House of X #3 *spoilers*

[JamJams]

Do you think the team of x-men were clones

The team that was sent can easily survive the explosion so it could go either way.

[RD155]

Do you think the team of x-men were clones

Honestly it could go either way. Xavier is being extra super creepy and at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if these aren’t the real X-men. We still have to account for the pod scene that started this entire series off. The dude was literally hatching What most likely looked to be Cyclops and Jean.

[RD155]

I am really missing some of the X-men in this so far. Apart from this squad, we barely saw any X-Men.

Were are Gambit, Colossus, Kitty, Rogue, Storm, Rachel in all of this? Besides planting seeds I mean.

At this point I’m starting to doubt if we are going to see if these characters until Dawn of X picks up. If we do I can’t see characters like Gambit and Rogue getting much shine time....especially since we are already passing the half way point .

[jamesslow]

WHAT I KNOW SO FAR

LIFE I

M nearly dies aged 13. Just a fever showing manifestation of her mutant power? I think not.

FOOTNOTE 1: the Hickman timeline diagram shows a full circle around this point (THEORY 1: this ties into LIFE XI, e.g. she comes back and dies, but then is saved by someone and she loses her power and, importantly, her memories of the previous 10 lives, i.e. she goes around rather than through the YEAR 13 Mutant Manisfestation point).

M has a family then dies aged 74. We must assume she has witnessed the rise (and fall?) of the X Men in this life.

[jamesslow]

WHAT I KNOW SO FAR

LIFE II

Right away I start to have a gnawing fear that the timeline diagram at the end of HOX#2 has errors (and not only the admitted one where years 49 and 50 were swapped in LIFE X) -- M is described as aged 44 when this happens:

Capture4.jpg

The age at which she learns Charles is a mutant, and so might she be, seems too late and wrong.

FOOTNOTE 2: her plane crash is a bit convenient -- possibly a hidden hand?

[lurkerforyears]

Honestly it could go either way. Xavier is being extra super creepy and at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if these aren’t the real X-men. We still have to account for the pod scene that started this entire series off. The dude was literally hatching What most likely looked to be Cyclops and Jean.

The "I wont let you die" of Charles is very creepy. It may be that he wont let them die because he will make new clones if they die. or he is cloning Moira every day, and he can reset time killing a Moira clone.

[jamesslow]

WHAT I KNOW SO FAR

LIFE III

M discovers the Cure and has a fatal date with Destiny.

FOOTNOTE: the Greek root of the name Moira means "destiny" -- Hickman, I'm sure you knew that?

FOOTNOTE 2: Destiny's speech bubble in panel 2 is too small -- that indicates either speech at a lower volume, or a badly inserted edit = a late change to the script:

Capture4.jpg

The theory that HOX's Life X leads to M making "the right choice" at the end and being reborn, somehow without her power and without her memories, into LIFE XI, i.e. our 616 universe, has been rejected for many reasons, including that Hickman has just done that with the reveal that the X^2 timeline was the 9th life of M, but I maintain my support for this theory because, otherwise, this important part of Destiny's speech would be stripped of any meaning.

Sometimes I speak in too shorthand a manner -- hit me up if you want some examples...

[RD155]

The "I wont let you die" of Charles is very creepy. It may be that he wont let them die because he will make new clones if they die. or he is cloning Moira every day, and he can reset time killing a Moira clone.

That was one extremely weird and eerie conversation that Xavier and MAgneto has with Cyclops. There was nothing motivational about it. It was almost as if they were cool sending him off to his death. I know people will say the “I won’t let you die “ line was Charles and Mag meaning that cyc is a legend and no one will forget him. I’m taking it literally though and at face value. To me that meant “ If you die I got more of you don’t worry”.

[jamesslow]

WHAT I KNOW SO FAR

LIFE IV

This is weirdly the template of the 616 timeline we know, with The Gifted Years, through The Lost Decade, until Days of Future Past. This is the experience which informs M's decisions in her future lives. We're told that if M was a passive participant, then events would proceed exactly as before.

ALT-THEORY: if I'm wrong and M has all her memories in the 616 timeline but she needs the FUTURE (to her, the PAST) to reach a point where she has experienced before, with all the players carefully placed where they need to be, then she might need to re-enact LIFE IV.

ALT-ALT-THEORY: is this starting to feel like a video game? M's 10 lives are not a mutant power of reincarnation (SIDENOTE: who ever heard of such a power anyway? think about it, it's quite absurd -- either (a) this one person reboots the entire Marvel universe every time she dies; or (b) she has given birth to 9 parallel realities so far...), rather it's a SIMULATION. In support: Charles is located in one panel in HOX#1 as being in "The World". Note (a) The World is the VR simulated sphere from which Fantomex escaped; and (b) Charles inhabits Fantomex's body...

