Inferno #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
INFERNO vol 2 #1
by Jonathan Hickman, Valerio Schiti & David Curiel
INFERNO. “Inferno” was the name of the big X-books crossover of 1989, in which demons invaded Manhattan. On the face of it, this series has nothing to do with it. But we’ll see. Inferno vol 1, if you’re wondering, was one of the miniseries from the Secret Wars event of a few years back.
COVER / PAGE 1. Moira stands over the fallen members of the Quiet Council.
PAGE 2. Opening quote from Omega Sentinel. It’s from page 12 panels 4-5.
PAGES 3-4. Emma resurrects Charles.
Obviously a flash forward. This scene is a direct callback to the opening two pages of House of X #1, in which Professor X resurrected the X-Men after their first suicide mission against Orchis. The layouts are basically the same. This time it’s Emma resurrecting Professor X and another guy who isn’t easy to recognise – presumably Magneto?
The line “To me, my X-Men” was used by Xavier in the original (and was the only line of dialogue in the scene). Emma’s line here is new. Xavier is cast in the role that Cyclops had originally. Xavier has been killed and resurrected before in the Krakoa era, but this is very clearly presenting a role reversal.
PAGES 5-7. Data pages about Orchis.
Page 5 is largely a straight summary for anyone coming to this new. We have indeed seen Orchis actively recruiting allies, mainly via Henry Peter Gyrich, in other titles.
Page 7 is a list of failed attacks on the Orchis Forge space station, representing an increasingly desperate effort by the mutants to destroy Nimrod before Orchis can attack mutants. Since many of them are listed as “result unknown”, this is apparently from the Krakoan point of view. Mainly, the approach is to keep chucking X-Force in there and hoping for the best – and then resurrecting them every time. They’ve tried some other things too, including something involving a “Mystique gateway” (the exact details being unclear, since those entries are still ascribed to X-Force).
At the bottom are three attacks by allies, two of which are unredacted. The Technet are alien bounty hunters initially introduced in the 1980s Captain Britain run, who also appeared regularly in the original run of Excalibur. A flashback to their attack can be seen in page 11 panel 4. The Brood are the longstanding Alien knock-offs, who have been under the control of Broo since X-Men vol 5 #8. Their attack appears in flashback in page 11 panel 5.
PAGES 8-10. X-Force attack… again.
They get slaughtered, partly because Nimrod is very tough, but also for the reasons explained in the next scene. Nimrod’s “duplicate body” trick was previously seen in X-Men vol 5 #20; there’s just one of him, in two bodies.
PAGES 11-12. Orchis discuss the plot.
The man is Killian Devo, the director of Orchis. I’m fairly sure this is the first time he’s mentioned having any sort of temporal perception issue.
The woman is Alia Gregor, the creator of Nimrod. As we saw in X-Men vol 5 #20, Nimrod was intended to be a host body for the consciousness of Gregor’s husband (who was killed during the first mutant attack on the Forge in House of X). Nimrod is an obvious parallel to Krakoan resurrection. Mystique’s attempt to stop Nimrod from being created backfired and resulted in the personality being lost, hence Gregor’s objection to the description of Nimrod as her husband.
As Alia points out, the repeated attacks by X-Force are a desperate strategy, because each time, Orchis learns more about how to beat them – but the mutants seem to learn nothing. In House of X, when the mutants first attacked the Forge, we established that it was too far away for Xavier to remain in contact with them and maintain backups. So, when they die and are resurrected, they come back with no memories of the attack. It must be obvious to Xavier that trying the same thing again and again is unlikely to work, so the implication is that he’s desperate.
Note some wider implications of this. It’s not clear whether X-Force even know that they’ve been sent on all these missions. They may have been (deliberately?) restored to a point in time before of that happened. More alarmingly, the data pages earlier expressly said that the mutants don’t know what the outcome of the earlier X-Force missions was. (“Result unknown.”) If we’re to take that literally, does that mean Xavier has been resurrecting X-Force without actually being certain that they’re dead? (In House of X #4, Jean Grey was able to relay a message that the X-Men had been killed. It’s not clear from the incursion we see on pp8-10 that anyone’s doing the same here.)
As it happens, the previous X-Forces are indeed dead, so crisis averted. But still.
The cyborg on page 12 is Karima Shapandar aka Omega Sentinel. She’s a former X-Man whose reasons for aligning with Orchis haven’t yet been explained. Interestingly, she makes the point that “someone remembers – it’s why they keep coming.” Whatever Karima has in mind, the line is clearly intended to bring to mind Moira MacTaggert, whose memories of her previous lives are the driving force behind current Krakoan policy, and the desperation to defeat Nimrod.
PAGE 13. Recap and credits. The small print in the bottom left reads “AUTUMN, WINTER, SPRING, SUMMER”, referring to the four divisions of Krakoa’s Quiet Council ruling body. The top right reads “THE BOOKS OF DESTINY”, referring the books of prophecy written by Destiny that were a major plot point in X-Treme X-Men back in the day. Moira was seen reading some of them in X-Men vol 5 #20.
PAGES 14-20. Moira’s third life.
This is an expansion of a scene from House of X #2, in which Moira celebrates her creation of a cure for the mutant gene, only to be instantly attacked, lectured and slaughtered by Mystique and Destiny. This scene is the root of Moira’s fear of Destiny, who specifically warns that she is older than Moira, and will become instantly aware of the changes that Moira seeks to bring about in her next life.
