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The Potential of Luna Maximoff

Before we start... I’m going to focus mainly on Luna’s modern appearances (Son of M-current) since I haven’t read all of her comic appearances, and she was either a baby or a plot device with no personality (other than needing to be rescued) in those past comics. 

A lot of this is also speculation about her character (obviously) and how I see her, so there will be a lot of unanswered questions that I pose about her.

Luna Maximoff has the potential to be such an interesting character and comic book authors are missing out by not using and developing her. 

First, her powers. She’s an empath. Empathy is a power that we really don’t see a lot in comics since telepathy is favoured over it the majority of the time. (It’s a nice alternative with so many telepaths.) But empathy is a really good power because of the (obvious) emotional depth it has. A character with empathy can be someone who is very emotionally intelligent. 

It’s already been touched on in both Son of M and All-New X-Factor, but Luna has been shown to not quite understand why she shouldn’t just heal people of their emotional trauma. 

This would be such an interesting arc for her. Just to watch her come to terms with the fact that people have to go through pain to grow and that she also has to go through pain to grow. 

As an empath, it would also be extremely interesting to see how Luna herself deals with emotions. Does she embrace them? Can she force herself to feel happy with her powers? Does she get overwhelmed by the emotions of others around her? How does she deal with knowing everyone’s emotions? Does she try to help them? Does she leave them alone? There are just so many questions here that I just want people to explore.

Luna has also been shown to be very understanding of other people (mostly due to her empathy), and I love this as a trait in characters. She loves people and wants to help them. But this could also lead to her giving away her energy to people trying to help them and burning out because she doesn’t have anyone to support her.

And that leads into my next point. I think Luna is a lonely character. Does she even have any friends on Attilan? The only times we’ve seen Luna with other kids around her age is when she was with the Future Foundation, X-Factor and when she was on Hala with Crystal. But  none of these friends turn out to be long term for her.

She did go to the Braddock Academy for a while too, but we never saw this, and it didn’t last long. That’s the thing with all of the friendships Luna has had, they never seem to be lasting. By all rights, she should be close friends with Franklin and Valeria Richards, but they’re almost never seen together. I think it’s been a missed opportunity there. 

The only person who Luna could potentially be friends with on Attilan (other than Lockjaw) is her cousin, Ahura Boltagon. He’s the closest family member in age to her. Ahura is also an interesting character, who I think should be used more, but I think he and Luna compliment each other well. They both are empaths to a certain degree and both have grown up in the Inhuman royal court. Luna cured him of insanity when he was a child, and I think they could have a really close bond. Ahura is also kind of angsty and dark, while Luna tends to be more happy and optimistic. 

Speaking of Luna’s interactions with her family, let's talk about the other side of the family. Luna has somehow never met Billy and Tommy and I think this is a travesty. We already know that Erik loves Luna a lot and Lorna and her get along great. We haven’t seen her with Wanda recently enough to know how she feels about her though. I just wish we could get a comic with all of them in it. But also regarding the Magnet family, I feel like Luna is the only one in the family who is good with emotions. It would probably hurt her to see all of them fight as much as they do. She loves them all so much and doesn’t want to see any of them hurt. 

And on the topic of loving her family. I really think Luna should be allowed to spend more time with her dad. 

Pietro loves her so much (despite his past errors) and he loves her the same. I think now that Pietro has been trying to be a better person, she should be able to see him more. This would also be interesting because you could explore what it’s like for her to be the child of divorced parents. Who does she like living with more? How did she feel about her mom marrying Ronan that one time? How does she feel about her dad dating other women? Does she want her parents to get back together? There’s just so much under the surface.

And about the Inhuman side of her family. It would be so interesting to see how Luna’s relationship changes with them as she grows up. Would she come to realize that a lot of the ways that the Inhumans do things are wrong? Would she start to fight back against Crystal about these kind of things? Would she start to want to leave her home for good, or would she want to stay so she can try and change it for the better? Does she start to rebel against them in small ways, by bringing things from earth to Attilan like books with more modern ideas and music?

