Explores how the Phoenix and Dark Phoenix sagas, as told in X-Men: The Animated Series demonstrate how beliefs can inform people’s morally-relevant treatment of others. Highlights the roles of ambiguity and disagreement in understanding Jean Grey’s superhero mission.

The findings suggesting that people understand morally relevant actions involving antagonists differently than those involving others–coupled with the fact that various forms of this distinction feature heavily in superhero narratives (e.g., hero-villain, criminal-victim, innocent-guilty, malevolent force-unwitting host)–point to a potential area of scholarly inquiry when thinking about what it means to treat others fairly across different contexts.