The X-Men’s Age of Revelation Goes Out with a Bang… and a Whimper

2025 was certainly a year for the X-Men. The “From the Ashes” publishing initiative gave readers numerous X-books, and several event stories, but none of them really made fans happy, and this goes doubly with the last event of the year: “Age of Revelation”. See, 2025 is the 30th anniversary of “Age of Apocalypse” (of course, “AoA” came out in the first half of that long ago year, so Marvel positioning both of their homages to the story at the end of the year was certainly a choice), and Marvel editor in chief C.B. Cebulski is known for loving the story (one of the stories he pretended to be Japanese to write was a ten year anniversary X-Men: Age of Apocalypse miniseries), so we were always going to get a lot of AoA content. We were just hoping it would stand with the original.

It hasn’t. “Age of Apocalypse” was amazing and “Age of Revelation” isn’t. That’s not to say it’s a bad story in total. There have definitely been some good series over the course of the story — Unbreakable X-Men and The Last Wolverine were my favorites — but “AoR” is never going to be spoken of in the same tones of “AoA”. “Age of Revelation” had to hit its marks perfectly and it mostly didn’t. Age of Revelation: Finale #1 is the big cap-off for the event, and much like nearly everything that came before it, the issue has some great strengths and some weaknesses that can’t be overlooked.

Age of Revelation: Finale Leans Into the Problems with the Story While Giving Readers an Important Ending

Age of Revelation: Finale #1 comes from the X-Men team of Jed MacKay and Ryan Stegman, and as such is an exciting, action-packed story. However, it also leans into the worst part of “Age of Revelation” heavily and that’s a huge problem. Book of Revelation #3 revealed Revelation’s plan for the planet — that he wanted to use mutants to form a biomass to make Earth into a living planet like Ego the Living Planet — and this book shows the final battle to stop him, as Cyclops’s X-Men, the un-brainwashed Wolverine, and Apocalypse, Xavier, and the forces of Arakko attack.

There are some amazing action scenes in the story, which is to be expected from MacKay and Stegman, but let’s be real for a second: Revelation’s plan is dumb in every way. The crux of the issue is that Doug was able to fool everyone into doing what he wanted, that no matter how hard they fight against him, he wins. The villain succeeds, mirroring the ending of “Age of Apocalypse” which also ended with the heroes losing. Now, obviously, this is meant to make the Cyclops of the present fight even harder against Revelation, but it shows that for every original ideas readers got from the story, it was still beholden to the past. The story ends with Doug’s plan working and on a downer because “AoA” did.

However, there is a silver-lining to the issue as well, as the truth behind the weirdness of the Beast is finally revealed. Throughout Amazing X-Men, Beast didn’t seem right and we found out why at the end of the issue: he’s not the X-Men’s Beast, but the Krakoa Era Beast and he’s the leader of 3K. This is a major reveal and it’s going to have massive repercussions for the future of the team. Beast proved how dangerous he could be in X-Force (Vol. 6) and MacKay bringing the character back as one of the big bads of his run is an amazing idea.

What makes the whole situation even more dangerous is that Krakoa Beast was able to get his hands on ten years worth of information about the world to come. 3K has already been hitting the X-Men hard since their debut, but now, they have a leader who saw what direction that the world is going to go in. He knows the weaknesses of the X-Virus and he knows when Revelation is planning to release it. He knows how to make a virus that might actually work at turning humanity into mutants. This breaks the whole situation between the X-Men, 3K, and Revelation in the present. X-Men (Vol. 7) has been something of a mixed bag for a lot of fans, but MacKay has injected some life into it with this latest twist.

X-Men (Vol. 7) Has More Potential Than Ever

“From the Ashes” has been a mixed bag, and “Age of Revelation” is more of the same. Overall, it’s not a bad story, but it’s also not really a good one either. The final chapter exemplifies both the worst parts of the story and the best parts. Revelation winning wasn’t a bad choice; his plan was the bad choice, so seeing it succeed doesn’t really help make anyone look good, not Revelation and not the people he manipulated into doing his bidding. Revelation hasn’t been a good villain, and this issue is yet more proof of that.

The Krakoa Beast reveal, though, is a great twist that has legs. It’s an idea that has been talked about in fan spaces since this story began, and getting this pay-off is exactly the right direction to go in. It adds some oomph into X-Men (Vol. 7) that the book has been missing so far. As far as it goes, “Age of Revelation” isn’t going to go down as a memorable or beloved story; it’ll be lucky to go down as a good story. However, the ending works in that it adds some interesting ideas to X-Men (Vol. 7) that could definitely pay off in the future. There’s a certain irony to the story being a mixed bag; given the position that the X-books are in, that fits perfectly.

What do you think about the ending of “Age of Revelation”? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!

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