Warning: SPOILERS for Wolverine #27!Beast‘s descent into evil has been well documented, and now this original X-Men member has come full circle in his turn to villainy. Leading the Krakoan iteration of X-Force has exacerbated Hank McCoy’s worst tendencies to the point that nearly every aspect of his life has become dominated by his moral decay. Close friends like Wolverine are no longer safe from Beast’s self-justified acts of darkness.
Defecting to the Inhumans during the Inhumans vs. X-Men period, submitting to Hydra’s brief coup of the United States during Secret Empire, and risking the stability of the entire timeline by stranding the original five X-Men in the present are all grave mistakes made by Hank McCoy over the years. His recklessness and lack of empathy for those he’s hurt has only escalated since gaining power in the era of mutant sovereignty. On the off chance of the development of biotechnology that could compete with Krakoa’s, Beast triggered a genocide of the entire nation of Terra Verde. He’s imprisoned and tortured Colossus, and recently his sexual misconduct at X-Force HQ briefly came to light. Now, just after Wolverine saved him from Kraven the Hunter, Hank McCoy ensures that Logan’s good deed will not go unpunished.
Following the events of A.X.E.: Judgment Day, Beast has taken the opportunity to begin profiling potential threats to Krakoan national security and eliminating these targets whether they have actually attacked Krakoa or not. After rejecting Hank’s newest step into fascism, Wolverine’s personal adventure finds him being sold in McCoy’s vengeful clutches. The aftermath is detailed in Wolverine #27 from Benjamin Percy, Juan José Ryp, Frank D’Armata, VC’s Cory Petit, and Mark Basso. Logan is a hard man to kill, but it turns out that beheading him still gets the job done in a pinch. Back on Krakoa, Beast disrupts Wolverine’s resurrection, and places a mysterious collar made of Krakoan plant tech on him. The specifics are cloudy, but the intended effect is clear, as Hank has functionally lobotomized Logan and enslaved him as a personal assassin. For Logan, this development mirrors the abuse he suffered in the Weapon X program, but for Beast it’s a warped reflection of the story from over 20 years ago that sent him down this path.
Beast’s Wolverine Betrayal is the Final Evolution of His Threnody Failure
Hank McCoy’s treatment of Logan is inhumane to the extreme and a betrayal of any friendship the men might’ve once had. It is shockingly reminiscent of the kind of behavior Mr. Sinister employed with his original Marauders, hearkening back to where Beast’s fall from grace began. Back in the crisis caused by the X-Men’s Legacy Virus, a young Black unhoused woman named Threnody develops a mutant gift that puts a grave strain on her sanity. Rather than helping Threnody cope with her mutation, Hank encourages her to sell herself into servitude under Sinister. His fellow X-Men are aghast, but Beast claims that Mr. Sinister’s lack of morals will allow him to get better use out of Threnody’s gift in the fight against the Legacy Virus. Hypocritically, Hank risks the lives of countless others to give Infectia one last view of the sunset before she dies of Legacy later in the very same issue. Both in deep pain due to the Legacy crisis, the notable difference between the women is that Infectia is white and Threnody is Black.
Among readers, Beast selling Threnody to Mr. Sinister is noted as the defining moment of shameful behavior that begins his turn to evil. Hank’s reasoning for doing so is that he is too morally pure to use Threnody as effectively as Sinister could. At the same time, abandoning Threnody was the first step in bridging that moral gap between Hank McCoy and Nathaniel Essex. Now Beast has come full circle, the only separation between the two at this point being that Sinister has committed fewer war crimes in the Krakoan era. Beast may be one of the original X-Men, but he’s a far-cry from his heroic youth. Arguably, he’s the first of the first five X-Men to truly become a supervillain completely by his own volition.
Wolverine #27 is available now from Marvel Comics.
