Warning! Spoilers for Wolverine #31 ahead!The X-Men hero Beast‘s descent into villainy and horrific evil throughout the Krakoan Era has sullied the character for many of his former fans, but a throwaway line in Wolverine #31 reveals that his former teammates could eventually resurrect him, as a hero once again.
When Hank McCoy first debuted as the Bouncing Beast in 1963’s X-Men #1 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, he was a studious, caring, and brave young man, dedicated to heroism and Xavier’s dream. Slowly over the last several decades, the once happy-go-lucky Beast has become trapped in a moral hellscape of his own making, one that he can only escape by death at this point. In Wolverine #31 – from writer Benjamin Percy and artist Juan Jose Ryp – as Beast continues to terrorize his former X-Force teammates, a Data Page from Sage reveals that all the Cerebro backups of Hank since Krakoa was founded are gone. The only psychic files of Beast that remain are from his time as a member of the Avengers.
Beast’s Time With The Avengers Was A Highlight Of His Heroism
After Wolverine finally thought he killed Beast in Wolverine #30, ending Beast’s reign of terror, it was quickly revealed that Hank had contingency plans in place. Wolverine #31 reveals that the deranged former hero, who has convinced himself that his atrocious actions are for the “greater good” of Krakoa, is continuing his quest to protect his nation, even if it turns him into a villain. Wolverine is desperate to gain more information on Beast’s motives and machinations, particularly after Beast kidnapped, murdered, and enslaved Logan to use as a weapon. Logan asks Hope Summers to give him all the information from his Cerebro backups. Shockingly, Hope realizes that all five of the Cerebro cradles have been wiped of Beast’s backups, which Sage confirms.
This is fascinating, because in many ways Beast’s time with the Avengers were some of his happiest, and most heroic adventures. Many of Beast’s more horrifying moments, like upgrading the Legacy Virus to work against the Super-Skrulls, obliterating an entire reality in the “Ghost Boxes” arc, or bringing the original five X-Men to the future, were all done in the name of saving mutantkind. However, when Beast was with the Avengers – although he would regularly leave to support the X-Men during major crises – he was not fighting to save the vulnerable community he hails from, freeing him to not need to always be so drastic and morally gray with his actions. When Hank joined the Avengers in 1975’s Avengers Vol. 1 #137 by Steve Englehart and George Tuska, he ended up staying on that team longer than he had ever been with the X-Men. Many comics writers have said they continually brought Beast back to the Avengers because of his bubbly and compassionate personality, something that is sorely missing from the Krakoan Beast.
Beast Is In Need Of A Heroic Redemption More Than Ever Before
While Sage can only speculate and say that Beast must not have seen those Avengers files as “important or compromising,” one has to wonder if somewhere deep in Hank’s heroic heart he purposefully saved those backups, so that eventually he could be resurrected as a hero once again. Beast’s current heel turn has not only seen him cloning himself, but also starting a “Weapons of X” program and creating a series of Wolverine clones to use as weapons for the Krakoan state. This is just one step further in Hank’s true descent into super villain territory, and proves that there is no hope for redemption for Hank McCoy, unless he is killed and resurrected as a former version of himself.
Hank has come too far to stop now, alienating himself from all his X-Men allies and relying on his philosophically broken ideals of morality and justice to push him along on his brutal agenda. But for some reason Beast chose to not delete the Cerebro backups of his times a happy, heroic Avenger, meaning someday in the future an untwisted version of Hank could one day be reborn.
Wolverine #31 from Marvel Comics is available now in stores.
