Warning: contains spoilers for Marauders #10The X-Men’s mutant rescue team the Marauders has finally wrapped up their mission to the ancient mutant civilization of Threshold, and the conclusion to Marauders #10 reveals a major secret about the mutant’s living island Krakoa.
The sentient island Krakoa has been a major player in X-Men comics since Jonathan Hickman’s 2019 soft reboot of the franchise in House of X/Powers of X, where mutant Doug Ramsey worked closely with Krakoa and his ally Warlock to terraform the living island into a habitable home for all of mutantkind. Slowly, over the past 4 years, the true history of Krakoa and it’s sister island Arakko has been revealed, with Marauders ally Grove shown transforming into Krakoa’s first evolution Okkara.
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The modern Krakoa is nothing like the angry, violent Krakoa that attacked the X-Men back in the famous 1975 relaunch Giant-Size X-Men, which required sapping mutants of their life force to survive. Working with Doug and Xavier the founders of Krakoa realized that by having a massive amount of mutants living on the island, Krakoa could sap a small fraction of energy from every mutant, empowering itself without doing any harm to its inhabitants. The massive X of Swords event revealed that Krakoa used to have a twin island named Arakko, and before these two islands were separated by the demonic Twilight Sword they were actually one connected land mass called Okkara. At the conclusion to X of Swords the island of Arakko was brought back to Earth, and then sent to Mars to terraform it into the mutants own planet, becoming the planet Arakko. Now, in Marauders #10 – written by Steve Orlando with art by Eleonora Carlini and Matt Milla – it has been revealed that Okkara was once a humanoid mutant known as Grove, the leader of the 2 billion year old mutant civilization called Threshold.
Krakoa Is More Connected To Mutantkind Than Anyone Realized
Recently in the Judgment Day event it was revealed that the Eternals could not harm the island directly because it was a part of the Great Machine of Earth which went against their prime directives, and later it became known that the Celestials actually based the Great Machine on Okkara itself, meaning it in many ways was the Great Machine’s parent. Yet, it turns out that Okkara – and Krakoa – are even older than readers thought, with Marauders #10 showing that the sentient island is at least 2 billion years old, and was somehow able to survive the extinction event that loomed on Threshold’s horizon. Grove was a powerful mutant in Threshold society whose power was healing through vegetative growth, and in the Marauders and Thresholders final battle against Sublime, Arkea, Stryfe, and the Unbreathing, Grove was mortally wounded.
However, Grove was able to use their ability to heal themselves by transforming into a sentient living plant who decided to call themselves Okkara. This is a huge deal, mainly because history showed that Okkara was home the “first mutants” – Isca, Genesis, and En Sabah Nur’s generation – until Threshold was discovered by the Marauders, but now that it is known that Okkara was a Thresholder, and it’s leader on top of that, it is clear that Krakoa has always been part of mutant history and evolution. For years and years Krakoa was called a “mutant,” but it has always been classified as an “other mutant” like Warlock or Broo, and now it is known that Krakoa was originally a true humanoid ancestor of modern mutants, a massive retcon for such an integral part of mutant history.
The X-Office has done a truly wonderful job of slowly revealing the true history of the X-Men’s living island Krakoa over the past 4 years, and the Marauders’ discovery that Krakoa was once an ancient mutant is a truly exciting reveal that can hopefully be explored even more in the future.
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Marauders #10 from Marvel Comics is available now in stores.