[loke13]

I am really missing some of the X-men in this so far. Apart from this squad, we barely saw any X-Men.

Were are Gambit, Colossus, Kitty, Rogue, Storm, Rachel in all of this? Besides planting seeds I mean.

It really helps to think of this less as a traditional team book and more about a story of mutants as a whole about their new place in the world and all the human bigotry that entails. So far the main characters of this story seem to be Xavier, Magneto, and Moira.

[jamesslow]

WHAT I KNOW SO FAR

LIFE V

This shows M trying to accelerate a mutant utopia, and still the machines came. Note that the timeline diagram at the end of the issue has TWO anomalies: (a) it has the dotted line between Year 43 (M injured, in coma) and Year 44 (genocide at Faraway); and (b) the timeline ends quite clearly at Year 44 but it does not say, like all the other terminal points, "Moira dies" -- mistake or intentional?

This is especially suspicious since LIFE VI is wholly absent. Many theories abound but I favour the one where M tries something different and sides with the Machines. Not to exterminate Mutants, but to find a way to co-exist. This may very well end in X^3, where M dies a thousand years in the future during the Ascencion:

THEORY 1: she has lived all this time and appears near the end as the aged blue skinned female mutant.

THEORY 2: she was caught near the end of X^2 and placed in some kind of stasis, e.g. in a "bath" next to the one in which Cylobel soaked for almost a millenium.

THEORY 3: the narrator who said "so ended the 9th life of Moira" at the end of POX#3 was a liar or unreliable -- Logan failed to kill M. Nimrod came back through the portal and put M in stasis until X^3. Either way, that life in which Mutant and Machine cooperated to defeat Man was one of the unsatisfactory outcomes experienced by Moira, turning her into a murderer of innocent humans in >>>

[marseve]

x.jpg
perrrfect

[jamesslow]

WHAT I KNOW SO FAR

LIFE VII

This is the indefensible Moira -- murderer of people who might become inventors of sentinels. The "montage sequence" draws the reader's attention from the fact that she is now a serial killer of (up until that point) wholly innocent victims. How does M come back from that if this all was not a dream (i.e. simulation)?

This is also the point where, having had the perspective of 6 lives so far and (if the theory of Moira being alive during Ascension holds) some 1,500 years of an endlessly losing battle, she must have inevitably taken a Macchiavellian view that a victorious END will justify any MEANS.

The ultimate trolley problem solved by one who has seen that if a million must die so that a trillion may live then that is an acceptable, even desirable, outcome

[jamesslow]

WHAT I KNOW SO FAR

LIVES VIII, IX & X

M joins Magneto to attempt a victory by Mutants over Man and Machine -- she fails. M joins Apocalypse and is willing to kill the X Men to win -- she fails again after around a hundred years. Then the narrator says in her 10th life, Moira and Charles decided to "break all the rules" meaning, for mutants to group together to form a sovereign state? Really...?

FOOTNOTE: M's 9th life ends with her transmitting the information which Apoc and his final horsemen died to learn -- that Nimrod came online in Moira's year 50, which I pulled off the following screencap on Twitter... and which I can't seem to see in the comic itself? Can someone clarify or have I finally fallen down the rabbit hole?

Capture4.jpg

[jamesslow]

HOW THE TEN LIVES TIE IN TO HOX#3

They don't. I don't get it. I choose to have faith that Hickman will tie this up with a neat bow and make me go, Oooooohh...

Because, right now, we're being told that HOX takes place in Life X in which, among other things, Moira marries Joseph MacTaggert, is raped by him and gives birth to Proteus. The only reason the 1600 year old Moira, former right hand of both Magneto and Apocalypse, would behave as we have seen her so far in the 616, is because she must do nothing to alter the course of what she has experienced in Life IV, right up to the current point in X-continuity...

But there ARE a lot of logical disconnects and inconsistent conduct, if HOX is unfolding in the 616.

Fr'instance, how do we tie the uber-creepy, Jihad-spouting [Xavier_Alpha] and [Magneto_Omega] to any reasonable future in DOX?

Here's just one legal exhibit I would tender: Sabretooth broke into Damage Control to steal the plans for Sol's Anvil which became converted to a Mother Mold facility, killing human guards in the process, on Xavier's and Magneto's instructions. Then they send Cyke to retrieve Creed from the F4 and, when that failed, they sicced Emma on the "Superhuman Supermax Supervillain Processing" with paperwork on diplomatic immunity for all mutants from human criminal prosecution...!

How are we going to move onto a mainstream 616 universe where such villainous behaviour becomes the MO of the X Men?