. All of the different timelines and POVs were too messy for my taste, especially in the beginning, but once you settle into the primary storyline in 1975, it does get much, much better. I loved all the character appearances and I'm now a fan of Kitty Pryde and Betsy Braddock, so I have to be grateful to the book for that. It's also got some fun action sequences, too. Overall, it's an averagely decent read.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews