Rachel Summers

Rachel Anne Summers is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was created by writer Chris Claremont and artist/co-plotter John Byrne.

In her first appearance, the character's surname was not revealed; in later appearances, she was established as the daughter of the alternate future counterparts to Cyclops and Jean Grey-Summers from the dystopian Days of Future Past timeline. Although there are other characters bearing her name throughout the multiverse, she herself is considered a multiversal anomaly with no true alternate-universe counterparts.

The character is a mutant with similar abilities to her mother, including telepathy, telekinesis, and a connection to the Phoenix Force. Throughout her publication history, she has also been referred to by the monikers Marvel Girl, Phoenix, Prestige, and Mother Askani (later simply Askani).

Rachel first appeared in The Uncanny X-Men #141 (Jan. 1981) and has since been affiliated with several comic book superhero teams including the X-Men and Excalibur.

In 2022, she joined the Knights of X team as part of the Destiny of X era under the leadership of Captain Britain, who takes a group of mutants under her wing leading them into the Otherworld. The title was the follow-up to the 2019's Excalibur relaunch and was written by Tini Howard. In its fourth issue, Rachel Summers and her long-time friend Betsy Braddock confessed their romantic feelings for each other and their kiss was shown in a splash page.

Rachel Anne Summers comes from an alternate future Earth known as Earth-811, as seen in the "Days of Future Past" storyline from The Uncanny X-Men #141–142. In this reality, the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly provoked the ratification of the Mutant Registration Act, leading to a dystopian future where the mutant-hunting Sentinel robots rule North America. Rachel was abducted by operatives working for Ahab, who used drugs and hypnotherapy to turn Rachel into the mutant-hunting "Hound". She fulfilled her duties, but her psychic powers linked her to her victims; fueling her grief and despair until she attacked Ahab and scarred him. In return, he sent her to the mutant concentration camps. There, she befriended the surviving mutant rebels, including Wolverine, Magneto, Colossus, Storm, Kate Pryde, and her lover, the adult Franklin Richards.

Rachel managed to send Kate's consciousness into the past to her younger self to prevent the assassination, but it did not change their time. Rachel sent her astral form into the past to find out why and discovered she had sent Kate into an alternate past. On the way back, she encountered the disembodied Phoenix Force and it followed her to her present. Rachel passed out from the strain of astral projection and the Phoenix Force revealed itself to Kate, who asked it to give Rachel a fresh start.

When Rachel and Kate broke into "Project: Nimrod" on a suicide mission to destroy a new model of Sentinel, they became trapped. When Kate spoke the words "Dark Phoenix," the Phoenix Force ripped Rachel from her timeline and sent her body back to the alternate past to which she had sent Kate's consciousness. This was a past where she learned Jean Grey was dead and that her father was married to someone else. Rachel experienced additional heartache and displacement trauma when she discovered that her father's new wife, Madelyne Pryor, was pregnant with a son (Nathan Summers), because in her timeline she was the first-born child of Scott Summers.