AXIS #7 Spoilers: No More Mutants?

Avengers & X-Men: AXIS #7 hits stands today, continuing Rick Remender’s saga of inverted heroes and villains.

The issue also has a pretty huge retcon in it, one that may have revealed the meaning of the “No More Mutants” Uncanny Avengers teaser from New York Comic Con. Read on to find out more, but be warned that SPOILERS follow.

AXIS #6 saw the inverted Scarlet Witch attempting to take revenge on Doctor Doom, the villain who manipulated her into going mad, disassembling the Avengers, and casting the “no more mutants” spell that nearly sent mutants into extinction. Her father, Magneto, and brother, Quicksilver, arrive to stop her, and she’s not too pleased.

AXIS #7 sees the Scarlet Witch lashing out at her family, casting a spell to curse her own bloodline. The spell knocks out Quicksilver, but Magneto is surprisingly unaffected.

In other words:

Naturally, this brings up the question of the twins’ true lineage. It also seems to solve the problem of the twins’ parentage for Marvel Studios ahead of their Marvel Cinematic Universe speaking role debut in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Marvel is legally forbidden from mentioning that Magneto is Wanda and Pietro’s father because of rights issues with Fox, but if he’s not really their father in the comics, then it’s not really a concern anymore, and in fact opens up all new possibilities for Marvel Studios that Fox won’t be able to touch. The characters are now altered in a way that matches the narrative of films, much like when Nick Fury Jr. was introduced to the Marvel Comics universe after Nick Fury Sr.’s “death.”

Marvel Studios is also forbidden from referring to the twins as mutants, which brings us to the “No More Mutants” teaser from NYCC. Perhaps the first arc of Uncanny Avengers will delve into Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver’s new true origin, and perhaps that origin doesn’t include being mutants.

It’s worth noting that, while having mutant parents has been said to increase the chance of mutation, it is not a prerequisite. Therefore, though Magneto is not the babies’ daddy, the twins could still be mutants of their own, free mutation. In fact, Quicksilver did lose his powers on M-Day, suggesting that his powers are the result of mutation. However, there’s a sizable loophole in that story, as Quicksilver eventually regained his powers, without much explanation, after experiencing a series of hallucinations in a jail cell in the one-shot X-Factor: The Quick and the Dead. This occurred after Quicksilver stole the Terrigen Crystals from the Inhumans, which gave him a form of time travel that replaced his lost super speed for a short while. It’s easy to see Marvel using this storyline as a way to say that either Quicksilver had never really lost his powers (he was only mostly depowered), or that the Terrigen Crystals actually restored him through some sort of slow, gradual form of Terrigenesis, suggesting he is actually of Inhuman decent.

So maybe the twins are still mutants, or maybe Magneto stole some Inhuman babies way back when, or maybe they’re something else entirely. We likely won’t start getting solid answers until Uncanny Avengers #1 goes on sale in January.