Nocturne, the mutant daughter of one of her world’s greatest X-Men, Nightcrawler, shares his agile abilities and bravado along with possession powers. She protects those in need and joins teams like the Exiles to repair broken realities across time and space.
Pulled Through Time
Native to Earth-2182, Talia Josephine “T.J.” Wagner is the daughter of the X-Man Nightcrawler and the Avenger Scarlet Witch. With the X-Men often considered outlaws, her parents hide their relationship from the public to keep their teammates safe.
Able to possess the bodies of others and cast hex bolts, Nocturne later joins the X-Men and becomes involved with her teammate James Proudstar, AKA Thunderbird, but before it could flourish, the Timebroker, secretly a holographic image created by insectoid alien explorers, snatches Talia from her reality. Landing in the Crystal Palace’s desert room, she is joined by various worlds’ heroes Clarice Ferguson, AKA Blink, Magnus Lehnsherr, AKA Magnus, Calvin Rankin, AKA Mimic, Kevin Sydney, AKA Morph, and John Proudstar, AKA Thunderbird.
The Timebroker tells them they are unhinged from time and must help repair broken realities before they can return to their own. If they fail, Talia’s past would allegedly alter, causing her grandmother Mystique to murder her father. Calling themselves the Exiles, they visit a series of flawed dimensions, setting things right in hopes of returning home.
Body Possession
Nocturne can possess another person’s body for up to 12 hours, leaving the host body comatose for up to 24 hours after possession. Additionally, Nocturne possesses limited telepathic powers enabling her to read minds and project her thoughts into the minds of others.
She can fire “hex bolts,” destructive projectiles made up of extra-dimensional energy from the dimension through which Nightcrawler teleports. Combining her telepathy and hex powers, she can project a psychic shield to protect herself and others from psychic attacks.
She can cling to solid frictionless surfaces with her hands and feet via the attraction of the positive particles of an object and the negative particles of the dimension through which her hex bolts originate.
Nocturne has superhuman agility and a flexible spine that allows her to perform contortionist-like feats without injury. She has indigo fur that allows her to blend in surrounding shadows, three fingers and an opposable thumb on each hand, two extra-long toes on each foot with a flexible heel, pointed ears, fang-like canine teeth, and a 3 ½-foot-long prehensile retractable tail that can support her entire body weight. Her dexterity diminishes following her stroke but is continually improving with physical therapy.
Multiverse Maniacs
Nocturne faces the Mojoverse tyrant Mojo a couple times. The first time he captures and tortures Nocturne until her teammate Morph agrees to become one of Mojo’s entertainers. Mojo’s former captive Longshot helps the Exiles to defeat Mojo. In an effort to infiltrate the Brotherhood of Mutants, Nocturne and Cain Marko, AKA Juggernaut, later face Mojo together but escape thanks to Nocturne possessing one of his servants, Rita Wayword, AKA Spiral. Though Spiral is not knocked out like Nocturne’s typical possessions, and she leads Mojo back to Earth-616 where Nocturne battles and defeats Mojo and the Brotherhood alongside the X-Men.
With the Exiles alongside the UK super team Excalibur, Nocturne helps defend Otherworld from the reality-altering Mad Jim Jaspers and his army of Furies.
Family Ties and Mutant Allies
Nocturne is the daughter of her world’s Scarlet Witch and Nightcrawler, looking most similar to Nightcrawler in appearance. She is tutored at Charles Xavier’s School and moves up the ranks to become an X-Man, a team that becomes her extended family. Eventually she fights alongside her father and after Xavier’s retirement, the team is led by Wolverine.
When the Timebroker snatches Nocturne from her reality, Nocturne joins five strangers, each from different realities, to insure that life does not cease to exist. She joins the teleporter Blink; Mimic powered by his reality’s X-Men; Magnus, son of Magneto and Rogue; Thunderbird, possessing super-strength and senses; and Morph, the shape-changing funny man and they become the Exiles.
In Nocturne’s home reality, she has a relationship with James Proudstar, AKA Thunderbird. When she joins the Exiles, she meets an alternate version of James’s brother, John Proudstar, who also goes by the moniker Thunderbird. They bond over having known James despite their differing versions and become romantically entangled.
A Nocturne of Events
After becoming involved with her teammate Thunderbird, Nocturne became pregnant, but Thunderbird became comatose after a battle with Galactus on Earth-5692 and was replaced by Earth-3470’s Heather Hudson, AKA Sasquatch. Overwhelmed with emotions, Nocturne loses the baby.
En route to a new mission, Mojoverse tyrant Mojo interrupted the Exiles’ teleportation and tortured Nocturne until Morph agreed to become one of Mojo’s entertainers. With help from Mojo’s former captive Longshot, the Exiles ultimately defeated Mojo. During the Exiles’ second mission to Earth-616, Nocturne was left behind. Juggernaut recruited Nocturne to help defeat Bennet Du Paris, AKA Exodus’ Brotherhood of Mutants from within. Though successful, Nocturne was pulled into the black hole within Shen Xorn’s mind along with the Juggernaut and the Brotherhood; emerging in the Mojoverse. Nocturne possessed Mojo’s servant Spiral and escaped with Juggernaut; they reappeared at Earth-616’s X-Men’s mansion with Spiral and Mojo in pursuit. Spiral turns them into babies for a time but Nocturne, Juggernaut and the X-Men defeated and the Brotherhood and their pursuers and are restored to normal.
Following M-Day, Nocturne joined the London-based Excalibur team alongside Brian Braddock, Captain Britain, Alison Blaire, AKA Dazzler, Juggernaut, Tessa, AKA Sage, and Peter Wisdom, battling Shadow-X (evil X-Men from Earth-6141), Tom Cassidy, AKA Black Tom Cassidy, and Warwolves. While visiting a hospitalized Dazzler, Nocturne suffered a stroke, but through dedication, friends, and physical therapy, she worked past her paralysis, though some effects persisted. She aided the Excalibur team alongside Shadow-X team, a dark version of the original X-Men, and saved lives against Albion when she possessed one of his Shadow-Captains.
Excalibur later teamed with the Exiles, reuniting Nocturne with Thunderbird, who had revived from his coma, to defend Otherworld from the resurrected, reality-altering Mad Jim Jaspers and an army of Jaspers-created Furies. Afterwards Nocturne rejoined the Exiles to be with Thunderbird, but the couple took a sabbatical and relocated to Heather Hudson’s reality, Earth-3470, to help Talia recover.
After recovering from her stroke, Talia returned to the Exiles and, for a time, merged with the Crystal Palace alongside Heather and Morph. Blink then left to recruit new team members, and Nocturne led the Exiles. When the Tallus, a communication device that sends commands from the Crystal Palace to the Exiles, directed Blink to form a new team, she encountered a past version of Talia and Morph. In a face-off with evil versions of Professor X and Scarlet Witch, Morph was lost and Talia combined her telepathy and hex powers to form a psychic shield.
