Revelation’s Master Plan Is As Insane As A 30-Year-Old X-Men Masterpiece

Thirty years ago, one of the most influential X-Men events of all time was released under the banner of the “Age of Apocalypse.” The dystopian future defined that era for the mutant superhero team, and now Marvel is paying homage to it while charging forward with a brand-new take on it and a brand-new villain at the helm. Revelation, the heir to Apocalypse, has plunged the United States into chaos ten years in the future. The “Age of Revelation” is finally nearing its end, and after all this time, a major secret has been revealed.

Revelation was once Doug Ramsey, but he was reborn as Apocalypse’s heir and given the mission to complete his mission. It’s survival of the fittest at all costs, with mutants being the fittest of all. However, Doug was never a character to seek wanton destruction, yet his final plan to save mutantkind and change the world was so terrible, even his own wife turned against him in the end. Amazing X-Men (2025) #3 just revealed Revelation’s master plan. This entire event has been bombastic, over-the-top, and insane, and trust me, this secret plan is the perfect capstone to that.

Revelation’s Bombastic Plan on a Worldwide Scale

Way back at the start of this event, in X-Men: Age of Revelation Overture, it was revealed that the titular villain had some kind of master plan to bring down the entire world. To combat this, the future X-Men exchanged the minds of Cyclops and Beast with their past selves and set out to bring down the villain once and for all. In the meantime, Revelation’s wife, Bei the Blood Moon, sent an emergency message to Apocalypse and Charles Xavier on Mars. Psylocke, Revelation’s assassin, caught up to Bei and killed her, but Bei spent her final moments telling the psychic warrior the truth.

Revelation, fearing that Psylocke turned on him, pushed her away, leading to her joining the rogue X-Men’s attempt to save the world. After the team fought and talked their way through Darkchild’s Providence, the team finally got close to their destination. In Amazing X-Men #3, as the team prepared to take the fight to Revelation directly, Psylocke revealed the depths of his plan. The mad mastermind wanted to save the entire world by making them strong, so he was planning to make the entire world strong, like him. Revelation was going to use his voice to alter the makeup of the entire country to convert it all into an extension of himself. From there, his empowered form would take the entire world.

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Revelation’s Is A Plan As Stupid As It Is Fun

Revelation’s master plan is to literally make the entire world into himself, which is such an insane idea to imagine. This plan is out there in a way that only comic book plots can be, but that’s exactly what makes it so incredible. The original “Age of Apocalypse” made a name for itself not just because it was an incredible story with genuinely inventive ideas, but because it embraced one of the best parts of comics: they are unabashedly weird. Superhero comics revolve around people with unbelievable powers regularly breaking the laws of physics and wearing skin-tight spandex while they save the world from equally fantastical people bent on its destruction.

This is not to say that superheroes can’t tackle serious topics or situations. In fact, they regularly do, to great success, but there is always the inherent silliness that goes along with them. Sometimes, there’s the inclination that this silliness and serious topics cannot coexist, so writers replace traditional superhero tropes with gritty, bloodier material to make the story more mature. This might seem like a natural conclusion, but taking away the silliness and supposedly childish aspects of superhero comics actually takes away one of their biggest strengths.

These wild aspects let superhero comics break away from reality and create a brand new world where these mature and sensitive topics can be explored in a way that people can understand, empathize with, and be entertained by. The X-Men themselves are one of the best examples as they are often used as an allegory to real-world discrimination and bigotry. The wacky circumstances that surround their stories alleviate the heaviness of their stories and let them educate as much as they entertain. And besides, in a world where media is obsessed with being mature, a medium where silliness is celebrated and combined with serious storytelling is a celebration of all things human, and downright amazing.

Comic books work best when they unshackle themselves and go as wild as they want, which opens the doors for stories that can’t be told anywhere else in any other way. I, for one, will always champion the idea that comic books can be insane and deeply mature at the same time, and even when they’re not trying to be mature, that insanity is still just as entertaining. 

Amazing X-Men #3 is on sale now!

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