WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Hunt For Wolverine: Dead Ends, by Charles Soule, Ramon Rosanas, Guru-eFX and Joe Sabino, out now.
The Hunt For Wolverine is nearly over, and thanks to this week’s one-shot Dead Ends, we’re one step closer to the Return of Wolverine next month. More than that though, Dead Ends introduces us to the big new villain that’s going to be facing off against the X-Men and Wolverine moving forward.
It was first revealed by writer Charles Soule that the upcoming miniseries Return of Wolverine will see the missing mutant square off against a new villain called Persephone, and here, at the conclusion of the Hunt For Wolverine, storyline that we get our first introduction to the mysterious foe. It’s revealed in the closing pages of the issue that not only is Persephone holding Logan prisoner, but all of the clues discovered by the superheroes in the recent Hunt For Wolverine miniseries lead to this enigmatic new villain and her insidious corporation known as Soteira.
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Kitty Pryde, the current leader of the X-Men calls Tony Stark and Matt Murdock to the X-Mansion in Central Park to review all of the clues uncovered by the four separate teams that have spent the last few months searching for the whereabouts of Wolverine’s body. When he died, seemingly drowned in molten Adamantium, the X-Men secured his encased body and hid it in a top secret location. Not only did unknown enemies find this location, but when the X-Men arrived to make sure it was safe, they found the adamantium shell cracked in two, and the body of Logan missing from within.
This led to the four Hunt For Wolverine miniseries -- Mystery in Madripoor, Claws of a Killer, Adamantium Agenda and Weapon Lost -- in which three teams of heroes and one team of villains, investigated various clues that would lead them down very different paths to finding Logan. It’s here, in Hunt For Wolverine: Dead Ends, that Kitty, Iron Man and Daredevil are able to piece the clues together and uncover the machinations of Soteira.
But... what is Soteira, really?
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As they unfolded, the four seemingly disparate adventures didn’t seem to have anything in common save for their goal to find Wolverine. But when Kitty uncovers her findings, the heroes realize a startling truth: that Soteira has a wide and varied reach, and that it's far more established than anyone realized. By examining the chart that Kitty pulls up, we can see that Soteira already has a hand in other major organizations in the Marvel Universe like Roxxon, A.I.M., Hydra and the Latveria government, as well as connections to powerful villains like Mr. Sinister, Lord Deathwind, Graydon Creed and the Nasty Boys.
The chart also links Soteira to things like the Legacy Virus (a mutant plague introduced in X-Men comics in the mid-‘90s) Necrosha (an X-Men event from 2009 that saw long-dead mutants being brought back to life), genetic modification, espionage, mind control, terrorism, DNA tampering, cloning and much more. In fact, Soteira’s web of influence is on a scale that’s only really been seen from one other group in the Marvel Universe: Hydra.
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Named after the many-headed serpent of Greek myth, Hydra is a far-reaching terrorist organization that has plagued the Marvel Universe ever since their first appearance in 1965. Much like Soteira now claims to be, Hydra has been long established to be behind many of the most powerful people, organizations and even political powers of the world. In the first issue of 2009’s Secret Warriors by Brian Michael Bendis, Jonathan Hickman and Stefano Caselli it was revealed that Hydra was even behind the peacekeeping organization S.H.I.E.L.D, a plot point capitalized on by the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2014's Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Hydra reached its apex in 2017’s Secret Empire storyline, an event that saw Captain America -- transformed by the Red Skull and the Cosmic Cube into a Hydra Sleeper agent -- lead a full-on overthrow of the United States Government and the domination of the country by Hydra forces. It took the combined effort of every Marvel hero (including a newly reformed Captain America) to fight back Hydra, but since then the evil organization has been a shell of its former self.
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Despite the organization's motto being "if a head is cut off, two more shall take its place," Hydra has yet to recover from the defeat seen at the end of Secret Empire. But nature abhors a vacuum, and if Hunt For Wolverine: Dead Ends is any indication, that power vacuum left by Hydra looks to have been filled by Soteira.
Persephone claims, “It’s all Soteira, and Soteira is me,” and she’s already proven that she has the capability to find mutants even before they have manifested their powers, something beyond even Cerebro. Quite what her motives are, why she would want to kill mutants and why she has Logan captive remains to be seen, but with a formidable organization like Soteira behind her, she presents not only a threat to the X-Men but to the Marvel Universe as a whole.