Siryn
Siryn is a female comic superhero who features in Marvel Comics.
Contents |
Biography
Origin
Theresa Maeve Rourke Cassidy was a red-haired female Mutant daughter of Sean Cassidy and his wife Maeve Rourke. During their time together, she became pregnant but did not inform Sean at the time. Unknown to anyone, Sean Cassidy was secretly an Interpol agent and a Mutant who was regularly deployed on assignment for months at a time. (X-Force v1 #31)
After her death, her daughter Theresa was left in the care of Tom Cassidy as the child's father was not present. Eventually, Sean returned to Ireland only to be shocked to find that Maeve had died and stood by her grave. Tom attempted to console his cousin and tell him that he had a daughter but an angry Sean unleashed his sonic cry on him. He lashed out on Tom as he blamed him for not looking after Maeve in the time he was away. Thus, Sean never came to realise that he had a daughter and Tom Cassidy developed an enmity with his cousin. He decided to raise the girl himself where he told her that her father had died making her believe she was an orphan. Though an act of revenge against Tom, he did genuinely care for Theresa as if she was his own daughter. As she grew older, her uncle began to engage in more illegal activities and decided to ship her to St. Elizabeth's boarding school by the time she was twelve years old. A year later, she remained angry with Tom with this resulting her trying out drinking alcohol for the first time. Her friends stopped the drinking as they hated the taste but Theresa continued as she used it to numb the painful emotions she was experiencing at the time. When she was 15 years old, she was informed by the school that Interpol had arrested her uncle Tom Cassidy for black marketing. Afterwards, she began to shut herself out from the world with her not going to his trial where he was sentenced to five years in prison and never visited him. (X-Force v1 #31)
Siryn engaged in a direct battle against the X-Men under Black Tom’s orders. She unleashed her sonic wail against multiple members of the team, disorienting Wolverine and knocking Nightcrawler from his perch. When Storm attempted to counter her with wind gusts, Siryn used her vocal control to create harmonic vibrations, destabilizing Storm’s aerial maneuver. However, after being subdued and confronted by Professor Xavier, she learned the truth about her heritage. She was eventually informed by her uncle Tom Cassidy that Sean Cassidy was her father and still alive. This saw her journey to the X-Men where her father resided and delivered him the letter from her uncle which said that Theresa was his daughter. A shocked and overjoyed Sean Cassidy then reunited with the daughter he never knew he had with Theresa being the last link he had to his dead wife Maeve Rourke Cassidy. (Uncanny X-Men v1 #148)
X-Force
When Cable seemingly was responsible for shooting Professor Xavier, his associates in X-Force were hunted and captured by the other X-teams, including X-Factor, who now counted the Multiple Man among their ranks. Once X-Force had been detained and locked away in the Danger Room at Xavier’s, Theresa was shocked to learn that Jamie Madrox did not remember their past relationship as she did. It was only then that she discovered that the Madrox with whom she had gotten romantically involved had only been a duplicate. (X-Force v1 #17)
In the aftermath of that crisis, while the X-Men were deciding X-Force’s fate, Siryn and Warpath stole a copy of the X-Men’s files to make sure they could get X-Force up and running again. Later that day, after Cannonball convinced Xavier to let him continue to lead X-Force his own way leading to the group relocating to Camp Verde. Xavier also had a talk with Theresa about her membership with X-Force. She explained that she’d felt dead inside after what the Shadow King did to them, but now that had changed and her emotions were coming alive again. She explained that she had felt dead inside after what the Shadow King did to them, but now that had changed and her emotions were coming alive again. (X-Force v1 #19)
Eventually, she finally decided to face her inner demons and returned to Cassidy Keep where she grew up, asking James along. In Ireland, they found the family’s lawyer badly injured by Black Tom, whose powers were spinning out of control. During the first two weeks of their stay, Theresa’s alcohol problem increased, forcing Warpath and a childhood friend of her, reporter Kelvin Doneghann, to work together with the Juggernaut to arrange a meeting with Tom. Theresa finally met her uncle over Maeve’s gravesite, where she confronted him about keeping her a secret from her father and told him to stop blaming others for his own mistakes. Realizing that she was at least partially sporting the same attitude, Siryn got a handle on her drinking. Before returning to their teammates in the United States, Terry told James that she could not return his romantic feelings and that she wanted to remain “just friends” with him. (X-Force v1 #31)