More specifically…
Page 14 is a new scene, but panel 2 is based on House of X #2 page 10, panel 4. In the original, she was holding up the cure, rather than a glass of champagne. Other than that, the layout is the same. In this version, her fellow scientists – Singh, Hatwell, Moorr and Gil – get names, and our attention is specifically drawn to the fact that it was a collaborative effort of five people. There’s an obvious allusion here to the Five, the mutants who combine their powers to achieve resurrection on Krakoa. The references to Moira’s dream also position her as a quasi-Xavier figure.
Pages 15-18 and 20 are a re-drawn version of House of X #2 pages 11-15- not a reprint, but re-drawn with the exact same layouts. There are a couple of minor dialogue changes:
- Moira’s line “You killed all my friends, everyone” has been cut
- Mystique originally said “Now listen closely” before “Destiny has a word for you.”
- Moira originally said “But I’m not trying to force it on anyone, I’m only trying to cure people who want it.”
- Perhaps the most significant (but also potentially a mistake): Destiny’s line “Do you have any idea how much they hate us” has changed to “Do you have any idea how much they hate you?” However, she always went on to talk about of string of things that the humans would do to “you”.
- Destiny’s line “My powers will have manifested full of the knowledge of what we have done” is changed to the rather clearer “My powers will have manifested before you are reborn, equipped with the knowledge of today.”
- Destiny originally said that if Moira tried to kill her then “I will see my end coming and prevent it.” She now says “I will see you coming.”
- Destiny originally had a “…” hesitation before the line “I see ten lives.”
- Moira’s line “How is – how is that possible?” has been changed to “How can – how can I die?” That’s probably just because it’s clearer.
- Moira originally said “I don’t want to die like this”, not “I don’t want to die.”
- Destiny’s original reply to that line was “Dying like this is what a life poorly lived gets you.” That’s been replaced by “Who does?”
Page 19 is a new scene, fitting in just before Moira’s murder. In it, Destiny suggests that even if Moira changes her ways in future lives, she will always have in the back of her mind the idea that getting rid of mutants entirely was the right call. Obviously, we’re coming back to that.
PAGE 21. Moira looks for her fellow scientists.
The art isn’t terribly clear about this, but she’s meant to be visiting the former Muir Isle Research Centre (which gets confirmed in a later scene). She retrieves a notebook from the ruins which has her notes on the mutant cure, and the names of the four scientists she worked with before. (Doesn’t she have a photographic memory for this stuff…?)
The scientists are given full names here, but they all seem to be new characters.
PAGES 22-25. Orchis consult Hordeculture.
Terra Verde is a South American micronation which has appeared prominently in X-Force; it seems to be serving here just as a generic location for a hidden base.
The two hyper-intelligent ape scientists are a callback to X-Men vol 5 #1, where the X-Men attacked an Orchis base that had a whole bunch of apes with doctorates.
Hordeculture are evil botanists who debuted in X-Men vol 5 #3. Though normally played as comedy characters because they’re all old women, there’s nothing about the concept that inherently prevents them from being played straight. The two we see here are Augusta Bromes and Edith Scutch. Their ability to hack Krakoan gates was established in their first appearance, and they’ve apparently sold some of that technology to Orchis.
PAGE 26. Tommy reports back to Sage.
Sage is the communications hub for X-Force. Tommy is a very minor character – a walk-on Morlock who was the first to die in the Mutant Massacre back in Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #210. We’ve seen her resurrected on Krakoa before, in Hellions #1.
PAGES 27-31. Professor X and Magneto consult with Moira.
“Moira’s No-Place.” Her hidden home beneath Krakoa, seen back in Powers of X #6 and occasionally since. The books on her desk are volumes of Destiny’s diaries – note that Xavier is flicking through one of them when she arrives.
“You’re the most important person in the world.” Presumably because, if Moira dies, the timeline gets reset. It’s not immediately clear what the long-term plan is to deal with that, though suspended animation or somehow depowering her would seem to be options.
“Nimrod might be an inevitability.” Xavier is basically right in what he says here: everything the X-Men have done in their attempts to destroy Nimrod have simply wound up being essential steps in his creation. Nimrod exists because they botched their interference with Alia Gregor’s attempt to resurrect her husband. And he only died in the first place defending the Forge against the X-Men’s attack.
“Have you ever tried embracing the machines?” The very fact that Xavier is asking this shows that he doesn’t have faith that he’s getting the full picture from Moira.
The answer to his question is no. Moira’s previous lives were:
- 1: Ordinary human.
- 2: Prodigy who dies in a plane crash before meeting anyone else important.
- 3: Develops the mutant cure and gets killed by Mystique and Destiny.
- 4: More or less normal X-Men history, ending in a Sentinel apocalypse.
- 5: Mutant separatism, wiped out by Sentinels.
- 6: The far future timeline from Powers of X, where posthumanity ascends to the Phalanx.
- 7: Moira tries to extinguish the Trask bloodline, but the Sentinels emerge anyway.
- 8: Moira sides with Magneto.
- 9: Moira sides with Apocalypse.
- 10: The mainstream Marvel Universe.
Moira has indeed never tried embracing the machines; her approach in all previous lives has assumed (reasonably enough) that they’re an existential threat.
“Nimrod and Destiny.” Nimrod is a threat to mutants. It’s less clear that Destiny is a threat to anyone but Moira. Moira has resisted bringing back any precognitives on Krakoa, but is that just an excuse to keep Destiny out…?
