Secrets are revealed as Moira comes home and the shit hits the fan in X Deaths of Wolverine #4, written by Benjamin Percy, art by Federico Vicentini, colored by Dijjo Lima, and lettered by Cory Petit.

Liz Large: Hey Austin, long time no see! Are you as excited as I am to talk about the adventures of Psylocke, Greycrow, and Nanny again?

Austin Gorton: It’s been too long, Liz! I am super stoked to see what those crazy Hellions are up to these days, whether Greycrow and Psylocke are going to make it work, find out where Sinister’s cape is now. But, um, huh. Upon closer inspection, this isn’t Hellions. Although there are people doing terribly macabre things to other people and tossing off dry one-liners like an 80s action star, so…close enough, I guess. 

Keep it secret. Keep it safe.

Liz: I know we’re approaching the end of this story, but this opener is really where the plot started to click for me. We’ve seen hints and bits and pieces throughout, but starting with this opening scene everything starts to fall into place. Wolverine and Forge, in the not TOO distant future, make a last-ditch plan to save the day. I really like how they just don’t know what the specific problem was that led them here— just that there was one, and it needs to be discovered and fixed. 

Austin: Agreed. Unlike the usual time travel stuff, where the “shatter point” is clearly defined (“kill John Conner”, “stop the Senator Kelly assassination”), here it’s much more of a vague “wow, things really turned to shit, didn’t they? No idea why, exactly, but we gotta do something”. It’s a minor but refreshing spin on the “travel to the past to save the future” trope. Another twist here is that before he can go back in time, Wolverine must go forward in time, in order to learn exactly what that shatter point is. He travels (via, you know, living a long time) from the “near future” of the opening pages to a “far future” that is a lot like the setting of Moira’s ninth life from Powers of X. Thus, we learn how Omega Wolverine came to be infected with the Phalanx virus before traveling back to the “present”, and in an echo of and reversal to the end of Moira’s ninth life, we see that Moira tried to kill Wolverine before he used his knowledge of the future to fix the past.

Liz: Did it really take Logan hundreds of years to figure out that Moira was to blame? It does sound like he had a very rough time, between living on the run, being a science experiment, and getting thrown into the Preserve. I like the juxtaposition in this scene between Moira’s classic “villain chewing the scenery” explanation to him of why she’s done this to mutants and Logan’s narration boxes as he explains this story to his children in the present. It’s such a 180 from earlier in the series, where— at least for me— there was an inclination to understand Moira and assume this fake Wolverine was up to no good. This is our Wolverine, or close enough to him, just after even more terrible things than usual. The art really sells how difficult things are for him, as he struggles to physically enact the next steps of the plan and get back to the present. 

Austin: The art throughout the series has been really effective at manipulating our emotions through grotesque depictions of bodily horror: earlier, Moira was positioned as a bad-ass hero on the run, alone against the world, forced to take the extreme measure of amputating her own arm to stay under the radar. That sequence positioned her as, a sympathetic figure (if not an entirely blameless one). Here, the ominous Techno-Organic Terminator Wolverine of the series gets humanized via the grotesque imagery of him ripping the time travel seed out of his eye socket. And, later, Moira’s status as an out-and-out villain (in the present, as well as the future) is solidified through another bit of grotesquery we’ll get to.   

Liz: Our first data page is a quote from Moira, and it is a lot. It shows how she’s fully embraced the machines, and while it could be from any point between now and the far future, her team up with tech genius Arnab Chakladar shows that her allegiance has changed. She’s already gone by the time the Wolverine family arrives at the lab, but Chakladar is still there and, well. Things don’t go great for him!

Austin: This issue really completes Moira’s transformation into an out-and-out villain, a threat to all existence. While “Inferno” made it clear she was no longer interested in saving mutants, merely “curing” them, here it’s confirmed that this iteration of Moira is ultimately gonna kill everyone – mutant and human – in her quest for AI singularity. Thanks to an impassioned/deeply depressing rundown of how all the members of Techno Wolverine’s family died in the future, plus a promise not to kill him, Techno Wolverine convinces Arnab to give up Moira’s location. Then proceeds to give him a little Phalanx-assisted brain surgery by claw. 

The Prodigal Daughter Returns

Liz: Moira’s headed to Krakoa, and the data page makes it clear that she’s reached out to her longtime friend and former partner Banshee for help, even telling him at least some of what she’s been through. It’s almost a sweet moment, and I assumed that Banshee, so happy to see Moira alive, would simply assist her in reaching the island. But in what is a truly horrifying moment, we discover that Moira has instead disguised herself as Banshee to trick the gates. How’d she do it? BY WEARING HIS FACE SKIN LIKE A MASK. I’m sorry, I simply cannot. While mutant death is pretty cheap right now, this is some Criminal Minds-level behavior. 

Austin: It’s quite possibly the best smash cut from a data page to story in the Krakoa Era. 

Text Page: Hi Sean, it’s your old squeeze, Moira. Turns out I’m alive, and a mutant, and I need something from you. 

Story page: What I need is, to re-enact the movie Face-Off, with your face.

Ever since the whole Moira retcon was laid out, I’ve been waiting for someone to do something with the fact that Banshee once had a long-term, very serious relationship with what we now know to be this hugely significant figure in mutant history. 