Luna’s relationship with Crystal has the potential for a big fallout between the two of them. Crystal hasn’t always been the greatest mother, especially recently.

Luna has been shown to love her mother a lot and to want to be with her desperately, but I think that in some ways this is just Luna’s want to be comfortable. Luna was kidnapped a bunch as a child (which she probably has trauma from), so she probably feels the safest with her mother, something that is completely understandable. But as she grows up, things will change. Luna might start wanting to leave home more and to make more friends, but Crystal is quite protective of Luna, and might not let her. And if Luna’s outlook on the Inhuman way of life changes, there could be a lot of differences that might push them apart.

Another thing I want to touch on is how despite all the hardships she’s gone through, Luna is still a sweet and kind character. She’s been through so much, and she feels so much beyond just her own feelings. It’s amazing that she hasn’t broken down or that she isn’t pessimistic. She’s just kind and wants to help people as best she can. She’s still learning how to help these people, but she has good intentions. It’s really just a nice breath of fresh air to see a character that has gone through so much, but is still able to smile and love the way that Luna seems to love. 

Luna is the kind of character who would hardly get angry, so that when she does get angry, you feel it. She knows the power that emotions hold. She could literally radiate anger. But I don’t see her as one to hold grudges. She knows what that can do to a person.

Luna knows how actions make people feel. She doesn’t want other people to ever feel the ways she’s had to feel. I think this is evident in the kinds of friends she has made. Both Georgia (All-New X-Factor) and Adolf (Future Foundation) were both lonely people. Georgia was mourning and new to the team, and Adolf was still finding his place among the Future Foundation. Luna reaches out to the lonely people and the outsiders because she herself has felt lonely and been an outsider. 

And speaking of Luna feeling like an outsider… We have to remember that Luna grew up as a human in an Inhuman world. There’s this really great post by @writingcaterpillar that talks about how Luna didn’t know she was human, and how in Son of M she points out that some of her friends hate humans. So from this we can infer that those who did know that Luna was human would not have liked her very much. And even after she gained her powers, I doubt this would change things very much. 

Another post by @imperiuswrecked goes deeper into this and talks about how the Inhuman genetic council might have actually denied Luna terrigenesis more based on her being a “half-breed” of a mutant and an Inhuman than based on it being a risk to her. (Another thing is that the genetic council sucks in general. They don’t have a good record of treating people well, just look at Ahura.) I feel like there is a lot you could uncover about Luna and how her family treats her. She’s not a pure blooded Inhuman. Do they discriminate against her? Do they deny her things and rights since she is not a “true Inhuman”? 

And Luna has only just started to defend herself. @imperiuswrecked​ has another post that talks about how in Son of M Luna defends herself physically for the first time. And in All-New Inhumans, Luna starts to argue a little bit with her mother. She’s learning to stand up for herself, but slowly. In All-New X-Factor, she even goes to see Pietro without Crystal’s permission, doing something that she wants, not that her mother wants.

That was longer than I expected, (no it wasn’t, who am I kidding) but I just really love Luna. I wish Marvel would look into her more. I feel like she hasn’t been explored nearly enough. She is a character who is kind and feminine. She is very in touch with her emotions, but lonely. She is compassionate towards others and still learning to fight for herself and for how she feels. 

I just have so many ideas about Luna and where she could go and how she could grow as a character, but clearly Marvel isn’t as interested in her as I am, so I guess I’ll have to write some fanfiction. :D

Okay, but like, I love Bentley….and the fact that throughout this whole issue he was never asked about what he thought about who should be his guardian...it just makes me mad. Bentley definitely has an opinion, and I’ll be surprised if any bit of him wants to go with the Wizard (someone who literally abused him as a child). Why have they not asked Bentley? This is so maddening! This whole thing is about him and we hardly got to hear anything from him or see anything from his perspective! Anyway I just hope we get to see more of him in the next issue...but I’m not holding out for anything.