“It was in your tea.” Xavier is claiming to have tagged Moira during a scene from Powers of X #6. In the original scene, Xavier was making reassuring noises to Moira as she recited her usual concerns. With hindsight, the clear implication is that Charles and Magneto have never trusted Moira (at least not blindly). That begs the question of why they’ve been so consistent in stringing Mystique along, though – and indeed we still don’t know why they and Moira wanted Mystique on the Quiet Council in the first place. Moira’s suspicion that she is being ignored may well be right.
At any rate, Moira’s preoccupation is to get rid of Destiny at all costs, and to get rid of Mystique into the bargain. Maybe she never wanted Mystique on the Quiet Council and it was Xavier and Magneto who insisted.
“There are two seats open.” There have been two vacancies on the Quiet Council ever since Apocalypse and Jean Grey both quit in the “X of Swords” crossover.
PAGES 32-35. Magneto and Professor X implement Moira’s plan.
Or do they? At any rate, Magneto is returning to Island M to pick up the back-up Cradle kept there, while Xavier is retrieving from Bar Sinister the DNA sample that would provide the basis for cloning Destiny a new body. (Or, again, is he?) Broadly speaking, Moira knows she can’t control the Five directly, so she’s aiming to make it impossible for them to resurrect Destiny even if they wanted to. Sinister seems amused by the whole thing – has he given Mystique the necessary sample already?
The Krakoan on the little canister seems to say SN3 and has no obvious significance.
PAGE 36. A data page on Black Tom Cassidy. It’s a medical report by regular doctor Cecilia Reyes. Broadly, this is just brniging readers up to speed on Black Tom’s status quo in X-Force.
PAGES 37-39. Hello flowers, hello trees.
Cypher serves as the translator for Krakoa; his wife Bei was introduced in “X of Swords” and hasn’t really done much since. It was an arranged marriage imposed on them by Saturnyne, but they seem to have bonded. Warlock – Cypher’s traditional partner character – is not unreasonable in calling her scary, though his feelings of being supplanted by her have already been addressed over in New Mutants.
Nothing happens in this scene other than reminding us that Cypher and Warlock exist. Warlock may be a significant character here is Xavier and Magneto are now thinking in terms of befriending the machines.
PAGES 40-44. Bishop becomes the new Captain Commander.
The Commanders are the main defence leaders of Krakoa, with Cyclops the chief. Since he’s now going to be off Krakoa with the X-Men, Bishop (from Marauders) is stepping up. Psylocke (from Hellions) is replacing Gorgon, who was killed in “X of Swords” and rebooted as a blank-slate ingenue. He’s obviously no longer capable of fulfilling the role.
All of this initiation ceremony is completely made up from scratch, which has been a feature of the whole Krakoan era – social rituals that, in fact, must have been made up on the back of an envelope last week, but which aspire to give the whole thing a look of stability and permanence. Interestingly, the final page of the scene lampshades this. And then all four defence Commanders leave the island simultaneously to go drinking in Madripoor. That seems… poor planning.
PAGES 45-50. Look who’s back.
Xavier and Magneto start out apparently trying to fulfil Moira’s plan to ease Mystique off the Council. But, somehow, Mystique has managed to get Destiny resurrected. Note that Sinister seems to be giggling, just as he did in the earlier scene where Xavier visited him to get the DNA sample. Mind you, he’s Mr Sinister. He does that a lot.
The voice over is an edited version of a speech from Destiny to Mystique in a flashback in X-Men vol 5 #6. Importantly, note that Destiny’s instructions were for Mystique to destroy Krakoa if she couldn’t be brought back. But she has. So what now?
PAGE 51. You’re shocked, I know, but the Krakoan reads NEXT: DESTINY.
What now?
Xavier and Magneto have bungled everything, every step of the way.
They had two jobs. Stop Nimrod from being created and stop Destiny from being resurrected. They completely failed.
Moira has been betrayed. Moira is the one who is going to be doing some burning now.
The thing about forming an alliance with the machines is that this has been shown as a very poor idea.
The machines are the ones that always win.
Look at life nine.
Look closely at life six.
The real enemy doesn’t end up being post-humanity. It is the machines.
Everything leads to the Phalanx.
Look at Nimrod’s words to the post-humans, “How does it feel to know it doesn’t want you?”.
Look at the Librarian’s words to Moira while he hesitates, giving Moira her chance to be resurrected. “What would you do to change this?”.
Embracing the machines is not the correct option.
I do hope we get a scene of an X-Man confronting Omega Sentinel about her complete about-face. I quite liked her during Mike Carey’s run.
Regarding the ‘Magneto and Professor X implement Moira’s plan’ scene, I’m pretty sure that was Mystique in disguise as both of them.
Magneto wears his black suit throughout the entire issue: the Moira conversation, the changing of the guard, the Council scene. The only scene where he is in his white suit is the one where he goes to Island M. That was probably Mystique. ‘Magneto’ also takes a ship to Island M instead of using the gates, presumably because the gates would identify that Mystique visited the island.
The cradle in Island M is also he easiest one to steal. Practically no one lives there. The other four Cerebros are located in the House of X, the Summer House, the Pointe and Moira’s No-Place. All fours locations would be heavily guarded.
Once Mystique had the Cerebro, she could disguise herself as Professor X and go collect the DNA samples from Mr Sinister. Essex is probably amused because he recognises her. So amused, in fact, that he wrote about it in his Sinister Secrets.
Are we gonna find out Orchis has a bunch of X-Men/X-Force alive and imprisoned in space? And we’ll have to deal with what to do with duplicates?
