Marvel Has Basically Made the X-Men Immortal

When Marvel announced that the X-Men were getting a major reinvention, fans were intrigued; however, even the theories have paled compared to what Jonathan Hickman has delivered with his House of X / Powers of X event series. With the release of House of X #5, Hickman finally has to answer the looming question about those major X-Men deaths in the previous issue. Well, as many fans suspected, characters like Cyclops, Wolverine and Marvel Girl weren’t gone for long, as Marvel has revealed a game-changing twist that basically makes the X-Men immortal!

WARNING: Major Spoilers for X-Men House of X #5 Follow!

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House of X #5 basically takes the time to reveal a pivotal process in Charles Xavier and Magneto’s mutant homeland of Krakoa: resurrection. Using the synchronized powers of five key X-Men characters (now known as “The Five”), Xavier and Magneto come up with a two-step process of being able to resurrect any dead mutant:

1. The Five grow matured and fully-powered clone bodies of dead mutants, using the DNA stored in Mr. Sinister’s mutant DNA databank.
2. Through Cerebro, Charles Xavier has compiled and routinely updates a library of psychic “downloads” of all his X-Men. When a clone body is grown for a dead mutant, Charles simply “uploads” the psychic imprint into the body, to truly bring that mutant back to life as their “true” self, instead of an empty copy.

(Photo: Marvel Comics)

House of X #5 takes us through this mutant resurrection process as Cyclops, Wolverine, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, Angel, Husk, and M are all brought back from the dead, after their suicide mission to destroy the Mother Mold Sentinel. Once restored in both body and mind, Storm re-introduces the resurrected X-Men to the mutants of Krakoa through a ceremonial ritual of recognition and brotherhood. For all intents and purposes, it seems as though the process truly does bring the X-Men back from death fully intact.

The key thing about this new resurrection process is that it is a communal process that strictly endemic to the mutant community. With it, Hickman essentially transforms the entire nature of mutant existence in the Marvel Universe: before, mutants were a species constantly under threat of extinction, and scarred by instances of suffering and loss. Now to be a “mutant” – specifically, to be an “X-Man” – is to be able to traverse death itself. Mutantkind being defined by victimization and tragedy is now a thing of the past.

House of X 1 – 5 and Powers of X 1 – 4 are all now on sale.