The Moon Seems Like Such A Lonely Place To Be With Only The Stars To Keep You Company

Marvel Meow: Infinity Comic #5 (2022)

art by Nao Fuji

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

Everyone wants John Krasinski as Reed Richards, but I’m over here advocating for John Krasinski as Future Franklin Richards.

commission for @bish-0-p

Oh, I like that! In my personal headcanon/fanfic storyline I have for Luna, since she's with Franklin, she becomes part of the Fantastic Four, so my preference is for her to go with blue. (it's not the same shade of blue, but still, you could have some light blue parts on her FF costume that harken to her magic or inhuman background). Even if she ever does get noticed by Marvel's writing team, I doubt she'd ever actually join the FF in the actual comics canon because Marvel will never get rid of the original Fantastic Four lol

And for my Fantastic Four Luna, I do think having her learn magic would be interesting too because it would kinda parallel her with Doctor Doom and of course you'd also get that science/magic tension with Valeria.

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

Luna was at that party and she was dressed as Sailor Moon.

sounds familiar...

oh how Deeply I love this wee silly rarepair oh

Gonna snap one day and commission an artist to draw me the entire Magnet Family with Luna included in a royal House of M style portrait, because I am sick and tired of her being forgotten or treated as non important even though she's the first grandchild, and she has powers, and is so important to the family. STOP IGNORING HER MARVEL.

current Maximoff pet theory

Everyone knows the retcon is stupid. So let’s explain it away!

Why cut the Maximoffs off from Krakoa? Because little Luna Maximoff knows when someone is being mind-controlled and shows possible signs of precognition. (I think that was just everyone forgetting what her powers are/how they work, but I’m willing to go with it.) Let her visit even once, and the jig is up.

This could’ve been solved by manipulating things so that Luna appears to be someone else’s daughter, but that would have caused (1) Pietro to immediately flip his shit, (2) Wanda to immediately flip her shit, and (3) Medusa to immediately flip her shit, and (4) a paternity test, which would have revealed the manipulation.

So, really, manipulating things so that Wanda and Pietro appear to not be Magneto’s kids was the easier way to keep Luna and her powers away from Krakoa.

Who’s doing the manipulating? Not Magneto. Xavier doesn’t have that kind of power on his own, but he has telepathy and zero qualms about using said telepathy to fuck with/up anybody he pleases. (War hero and king of a sovereign nation Namor. Magneto. His own students. Himself. Every woman he’s ever dated, apparently.  And so on.)

So my current pet theory is that, in the original timeline, the retcon didn’t happen, Luna visited Aunt Lorna on Krakoa and said, “Hey, there’s mind control spores in everyone’s brains?!” and started fighting spores, alerted her dad and other heroes, and that was the end of Krakoa. It took like an hour.

Xavier and Moira hated that. Xavier and Moira put together a small team of mutants including someone with time travel powers, someone with heavy-duty reality-warping or manipulation powers, and someone to troubleshoot whatever fuckups the first two might cause, and then sent them back in time to prevent Luna Maximoff from ever visiting Krakoa. Thus, the retcon.