Because I am an Old who’s read Chris Claremont X-Men comics too many times and remembers when Banshee left the X-Men to chase after a Moira who was distraught over having temporarily manipulated the genetics of a reduced-to-infancy Magneto, I really wanted to see that relationship get acknowledged in some way. Well, I guess I should be careful what I wish for, because it led to the single most gruesome moment in a series filled with gruesome moments. 

Liz: Oh my god, Moira has gone full Nic Cage. Seriously though, this is such a moral line to cross? This took effort! You don’t accidentally turn somebody’s head into a Halloween mask in a fit of passion or a momentary lapse of judgment.

Do you think Destiny is looking into the future and seeing this? Just reporting back to the Council like “Look, I know I’m biased but this woman is actually unhinged”. 

Austin: Moira’s Nic Cage-ification is complete by the time she grabs Destiny while wearing an organic mech suit and declares “Guess I’ve got a date with Destiny!”. She all but winks at the camera. 

Liz: Not attending this date will be Xavier himself, as he literally blows off the time travel-related disaster happening in this issue due to the time-traveling-related disaster simultaneously happening in X Deaths of Wolverine. His irritation with her is delightful as he explains that she’s not the only one with problems! Many people are being hunted right now!

Austin: Xavier is channeling all of us right now (sometimes Zoom is just easier and safer!), but his appearance does prove a curious intersection point between this book and its sister series X Lives of Wolverine. Both involve sending Wolverine through time to save the future/present, and things aren’t going too great with Xavier’s time-traveling Wolverine at the moment. But with only two issues left (one per series), it’s still unclear how the two narratives will impact each other on anything more than a parallel construction/thematic level (or if they even will at all).

Liz: I’ve been wondering that. Now that everyone is on Krakoa, it would seem like they’re destined to meet, but the stories just don’t feel connected. 

Dance Through the Ashes 

Liz: You know what else isn’t connected? Forge and his mutant abilities, after Moira zaps him with his own depowering gun. I like that Forge is present in both the current-timeline attempts to avert this catastrophe and also the near future version. He’s not doing particularly well in either situation, but he’s laying a foundation of supplies that will make a difference. 

Austin: Forge getting depowered feels like a big deal, something which is (understandably) shoved into the background by the bigger (Moira seemingly dies) and grosser (Face-Off Banshee) things that happen in the issue. But given how involved he is in the development of Krakoan technology (to say nothing of Cerebro technology) this feels like a much bigger victory for Moira than if she’d wiped out, I dunno, Domino’s power or something. Plus there’s the semi-irony in Forge getting hit with the neutralizer gun he developed for the US government all those years ago and was more or less responsible for putting him in the position he’s in now (in terms of setting him on a path towards the X-Men). Then again, it all becomes moot if the Five can just restore him from a backup with his powers. I don’t think it’s yet been established whether that would work or not (we know it wouldn’t work on the only other mutant depowered by the neutralizer in the Krakoa Era – Moira – because she specifically wasn’t ever backed up, a fact confirmed here). 

Liz: You’re right— this really does feel like taking out a heavy hitter. Forge is responsible for so much of modern-day Krakoa, and (though I don’t think Moira knows) is also responsible for the predicament Moira is in. 

Austin: Another thing overshadowing the loss of Forge’s powers is the fact that Techno Wolverine got hit with the neutralizer, too. Which means without his healing factor to hold it in check, he’s become a fully armed and operational Phalanx. Even though this was set up earlier in the issue when Laura asked Techno Wolverine what would happen if his healing factor gave out, the frantic pace at which the shit hit the fan at the end of the issue obscured the plot beat enough that I was still surprised. Did you see that beat coming, or were you effectively hoodwinked as well?  

Liz: That foreshadowing definitely felt like something that we’d be seeing, but I wasn’t expecting it to be until next issue. These last few pages were action-packed, and I assumed that depowering Forge and grabbing Destiny in a mech suit would be plenty! But I really liked it. It’s the perfect cliffhanger going into the finale, as there’s a sense of such dread hanging over everything. No matter what path this takes, there are going to be repercussions for everyone involved. Do you think Moira’s really dead? Or is something going on here that I’m not seeing?

Austin: I mean, it sure seems like she’s dead: she took two techno-organic fistfuls of claws to the chest and we saw her lifeless body afterward. Being the series that killed off Moira after everything HoXPoX did to change our understanding of her would certainly put it on the map. That said, this is comics, specifically, comics about a group of characters who have found a way to cheat death pretty casually, and we’re talking about a character who, all other plot beats aside, we’ve seen die nine times before. So I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this is not, in fact, the end of Moira in some form. I will say, it definitely reads like we’re meant to think she’s dead. 

All in all, Forge depowered, Moira *dead*, Wolverine consumed by the Phalanx – that’s a hell of a cliffhanger to carry us into the final issue. 

X-Traneous Facts

• Krakoan reads: TIMES UP
• I’m sorry but you can’t have an X-character say “you should have killed me when you had the chance” without my mind immediately going to the best X-Men movie. 

Liz Large

Liz Large is a copywriter with a lot of opinions on mutants.

Austin Gorton

Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him on Twitter @AustinGorton