Have you considered maybe not cheating on Jean, Scott?!
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00:00Now, Scott Summers is generally somebody who likes to think of himself as a good guy,
00:04which kind of makes all of his wrongdoings all the more interesting. Because it means
00:08that all of his worst deeds are still things that he can somehow find ways to justify. And
00:14while you'd expect that this means that Cyclops hasn't committed many wrongful acts,
00:18it's almost the complete opposite. With this in mind, I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,
00:22and these are the 10 Worst Things Cyclops Has Ever Done.
00:2610. Almost Killing a Ton of Children
00:29Within the pages of the collective X-Men comics, there are just enough occasions where Cyclops
00:34narrowly evades killing children to raise some very serious red flags somewhere in the back of
00:39your mind. A prime example of this lies in X-Factor number 35, which saw the hero team
00:45throw hands in a child-filled cryogenic chamber against a bunch of villains with reflective armor,
00:50something that Cyclops warns against as he fires an energy beam at an enemy that then begins to
00:55bounce around the room. In doing so, he narrowly misses zapping several of the children, in a move
01:01that could have resulted in some mass-murdered frozen kids. The fact that Cyclops simultaneously
01:06recognized the danger of fighting in this room, and then immediately endangers all the children
01:10in there by doing so anyway, is as ironic as it is a kind of terrible move.
01:169. Creating a Child Soldier
01:19X-23's backstory is a tale of child exploitation and manipulation that is not uncommon in comics,
01:25but it's still sad all the same. With Laura having been weaponized since birth by the people behind
01:30her creation, it would seem likely that when she finally was recovered by the X-Men that they would
01:34focus on rehabilitating her, and then take her out of any fighting until the trauma of the violence
01:39that she'd seen her whole life had at minimum been addressed. But Cyclops clearly doesn't believe in
01:44therapy, as within days of her arrival he sends X-23 out into a revived X-Force team, which is
01:51explicitly the worst idea of what to do with Laura Kinney imaginable. It's questionable enough
01:56that even Wolverine expresses some serious concerns with the plan, which are then totally ignored by
02:02Cyclops, because he is apparently more than willing to prevent Laura from starting the
02:05recovery process that she needs so long as she can help him beat up some costumed crooks.
02:10When Wolverine has to be the voice of reason about violence and its potential impact,
02:14you know something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
02:178. Fighting His Own Team
02:20As a leader, sometimes you have to make calls that you don't want to. Doing the best thing for your
02:24team often involves doing things the team doesn't want to do, and helping them become better fighters
02:29and better people can often involve clashing with those you care the most about. However,
02:34there is a line in terms of how far it's okay to push your team, and Cyclops crosses that line
02:40one too many times for him to be considered a good leader. His decision to insult and then
02:45fight his team in order to try and help them regain their spirits from losing a battle
02:49is a sure sign of this, as literally nobody is actually helped by Scott's decisions
02:54to just viciously turn on them. In a time where every single member of the team could have used
02:58encouragement or even just a word of support, Scott's instinctive response is to be a complete
03:04monster to his own team, and that's very, very telling as to the type of person he can often be.
03:107. Fighting Wolverine for Being Right
03:13Friends don't let friends lose their morals, as a general rule, especially when said friend
03:18can shoot city-destroying energy beams from their bloody eyes. So it's no real surprise that when
03:23Wolverine discovered that Cyclops had shacked up with Emma Frost immediately after one of Gene's
03:28many deaths, he confronted his longtime teammate about whether this seemed to be a wise idea.
03:33But what was a surprise is that Cyclops responded to this concern about his well-being
03:38by immediately blasting Wolverine with what appears to be lethal force. It's needlessly
03:43aggressive and totally out of line given that Wolverine is right about it being sketchy to
03:47hook up with the woman you cheated on your wife with just because said wife is now dead.
03:52With Cyclops supposedly being the bastion of control and dignity amongst the X-Men,
03:57it feels pretty bad for him to blow up in such a dangerous and painful manner
04:01just because somebody called him out on his behaviour.
04:036. Being a Terrible Dad
04:06With Cyclops looking like he's thinking about what he's having for tea in the majority of
04:09panels featuring him and a child, it was written in stone from the very beginning that he wouldn't
04:14exactly be the pinnacle of fatherhood. And indeed, while Cyclops has had some okay moments
04:19with his kid, they are far outweighed by a series of abandonments and moments where Cyclops seems to
04:24lack any affection at all for his darling child. Even his good dad moments can get incredibly
04:30worrying, like the period of time where Cyclops would take child Nathan Summers on missions with
04:34him, where the infant was continually a hair's breadth from dying brutally just because Scott
04:39wanted some weirdly violent bonding time with his baby boy. Balancing being a father and being a
04:44superhero is basically like walking a tightrope covered in barbed wire for sure, but Cyclops
04:49seemed to avoid anything resembling spending time with his son like the actual plague.
