Snap Into Marvel: Esme Cuckoo From The Five-In-One To Marvel Snap

First Appearance: New X-Men #118 (November 2001), named in New X-Men #123 (April 2002).

First Multimedia Appearance: The Gifted (as the Frost Sisters) portrayed by Skyler Samuels (2017-2019).

Powers And Abilities: Esme is 1/5 of the Stepford Cuckoos, a group of five identical sisters who can form a telepathic hive mind. Each is a formidable telepath in their own right, but their combined abilities make them collectively stronger. When linked in a telepathic gestalt, then can communicate with each other instantaneously and operate as a single being. Esme, like all the Cuckoos (and her mother, Emma Frost), can also assume a nigh-invulnerable diamond form.

Comic Book Chronicles

Originally introduced as the Five-in-One, the Stepford Cuckoos were aloof, largely background, characters to whom Emma Frost took a shine in Grant Morrison’s New X-Men, part of the larger student body they introduced as part of the effort to create a more traditional school environment for the Xavier Institute and a broader mutant culture.

Eventually, it was established that the Cuckoos are the biological daughters of Emma Frost, grown from cells harvested from Emma by the Weapon Plus program and aged into teenagers inside the World, a hidden lab in which the flow of time can be manipulated. Weapon Plus is the same program responsible for the creation of Captain America — aka Weapon I — as Project: Rebirth and Wolverine — Weapon X; the Cuckoos are Weapon XIV.

Esme is, essentially, the “evil” Stepford Cuckoo. The first to develop a personality distinct from her sisters, she attempted to kill Emma Frost and succeeded in killing her sister Sophie by manipulating her into using the power-enhancing drug Kick until it killed her.

Fleeing the X-Mansion, Esme would later return at the side of a Kick-enhanced Magneto (who was actually Xorn…pretending to be Magneto…after pretending to be Xorn. It’s a whole thing…) as part of a new Brotherhood of Mutants in Morrison’s penultimate story arc, “Planet X.” In the course of that story, Esme is killed at the hands of Xorn/Magneto.

Esme would make a few temporary post-death returns, including by the Phoenix Force in X-Men: Phoenix – Warsong and as part of the “Chaos War” crossover. She ultimately returned to life, like many other deceased mutants, on Krakoa. While still headstrong and selfish, Esme mostly left behind her super-villain tendencies and reunited with her sisters.

Together, they collectively dated Kid Cable, with Esme fighting by his side the most often and developing genuine feelings for him compared to her sisters, who viewed the relationship mostly as a lark. Most recently, she and the rest of the Cuckoos had a recurring role in the just-completed NYX.

Fit & Finish

All three of Esme’s cards feature different looks, though the main card is more conceptual than a representation of a specific uniform she wore in the comics. The Creative House Pocket variant features Esme’s darker variant on the X-poncho look the Cuckoos sported during the Krakoa Era, while the Inhyuk Lee variant is taken from the variant cover to NYX #4.

Form & Function

Esme’s Snap ability doesn’t really represent her telepathic powers — which in Snap, is usually represented by an ability to control card placement (like Professor X not allowing cards into its lane, or Jean Grey not allowing cards outside its lane). Instead, Esme’s ability taps into the character’s connection to her mother/mentor, Emma Frost/White Queen.

Just like Emma copies a card from your opponents hand into yours, Esme copies a card from your deck into your own hand. Esme and Emma even have the same power and cost. Now, the larger question is how “copy your opponent’s card into your hand” represents Emma Frost’s telepathy in the first place (I guess it’s “reading” “the mind” of your opponent and sharing that info?), but that’s not Esme’s problem.