Sometime later, she met up with her father who, in the meantime, had become the headmaster of Generation X. Banshee told his daughter he wanted to have a better relationship with her as friends, and she happily accepted. (X-Force v1 #35)
X-Force continued to operate out of Xavier’s mansion until Operation: Zero Tolerance began, and Bastion and his Prime Sentinels got a hold of the Xavier Institute and all of the professor's files. Cable ordered the team to go underground under assumed names, but they refused to hide their heads in the sand, so he left the team to make their own choices. Many members went their own separate ways, but Theresa stayed with the largest grouping afterwards, and these five decided to go on a road trip. Siryn was somewhat annoyed with new/old arrival Dani Moonstar, as several of the older teammembers automatically deferred to her in questions of leadership. (X-Force v1 #71)
Theresa was depressed, even considering suicide. She withdrew from her friends and teammates and nearly started drinking again but instead went to an AA meeting to get her act together. Afterwards, she chose to leave X-Force. She gave Warpath a letter in which she explained her decision and went to visit a distant aunt, who had invited her to her ranch in Looking Glass, California. (X-Force v1 #91)
While getting to know her aunt better and waiting for her vocal chords to heal, Theresa felt compelled to visit an antique store. The shop owner noticed the scars on her neck and insisted on Theresa trying on a necklace with a jewel pendant to cover them. The piece of jewelry had been salvaged from a passenger liner that sunk off the coast of North Africa during the war. Before Terry knew what was happening, the necklace took possession of her. Whatever spirit or entity the necklace was housing, it made Terry drink alcohol, much to the concern of her aunt. There was not much she could do about it, though, as the necklace also was capable of accessing Siryn’s powers, and made her fly away from Looking Glass to whereabouts unknown. (X-Force v1 #100)
X-Factor
Theresa’s involved with the X-Corporation came to an end during M-Day, when about 90% of Earth’s mutant population lost their powers. Anti-mutant groups quickly seized the chance to attack the few mutants left, and the headquarters of X-Corporation Europe was blown up by terrorists. As a result, the X-Men chose to shut down the organization entirely; after all, it had already lost its purpose with there being next to no mutants left to contact. Jamie Madrox had left the X-Corporation earlier on to start his own detective agency, X-Factor Investigations in the Mutant Town area of New York City and he hired several former colleagues and friends, among them Siryn to help him run the agency. (X-Factor v3 #1)
To make matters worse, she was not found by her teammates but by a sadistic ex-mutant doctor called Leery, who kidnapped her and tied her up. Things quickly turned uglier and Leery might have mutilated or killed her, if not for Rictor turning up having expected Theresa for breakfast. That gave Siryn the incentive and opportunity to free herself and reuse her powers. (X-Factor v3 #5)
While the business side of X-Factor Investigations was doing quite well, troubles were brewing within the team. Madrox’ duplicates were acting more and more independently, each duplicate being a different manifestations of one of his personality traits, and it occurred in one night that while one Jamie was having sex with Monet, another was sleeping with Siryn. (X-Factor v3 #10)
As Lorna's condition worsened, Terry came to ask Layla Miller for help in contacting the Morrigan in an attempt to save Polaris's sanity. This was a success and she was granted an audience once more with the Morrigan who revealed that her name was actually a title that had been passed down from one woman to the next for countless years. Siryn then pleaded for the Morrigan to use her power normally for destruction as a tool for healing in saving Lorna's mind before she could potentially destroy the world. The current Morrigan stated that she had grown tired of this existence and simply wanted to move on so she would give her power to Siryn but the condition that she would become the new bearer of the mantle. Terry accepted and she killed the last Morrigan host with a 'Banshee's scream' in the form of a sonic lance and thus gained her godly power which she used to easily restore Lorna back to normal. (X-Factor v1 #244)
House of X
