Meet Lilandra, The ‘X-Men ’97’ Character Whose Wedding Was Crashed by the Threat of Mutant Extinction

We’re officially over halfway through the first season of X-Men ’97, and episode six teed up one of the most exciting developments yet in the imminent return of the one and only Charles Xavier to his home planet.

Storm’s triumphant acclimation may have been the certified major moment for “Lifedeath – Part 2,” but especially after what just went down in Genosha, the world looks all but ready to implode as mutant-human relations enter a whole new, destructive paradigm, and subsequently needs Xavier now more than ever.

And when/if this all comes to an end, he and Lilandra had better get to indulge in the most spectacular wedding of the millennium after needing to call it off on account of an interspecies war. In saying that, who exactly is Lilandra, and what role might she play going forward?

Who is Lilandra?

Lilandra is the Empress of the Shi’ar Empire who has long held a powerful telepathic bond with Charles Xavier; a bond that first drew her to Earth during the original animated series’ adaptation of The Phoenix Saga, in which the X-Men aided her in taking the throne from her brother D’Ken, who at the time held dictatorial rule over the Shi’ar. She was also the one who brought Xavier to the Shi’ar homeworld in the series finale so that he wouldn’t succumb to his illness.

Now it seems the pair’s love has blossomed in a big way, with Lilandra having prepared to take a now-healed Xavier as her husband—a union that’s spoiled by her sister Deathbird and Xavier’s urgent need to return to Earth.

The two actually did marry in the comics, but that marriage was chiefly disrupted by one Cassandra Nova, who disguised herself as Xavier and manipulated Lilandra via mind control so that she could gain control of the Shi’ar fleet as she sought to wipe out mutant-kind.

Now, with Mister Sinister plotting a similar global atrocity and Lilandra having a vested interest in seeing Xavier return to the cosmos, it’s no great leap of logic to think that the Empress of the Shi’ar Empire might lend her aid to the X-Men as they seek to avoid a cataclysmic war between humans and mutants by any means necessary. Indeed, maybe “any means necessary,” in this case, means a fleet of alien ships at the ready to neutralize the Sentinels that will inevitably show up in the next few episodes.

(featured image: Disney+)