04:545. Cheating on Jean Grey with Emma Frost
04:57The messy situation that is Cyclops' relationship with both Jean Grey and Emma Frost is one that
05:02has been excruciatingly documented for an almost obscene amount of time.
05:07Summers swings between the two like a romantic seesaw, and even when he appears to have chosen
05:11one, he still tends to court the other. This debacle reached its peak when Scott cheats on
05:16Jean, who he has married at this point, by having psychic sex with Emma, justifying it because they
05:22aren't physically doing anything. Seeing Scott's reaction when he's finally caught, however,
05:26makes it very clear that he's aware that what the pair were doing is wrong on several levels,
05:31but that he had simply found it easier to cheat with Emma instead of actually trying to work
05:35through his issues with his wife. While Jean's past is also not perfect, she doesn't have freaky
05:40mental sex with anyone, which means that Cyclops is fairly and squarely in the wrong for this one.
05:464. Cheating on Emma Frost with Jean Grey's memory
05:49In a move that is stunningly unsurprising to anyone who's aware of Scott's frankly depressing
05:54relationship history, Scott goes from cheating on his wife Jean Grey to fantasizing about Jean
05:59whilst being with Emma after Jean dies. It is a bit of a mixed bag, as Emma repeatedly uses her
06:05psychic abilities to look like Jean around Scott, purposefully playing into his fantasies surrounding
06:11his first love, which naturally creates an incredibly weird dynamic between the two of them
06:15when Jean herself is removed from the situation. Their entire relationship involves Cyclops
06:20focusing on Jean and not Emma, made even more awkward by the fact that Frost can read his mind
06:26and so is aware that she's playing second fiddle to his dead ex. Ultimately, it seems as though
06:31Scott should really have spent some time recovering from the trauma of Jean's death instead of moving
06:36straight into things with Emma, as it seems exceedingly cruel to continually daydream of
06:40another woman in front of your psychic girlfriend. 3. Making out with Emma Frost on Jean Grey's grave
06:47Now grief makes people do some funny things. It can change sleeping patterns, eating patterns,
06:52and pretty much affect any corner of your life whether you want it to or not. But what grief
06:57doesn't really do, notably, is to force you to kiss your mistress on the grave of your just-deceased
07:02wife, and yet it's the very real and potentially very worst moment of Cyclops' entire comic career.
07:08While there is an attempt to try and justify it, with Jean Grey's spirit coming back to tell Scott
07:13to explore his feelings for Frost now that she's dead, it's pretty clear that this isn't her way
07:18of saying, please go ahead and make out all over my tombstone. It's one thing that Cyclops cheated
07:23on Jean Grey, as both parties had affairs with others throughout their relationship,
07:26but disrespecting her death in this way is another, much worse thing entirely.
07:322. Ruining Madeline Pryor's life Marrying somebody because they resemble
07:36your dead love interest is just setting yourself up for a bad time, you and whatever poor unfortunate
07:42you marry, of course. Madeline Pryor, Jean Grey look-alike and all-time most poorly treated wife,
07:47sees this first-hand, when her marriage to Cyclops results in her having to raise a child
07:51pretty much by herself, having basically been abandoned when Scott learned that Jean was back.
07:56Scott abandons Madeline three separate times, two of which are during the time when they're
08:00raising their child, and each time we get to see her die a little more inside. In the end,
08:05Cyclops more or less admits that he only married Pryor because she looked like Jean,
08:09and shows very little grief or even concern when she eventually dies, likely because this clears
08:14the way for him to marry Jean and to continue on the steady chain of unhappy marriages.
08:181. Killing Professor X Anyone who knows anything about
08:22the X-Men knows just how close Cyclops and Professor X are, with the two sharing an almost
08:27family-like bond since their joint introduction in the first ever X-Men comic. As such, Cyclops
08:33killing Xavier in Avengers vs. X-Men is pretty much the biggest sign the supposed superhero
08:38has gone fully off the deep end. The pair meet on opposing sides for sure, but Xavier is doing
08:43anything but trying to fight Scott. Indeed, the old man tells Cyclops that he loves him,
08:48and that he's worried about the effects the Phoenix Force is having on his mind,
08:52with every sentence clearly aimed at trying to create a peaceful resolution.
08:56But what does Scott do? Well, he listens to him, winds himself up misinterpreting everything he
09:00says, and then completely obliterates the closest thing he's ever had to a father figure,
09:05in the most dramatic moment of the entire comic. It's needlessly brutal, and marks the moment that
09:10Cyclops ceases to be redeemable in the comic, as this murder is the most evil deed we've ever
09:15seen Summers carry out. And there we go, my friends, those were the 10 worst things that
09:19Cyclops has ever done. I would normally say I hope you enjoyed this, but I hope that you got
09:23something out of this, because enjoyment doesn't seem like the right thing to say here. Either way,
09:26let me know what you thought about it down in the comments section below. As always, I've been
09:30Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.