After the establishment of the nation of Krakoa, she was one of many Mutants that came to reside on the living island that was the home of their people. Afterwards, a new X-Factor was created due to the influx of missing mutants and unknown deaths The Five couldn't process for the resurrection protocols. She was one of the first mutants on their investigation list, after she let out a sonic scream as she fell to her death on a Krakoan cliff. (X-Factor v4 #5) Resurrected by the Five, she died again 5 days later 'somewhere in the UK'. Upon another resurrection, X-Factor interrogated her about her mysterious deaths, but she avoided their questions and blatantly lied to them. When Theresa left the Boneyard, she was confronted by Lorna on why she wasn't being honest, prompting her to use her powers to bewitch Lorna into sabotaging the investigation on her. (X-Factor v4 #6) It was later revealed Theresa was secretly still under the control of the goddess Morrigan and had made a deal with her to die a thousand times, instead of allowing the Morrigan to perform a ritual mass sacrifice on Krakoa. (X-Factor v4 #9) Noticing she was being 'tailed' by Daken, she lured him into the Alberta wilderness, in the middle of a snowstorm, to kill him without having his teammates alerted, unaware he had a healing factor. He remained a few days out in the cold, impaled with a broken crossbeam, but was eventually rescued by Northstar, who had been told of Siryn's last whereabouts by Polaris after Rachel had telepathically removed the Morrigan's influence from her mind. By then, Theresa was nowhere to be found. (X-Factor v4 #7) X-Factor would eventually confront the Morrigan after her attack on their HQ, which resulted in most of the team's demise. Eye-Boy and Prodigy, who were the sole survivors, got all their teammates resurrected and, together, they planned a counter-attack that successfully inhibited Morrigan's influence on Theresa. (X-Factor v4 #8) After going through Terry's memories, they discovered the key to defeating the goddess was Terry's former X-Factor teammate Shatterstar, whose power could kill the Morrigan and free Theresa from the curse. Therefore, after a complex rescue operation, Shatterstar was brought to the island and performed his duty against the goddess, freeing Theresa once and for all. (X-Factor v4 #9)
She later attended the second Hellfire Gala, where Micromax flirted with her. Terry later aided in the battle against the Typhon Group who wanted to create an international incident by poisoning Gorgon and a few other mutants. (X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic v1 #52)
From the Ashes
After the X-Men's war with the terrorist organization Orchis, Siryn would be one of several mutants incarcerated in Graymalkin Prison. (Free Comic Book Day 2024: Blood Hunt/X-Men v1 #1)
Overview
Personality and attributes
In appearance, Siryn was depicted as a tall, slender woman with long, fiery red hair that flowed past her shoulders, inherited from her Irish heritage. She typically wore a green bodysuit with yellow trim, complete with a cape designed in a wing-like pattern similar to Banshee’s costume. Her suit’s colors symbolized her Irish background, while her expressive features and confident posture emphasized her fiery spirit and determination. (Spider-Woman v1 #37) Originally, she operated under the name of Theresa Rourke with her using the same last name as her mother. (Uncanny X-Men v1 #148) Whilst working with her uncle, she began to operate under the code name of Siryn. Originally, she began to wore a costume that was patterned after her father, Banshee. (Spider-Woman v1 #37)
She was said to be the kind of girl that people fell heads over heel in love. (X-Force v1 #31)
It was noted that she spoke with a distinct Irish accent. (Spider-Woman v1 #37)
Siryn was initially portrayed as loyal to Black Tom Cassidy, exhibiting stubbornness and devotion even when aligned with villainous causes. Upon learning her true parentage, her personality softened, revealing her strong sense of family and desire to build connections with her father and his allies. She was fiery, passionate, and headstrong, often clashing with others due to her temper but equally quick to show compassion and loyalty. Her wit and sharp tongue often surfaced in interactions, balancing her more emotional and caring traits. (Uncanny X-Men v1 #148)
To Theresa, Tom Cassidy was her uncle and a parental figure to her as he was responsible for raising her. When she was 12 years old, he sent her away to boarding school and she knew that he sent her away as much for her safety as his own. Despite that, she felt hurt by his actions and was angry at him for sending her far away from home. Though angry, a part of her was also afraid as she thought she had done something and was being punished for it. (X-Force v1 #31)
Powers and abilities