GN-How did Mystique use the Cerebro to resurrect Destiny?
Isn’t that overly complicated?
Until that point, Sinister had Destiny’s DNA.
All Mystique had to do was disguise herself as Xavier and get a sample from Sinister and then order the Five to resurrect Destiny.
The same problem applies with using Cerebro in either case.
Now, Hope already has access to one of the Cerebros.
We have seen the Five circumvent Quiet Council orders in the past, but it would be strange to have Mystique disguised as Xavier asking Hope to use Cerebro.
Besides which, I think Sinister would have no problem sabotaging Xavier and Magneto’s goals.
Moira didn’t want Sinister on Krakoa. Sinister betrayed Krakoa to join the Man-Machine Supremacy in life nine.
So, Mystique probably didn’t need to attempt to trick Sinister.
Thinking about allying with the machines is a pretty natural idea, though. It might work out horribly, but Xavier and Magneto are right that it hasn’t been tried on a major level yet. When the whole point to this iteration of Moira’s life is trying something completely new, the fact she hasn’t tried that at any point is definitely something to flag.
And if you’re thinking of befriending the machines, Cypher is as important in that scene as Warlock. He’s an important bridge both in his powers and in bonding to Warlock in the past. Then there’s also Karima, who’s a wild card and could certainly help them explore that path some.
I’m not sure where they’re going with Moira right now. The flaws and questions about what she’s up to definitely could go straight along to the possibility that she’s just been making a honeypot to get rid of the mutants. Get them all in one place, call down Orchis, take the Cure herself, and quietly slip out the back to live the rest of her last life? If Magneto and Xavier died, no one would know to go looking for her, and she could have a peaceful end. In that case, she definitely doesn’t want Destiny back to warn anyone.
At the same time, with past-life-Destiny bringing up the possibility that Moira would turn against them, it might be too obvious a twist at this point.
It’s also possible that *isn’t* Destiny. The art looks like she’s much younger. That makes sense if she’s resurrected in the prime of her life, but also would make it easier to slip in a ringer. Get someone the right general size, put the mask on, give her some vocal coaching. Mystique’s been around long enough that I wouldn’t blink at her having one of Magneto’s old helmets or other tech to build into that mask as a psi-blocker.
It’s not a long-term play. It falls apart if she walks past Logan or runs into one of the old Brotherhood/Freedom Force gang who want to chat, but if you’re trying to get a reaction out of Magneto and Xavier in front of everyone else, it’d be a good ploy. It’s a mind game I can see out of dear Raven, even if I hope that actually *is* Destiny.
Am I the only person that thinks that making Kwannon one of the captains is odd? Especially since it’s not clear whether this takes place before or after the current Hellions storyline? if this takes place after it, then not only should the council be questioning her effectiveness since Sinister blackmailed her for a lengthy period of time but Kwannon should be furious at Emma for implementing a strategy that risked (or ended) the life of her child. (The previews for issue 16 are up and they make it clear Kwannon survived, so she should remember what happened.)
Jon R-The idea I got from that scene is that Xavier and Magneto have already allied with the machines, in some form.
It seems very odd for Xavier and Magneto to bring that up, out of nowhere, with Moira.
They also don’t seem that concerned by Nimrod’s coming in to existence.
They sort of blow it off, “Maybe Nimrod is inevitable.”, even though Moira has stated that the existence of Nimrod will always spell extinction for mutants.
Maybe Xavier and Magneto’s overwhelming arrogance and ineptitude attempting to use Mystique to stop Nimrod was all part of Xavier and Magneto’s plan to lead to the creation of a Nimrod.
It seems that the slight variations in the Moira/Destiny scene are the differing recollection of either Moira or Destiny… The subtle emphases do change Moira’s motivation. Is Moira an unreliable narrator?
But yes, seems like Moira is going to be the one to burn everything down. And ally with Mystique and Destiny? It does feel richly deserved, with Xavier and Magneto so very condescending. And getting a tracking device on Moira – who else will be aware?
I do like this return to Hickman’s grand mythos, and the very sinister undercurrents throughout. Could go any number of ways. And what is with Doug/Bei/Warlock? That’s even stranger.
@GN: Good call on Mystique impersonating Xavier and Magneto. My bet is that Mystique then worked with Emma and the Five to resurrect Destiny.
The Five have been reluctant to follow Xavier and Magneto’s wishes recently (in New Mutants?) with clones, so it’s possible they circumvented their leadership in this case, too. And Emma’s got her fingers in everything anymore.
I loved all the changes to the dialogue during the Destiny/Moira confrontation. So much clearer. Quick question: The Muir Island Research Centre ruin that’s behind Moira in the present day was destroyed in some other story, right? Because it can’t be from life 3 unless I’m completely misunderstanding how Moira’s powers work.
The comments here underscore to me that the plot is working at least on the level that Marvel have promoted it as a “trust no one” kind of story. It’s hard to guess at the motivations or indeed the actions of the primary players.
I did like the re-calibration of the Commanders, since you end up with a representative from most of the team books — Cyclops from the X-Men, Kwannon from Hellions, Bishop from Marauders and Magik from New Mutants. No representation from Excalibur, SWORD or X-Force, but I guess it’s all likely to be scotched when the line resets anyway…
The only character in the Inferno “they can’t be trusted” teasers that we didn’t see in this issue so far is Colossus, who was paired up with Kwannon and Bishop in the teaser. The three of them have hardly had any scenes together, but at least now we have a connection between Kwannon and Bishop.
