Let's Talk About House Of X #4- SPOILERS

Hi, I’m David Harth, and I’m out of pithy little greetings. I just House Of X #4 and I’m not really in the mood for that sort of thing. This one was a downer to be sure, but it also brought up some interesting questions about the future of the book and what comes next.

Before ye sail off into these waters, know that there be SPOILERS ahead.

This column probably won’t be as long as some of the other ones I’ve done so far, but that because there’s not a whole lot to talk about, not really. The last time we got together here, I predicted that Husk would die. She was the weirdest choice to have on the team, so I figured she would be the sacrificial lamb.

Yeah, I was wrong.

Every member of the team ended up dying. There, I said it. That said, they succeeded in their mission. That success brings up a lot of questions about the future of not only this book but all of Hickman’s work. As we found out in Power Of X #3, everything readers saw from X-Men Year One Hundred was from Moira’s ninth life, the one where she was a servant of Apocalypse. We know very little about X-Men Year One Thousand so far, but I think X-Men Year One Thousand comes from what we’ve witnessed in this issue.

At the end of the book, Xavier says, “No More.” No more mutants dying at the hands of humans. I think this event radicalizes Xavier to such an extent that he militarizes mutants to an extent never seen before. Now, we know there is a Nimrod in X-Men Year One Thousand, and the X-Men succeeded in destroying the Mother Mold, but that doesn’t mean that humans could never build another one, especially since Xavier took mutants in a less peaceful direction.

From what we’ve seen so far, Magneto has been in Xavier’s ear a lot lately. He seems to be the second in command on Krakoa, and if anyone could push Xavier to a more militant direction, it would be him, and it wouldn’t be hard. Scott and Jean are dead, and they are two of Xavier’s first and most loved students. It would be simple for Magneto to use this loss to push Xavier into taking mutants down a new road.

In X-Men Year One Thousand, we see a dominant mutant race who are very dismissive of humanity. This could easily stem from what we’ve seen begun in this issue. Instead of being raised on Xavier’s dream of peaceful coexistence, they’ve been raised that humans are monsters that will destroy them given half the chance. This could very well explain what we saw in that future.

Another thing that has to be addressed is that we all know that all of the characters who are dead aren’t going to stay dead. We’ve seen the solicits for future issues, so the question is, how do they come back? If you’ve been following these articles of mine, then you know that I’ve been theorizing a lot lately about Moira’s lives and how we really don’t know what one we’re going to get at the end of all this. We can infer that this issue takes place in her tenth life. So, when will the rest of Hickman’s run take place?

We haven’t seen Moira in her tenth life at all yet. According to her lifelines in some of the books, we know she’s alive in this world again. But she hasn’t made an appearance yet. So, my first theory is that she dies and in her eleventh life, she’s able to help the X-Men find a way to destroy the Orchis Initiative’s Mother Mold without all of the casualties. Maybe the meeting we’ve seen between her and Charles when she reveals everything to him in X-Men Year One is in this eleventh life.

Now, another theory I have is this- Krakoa can regrow dead mutants. I brought this up way back in my first column about Hickman’s X-Men, but maybe that’s what’s going to happen. Xavier was in Jean’s mind, who was telepathically linking the team. Perhaps there is some kind of telepathic download thing that allows them to be put into new bodies? It would also explain why other mutants that we know are dead will be back in the future.

So, that’s all I got for this week. This one was a shocker, and it raised more questions about what comes next than it answers. That’s the beauty of Hickman’s stuff so far; it keeps unfolding like an onion. There are more layers the more you pick at it, and the layers keep leading to new and exciting places.

Join me next week for some spoiler-y discussion on Powers Of X #4.