As a Mutant, she developed the ability to emit powerful sonic attacks as a scream. Teresa was shown to be capable of creating a sonic lance that could kill her target or slash through objects. Her control of her powers was also refined enough to allow her to create a bubble of sound around her to protect Siryn from harm. (Spider-Woman v1 #37)
Siryn possessed the mutant ability to generate sonic screams capable of shattering solid objects, incapacitating foes, and disorienting opponents. She could manipulate her voice to produce concussive blasts, sonic barriers, and focused sound waves. Like her father Banshee, she used her voice to achieve flight by channeling sound waves beneath her, allowing her to glide and maneuver at high speeds. Siryn also exhibited limited hypnotic and persuasive qualities through vocal manipulation, giving her a unique edge in both combat and social encounters. (New Mutants v1 #43)
She could prevent others from hearing external sounds by a certain vocal pitch so that she can secretly deliver messages to them. (Cable & Deadpool v1 #17)
Her powers in conjunction with the wings of her costume allowed her to fly. (Spider-Woman v1 #37)
Excessive vocal cord strain can also cause her to temporarily lose her powers. (X-Force v1 #91)
After killing the last Morrigan host, she came to inherit the power of the goddess that was a mantle which passed through hundreds of women over countless years. Theresa Cassidy gained numerous undefined mystical abilities when she killed the Morrigan. Her known powers include the ability to teleport by her own free will or to people who summon her using the correct ritual, heal her followers and people with a personal bond to her, and some form of immortality or longevity. (X-Factor v3 #244) The raven served as a familiar to the Morrigan and was their tie to the source of their power. (X-Factor v1 #239) The entity itself remained within Siryn's body where it could impose a geas on another person with this being a magical contract imposed on a mortal to achieve a set goal. (X-Factor v4 #9)
Notes
- Siryn was created by Chris Claremont and Steve Leialoha where she made her first appearance in Spider-Woman v1 #37 (April, 1981).
Alternate Versions
- In X-Man v1 #1 (1995), an alternate version of the character named Sonique appeared in the Age of Apocalypse reality that was designated as Earth-295 in the Multiverse. Theresa Cassidy was unaware that she is the daughter of the X-Man known as Banshee. She was in the care of a human man and they were herded into a train to be shipped off to a slave camp to be terminated. The train was stopped by the Outcasts, a band of mutants who traveled the ruins of America led by the mutant inventor known as Forge. The Outcasts saved Sonique and the others from certain death. During the battle, Theresa saved young Outcast Nate Grey from an Infinite soldier, manifesting her mutant powers for the first time. She passed out from the exertion, and Grey insisted that she be taken along with them. As they escaped, they also picked up the man named Essex, secretly the geneticist Sinister who had actually created Grey. Theresa took on the name Sonique, and along with Grey came to trust Essex, much to Forge's chagrin. She later followed the Outcasts after they were convinced to accompany Essex to one of Apocalypse's factories, and watched as Nate Grey destroyed it. Their rebel activities soon drew the attention of Domino and her assassins, who had come to recruit Grey or kill him. The assassins attempted to slay the Outcasts, but Sonique survived the attack, aiding Forge in killing Grizzly. After Nate seemingly slayed Sinister, he left Sonique behind to care for their injured friend Sauron while he went to battle Apocalypse alongside the X-Men. Sinister survived Grey's assault and later managed to capture and brainwash both Sonique and Sauron, forcing them to join his Sinister Six to defend him while being hunted down by the X-Men. Tracking Sinister to Liberty Island, the X-Men attacked Sinister and battled the Six. During the battle, Sonique was badly wounded by Silver Samurai, who purposefully spared her life, knowing that she was not in her right mind. Sauron was not so lucky, and was impaled by Magneto after killing his son. Sonique was one of the few survivors of Sinister's group, but Psylocke had doubts that she'd be able to reverse the effects of Sinister's brainwashing techniques.
- In Age of X: Universe v1 #1 (2011), an alternate version of Siryn appeared in the Age of X reality that was designated as Earth-11326 in the Multiverse.
In other media
Films
Appearances
- Spider-Woman v1: (1981)
- X-Force v1:
- Deadpool: Sins of the Past v1:
- X-Factor v3:
- X-Factor v1:
- X-Factor v4:
External Links
This article is a stub. You can help Multiversal Omnipedia by expanding it.