I don’t think Krakoa can be a honeypot; Moira actively helped plan for resurrection. You don’t set up a resurrection machine for a race you want to destroy.
This disappointed me. Pages wasted on repeating scenes and Orchis watching a couple of gates, Cyclops stepping down which could or should have happened in an issue of X-Men, and stuff which wasn’t as clear as it should have been – why is Moira looking back through Muir Island now? Why is there a notebook that looks like it was from the fire in life 3? I’ve read online reactions that thought the opening resurrection was a result of Onslaught Revelation.
This issue could basically have been an opening of a council meeting with the shock appearance of Destiny, then carry on into whatever’s coming in issue 2.
Karima’s line – somebody remembers…what? She’s inferred from this that somebody has remembered knowledge from ‘other’ futures? How?
If the book Moira was holding in the scene at Muir Island was her own, how is that possible if her death re-set the entire universe?
With the title “books of Destiny” I wondered if it was one of the diaries? Still doesn’t explain why Moira took the diary and why she visited Muir Island. Nostalgia? Was this a regular enough occurance that two gates were needed to mask Moira’s comings and goings?
I’m seeing what Jon R is seeing. It could be that she’s the real villain, still hoping to wipe out mutants? Could also explain why Destiny is so anti-Moira. After all, if Destiny did foresee that Moira helped create a mutant paradise, why would she be so antagonistic to her?
I don’t think the book she wrote was from Life 3.
First and foremost, her name wasn’t MacTaggert then, since she only married Joe in the current life.
I expect it’s one of Destiny’s books, or notes Moira had written out herself, but it obviously wouldn’t be possible for her to have plucked it out of the fire.
The reason so much emphasis was placed on Orchis watching a Paris gate is likely because Moira has a personal gate from Paris to her No Place.
The scene with Moira’s notebook was to show that apparently Moira either betrayed Destiny and was working on a cure for mutants in this life, or she simply recorded what she remembered from life three in a notebook…perhaps because of she did succeed with this life, she needed to cure herself of being a mutant to prevent herself from restarting the timeline again?
I was confused by the Muir Island scene too though.
I was hoping someone could explain the current status of Muir Island since Moira’s death.
Was the facility ever rebuilt after the Moira golem was killed by Mystique?
Was that the last we saw of Muir Island?
I wonder if we are going to revisit that scene and there is going to be a reveal that Moira was working on the cure for mutants again, and that was why Mystique targeted her during the Claremont story.
Dave-I think the review is correct and the opening scene is from the future.
I think Xavier and Magneto are going to be revealed as enemies of Krakoa and be killed, leaving Emma to take over running Krakoa.
She’ll resurrect Xavier and Magneto as their old selves before whatever has occurred which may have led to them aligning with the machines. That’s my guess.
I’m not sure if Moira is also an enemy, or maybe Moira is going to choose Emma who will be willing to follow Moira’s plan, unlike Xavier and Magneto.
On the other hand, there may be multiple sides all working against Krakoa.
Moira may be still planning to betray mutants.
Xavier and Magneto may have aligned with the machines against Moira.
Sinister and Mystique may be working together to undermine Moira, Xavier and Magneto,
The problem with Moira working against mutants is that she had multiple opportunities to eliminate mutants for all eternity.
In life six, if she had allowed the Phalanx to bring about Ascension, as the Librarian said, post-humanity would have become immortal and Moira would have been guaranteed to always lose.
In life nine, Moira could have let Nimrod kill Apocalypse and the fate of mutants would have been sealed. The Man-Machine Supremacy were the future.
So, Moira had plenty of opportunities to betray mutants.
You can tell Hickman wrote this because it’s mostly repetitions of stuff we’ve already seen.
I agree that this is a “trust no one” story that’s going to have everyone look shady and some twists.
Allying with the machines makes perfect sense. Mutants can’t beat them no matter what they do. It’s an unwinnable war. So the only option is not to fight.
One thing that wasn’t mentioned- Black Tom’s rantings include “hallucinations of machinery moving under his skin.”
Followed immediately by the Cypher scene where Warlock is once again infecting the flora of the island.
That has to mean the Krakoa/Cypher/Warlock triumvirate is up to something.
PS- Orchis now has a shitload of adamantium from all those dead Wolverines.
Chris V- sure Moira did try to save the mutants.
And failed every time.
Like Destiny said, Moira could once again come to a point where she thinks getting rid of mutants is the only choice.
Put them out of their misery.
ChrisV: Right, the idea of Moira working against mutants is that she was honestly on their side for multiple lives, but at some point during Life 10 she’s just given up. Maybe as a child, or maybe more recently. All of her plans and attempts have failed and she just wants it to end. Or in Inferno terms, wants to watch it all burn.
She knows this is potentially her last life, so if she’s run out of good ideas then I can definitely see the temptation to break everything she’s spent lifetimes “wasting” her life on. Sure, she could just have spent the life lounging on some island paradise instead, but despair and anger can do some ugly things.
I’m not necessarily banking on this, but there’s enough there that I can see it lining up.
Uncanny X-Ben-Yes, that was the other point I wanted to make.
Black Tom’s page mentioned machinery.
That ties in to my thinking that Xavier and Magneto have aligned with the machines and betrayed Moira.
The real Xavier and Magneto might be dead and have been replaced by techno-organic beings.
Hence, the scene with Emma at the beginning of the issue.
Their asking Moira about aligning with the machines was so completely lacking in context in that conversation.
