Earlier today, Josh Brolin revealed a new photo of himself as Cable that, at first, seemed like the actor was just having some fun but, on second thought, may offer an important hint about the plot of Deadpool 2.
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The photo in question shows Brolin’s cable screaming into a broken mirror. Brolin attached hashtags like “Cable insanity” to the photo and noted how everyone expects the movie to be funny. Considering that, it was easy to think of the photo as just part of the fun.
However, it is possible that the photo is actually hinting that Brolin will play not one but two roles in Deadpool 2, those roles being that of Cable as well as Cable’s twisted clone Stryfe, represented by the broken mirror image of Cable in the photo.
Stryfe was created by Louise Simonson and Deadpool and Cable co-creator Rob Liefeld and first appeared in New Mutants #86. The villain appeared entirely covered in metal armor, including a metal helmet covering his face.
On the final page of New Mutants #100, the final issue of the series, Stryfe’s helmet is removed and he is revealed to have the same face as Cable, the mysterious mutant who had taken over stewardship of the New Mutants over the past year of stories. The reveal served as a tease leading into X-Force #1, the beginning of a new series that saw Cable assemble a mostly new team of mutants to be a proactive paramilitary operation.
The origins of Cable and Stryfe and their relationship to one another remained a mystery in the X-Men comics for years. Stryfe was made the main antagonist of the 1992-1993 line-wide X-Men crossover story “X-Cutioner’s Song.” That story revealed that Stryfe had a strange obsession with the X-Men’s Cyclops and Jean Grey, as well as Cable, but didn’t fully explain why that was until months later.
Cable Sent to the Future
The full details came to light in the four-issue The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix miniseries that was released in 1994. This series confirmed that Cable was actually Nathan Christopher Summers, the son of Cyclops and Madelyne Prior, a clone of Jean Grey.
The evil mutant Apocalypse infected baby Nathan with the Techo-Organic Virus, which threatened to consume the child. A member of Clan Askani, from a possible future timeline, appeared to Cyclops and Jean and offered to take the child to the future where he could be cured. Feeling he had no other choice, Cyclops let the child go even though he believed he’d never see him again.
However, when Mother Askani was feared dead, Cyclops and Jean’s consciousnesses were brought to the future to raise Nathan in new, cloned bodies.
The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix miniseries revealed that Nathan was being cared for in the future by Mother Askani, a time-displaced version of Nathan’s half-sister from another reality, Rachel Summers. Clan Askani believed Nathan was a prophesized hero who would overthrow Apocalypse, who ruled in that dystopian timeline.
Stryfe, the Corrupted Clone
Fearing they may not be able to cure Nathan’s virus before it killed him, Mother Askani had Nathan cloned. That clone fell into the hands of Apocalypse himself, who raised the clone child and named him Stryfe.
Secretly, Apocalypse planned to transfer his own consciousness into Stryfe’s younger, stronger body, but Stryfe’s caregiver protected him and he was eventually able to escape to the present day.
In the present, Stryfe became a mutant terrorist and leader of the Mutant Liberation Front. The “X-Cutioner’s Song” storyline turned out to be Stryfe’s long-simmering plot to exact revenge on everyone he perceived to have wronged him in his past, from his genetic parents Cyclops and Jean, to his clone brother Cable, to his adopted father Apocalypse.
That may sound like a storyline too large to fit into Deadpool 2, and maybe it is, but we know that Cable will be back for the upcoming X-Force movie, so perhaps it’s only the start of a larger story to come.
Deadpool 2 opens in theaters on June 1, 2018.
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