At the conclusion of "The Dark Angel Saga", Psylocke was forced to kill original X-Man, Warren Worthington III. Originally known as Angel, his Archangel persona (implanted by Apocalypse) finally took over resulting in the death of thousands as he attempted to remake all life on Earth. He first appeared in 1963's
X-Men #1, and while the press didn't pick up on this major death, the Angel we all know is indeed dead according to writer Rick Remender.
"He's dead. Warren is dead," he told
Newsarama.
"I know where he's ending up, I know what we're doing with him for the next year. Our intention right now is that Warren died. His soul died, his mind died, he died. But that Life Seed stuck in his gut regenerated something. It took the husk that was there, of Archangel, and it regenerated something else. It took that dead body and made this new body. What is the body, and who's the person inside? It's not Warren Worthington. It's not as simple as amnesia. That's a different person.
He added:
"There's going to be cynics. For us, it was important not to just do, "And he died." We wanted to do something that was more of a knife in the gut, where he dies, and Betsy gets to live with him in this telepathic trance, where they get their lives together how it should have been. You think you've got some kind of closure, then you get the up moment of Warren returns — everybody is happy and excited — and he pushes Betsy aside and says, "Who are you?" Warren did die, but here's this person who looks just like him. It's even worse than him dying, in my opinion."
How do you feel about this new take on the "death" of a major character? Of course, he won't necessarily be gone FOREVER as Marvel can always give him back his memories! However, until then, Warren/Angel/Archangel is dead.