I think they were trying to gauge Moira’s reaction to see if she would agree to Krakoa forming an alliance with the machines.
Orchis sure does have a lot of adamantium now. This is the first I’ve dipped back into the X-titles since House/Power of X. I presume Proteus’ reality warping powers allow him to create Wolverine’s adamantium over and over? So theoretically he could create vibranium, gold, or whatever any time he wanted to?
And I’m sure this has been discussed/debated ad nauseum since House of X but I am not clear on how Moira’s powers work. Surely she can’t really be resetting the 616 timeline every time she has died. Wouldn’t entities like the TVA, Kang, Eternity, Infinity, The Living Tribunal, The Watcher, etc. know this was happening? Wouldn’t it make more since that she was born in a non-616 reality and every rebirth is in a different universe?
Jon R-My original theory was that Krakoa was a trap for mutants and Moira was the true enemy.
I dropped that belief as Hickman’s run continued.
However, in life three, Moira believed that mutants were a cancer in need of a cure.
Destiny ordered Moira burned to death.
Moira supposedly took up the mutant cause.
I mean, if I dislike someone and they torture me, I’m not going to turn around and change my opinion. I am going to hate this person all the more and want them to suffer.
It was interesting that Moira responded to Xavier and Magneto’s proposal about aligning with the machines by saying, “It would be like working with cancer.”
That could be read as a hint.
In life three, she said mutants were a cancer. She’s been working alongside other mutants.
Hmm…”It would be like working with cancer.”
Daniel T- yeah they’ve hand waved that whole “how’s Wolverine get his metal back” thing.
Proteus did it is the new a wizard did it.
Souls= Proteus
Adamantium= Proteus
TK virus= Proteus
Horseman form= Proteus
You’d think if he was that awesome they’d have never beaten him.
Daniel-Moira dies and it restarts the 616 reality back to the time of her birth.
Hickman explicitly explained this within his story, so it just has to be accepted for the story he is telling.
Why no cosmic entities have noticed? Maybe some of them do, but accept it as a natural aspect of reality since Moira evolved with this mutant power.
“Moira is the most important person who has ever lived.”
I read the “Mystique gate” as a reference to the gate that she planted on the Orchis station. I don’t recall what it’s status quo was left as in Hickman’s X-MEN.
The Muir Island scene could have been clearer. I read it as she really did work on that team in this reality (after all, we know she won the Nobel) but deliberately steered their research in a different direction.
I enjoyed this issue. It’s mostly table setting, but it’s also increasingly clear that we’re going to get some definitive payoffs to all of the dark hints that all is not right on Krakoa. I agree that Xavier/Magneto don’t come across as trustworthy here, although Moira’s trip to Muir Island and overall obsession with Destiny seem real sketchy too.
I’m with Jon R… I think the reveal is going to be that Moira herself has allied with the machines, and that she’s viewing the Krakoa project mainly as a way of assembling all the mutants in one place to be slaughtered. Then she uses her Muir Island research to permanently repress the X-gene in latent mutants and humanity in general? Do we know if her cure is meant to work on existing mutants, or prevent the manifestation of new ones?
@GN — Nice catch. I think you’re probably right that this is Mystique posing as Xavier and Magneto.
@Michael — I’m working on the assumption that Inferno takes place after all the current storylines, so Psylocke’s presence here didn’t bother me. It also seems pretty clear that Trial of Magneto is going to end with Magneto exonerated.
@Dave — I think the idea is that Karima is saying that if someone keeps sending X-Force clones to attack Orchis, then someone must know the previous attacks failed. Therefore they’re being monitored by someone, probably Xavier.
Ben Johnston-My original theory was that the Krakoan drugs are meant to stop mutants from being born.
My original theory was that Moira was secretly on the side of humans.
Someone pointed out that the letters given to the Krakoan drugs are a protein which causes cancer.
Some people jumped on this as proof that Krakoa was planning to give humans cancer and commit genocide.
My theory is that the letters played in to Moira’s comment about “mutants being a cancer” and these drugs were part of her cure.
It feels like this could have been published right after HOXPOX and the first issue of Hickman’s X-Men, and we would have missed practically nothing.
Since people think that Moira is the enemy working against mutants, so here is my original theory when that was my working theory after House/Powers.
Life Three-Moira thinks that mutants are a cancer. Gets killed by Destiny.
Life four and five-Moira half-heartedly takes up Destiny’s cause. She uses mutants to try to help humanity, gets killed.
She tries to keep humans and mutants separate, thinking that they can coexist, gets killed.
Life six-Moira grows frustrated and secretly sabotages mutant ascendancy, when it seems that mutants are going to win in this lifetime.
She continues to live wanting to see what the fate of humanity will be in the far future.
She sees the rise of post-humanity.
The war for survival sees humanity sacrifice everything that makes it human in order to win.
Her hatred for mutants grows.
The Librarian confronts Moira with his doubts about Ascension and becoming part of the “machine-god”.
Moira takes up a new mission…stopping humanity from going extinct by becoming post-human.
She blames mutants for causing this to happen. She realizes that only by causing the extinction of mutants can humanity be saved.
Moira realizes the true enemy are the Machines.
Remember, in Life Six, we never saw what happened before Wolverine and Moira were in the preserve.
Nimrod says something interesting though, “They (the mutants) must never have dominion again.”
This makes it sound as if the mutants did win at some point during life six.
Could Moira have secretly betrayed the mutants? Is that why we never saw the entirety of Moira’s life six yet?
