Haven't read the article, but I agree with the consensus that Larocca's art has taken a nosedive in recent years. That Wolverine/Sinister panel is bad, yet amazingly homoerotic.
As for the suspected shipping, Scott/Dani was a little too predictable for a while there, so I'm glad it didn't happen. As for Hope/Illyana, I honestly read both of them as almost asexual: Hope's never really shown tons of interest in anything like that, and Illyana hasn't shown much, either (at least from what I've read, which is mostly Gillen and later). There also didn't seem to be anything on-panel to suggest any kind of pairing between the two, so it likely would've felt forced like almost all of this run.
Thankfully, this era's almost over. BRING ON HICKMAN.
What can I say but, "I love comics."
I was going to point out that the art is horrible, the monster in the first pic does not even look consistent, and to check out the benches in the preview for issue #22 to see some really bad work, but yeah, the second pic (the preview one) definitely looks like a gold, typical sentinel.
Hope's shown interest in romantic relationships before, starting all the way back in Cable. She even had a fling with Velocidad, which ended when he cheated on her.
"We come into this world alone and we leave the same way. The time we spent in between - time spent alive, sharing, learning together... is all that makes life worth living." - Jean Grey