Warning: spoilers for X-Men #18 ahead!The X-Men‘s Resurrection Protocols have shaken up the status quo of the Marvel universe, but this apparent ‘cure’ for death comes with a dark secret: one Laura Kinney’s Wolverine is now being forced to grapple with. While the Protocols create new versions of any given mutant, this is essentially down to a process of duplication, not true resurrection. This has disturbing consequences for the X-Men, as well as all in the Marvel universe who want to use the Protocols to escape death.
The complications began in Jonathan Hickman, R.B. Silva, Marte Gracia, and Clayton Cowles’ X-Men #5, when Laura, Synch, and Darwin were sent inside the Vault: a temporally separate biome used by the lethal Children of the Vault to rapidly out-evolve mutantkind. Ultimately, Synch escaped, but Laura stayed behind and was believed to have been killed, so she was promptly resurrected using copies of her personality taken before the mission. Fast-forward to Gerry Duggan, Joshua Cassara, and Cowles’ X-Men #16, where another raid into the Vault reveals that Laura, while aged hundreds of years, has been alive this whole time.
Duggan, C.F. Villa, Matt Milla, and Cowles’ X-Men #18 largely concerns itself with the ramifications of having two extant Laura Kinneys at the same time. The old and young Lauras meet up to discuss just what that means: for example, who gets the title of Wolverine? Which of their personalities will be used for future resurrection should one of them die? Ultimately, the two part with a mutual understanding, but with the older Laura telling her counterpart that, “I’m happy you get to live a different life, and this isn’t personal…but I don’t want to be your friend…I don’t even want to see you.“
Wolverine & Old Woman Laura Face an Impossible Situation
Fans have long debated whether the X-Men’s Resurrection Protocols bring back the original version of a hero or just create a copy, but the return of Old Woman Laura answers this question. ‘Old Woman Laura’ hits the nail on the head when she mentions that her younger version “gets to live a different life.” Her resurrected self is now her own entity. Nothing suggests the transfer of consciousness from the first Laura to the second, just that the new Laura has the memories of her older self up to a certain point. If the consciousness of the original does not transfer to their resurrected body, but only their memories, that means that the X-Men’s resurrection is just a copy and the individual who actually died is lost forever.
This is a thorny philosophical issue, made more complicated in a world of psychics and mutant powers. Given that the Resurrection Protocols function off a psychic imprint as a ‘backup,’ it does seem as though that imprint is what animates a resurrected mutant and not the original consciousness. As wonderful as the technology behind the X-Men‘s mutant resurrection seems to be, the grisly truth is that this is only “resurrection” from an outside perspective – as Wolverine has realized, the greatest mutant power can create new copies, but it can’t bring anyone back.
X-Men #18 is now available from Marvel Comics.
