Wolverine’s claws are usually a reassuring sight when a Marvel story turns into a horror movie. Whatever is lurking in the dark, Logan has a weapon that can reach it and the willingness to get close enough to use it. Put him beside the rest of the X-Men, and even a nightmare scenario comes with some formidable defenses.
The Alien franchise makes that confidence dangerous. Its monsters reproduce by using living hosts, and a powerful opponent can become an opportunity for the species to produce something even harder to kill. That possibility gives Kieron Gillen and Geraldo Borges’ Alien vs. X-Mena particularly nasty question to explore: what happens when the bodies available to the Xenomorphs belong to mutants?
Spoilers Ahead for Alien vs. X-Men #1.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which MCU Villain Do You Align With? Killmonger · Namor · Zemo · Thanos
Eight honest questions about how you actually are: what you do about something unfair, how long you will wait for what you want, who you are really loyal to, how easily you let a thing go. Answer them and we will tell you which one of these four you have more in common with than you would like. Every one of them thinks they are the reasonable person in the room.
🐆Killmonger(Black Panther)
🔱Namor(Wakanda Forever)
🎭Zemo(Civil War)
🧤Thanos(Infinity War)
01
How do you react to something you think is unfair? All four of these men started here.
02
How long will you wait for something you want? Patience separates these four more than anything else.
03
Who are you actually loyal to? Answer for the real one, not the polite one.
04
How do you win an argument? Everybody has one method and uses it every time.
05
How easily do you let something go? This is the question that makes villains out of people.
06
What do you think about breaking the rules? Nobody on this list has ever felt guilty about it.
07
What do people say about you behind your back? You already know which one it is.
08
What would you do with real power? Eight questions in, this is the one that picks your villain.
The Case Is Made You Align With…
Four villains, and four arguments the films were honest enough to
actually let them make. Here is the one you lean towards, the part of it that holds up, and the
exact point where it stops holding up.
Black Panther · Marvel Studios · 2018
Erik Killmonger
You align with the one who was right about the problem and wrong
about the solution. Killmonger is the most persuasive villain Marvel has produced because
the film never pretends his anger came from nowhere.
You notice who was abandoned and you cannot let it go, which is a moral instinct before
it is anything else.
His argument lands because Wakanda really did watch and do nothing, and the film makes
T’Challa admit it out loud.
Where it breaks is the method, since a man who was failed by power decided the answer
was to hold more of it.
Michael B. Jordan plays him as somebody performing certainty over grief, which is why
the last scene of that film still works.
Wakanda Forever · Marvel Studios · 2022
Namor
You align with the protector, which is the most understandable
and most dangerous position on this list. Namor is not chasing power or revenge, he is doing
whatever keeps his people hidden, and he has been doing it for centuries.
Your loyalty has a hard border around it, and everything inside that border matters far
more to you than anything outside it.
Talokan is the best realised world Marvel has built since Wakanda, and the film makes
you understand exactly what he is guarding.
His logic is airtight right up until it requires somebody else’s people to pay for his
people’s safety.
He would rather be feared by the surface world forever than trust it once, and history
has given him reasons.
Captain America: Civil War · 2016
Helmut Zemo
You align with the patient one, the only man on this list with no
powers, no army and no hurry. Zemo lost his family in Sokovia and then spent years working
out that you do not fight the Avengers, you introduce them to each other’s secrets.
You go quiet when you are hurt, and the quiet is where the thinking happens.
Zemo is the only MCU villain who completely won, and he did it with a notebook, a plan
and a great deal of self control.
His grief is real, and the film is careful never to let you forget that he started as an
ordinary man with a family.
Where it fails is the cost, since taking apart the people who hurt him meant hurting a
great many people who did not.
Avengers: Infinity War · 2018
Thanos
You align with the one who decided the answer was arithmetic.
Thanos is not angry and not grieving in any way he will admit to, he simply reached a
conclusion and never once revisited it, which is precisely what makes him frightening.
You are capable of holding a position that costs you everything, and you would call that
conviction rather than stubbornness.
Infinity War works because it is structured as his film, with a goal, a journey and a
sacrifice, and the heroes are the obstacle.
The flaw in the plan is not the cruelty, it is that he never seriously considered a
single alternative to it.
Josh Brolin plays him tired rather than triumphant, which is the choice that turned a
purple giant into a real character.
Wolverine’s Greatest Weapon Just Became an X-Men Problem
The Xenomorph with Wolverine claws in Alien vs. X-Men #1.Image via Marvel Comics
The first issue delivers a horrifying answer with a Xenomorph sporting Wolverine-style claws. The creature extends the familiar blades from its hands, combining the X-Men’s most recognizable close-combat weapon with a predator already built to tear its victims apart. It is a straightforward visual reveal with an ugly implication for every mutant who encounters the infestation. A regular Xenomorph is bad enough, but giving a Xenomorph Wolverine’s claws means the X-Men now have to deal with something that can attack like Logan without being Logan. The issue makes that connection explicit when one of the mutants spots the blades and recognizes what they resemble, and this is where this crossover gets interesting: Xenomorphs take on traits from their hosts, and the X-Men offer a much more dangerous set of possibilities than the humans the creatures usually encounter. Wolverine’s claws are an obvious nightmare, but they also invite the question of what an alien born from another mutant might inherit.
Suddenly, the future of the series becomes full of terrifying possibilities, because Wolverine’s claws are hardly the worst mutation to face. The first issue already shows how badly the team has underestimated the infestation. Beast’s attempt to remove the parasites fails, and the ship carrying them reaches Earth before the danger can be contained. With mutants now in reach, the aliens have access to hosts whose abilities could make an outbreak considerably harder to stop.
