As the X-Men‘s Krakoan Era draws to a close in 2024, one of the last threads to tie up is X-Force’s battle against a founding member gone bad. Now, as Marvel reveals how Colossus’ vicious X-Men team plan to beat their former leader, fans also get to see the monstrous final form of their target.
In a recently released teaser for Benjamin Percy and Robert Gill’s X-Force #48, fans see X-Force planning to take down Beast, aka Henry McCoy. Alongside the tagline “The best way to stop Beast… is Beast,” fans see the team apparently activating a clone of the villain, while the original (now called Beast Prime) sports telefloronic armor, which seems to include a gaping maw in the stomach.
Beast Prime was last seen in Benjamin Percy and Juan José Ryp’s Wolverine #35, where X-Force managed to kill his strike force of Beast and Wolverine clones, destroy his mobile Weapons of X base, and seemingly behead Beast Prime himself. However, for all the punishment they handed out, Beast Prime survived and escaped.
Beast Gets New Armor for His Final Battle
Meanwhile, X-Force Create a New Beast to Fight the Original
Telefloronics have been a major focus for X-Force over the last few years. This plant-based technology is unique to the mutant nation of Krakoa, where the sentient island and genius inventor Forge have managed to grow exciting new technologies out of plant matter, including teleportation gates and self-building cities. Forge has also managed to build several suits of advanced armor that mimic mutant abilities or grant the wearer new powers. It seems that Beast will be wearing one such suit during his showdown with X-Force.
Beast’s Corruption Is a Genuine Tragedy
Years of Stories Reach a Dark Conclusion
Since 2019, X-Force Volume 6 has followed the gradual decline into villainy of Hency ‘Hank’ McCoy, aka the Beast. Often considered the heart of the X-Men, Beast has often been reckless, especially in wielding his scientific genius for personal reasons – for example, damaging time itself when he brought the original teen X-Men into the present day. However, Beast truly lost control of his ambition when he was asked to run X-Force, turning the team into a mutant CIA to protect the interests of the island nation of Krakoa.
Since then, Beast has killed innocents, used mind control to eliminate economic competition to Krakoa, and experimented on his mutant charges – including cloning brain-damaged versions of Wolverine to act as his personal hit squad.
Finding out about Beast’s crimes, X-Force shut down Beast’s Weapons of X operation, then embarked on a time travel journey to find and defuse various failsafes he’d set to activate at key moments in the future. The future as constructed by Beast Prime was a horror show in which he merged with the mutant-killing Sentinel Nimrod, then evolved into a monstrous creature named the God of All Mutants. Thankfully, X-Force triumphed, and now there’s just one last detail – killing Beast Prime himself.
X-Men Founder the Beast Must Die
Marvel Is About to Kill a Hero Who’s Been Around Since 1963
While Hank McCoy has been a beloved member of the X-Men from the start, his actions as Beast Prime have gone beyond redemption. Beast has become a murderous dictator willing to enslave innocents and carry out abominable experiments simply due to his sense of superiority. This isn’t the usual Marvel ‘hero gone bad’ story where it turns out they were possessed or operating under a misapprehension that explains their actions. Indeed, X-Force has gone to pains to make it clear that nothing has ‘happened’ to Beast – Krakoa simply gave him power, and his arrogance bloomed into full-blown evil.
The upcoming X-Force #50 claims to be “the final battle against Beast,” promising the conflict will bring about a “final reckoning.” There’s essentially no chance that Beast Prime – the Marvel hero who has existed since 1963 and helped found the X-Men – will live beyond early 2024. However, this isn’t only because there’s no way to redeem Hank, but because of the many potential replacements waiting in the wings.
Beast Prime Must Die
But There Are Several Ways to Give X-Men a New Hank McCoy
The teaser from Marvel officially confirms that X-Force will activate a new version of Beast to fight the original. When Beast Prime officially broke ties with the X-Men, he left behind mental imprints of his time with the Avengers, apparently seeing no value in his heroic past. It’s possible that the X-Men can use these imprints to awaken a clone of Beast, recreating a version of Hank from the height of his ‘good guy’ era, and giving them tactical insight into Beast Prime’s plans and remaining resources. The X-Men’s resurrection tech – new to the Krakoan Era – is currently unavailable, but it’s likely X-Force can access one of Beast Prime’s existing Weapons of X clones, making this possible.
Usually, it would seem pretty obvious that X-Men will permanently replace Beast Prime with this heroic new version, but that’s far from certain. It would be a very easy solution to 50 issues of X-Force to just introduce a heroic Beast, especially since the comic has spent so long stressing that Beast Prime is the end result of a major flaw in Hank’s character. At the same time, Marvel’s upcoming The Original X-Men series provides another option.
This series will see the original teen X-Men go on a multiversal adventure, just weeks after being recruited by Charlex Xavier. What’s more, Marvel is promising that one of the heroes will end up permanently stranded in the present. It would make a lot of sense for this hero to be teen Hank, who could then grow into a very different man (especially since, during the time he previously spent in the present, he began learning magic, even taking on a new appearance with white fur and horns.)
There’s also the matter of a Skrull Beast introduced in Secret Invasion, who is seemingly still swinging around the Savage Lands. While this version of Beast has been forgotten by most, he established a connection to Wonder Man, whose appearance on Daniel Acuña’s cover for X-Force #49 could suggest the shapeshifting alien’s return (especially since Will Sliney’s cover sees X-Force fighting Beast in a Savage Land-esque jungle.)
2024 Is the End of an Era In More Ways Than One
Fans Still Don’t Know What’s Coming After Krakoa
As a new, heroic Beast is born, the evil Beast Prime is being officially replaced by the X-Men, who will no longer allow his crimes to continue. Fans have no idea what status quo will follow the end of the Krakoan era, and X-Force’s mission is just one of several climactic moments that will bring the 2019-2024 revamp of the entire X-Men franchise to a close. Exactly what happens next is anyone’s guess, but one thing’s for sure: the X-Men won’t stop until X-Force’s former leader is in the ground.
X-Force #48 is coming January 24 from Marvel Comics.