Life seven-Moira targets the machines. Her plan fails.
Life eight-Moira uses this life to learn how to manipulate Magneto.
Life nine-Moira learns how to control Apocalypse.
Life ten-Moira uses her knowledge of Xavier, Magneto, and Apocalypse to create a plan leading to the death of all mutants and doing so before the rise of the Machines, so that the mutant/human war doesn’t lead to humanity going extinct with the rise of post-humanity.
Destiny must stay dead because she is the only one who will realize that Moira intends to betray mutants.
I have to agree, @GN made a good call on detecting that Mystique is probably the one taking steps to resurrect Destiny.
Still, I don’t think she did. You heard it first from me here: this is not Destiny, but rather Mystique’s protegé Carmen from Children of the Atom, working as a living display and reminder of Destiny to illustrate Mystique’s pitch.
I don’t think that Mystique would attempt to work directly with the Five just yet – the process requires a telepath, which she is not. She could bring one along with her, but that would call undesired attention and probably expose her intentions too soon.
Her best shot for the moment is convincing the High Council with a very public elevator pitch that will hopefully overrule or even overcome the objections from Magneto and Xavier. Securing the DNA and the Cerebro are parts of her backup plan, which is riskier and more demanding.
I could not help but notice that Magneto’s continuity is being played fast and loose at present. We are probably to assume that his scenes in this series and in that special that is Way of X #6 in all but name happen after the conclusion of Trial of Magneto; that is not terribly clear and somewhat hurts the later series’ ability to surprise us in future issues.
Moira is a bit of a mystery here. Despite a very welcome open exposition of their reasons to suspect and trust each other, ultimately Magneto and Xavier very nearly admit that Moira has good reason to doubt their loyalty – and she has. The reverse is also true; Moira’s mental state is not above question here, and Xavier may be aware of layers of instability that we can only guess at. She is, after all, a person with nine lives of terrible trauma atop each other and is living in extreme isolation with significant burdens of secrecy. For all anyone knows, she can decide without warning that this is just too much and she would be better off, as suggested above, betraying Krakoa to Orchis and using her own cure for mutancy on herself.
Speaking of which, I am still uncertain on whether we should take Destiny’s words at face value. She claims that in each future Moira life she will herself recurr and be forewarned about any hostile intent from Moira. I may have missed something, but I don’t think that would happen. It may well be a daring bluff and nothing more – and Moira may know that for certain now that she has read Destiny’s diaries.
Finally, I liked what I perceive as a fairly subtle touch from Hickman in this issue: he is keeping a theme of contrasting pomp and arrogance with all too human lack of interest in actually sustaining those high ambitions. It feels like everyone is running around making ambitious statements and immediately showing a lack of commitment to the obvious consequences, often enough simply to establish links of mutual trust with each other. Orchis is perhaps the most ambitious group of all yet also the least arrogant overall – but they are still the target of repeated, increasingly desperate attacks by incredibly powerful enemies. Destiny threatens and orders the killing of Moira and expects to have that serve as the settling of a mutual understanding. Hordeculture is a small cabal of senior citizens engaged in both the trade of exotic, invaluable technology and deception of their own members so that they take the proper medicine. Moira, Xavier and Magneto all but admit that they can’t possibly trust each other anywhere near enough to pull off their ambitious plans which may well not even converge. Mystique is both a member of the High Council and heavily invested in barely-concealed betrayal of its goals. Cypher actually finds it funny that his wife terrifies himself as well as Warlock. Krakoa seems to resent Cypher’s interest in Warlock and Bel.
But I think my favorite is still that hilarious farce about the valued military traditions of Krakoa, those that are being made on the spot and disregarded immediately. Does anyone even know whether it means anything that Cyclops is “still a Captain” despite being in active duty in an independent team in another continent? The whole scene feels like everyone is about to ask “but what is that supposed to mean” while also answering “I have no idea and neither does you, so let’s play along and hope for the best, will you?”
Finally, the last scene is such a marvel (pun unintended) of, if I may, heavy handed subtlety. Xavier and Magneto might as well say outright to the High Council that they are hiding their main concerns but still want to launching baits and hope that someone else will bite. Kurt has to spell out that they are not sending a clear message, and he is correct. Sebastian Shaw comes as one of the most straightforward members here, which underscores how unreliable Xavier and Magneto have become. When Mystique shows that she has acted on their backs it is almost a relief, because it shows that someone knew what she wanted and acted on it. That isn’t very usual for this bunch of people, so many of which are big egos and hidden agendas.
Luis-There are definitely flaws in Destiny’s warning.
Moira would already know this from life six.
She lived long after Destiny and Mystique were dead. It would be hard for Destiny to keep her promise to kill Moira when she is long ago dead.
Really thought you’d leave this one for last this week, Paul.
Quite a lot to digest. Most people do seem to be reading the Destiny/Moira scene as a straight retelling of the end of Life 3, with one version or the other being delivered by an unreliable narrator. But the “Life 3” caption doesn’t actually show up until the very end, after what can easily be read as a scene transition. Is there room in the timeline for Destiny to have killed Moira twice? Maybe in the Trask-hunter timeline?
I initially read Moira’s “secure the Cradles” instruction as the explanation for why Magneto stole that Cerebro unit, as revealed in TOM #2; but then again, if the books are contemporaneous, why is he not in custody in Inferno? We probably do have to read all other books as taking place after TOM in its entirety.