Fantastic Four (2018) #38

To all the parents out there who bundle their babies up in the winter time with those little hats with the little ears that make them look like little teddy bears: You are doing the lord’s work. Seeing tiny ewoks toddle across the grocery store parking lot is just what we all need sometimes. My joy is immeasurable and my day is restored.

That is such a parent/little kid thing

Ooo, I like this! Having her use her dad's colours would be a nice touch! (though is she going the blue costume Quicksilver route or the green costume Quicksilver route?)

And either way she goes, Avenger or Scarlet Title Holder, I would just be happy if they used her at all *agony*

every day I wake up and I want to design Luna Maximoff a superhero costume but every day I wake up and I CAN'T DRAW

commission for @bish-0-p

#Teddy is 20 even though the avengers were present at around the time he was conceived and the avengers have existed for less than 16 years.#do skrull age fast. did the recent time travel story give him some time to grow up more some when. we just don’t know#I do want to know how old Luna is though#she was stated to be six around civil war time. that makes her 12 now#they grow up. painfully slowly#wait the young avengers who are 20 now were 16 then. she might only be ten#okay and this was all before civil war. I hate it here#marvel#comics [tags @meanstiel​ on this post]

I tried my best to break down Luna’s age progression in this post last year, after realizing that she is paradoxically the oldest and youngest out of all her cousins. 

Luna was born first, Billy and Tommy were born second, and Ahura was born last. The boys have all been aged up supernaturally, which allowed writers to refurbish the characters as adolescents and teens. It totally breaks the timeline, but that’s the point. They’re all young adults now, but Luna has been left to age naturally, which means she was stuck as a little kid for a really, really long time.

That definitely holds Luna back as a character, but at least she fits into the timeline. Pietro and Crystal haven’t really aged since the 90s, so it still makes sense for their daughter to be super young. Nowadays, Luna only shows up once every few years, but she’s a little bit older every time. In Quicksilver: No Surrender (2018) she looks like a young teen.

And in Fantastic Four #32 (pub. 2021), Crystal says that Luna has “blossomed into a young woman.” Luna mostly appears out of frame, but I think she looks like a teenager here. Maybe 14-15? Hard to say. Anyhow, that’s her most recent appearance. 

Character ages never make sense, and that’s just something we have to accept, but the arbitrary timelines that writers will set around big events like Civil War or HoxPox really break things. How am I supposed to believe that the Avengers have been around for less than twenty years, and the X-Men have only been around for ten, when there are characters on both teams who have full grown children that were born and raised within those timeframes?! Some of those kids are timewarpy and weird, like Wanda’s sons, but some of them have had fully natural lives and are just way too old to have parents under thirty.

Slott run dying as it lived: Being so pointless that it erases any lasting impact it may have had

Completely agreed. All I want is Magnet family interactions. But Marvel seems to have forgotten about Luna completely. I mean, she wasn’t even in The Trial of Magneto (but I ignore that comic anyways lol)

I wish we got more of an exploration of Luna's powers and just her in general. For me personally, I'd make her an Inhuman/Mutant hybrid and put her with the Young Avengers. She could have such an interesting dynamic with her cousins Billy and Tommy plus I want to see her and Magneto interact

Ugh yeah. I talk about this in a meta on my sideblog, if you haven't seen it. (https://just-a-local-lunatic.tumblr.com/post/673398401110556672/the-potential-of-luna-maximoff) I just want to know what her character is like and how her powers affect that. She is such an interesting character.

But what I would give to have Luna interact with any member of Pietro's side of the family. She has literally never met Billy and Tommy and I'm mad about it. And yeah, Grandpa Magneto and Luna would be such a fun dynamic. I also want to see her with Lorna and Wanda. It would be really fun to have like a little comic one shot with Lorna and Wanda rescuing Luna or something with just the girls. I would be happy with almost anything at this point.

(also with Billy and Tommy technically Luna was born before them but when they were reincarnated they are now older and I think it would be a funny running joke for Luna to be like "as the older cousin here-")