X-Men Blue Teases Venomized Wolverine, Extermination & New Brotherhood

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for X-Men Blue #28 by Cullen Bunn, Marcus To, Rain Beredo and VC's Joe Caramagna, on sale now.

For the last few months, Marvel has been using the final pages of its comics to tease upcoming storylines and events. Though not a new technique, it was given a twist recently with the debut of the "Where Is Wolverine?" post-credits scenes in various titles, single-page chapters detailing Logan's journey across the Marvel Universe after his surprise resurrection in Marvel Legacy #1.

The X-titles have been taking a similar approach for their upcoming Extermination event, telling a short story based in the future, stretched over several issues. X-Men Blue #28 offers less of a post-credits scene, though, and more a foreshadowing of threats set to play out in the series with a more traditional "What's Next?" style layout. The long and short of it is, though the original, time-displaced X-Men had their hands full with alternate reality Venoms and the Mothervine virus, what they are about to face next could literally be the end of the team.

Venomized May Not Yet Be Over

The first image shows that once the original X-Men reunite with Polaris, Jimmy Hudson and Bloodstorm, a set of familiar Wolverine-looking claws will be waiting for them. Of course, there are a few characters in the Marvel Universe who can unsheath a set of three claws from their fists, from the back-from-the-dead Wolverine to his older counterpart Old Man Logan. However, the first likely candidate is the team's feral member, Jimmy Hudson. The next story arc is titled "Apex Predator" and features the Ultimate Universe Wolverine stalking his teammates in a jungle, which looks similar to the landscape in the artwork above.

Of course, if you look very closely, there appears to be more going on with the mystery character. Parts of his skin and clothing look to be slithering across his body, in a similar fashion to the alien symbiotes called the Klyntar. The X-Men Blue team recently worked together with Venom in the "Poison-X" crossover, and the Venomized miniseries just concluded with a Wolverine-Venom hybrid sticking around in the Marvel Prime Universe. Another clue pointing to this being a Venomized Wolverine rather than Mr. Hudson is that both X-Men Blue and Venomized are written by Cullen Bunn.

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HellFire Club Reborn

X-Men Blue's "Cry Havok" arc saw Emma Frost and Havok collude with Miss Sinister and Bastion to unleash the Mothervine virus upon the population, with the goal of turning humans into mutants. While Havok and Emma had mutants' best interest at heart, Miss Sinister only looked to weaponize and experiment with the mutant race, which is why the White Queen turned on her cabal to bring Mothervine crashing down.

Though Emma attempted to broker a truce with Magneto for helping to stop Mothervine, the two parted ways as adversaries. Emma's status is now up in the air; she could continue down her villainous ways, or look to continue to do good for humans and mutants alike. Whichever path she decides to choose, we now know it will involve the Hellfire Club in some manner, as the White Queen sits in a room filled with the group's masks littered on the floor.

Countdown To Extermination

Speaking of post-credits scenes, as we stated earlier, select X-Men titles have included "Countdown to Extermination" pages in the lead up to the franchise's next big event, Extermination. Information on the event has been scarce, but we do know it involves the ramifications of the younger, original X-Men not returning to their proper timeline and how it affects the future.

Extermination writer Ed Brisson revealed the series will connect to every single Uncanny X-Men story ever told with Professor Charles Xavier's first class, so the likelihood of X-Men Blue tying into Extermination is pretty high. The Jean Grey, Beast, Angel and Cyclops displayed in the "Things To Come" one-pager are the same future versions from the "Countdown to Extermination" post-credits scenes.

To Me, My Brotherhood

Magneto has long been associated with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, having originally founded the terrorist group to combat the heroic efforts of the X-Men. Even though Magneto is still considered a terrorist himself, he has worked closely with the X-Men in recent years, going so far as to serve as a mentor to X-Men Blue. But after he was forced to kill innocent mutants in self-defense during the Mothervine saga, Magneto may revert back to his evil ways.

Marvel’s August 2018 solicitations hint at Magneto facing a major turning point in X-Men Blue #34, and a team-up with the future X-Men will lead the Master of Magnetism to “submit to his darker instincts.” With Magneto stealing the familiar, "To me, my X-Men" phrase and substituting "brotherhood" for "X-Men," we could be seeing the formation of an all-new group of evil mutants.