It seems pretty likely that by the end of this, Chuck and Erik will be forced to retire and the Council will be dominated by former Brotherhood members. Moving Krakoa into the spectrum of more neutral-to-evil fictional nations, alongside the likes of Atlantis and Latveria.
>>Was the facility ever rebuilt after the Moira golem was killed by Mystique?
Was that the last we saw of Muir Island?
Muir Island has certainly appeared since Moira’s death. Destiny was resurrected there in Necrosha. The research facility was also rebuilt at some point; Banshee went there during Deadly Genesis. Sinister used it as the Marauder base during Messiah Complex. It was staffed by Madrox studying Terrigen during Death of X. I believe it’s where Cyclops died as well.
“Karima is saying that if someone keeps sending X-Force clones to attack Orchis, then someone must know the previous attacks failed. Therefore they’re being monitored by someone, probably Xavier.”
The mutants would know their plan failed simply from X-Force not coming back and the Orchis station still existing. And why would it even be worth stating that Xavier might be telepathically monitoring one of his teams?
Chris V – Your theory has Moira realising in life 6 that humanity will turn to machines to win against mutants, but this follows the two previous lives in which mutants lost during her lifetime, where it was just ‘regular’ humans with seemingly basic Sentinels. So that was either already before the rise of the machines, or if you class that as after then she’s already left it too late in this life.
Skippy-Nope. We saw Moira’s death in each life.
She was killed by the Sentinels again in life seven.
Thanks, Mathias. I couldn’t remember. I spend too much time studying House/Powers, so I’ve forgotten most of what happens between Claremont and Hickman now. heh
So, it doesn’t make sense that the facility would still be a burnt out ruin.
Could that scene be a flashback to right after the Moira golem was killed? Moira went to the wreckage of her laboratory to save her notebook.
>> She lived long after Destiny and Mystique were dead. It would be hard for Destiny to keep her promise to kill Moira when she is long ago dead.
Destiny’s promise seems a bit more vicious than that; I got the impression that what she meant was: I had my powers when you were a child, if I foresee you making a cure again, I’ll kill you before you hit puberty.
Dave-Fair point.
We don’t know what happened in Life Six.
Perhaps Moira was complacent, thinking that mutants would always lose. Humans would use Sentinels to kill mutants and humans would win, end of story.
Something happened in Life Six which changed events, as Sentinels didn’t just kill off the mutants like in lives four and five.
My guess, based on Nimrod’s statement, was that mutants were winning, until something happened…and the tide was turned by the rise of post-humanity, which horrified Moira.
Moira was trying to stop the creation of Nimrod in this life, but Xavier and Magneto failed.
Perhaps on purpose.
I’m not saying this is what is going to happen, it was just my conjecture after House/Powers.
Mathias-Destiny told Moira she had ten, maybe eleven lives.
I think she was saying that Destiny and Mystique would hunt Moira down each time she tried to betray mutants and kill her in each life, until in the final life, then they would kill Moira as a child, officially ending her life.
That was how I read it.
Destiny can presumably only see so far in the future though, so if Moira were to wait (say) a thousand years to betray mutants, I don’t think Destiny would foresee it.
It feels like everyone is running around making ambitious statements and immediately showing a lack of commitment to the obvious consequences
Extremely meta move by Hickman.
The cover is also pretty terrible, despite Opena’s best efforts. It looks like Moira walked in the morning after a big slumber party.
Nah it’s fine.
I like that Mystique is reaching for her sons hand in death.
My read on the Muir Island scene is that it was left in this state after the explosion in Dream’s End, and the cure notes are regarding the Legacy Virus cure, which she was working on when Mystique blew up the island and killed the Moira golem. The idea being that she had recruited the same group of scientists to help her save the mutants instead of “curing” them.
I recognize that the research center technically has been rebuilt, but that could be an Oversight. The mansion’s current state also doesn’t feel totally in line with published history.
It just doesn’t make much sense that Moira would have been developing a mutant cure in Life 10, since Destiny would have probably killed her.
How long has Destiny been properly dead in wonky Marvel time?
Ten years or so?
I guess she could’ve been developing the cure post-Destiny’s death and pre-Legacy virus. But, at least if we believe Destiny, Destiny would have foreseen Moira developing the mutant cure one day and killed her while she was still alive.
Unless she didn’t decide to until after Destiny died.
Precognition is a bitch.
@Uncanny X-Ben “I like that Mystique is reaching for her sons hand in death.”
We don’t know that they’re dead (Moira doesn’t have the capability or intent to kill of the entire X-group), and those two characters have no interpersonal dynamic in the current Krakoa era, so any implied connection is pretty irrelevant here.
@Uncanny X-Ben “Unless she didn’t decide to until after Destiny died.”
Why would that matter? Does Destiny’s power involve seeing one future, or multiple futures that keep changing? Does Destiny get to determine which future comes to pass, or do others affect the futures she sees?
I suspect we have a lot more to learn about Life Six that will shed some light on all this. (After all, we did skip a thousand years of history.) It’s possible that in that life, after dying to two Sentinel attacks in a row, Moira decided to try to work with the Trasks or some version of Orchis to develop an AI that would be less hostile to mutants, only to have the project backfire on her completely.
We already know from some of the redacted data pages in Powers of X that there are elements of her history Moira deliberately held back or refused to clarify for Xavier after the initial download. Based on her evasiveness in this issue, it would make sense if one of her secrets is that the great threat she’s warning them about is one she had a hand in creating, even if she wasn’t directly involved in this version of the timeline.