It's been over a decade since Secret Invasion shook up the status quo of the Marvel Universe. That event revealed that many of Earth's greatest heroes had actually been shapeshifting Skrull aliens in disguise, and it rocked the foundation of what many Marvel fans thought they knew about their favorite characters. Now, Marvel may be in the middle of a similar story within its X-Men comics.
Together, House of X and Powers of X transitioned the X-Men into a new mutant nation called Krakoa. This living island nation was presented as a utopia where almost all the mutants of the world united under one banner to serve a common goal of establishing their independence and ensuring a future for mutantkind. They also developed miracle drugs to trade with the rest of the world, provided unlimited resources to their populace and even unlocked the key to immortality.
However, this key to immortality may have also created the way for the X-Men to be replaced by plant-based lifeforms.
The Krakoa cloning process essentially creates a perfect physical copy of every mutant in existence and backs up their mind through Charles Xavier's Cerebro network. When a mutant dies, their consciousness is uploaded into a new body, which circumvents the core problems of mortality. But what if these clones are not the perfect copies they are presented as, and the "consciousness" being uploaded is just as much of a sham? The island of Krakoa itself has a mind all its own, and the majority of the mutant populace could be replaced by plant-based simulacra while the world outside is none the wiser.
The seeds for the idea are planted in Jonathan Hickman and Pepe Larraz's House of X #1, when the Cuckoos give a tour of Krakoa's new capabilities to diplomats from the outside world. The diplomats are among a handful of intelligence agents sent to gather information about the mutants, and one of the Cuckoos reveals their true nature by announcing "They're all plants, sir," to Magneto after she reads their minds. However, the announcement may have had a double meaning to it. The "they" in the sentence isn't necessarily the diplomats, and the "plants" may not mean spies, but rather...plants.
It would certainly explain some of the oddities in behavior inherent in much of the mutant populace since the event first kicked off. Former villains like Gorgon, Apocalypse, Emplate and Exodus are suddenly more than happy to cooperate with the heroes despite all possessing insanely variable beliefs. Nightcrawler watches a ceremonial deathmatch and doesn't question the practice -- instead, he questions his Catholicism. Moments like that raise the question of whether or not these are really the characters we know and love.
Vegetable counterparts, as weird as it may seem, could be the most reasonable explanation, and they would be far from the weirdest things to happen in X-Men history. On one hand, the idea would provide a convenient way for Marvel to clear the slate clean whenever it wanted to bring the X-Men back to a more familiar status quo. At the same time, it sets up some familiar characters as foreboding villains, not the least of which is Krakoa itself.
Combined with Douglas Ramsay and Warlock to form a techno-organic hybrid environment, Doug seems to be the only one capable of fully communicating with the island, and he's clearly keeping secrets from the rest of the team. When Krakoa was first introduced, the island wanted to absorb the X-Men into itself, and it out Cyclops to bring back more mutants to keep feeding it. Has it really changed that much since?
If the latest story were at all like Krakoa's origins, this could mean that the original versions of the entire X-Men cast are actually sitting in a pod somewhere, hooked up to Krakoa and kept in stasis away from the action. Every death and out-of-character moment could be explained away with plant-based copies instead of the "real" character, and it would be a convenient way to pull a dramatic twist while shaking up the continuity right where Marvel needs it.
Much like Secret Invasion, the twist would allow Marvel to keep some parts of this new status quo while ignoring others. While some characters could just be dismissed as Krakoan imposters, characters like Shadowcat or Betsy Braddock could keep the character development that this new era of X-Men stories offered them. Of course, there are some characters still so integral to the goings on that there's no turning back even if there was a grand Krakoan reveal.
Charles Xavier has engendered a lot of suspicion due to his manipulating the minds of others and compromising his famously sturdy morals as of late. He very well could be in cahoots with Krakoa, and he would need to have a good reason for making a perfect copy of every mutant's consciousness through Cerebro. Similarly, the twist that revealed the true nature of Moira MacTaggart puts her outside the reach of a Krakoan explanation, but it's entirely possible that she's the true mastermind behind everything that has unfolded.
The plot could implicate Doug, Krakoa, Xavier and Moira while leaving a clear way to explain away the behavior of everyone else. If Marvel wanted to stay prepared to wipe the slate clean for the X-Men's MCU debut this would certainly be the handiest way to do so. After all, it may be a little complicated to explain the X-Men's mythos to new readers when the new status quo is tied in with clones and forgotten rivalries and an intergalactic war that stretches across thousands of years of history. By comparison, "they're all plants" really doesn't sound like that crazy of an idea.