Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

I'm still betting towards the multiverse merging mutants into the MCU. That way you can have long lived mutants like apocalypse and Wolverine, and and old X & Magneto, without going "Where have they been?!".

 

I don't know if that's necessary. I mean, there are already a number of MCU characters and entities that have been retconned in as secretly around the whole time -- Hank Pym, Wakanda, the magic-users of Doctor Strange and WandaVision, SWORD (apparently), the Time Variance Authority, now the Eternals. So it'd be easy enough to say the same was true of mutants, that people like Xavier and Magneto and Wolverine have been around for decades without the world knowing about them.

 

Apocalypse and Wolverine aren't a problem no matter what. Apocalypse was always an unknown piece of history because he only shows up once every few centuries. Wolverine could easily have pretended to be different people over the years, and even if you want him to have a history with shield, you could say Weapon X broke off from shield and wiped out all his records when they did.

Magneto's age is also still a problem no matter what, unless your alternate universe is pulling mutants from the 1970s/80s/90s, because of his Holocaust background.

I don't think it's at all satisfying or particularly believable to imagine that there were always lots of mutants that we never heard of, but a small number of them isn't an issue (though Magneto laying low for decades before attacking humans doesn't work so well for me, either).

 

<inserts Simpsons McBain "that's the joke" meme here>

 

Originally, the comics said it was potentially due to more Nuclear Radiation in the atmosphere that caused a surge in Mutant Births.

Later, they stated it's due to the Celestials.

So no, it was never "They were born that way".

 

As long as they don't go with the stupid mutant origin from the Ultimate comics universe, I'll probably be fine with however they explain mutants.

That said, Xavier and magneto need to have a long history, so mutants, to me, have to have been around for decades at the minimum (although maybe not as far back as in the mainstream comics, aka Magneto doesn't need to have been alive in WW2 anymore).

 

The theory I'm holding in my head until the movies contradict it is that there has been mutants throughout history, but their numbers were so miniscule that no one really took notice.

Then came the snap, which Rocket told us created an energy wave unlike anything anybody had ever seen.

We know that energies from the stones have a given people powers in the past. Wanda, Pietro, Carol and by extension Monica.

So my theory is that the Infinity Gauntlet snaps that occurred on Earth swept the globe with this energy wave and activated many more X genes that would have activated naturally if not for the stones energies.

 

I'm afraid to ask: What godawful shit did the Ultimate comics do with the mutant origin? I may have already read about it and burned it from my memory.

All of that sounds good...except if that happened after Thanos' Snap, why didn't anyone notice any mutants for five years? However, if it's connected with the energy burst that the Emergence appears to have happened after Bruce's Snap, then I think that works out pretty well.

 

Because they operated in secret, presumably, like they did in X-Men Evolution prior to their public exposure in the season 2 finale.

Or maybe people did notice various new superbeings emerging, but they wouldn't have instantly understood that the incidents shared a single underlying cause, since the MCU has a variety of superpowered individuals from various origins already. (And if the TV branch of the continuity still counts, they were probably mistaken for Inhumans.)

 

Sure, for a year. But in five years? When there's half the population? I dunno...

 

WandaVision gave us the necessary backstory.
We found out that Wanda was special with latent abilities all along, as was her brother likely.
Their powers just didn’t manifest yet or were very subdued.
The Mind stone amplified what was already there to superhero levels. it’s easy enough to say she always was a mutant. But it took an infinity stone to have her realize the full potential.

Coming up with another reason than the one already provided would be redundant.

It even still works with Xavier and Magneto.
Magneto could easily have been a test subject of Red Skull or at least Hydra. They could even link the same experiments to Wanda and Pietro.
Xavier could have had his own exposure to an infinity stone way before the snap.

 

My point is, scattered individuals with superpowers might be noticed, but determining their origin and nature would be more complicated, especially in a universe where there are so many competing explanations for superpowers. It might well take several years to research and confirm the existence of a new, widespread type of human mutation and to formulate and verify a systematic model of what it is and how it works. First you'd need to gather enough cases to prove it's happening, then you'd need to research the causes, formulate hypotheses, debate conflicting hypotheses, test them to see which ones hold up, collect demographic data to document a trend... realistically, it could be the work of decades.

And of course, it's even more complicated if the mutants are keeping themselves secret.

 

...or they can go with the simpler route and say it was tied into the Emergence which appears to happen in conjunction with Bruce's Snap per Ajax in the Eternals trailer.

 

AFAIK, there's absolutely nothing that would prove mutants haven't been noticed (even named 'mutants') since the original snap.

Literally the only material we've seen that takes place after that point is Endgame, Far From Home, WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Shang-Chi.

I haven't seen Shang-Chi yet, but Endgame obviously has more important stuff to consider, and while FFH, WV and FatWS could theoretically have dropped the word mutant in some random broadcast if they wanted, they clearly weren't focusing on anything like that so not mentioning it hardly proves it's some unknown thing.

 

"Potentially" does a lot of work in that sentence. They were mutants, an evolutionary step. The very first issue of X-Men does bring up that Xavier was born to parents who worked at Los Alamos, so the sci-fi trope of "radiation leads to more mutation" was there, yeah, but that was a side detail. There was nothing precluding older mutants like Apocalypse or whoever predating the atomic age. Mutations can happen any time -- they just ramped up because of modern technology. And I'm fine with that.

It's when you make the source of mutants some grand cosmic destiny or event that it's all a bit too much for me.

Case in point.

 

There's basically zero chance of them saying En Sabah Nur was born and raised in Cairo, Texas in 1984 and I think pretty much every post here is pretty consistent with that fact.

Nobody arguing that mutants will be the result of the snap is in any way saying that the snap energy created mutants and there were never ever mutants in human history before. The snap, if the story happens this way, will just play the same role the nuclear era played originally in the comics. It's a cosmic accelerant, nothing more.

 

Nuclear radiation led to children being born mutants. People here are arguing for the Snap to turn people of all ages -into- mutants (well, technically, they want it it to activate dormant x-genes or whatever but that's the same thing for all practical purposes). Not a fan of that. It basically makes mutants the same as the Fantastic Four or Spider-Man or any of the others who got their powers in some sci-fi accident, just on a larger scale.

 

Depends on how they handle it. If it's modern comics' take mutants where there are enough to form their own country and subculture, yeah, it wouldn't work. If it's older comics' take, where they were so rare that every time Cerebro detected one, everyone scrambled to find the person and it was a huge deal, it could absolutely work. (Hell, the underlying implication of the team being so international, back then, was that mutants were so rare Xavier had to go to places like Russia and Japan to find enough for a single team.) I mean, half the MCU films reveal that, oh yeah, here's another superpowered group/person who's actually been around all all along.

 

Not all mutants were caused by nuclear radiation. In fact I don't think most were. It's just a random genetic fluke.

 

Killian said in Iron Man 3 that Extremis worked because he found some strange part of the Human Brain that was empty and tapped into it. It gave them powers, which to him meant "Humanity has been destined to be upgraded" and we know from Captain Marvel and Wanda that being exposed to Infinity Stone Energies can trigger power-ups.

So yeah, if we go with the idea that Two Snaps on Earth began a mass activation of Superpowers, it fits.