Jonathan Hickman's Dangling Plot Threads
It was announced today that Jonathan Hickman is stepping away from the X-Men indefinitely after the end of Inferno to do another major Marvel project, mainly as a result of everyone else working on X-Men comics wanting to stay within the first act of his planned story longer than he wanted to. Reading between the lines it seems like he will be coming back around to complete his story later on – my guess going on where things are story-wise in the other books is maybe towards the end of 2023. In the meantime it seems like Gerry Duggan will be leading the line as they continue to explore the ideas of Reign of X.
This is disappointing in that I very much want to read X-Men comics written by Jonathan Hickman and am heavily invested in the story he was writing, far more than any of the other X-Men line writers. So I very much hope that things work out so he can complete the story he began, particularly as there are MANY loose ends for him to deal with. It would be heartbreaking for him to abandon these threads forever, particularly when so much of his X-Men series was meticulously arranging dominos that haven’t come close to falling.
Here’s a list of the major dangling plot lines, starting with the questions I expect to be addressed in Inferno:
• How did Moira MacTaggert actually come to know the capabilities of Krakoa? We understand that this comes from her 9th life in partnership with Apocalypse, but it seems like there’s some more to this than what we’ve seen, particularly in her 10th life.
• And what was actually going on with Xavier and MacTaggert’s initial confrontations with Krakoa in Giant Size X-Men #1 and Ed Brubaker’s Deadly Genesis mini-series?
• What does Moira know that she has kept from everyone else, possibly including Xavier and Magneto? “We always lose,” yes, but it seems like there’s something more specific left unsaid.
• What does Destiny actually know that Moira is deliberately suppressing? Or maybe, from another angle, what is Moira trying to learning from reading Destiny’s diaries?
• What will Mystique do to force the resurrection of Destiny?
• When will Sabretooth break free? (I have a feeling this is connected..)
• Will Moira reveal herself to Krakoa?
• When/how will Orchis learn of the resurrection protocols? (This is hinted at in Duggan’s X-Men #2.)
• How will Orchis/Nimrod strike?
Questions set up by House of X/Powers of X, X-Men, and Giant Size X-Men:
• What will become of the Sentinel legions being created in Sentinel City on Mercury?
• What will be Sinister’s inevitable betrayal of Krakoa?
• When will we see the chimera in this timeline? (This seems likely to start moving along in Hellions.)
• What is going to happen with the Children of the Vault?
• Who created the Children and why?
• Is there a direct connection of the Children and the Homo Novissima, or is this more just thematic mirroring?
• What will happen with the AI growing in The World that was created from Vault technology, from the end of Giant Size X-Men: Storm?
• What’s the situation with the Phalanx and ascension? There is nothing set specifically in motion here but it’s clear enough it’s part of Hickman’s endgame.
• Is some part of Krakoa infected with the techno-organic virus, as seen in Powers of X?
• When will things go wrong with Vulcan after the aliens tampered with his mind in X-Men #10?
• What will happen with the Brood after the X-aligned Broo became their king in X-Men #9?
• How will Storm call in the debt of the Shi’ar from the end of X-Men #17? (This seems likely to just be folded into S.W.O.R.D.)
• Who exactly is Riley Marshall and who does he actually work for? (Could be Orchis… or not.)