If there’s one thing you can say about Marvel Snap (Free), it’s that it nails its fanservice completely. From a dead Bucky giving way to the Winter Soldier to Agatha Harkness playing your game for you (it was Agatha all along!), the interactions of cards and the environments are a lot fun for seasoned fans of the comics and movies. Is there such a thing as taking it too far, though? I tell you, Second Dinner is so good at this stuff that they seem to be doing comic-accurate things even when they don’t mean to.
Kitty Pryde, also known as Shadow Cat, Sprite, and even Star-Lord for a few minutes, was created back in 1980 by writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byne, and it quickly became apparent that she was something of a favorite of the creative team. As a point-of-view character into the world of the X-Men, Kitty had many stories revolve around her attempts to integrate into the wild world of Marvel’s merry mutants. Like a lot of creator favorites, she sometimes had a bit more luck than you might expect during the team’s adventures. She was even the central figure in one of the most famous X-Men stories of all time, Days of Future Past. In that story, she was given the ability to return to the past to stop a horrible future from coming. She goes, she returns, and everything in the future she came from would cease to occur. A timeline broken, however undesirable it may be.
Given all of that, it’s no wonder she was chosen to be one of the new cards added during the current Days of Future Past event in Marvel Snap. A 1-Cost, 0-Power card with the ability to be returned to your hand to gain +2 Power. Seemingly innocent, just like Kitty Pryde herself. But longtime X-Men comics readers know Kitty is a lot more than she appears to be, and so too is this card. Marvel Snap has a lot of moving parts, and Kitty is (I believe) the first card you can return to your hand at will. Unexpected consequences have sprung up as a result, and she’s sometimes causing crashes to occur. Yes, Kitty is breaking timelines again.
An update regarding Kitty Pryde pic.twitter.com/FoBIqoezti
— MARVEL SNAP (@MARVELSNAP) March 30, 2023
The team behind Marvel Snap has issued a statement that you can read in the tweet above, but the long and short of it is that for the first time since the global launch, a card is being disabled. You won’t lose Kitty if you own her, but you won’t be able to play any matches if you have her in your deck. She won’t appear from any of the random card generators, and she’s been removed from the Token Shop rotation. If she’s up in there for you right now, you won’t be able to buy her. She’s been Thanos snapped right out of the game, at least for now.
There’s no word on when Kitty Pryde will return to Marvel Snap, but I’d imagine once the crashing problem gets sorted out she’ll be back. We’ll have to see if they have to make any modifications to how her ability works, though. For now, the team has apologized and promises to compensate players at a future date, and that’s really all they can do. I’ll likely let you know when Kitty is out of detention again, but for now it seems like the Sentinels won.