Whew. Okay, my thoughts on Carey are this…he seems not so bad by comparison of a lot of what we got right before, and directly after. I don’t mean to take issue with what you wrote, but, I have to weigh in with a different position.
Messiah Complex. Yes, Gambit has a big role…and it’s not necessarily bad…but, is it REALLY that good, either? Lets re-examine a lot of Gambit’s “feats” during it, and subsequent run, and we’ll se his accomplishments aren’t that great, and the good ones mitigated in some way. Lets begin. Gambit shows back up in X-Men 200, when he and Sunfire ambush Cable. Now, Gambit returns in heroic form…gets the drop on Cable, having sought him out, gets a (beautiful) whole page splash, and comes across as cool. He attacks Cable, after tipping him off, and Cable launches a self destruct and they escape. But, at the same time, while Gambit and Sunfire get the better of Cable, it’s 2 v 1…not 1 v 1. Also, Cable “caught” Gambit’s cards…it was a sneak attack by Sunfire that hurt Cable (before Gambits cards). So, yeah, Gambit both “won” the encounter, came off as sneaky, and tipped Cable off….he still only won with Sunfire’s help, via a sneak attack, Sunfire did the most damage, and Cable seemed none too threatened by Remy. Gambit then joins the rest of the marauders, and while he “saves Sam” and destroys Destiny’s Diaries, he’d gotten punched when Cannonball threw (the tornado guy, I forget his name…whiplash?) at Gambit.
Now, the scene where he reminisces his relationship with Rogue, before talking to Mystique are good…as, arguably, is his threatening Sinister (though Sinister dismisses him) are good. But, when the X-Men confront Sinister and the Marauders and Acolytes later, Gambit does not participate in the fight. When Wolverine confronts him, he kicks Gambit’s ass in the most one sided fight they ever had. Now, in Carey’s notes, it was supposed to be a stalemate where Gambit told Logan Cable had the baby but they were NOT living with Rogue…so, he had good intentions, but instead, Gambit got punked.
Next we see Remy, he and the Marauders save Destiny by ambushing Bishop after he bushwhacked Cable. Now, while Gambit lead the team, and delivered the final blow to take Bishop down/out, it was still 6 v 1. Again, mitigating a Gambit “cool” moment. When the climactic fight is happening, he doesn’t participate, he sits by Rogue’s side playing solitaire. When Mystique tried bring Rogue (and thus killing the baby),Gambit, again in Carey’s notes, was to “take Mystique out”. In panel? He gets shoved by her. Again, rather than Gambit take out an opponent (Mystique, Cable, Bishop) he, at best, stalemates. An of course, while he is heavily featured post MC with Xavier, which is cool, he got his ass kicked by a group of ninja’s….he had to essentially power Shaw to do something he couldn’t…and of course, he cucked out to Rogneto. I’m sorry, but, while Carey may have liked Gambit as a character, and featured him a lot, I don’t see a lot of accomplishments or feats of note. At best, he comes across as capable, but, weak.